Top 10 TE Rankings + Preseason Reaction - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/14

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Welcome into the show, the fantasy footballers podcast. Mike, the Fantasy Hitman Wright, Jason Moore, Andy Holloway. Monday, August 14th, happy to have you with us. The illustrious Deucers in the building, Judge Yamati, Al Borland, hanging out in Deucer's Alley, as they always, as they always do. Got the Tame Impala shirt on, Brooksie? Yes, sir. Rocking out. Yeah. That's good. That's good. We've got a great show for you today. We're in the thick of it heading into the third week of August. Preseason football happening. Yeah, we got little nuggets we can share. We did. We definitely got some initial answers to some of those off-season questions. We are talking top 10 tight-ins, favorite late-round tight-in picks on today's show as well. NFL news to cover some injury stuff. Rankings are flying around right now.

Maybe that's an exaggeration, but they are being tweaked and adjusted as we get to, you know, get a better look at these teams and what they're planning to do on offense. Some things happening, not surprising. Maybe the average repositions of these players moving around, Khalil Herbert. There's one feller who 56-yarded his way to a couple round jumps probably. I really want to talk about that because. In some ways, it's just like very funny to me when one play. It takes one play to rewrite six months of narratives. Right. And that is just a funny reality for fantasy football. And I'm not saying it's not worthy of being rewritten. I'm simply saying it's ridiculous that it can happen with one play. I mean, you look at your drafts. It just locked mine up. I wrote that thing back in March. Okay. All right. Yeah, I mean.

Cool. Cool. Team Herbert, baby. DJ Moore number one overall. But we're getting into it all. We do have a big, big announcement here at the top of the show. We have a big giveaway going on. In fact, you can win not only a signed Derek Henry jersey, not only a signed T. Higgins mini helmet, but the grand prize of all grand prizes, the ultimate draft kit for life. The rest of your life. Willie Wonka situation. That's, that's actually. No, they don't get, they don't own the fantasy footballers, Jason. Oh, man. They just get the ultimate draft kit. No, but they will own the suite. We actually give them the building. I feel like it's one and the same. If you own the UDK for life, it's like you have, you know, at least a minority share, you know, in this company. Sure.

So we are giving away the ultimate draft kit for life to one lucky individual. There will be three separate winners for those three awards. And all you have to do to be entered to win the UDK for Life is order the 2020, ultimate draft kit by Friday at 6.30 p.m. Eastern. Because we will be going live with a special UDK for Life live stream on Friday at 6 p.m. Eastern. And at the end of that live stream, we're going to give it away. And so you've got all this week. And if you've, if you've preordered it and you bought it in the past, you are entered to win as well. But if you want to get in on that giveaway, the UDK for Life, the Derek Henry signed jersey and the T. Higgins signed mini helmet, Ultimate draft, get ready for your draft, updating every single day. And there you go. We're going to be live on YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, Facebook. Yeah, it's not only a really cool opportunity for, look, you're going to get the UDK anyways.

But come hang out with us for a little bit. We're going to take questions, you know, have a good time and talk some fantasy football. All right. Anything else at the top of the show you guys want to mention? No, let's get into the preseason stuff. All right. Quick question of the day is basically what were some of your biggest preseason week one reactions? There were quite a few things that happened. I mean, not every starting group got an opportunity to even play, but. We saw some players we wanted to see. Yeah, I will jump in because I had the questions about, I want to see what are the Jacksonville Jaguars wide receivers? What does that actually look like? Because Calvin Ridley is being drafted so far as the number one wide receiver. And Christian Kirk has, at least in this game, he was the third wide receiver. He played exclusively in the slot. And that could be.

Like maybe Kirk ends up being drafted too high. If that's all we're going to see from him is he just comes in as the third wide receiver. I'm not sure off the time I head how much 11 personnel the Jags are going to run or they ran last year. But when that is your role in the offense, it definitely hurts because you're not on the field. You're not getting snaps. And if you're not getting snaps, it doesn't matter how good you are. You can't get a target. Yeah, it's really, really unfortunate. Thankfully, I think most of those plays are running plays. But still, if you're not on the field, it sucks. Yeah, it matters. Yeah, I mean, you're right. You're right. And so for me, one of my biggest takeaways is the same thing. It's a matter of opportunity and what we've seen being on the field or not being on the field. Well, in training camp, it started getting reported more and more and more that Rashad Penny was not really.

being very involved in practice. He wasn't running with the ones. I know he got that first snap, got us all excited. Yep. But he was not utilized much. And then the speculation because of that is, look, he either is their dude. You know what I mean? Like they're just set on him being the guy. And so they're resting him and using camp time to see the other position battles. Or he's like on the roster bubble might not make the team. Well, if it was the former. then what happened in preseason wouldn't have happened, which was Rashad Penny playing late into the second quarter. That's not what they do for the dude they're wanting to rest up because they know he's the one, which means to me he's on the roster bubble. Dude, I agree. I didn't believe that that first possibility was a real one with this coaching staff and with the history of being in the camp of Kenny Gainwell.

And even Boston Scott, like I didn't think that there was a real possibility that this team would just say, you're our guy on a one-year deal that you invested very little in. So, you know, seeing that happen, big adjustments for the fantasy community. And look, people have drafted in the best ball crowd leaning into penny and it might not pay off. It may not. Thankfully, he's been like a steady ninth round. So a lower investment. The. The team did come out and talk about it a little bit, and they said, like, next week it's going to look different. So I agree that this is, these are certainly bad vibes for Rashad Penny, at least making the team, you know, aside from that, but can he be the true number one guy? So this is a wait and see, but I did, I made some adjustments, moved Gainwell, because Kenny Gainwell and Boston Scott were the two guys that didn't play at all. That's right. Like as in, but.

That's also, they're the veterans of the team. They know the offense. The team doesn't need to see what they bring. So this is still a, there's still some answers I need from this team, but off to a bad start for Penny. I'll just bring up the most impressive player I saw, I think, during the preseason, which was Deuce Vaughn in that performance in Dallas. He might be a real thing. I mean, Deuce Vaughn, it's easy to make jokes about the stature because. Very, very, very few players historically have ever been able to have success at that size. And because it looks like a child. I mean, genuinely like he's awesome. He's a super fast little kid out there. But it looks so insane. I thought he looked. Honestly, I thought his stature looked better in Pats.

Like full pads for the game. From the game angle, you're right. Like the broadcast angle, it does look a little bit better. But if you watch anything from the sideline, when you see like the handhelds or, you know, just training camp videos, even in pads, it actually gives you a better perspective of the difficulty of finding him behind the line. He just disappears. He's so shifty. He's so shifty too. He made several Barry Sanders-esque. lateral movements in this game that were, they were like Darren Sprouls. I mean, it's... Say, deuce von rookie running back for the Dallas Cowboys. Yeah, just don't let in. I mentioned Dallas. I'm not the rookie part. But, you know, he's going to be competing with Rico Dowdell and Ronald Jones, who's suspended, but he'll have a chance at the beginning of the year to have snaps. It's possible. And running back is the one position where a rookie can come in and make a quick impact. So I, you know...

I think we all have doubts of Tony Pollard holding up to a massive... He is not built like Zeke or Derek Henry. Like Tony Pollard is generally going to be best with about 20 opportunities. Total. Passing game and running game. And maybe he gets more than that, but... And Malik Davis, too. So I think that they're going to figure out that rotation behind Pollard. Whether that means Pollard doesn't deserve to be as high as he as I don't... I'm not going there, but... It's interesting. Deuce Von looked great. And, you know, Mike probably wanted to mention that Adam Chapman caught a couple passes. He caught a couple passes. He was also, he was the starter. He was out there more than Greg Dulcich, at least in this small sample. Dulcich was a third down. I believe he got, he was missed on a big play. Dulcich was. Possible. And the first target was to Troutman. It was a bad target.

You can call it a drop, whatever, bad target. The point is that if this is, like, if this is the blueprint, and I'm not taking an Adam Tratman victory lap because I don't think Troutman's going to turn into something for this year. But if this is the blueprint, that's a massive downgrade for the possibility of Greg Dulcich being an actual sleeper breakout tight end. And quickly back to Khalil Herbert, Chicago Bears running back. It wasn't the play. That, I mean, that was just like kind of the cherry on top of the exciting morning for the Bears and for Khalil Herbert. It was the fact that Khalil took every snap that the starters played. And that included. Yeah, no Deonti Foreman working in. Or Rocheon Johnson. And that included third and long. And that was a, I was excited to see that the Bears got put in that situation. I'm like, okay, it's third and eight. Who's coming in? Because I wasn't sure it was going to be Herbert. I'm like, who's going to come in here?

But no, it was Khalil Herbert, and it was a designed screen pass to Herbert. So that's pretty exciting that his ADP will certainly shift up because the Normies are returning and they're seeing these big types of plays. But he's still going to be a later round guy. He's not going to all of a sudden skyrocket to the fifth round, at least in my opinion. I believe two things about Herbert. One, I think he's more talented than Alexander Madison. So I'll say that. Like on the field, I think he's a better player than Alexander Madison. And so the second thing is I don't understand that the ADP disparity between the two. To me, they're both in situations that first opportunity is the starter. We don't know what the rotation behind them is going to be. And I believe that both of those offenses are going to have a lot of success. So when you have a fourth round, ninth round ADP gap,

That's insanity to me. See, I see the difference. I recognize it. A lot of it's quarterback. The passing work that won't be there as much for Herbert, the vulturing of touchdowns at the goal line, that Kirk Cousins isn't going to be rolling out stealing those touchdowns. I think that there is, I like the comp and realizing that they both are in similar situations, but I do think that the upside will be different. Let me give you another example then. Rashad White. Rashad White is going significantly ahead of Khalil Herbert. Same exact situation where, you know, maybe he gets a lot of passing work, but right now we think Chase Edmins is going to get some of that work in Tampa Bay. And Rashad White's not necessarily a goal line force. So it's like five-round gap between Kalil Herbert. And, you know, there are these players right now. And we came up in our mock draft episode. If you didn't get to catch it, that was Friday last week. There are certain players. I got Clil Herbert in the...

10th round? That was a 10 teamer? It was a 10 team league. Maybe it was later than the 10th round. I think it was the 10th. It was the third to last pick in that draft and it was where I should have taken a quarterback. Great pick. I told you the Herbert pick was going to look good. But my point being that there are starting running backs going extremely late for those of you that want to invest in onesie positions, tight ins and quarterbacks early, wide receiver value drops to you and you're kind of like you're up against it to take a

I mean, it would have been great for you, Jason. You had a team in that mock draft that was searching for value at the running back position late because you ended up with Mark Andrews and you took Justin Fields, I believe. So these running backs are going to be there. And look, we all know what it's like in the middle of the season for fantasy. You're on the way everywhere and you're desperate to find a running back that will get any snaps. And here you have these running backs, eighth, ninth, tenth round that are going to have opportunities. And I just wish we could have, at some point, talked Brooks into the guy because Brooks all season long, hate Killal Herbert. He's a huge deontiform guy. We're like, why, Brooks? I mean, are you? Have we talked to you into Kalil Herbert now? I guess I'm in. Yeah, see, this is, we got to persuade our employees before we expect to persuade the listeners. Let's get into the news. News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance. All right.

Colts head coach Shane Steichen expects Jonathan Taylor back with the team this week. His quote said he should be back this week. Do I know the exact date? He'll be back? No, but he should be back. I'd like to believe he's just saying he should be. Like he really should come back. I'm still waiting for this storyline about Josh Jacobs and I'm not getting it. Back to Jonathan Taylor, I saw a tweet. Can't remember who it was from, but it was kind of an NFL reporter and they were saying, It remains status quo here for Jonathan Taylor. He still wants to be traded and has told the team, like, I'll be back when I'm 100%. So this, it certainly seems like a hold. I guess it's not a hold in because it's not there. But the holdout is, is contract related, hoping to get a trade. But he's also like, I'm guessing that if he were on a different team, he'd be out there pushing himself to get out there. But right now he's saying, no, I'm not 100% healthy. So you can wait until I'm.

Ready. Which is, I think, fair for players on a franchise tag to be back and be healthy. It's worth noting, looking at snap counts in the preseason, Evan Hull had the first opportunity in the backfield in Indianapolis. Dion Jackson got opportunities too. Wait, did I say that right? No. I got the name wrong. We'll figure that out. That sounds right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. He got more work on the ground after him. But Evan Hill caught some passes, something we know he'll be able to do. Just monitor that situation. Kenneth Walker, return to individual drills. Okay. Coming back from the- Ah! Okay. That'd be the groin. The groin index, yeah. This one's big. This one's really big. This one stinks. This one's big and stinky, as Mike said. Yeah. Kendri Miller, Saints rookie running back, left the preseason game, sprained knee, expected to miss a week or two, according to Nick Underhill.

optimism he'll be ready to get back in week one i read somewhere else there's a chance he'll be back for week one same knee he had surgery on towards the end of his career at tCU already had missed a bunch of the offseason program due to injury this is a problem because his his window to make his mark as a big contributor because everything we've read about jemal williams has been positive from saints camp like fitting in opportunity and we saw it in the game And then Alvin Camara's coming back. And to his credit, all the stuff. And look good. I say the stuff that sounds funny of like, we found an imbalance between the muscles in his legs and we've corrected it. Camara has, the wins have certainly shifted to be more positive for Camara. I think Camara is, he's closely. I mean, he's that, it's three games, right? It's three games. Man, what a fantasy situation. You don't get to put him on the IR.

Huge history of success, losing efficiency recently, but I think they're going to win that division. And I don't think it's going to just be Jamal Williams. So Alvin Camaro is probably going to have a pretty big opportunity. We just put up a new tool in the ultimate draft kit. And I want to pull this up here. It's under the research tab if you're in there. And it is an ADP platform comparison. And we talked about the fact that some of these platforms are going to lag. when it comes to where players are being drafted. So you can compare Sleeper, ESPN, Yahoo and Underdog. Camarra is a late seventh round pick on Yahoo, almost eighth round. An underdog, he's an eighth round pick. ESPN, he's still in the fifth right now, although in half point he's in the six. So I think that's going to keep dropping. If he's sitting there, based on the Kendry Miller News, Jason, if he's sitting there, 608 in your draft, are you thinking about it? Yeah, I mean,

He's going to be a player that you're going to have to think about if he's in the sixth round. The problem is there are still a few guys that I, you know, I, I'm not sure that I want to take the chance on a guy that I've got to miss several weeks on if there's someone else that I believe can be really special. And there's still some guys going pretty late I like, like James Cook. You know, who's going to have the better season between those two guys? It's already. a debatable topic, and one of them is missing three games. So I think I would, it's really a matter of just are the running backs that I still like to take a shot on gone? If they are, then yeah, Alvin Camara is worthy of a shot. But if not, I'm, you know, I'm just going to take the guys that I get to play week one. Zach Kurtz cleared to practice, expected to be ready for week one. Okay. Woo! He was very, very important to the roster last year. He was on pace for over 80 receptions.

Yeah, but he's going to be important for this roster. He's Zach Ertz. Yeah. There's an ability that he has to get open and be a quarterback's best friend. I'm not saying fantasy-wise you're going to want to play him. I'm just saying he hurts Tray McBride tremendously. That breakout season is not happening with Ertz on the field. It's my opinion. It could. Zachertz was playable all last year. Yeah, I would say the four McBride, it, if Ertz is really healthy and he's going to. Be there week one. I agree you're going to have to wait on it. But the progression of the Cardinal season, it could still turn into Trey McBride gets an opportunity because they see we got to move forward. We got to see what the young guys can do. But it looks like that might be on pause. Zachers could get traded midseason. That would be my most likely situation. That could happen to. They may give him the opportunity to go play for a contender if this team is one and eight or something. Elijah Moore exited with a rib injury. X-rays were negative. Elijah Moore.

now a wide receiver for the Browns. And then, uh, hooray, Mike. Oh, yeah. Kareem Hunt now visiting the Vikings making the rounds. Uh, love this quote from Kevin O'Connell, said Kareem, is quote, is maybe a potential fit for our football team. Maybe a potential. How much money you want, Kareem? That's, that's exactly. That's exactly what it is. So, Mike, you've got Ramandre Stevenson with the Patriots and you've got your Alexander Madison with the Vikings. both teams that Kareem Hunt is visiting, which one, if he has to sign on one of those two, which one will you be more upset by? Ooh. I can answer for him. Probably the Romandre side. Oh, really? Oh, I thought I was going to be the Madison. Yeah, I would have said Vikings too because he's going to take passing game work. And if you make Madison a first and second down guy with the history of inefficiency, I would concern me.

Yeah, I mean, it's the same argument for both. Yeah, that's true. Like Romandre, again, it was, you want those targets? He got a 17% target share last year for that to hold up. Kareem Hunt cannot be in business for the Patriots. What do you make of the fact that Kareem Hunt is making multiple visits, Saints, Colts, Vikings, teams are actively pursuing Kareem Hunt right now. And you're not seeing those storylines with like Ezekiel Elliott and some of these other back, Leonard Fournette. Like, does that tell you that Cream Hunt has more in the tank than what these teams saw with those other backs? I think it's probably more financial related, I'm guessing, that Zeke carries a much heavier presumed price tag than Cream Hunt. Nobody wants to pay for running backs. That's my presumption right now. And Cream Hunt is a, he's for, if you can look, and there's a lot of people that will say Cream Hunt is washed. He's done. He can still catch the ball.

So, I mean, like, he can still be a useful player in the passing game. That's why I think that he's getting the interest because teams always need that. More versatile. Yeah. All right. That was today's news and notes presented by USAA Insurance. Learn more at USAA.com slash insurance. Quick break and back with our top 10 tight-in countdown. I did realize with all these preseason games, I was reacquainted with the breath holding of injury. Yeah. And, you know, some of these starters, what Mahomes threw two passes, Justin Fields was on the, he threw two touchdowns. Both of them had air yards of about stuff. I think he had three air yards. Did he? I was going to, I was like two screen passes for touchdowns. Great to see DJ more involved. I really, really like DJ more this year. But, man, just those, there's going to be some. There's going to be the preseason injuries. It just, it's unavoidable.

Because things ramp up in camp and you start playing at a higher speed should be banned. I don't know why we don't outlaw injuries. I'll say just a small piece of breaking news, not going to hit the button. But sources are saying J.K. Dobbins, aka J.K.2L. is being activated today off the pup. Does that mean he'll be there? That would, I think so. Ellie, maybe we get like individual position. practices like Kenneth Walker's doing right now, but this is at least, we need this. But he was, remind me, he was kind of holding out before the pup. So does he still now have the right to show up, but he might not, or will he be there? If he's off the pup, that would then mean that if he doesn't show up, he'll start to get fined. Okay, okay, so we expect him to be there. I would think so. Okay, both legs? I have two strong legs this year. Not one staying on pup?

All right, let's get into it. Tight ends. Tightens. All right, over the last five years, tight ends are slowly taking more and more targets away from the wide receiver position. Tighten target share. And yet remain useless. Titan target share since 2018, 19.8% in 2018, 20.6% the next year. And then over the last three years, a slight increase, 21, 21.1, 21.3. More involved, more two tight-in sets, more higher draft capital lately being spent on them. 16 different tight-ins averaged five or more targets per game last year. That's the most in NFL history. Still feels unimportant because five targets in a game is not getting it done. The problem is not that you have, I mean, if you could see the future, you'd have enough tight-ins per week to be valuable in fantasy for your teams. The problem is that you can see the future for about three of them.

And then the other seven in the top 10 could be Moali Cox, right? It could be just some third string backup tight-in that ends up being those targets and catches a touchdown. Who's the guy that we call every tight-in we never see? Smyth, smith. Yeah, the smiths of the world will smite your chances of picking tight-ins week-to-week. You have been smote? Yeah, you have been smote. Kyle trying to tell me he's to tell everybody he plays for the dolphins. No, he plays for the mystery team. He plays for the NFL. Yeah. He plays for all teams. And he's there to steal your targets. And he's the guy that shows up. We talked about snap goblins around the end zone. The tight end is the permanent. He's the player that when he scores the touchdown, everybody goes, like, you know, he could have targeted any of the, if he targeted any wide receiver.

The fantasy players are happy. Any running back, they're happy. Quarterback sneak, they're happy. But no, it's Durham Smyth. And nobody played him. This freaking guy. This freaking guy. His family was ecstatic. Yeah. Good for them. But when looking, before we get into the countdown, our top 10 by consensus rankings, talk to me about a later round tight-in target that you got your eyes on. For me, it's 100% Tyler Conklin right now. Yeah. I think that that is a player that has been moving slowly up the ranks. I think Aaron Rogers is going to look to him in the red zone. I think you're going to have opportunities for Tyler Conklin. He seems to be the guy in New York and he's completely ignored in fantasy. This is the if you punt the tight end situation. For me, it has been and still is right now for at least one more week, Greg Dulcich. I am a little worried by what we saw from, you know, when they were in 11 personnel, you know, it was.