NFL Coaching Changes & Fantasy Impact, Just Sayin’ - Fantasy Football Podcast

But his offensive coordinator here is a 30-year-old, oh, Joe Brady, who, I mean, he wasn't a former NFL player. He spent two years in 2017 and 2018 with the Saints. So great offense, Sean Peyton and Drew Breeze. And then last year was the LSU passing game kind of office of coordinator in charge of totally...

basically rebranding the offensive LSU and winning the national championship with Joe Burrow. But, you know, so some of it is, well, he had Joe Burrow and he had Drew Breeze. We've seen a lot. That helps. That's going to help your offense. But at the same time, he's a, I'm really excited about him. I think he's a, he's 30 years old. He's an offensive coordinator now in the NFL and comes from success. Okay.

But I think what a lot of fantasy owners want to know first. Let's put this at the top of the list. Well, I think there's two big things in Carolina is, are you going to get consistent quarterback play out of Cam Newton? And did we see regardless of the coaching change? Look, nobody sings the praises of Norv Turner and the one-back dedicated offense than you, Jason, with what that brought to the table for Christian McCaffrey, 403 touches last year. And that's kind of something that you look at and say,

Regardless of the change, that's a peak number for a player. You know, since 2000, there have been 19 different running backs that had 400 plus touch seasons. The year after, those running backs averaged 352 touches and lost an average of 86 touches. You could have been fearful about McCaffrey going into this past year where he dominated because of the injury to Cam Newton or the tumult on the team and the fact that they were a franchise that struggled.

But he flourished. So where do you look now, you know, towards projecting McCaffrey? Well, I like the fact that you're, I mean, you're basically bringing in a college offense that it's having some success. The NFL game is transitioning. Cliff Kingsbury coming into Arizona. He was able to do some pretty solid things for his first year as a head coach and a rookie running the offense. So I'm hopeful.

for what Matt Rule can do. If we're talking about, is there concerns about Christian McCaffrey's workload and will he touch the ball as many times as last year? Yeah, you have to have those concerns because it's new people coming in, but I can't fathom coaches coming into Carolina and saying, well, we should, we should make Christian McCaffrey a.

Part-time running back. Some of that's going to be seen with the personnel moves, right? Do they go out and sign another back to share the load, draft the running back, you know, in the middle rounds? It looks like they're trying to get more involved, or is it going to be kind of status quo? I think Christian McCaffrey is pretty safe just based on his talent, his ability, his history, but it is a, certainly a red flag. It's a change. And Norve Turner was the change that got him to be the absolute every down.

I mean, nobody is on the field more than McCaffrey. Well, and not to perfectly compare David Johnson to Christian McCaffrey, but you had all of the argument for the college system and the things that would benefit David Johnson in Arizona last year, and at the end of the day, it just wasn't a fit from a philosophy standpoint to the strengths of David Johnson. I am not for one minute saying that that is the outcome for the McCaffrey situation, but I have concerns when you have 400 plus touches and a change at the position.

Yeah, I think it's going to be difficult to not have McCaffrey as the number one pick and the draft base on what he's done. Correct. But there are now concerns with that change. Regarding the head coach, Ja Rule, the one thing I will just say about him is, so he's coming from Baylor and Temple before that. And both of those situations, the first year he got there and granted obviously totally different. He's inheriting a bad college team at that point. But he went one and 11.

and two and ten in those two first seasons. Then the next season, 500, then the next season, double-digit victories turned both programs around. And I think that's how this franchise is viewing the Panthers, is that they're willing to strip it down a little bit to build it back up the right way. So looking at 2020, I don't expect this to be just a gangbuster season for the Carolina Panthers. We still need to know who the quarterback is, too.

Right. That's going to make a... They did re-sign Kyle Allen to a one-year deal. So he's under contract. Don't think he's the future. Cam Newton should be the quarterback this year. And I think Cam Newton coming back, look, Mike pointed out this Pat Thorman tweet earlier in the week. Curtis Samuel, so moving the discussion to the passing game and the implications there, Curtis Samuel saw the 10th most deep targets among 70 wide receivers last year. 19% of those targets were catchable.

You know, 19%. I had not seen that. That's not a high number in case you were. That is, it's impossible. That's not a C score. That's not a C grade, a D grade, an F. That's way below. That's 19%. How was that possible? And, you know, I don't know what to attribute that to outside of, you know, just simply bad quarterback play. But Curtis Samuel was a preseason darling in the eyes of fantasy football owners last year. And I think it's a fair.

it's a fair thing to say that he did not deliver on the expectations. Yeah, 100%, but it's pretty tough to overcome. I mean, he was doing his job. If he saw the 10th most deep targets, that means that Curtis Samuel is out there putting himself in a position where the quarterback needs to throw him the ball. I mean, it's not his fault that 19% were catchable. So if we're just like doing that brief talk about Curtis Samuel, yeah, if Cam Newton is back,

And he's back to health. I'll be in on Curtis Samuel again. I think he's a really, really good player who just suffered because of bad quarterback play. Before we move over to the Cleveland Browns and their changes, want to thank today's sponsor, Omaha Steaks. Did you see how I did that, guys? Oh, man. Talking about Cleveland and, yeah. Omaha. Oh, gosh. Moving over to Omaha. That's so delicious. But let's talk about the meat.

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All right, let's talk about the Cleveland Browns, new head coach, new offensive coordinator this year. Kevin Stefanski coming in, replacing Fred Kitchens, brings in Alex Van Pelt. I mean, Cleveland made a huge mistake, and they acknowledged it when they hired to be their head coach, a guy who didn't have a lot of experience in that realm, was a one-year offensive coordinator, and they said, you know, we're going to correct our mistake, and we're going to get.

rid of them and we're going to go hire a guy who doesn't have a lot of experience as a head coach and was an office coordinator for a year. It's so dumb to me. And I'm not saying that Stefanski can't succeed, but it's like bad organizations do bad things. That's, that's, yeah, I, I guess I would, I'd have a much softer stance than your, uh, so dumb to me stance. This is a hire to win the way they need to win.

Kevin Stefansky is the type of offense that represents the type of offense that I believe you need to win with Baker Mayfield and the roster that you have, which is completely counterintuitive to what they tried to do last year. They tried to lean on Baker and bring in pass catching weapons and the strength of the offense. The only thing they can move the ball between the 20s was Nick Chub. I believe that Kevin Stefansky incorrectly gets credit for

having a great running team for the Vikings last year when the credit should really, truly be going to their current, and we'll talk about him later, offensive coordinator, Gary Kubiak, who they brought in, who has a long history of. Cubs. Oh, the Coobes. And, of course, Dalvin Cook. I would say those two, you know, were great. But philosophically, you're right. Philosophically, he's on board with running the ball more. They've got Nick Chubb. That could very well be helpful to the Browns. It's just.

I don't know, man. If you're a franchise like the Cleveland Browns, it's been mired in the dirt, I feel like you need a guy who's got some kind of proven track record. What's so bizarre about Stefansky to me is from 2009 through 2013, he was the assistant quarterback coach for Minnesota. Then he moved up the ladder, and then 2017 and 2018. He was the quarterback's coach.

Then he became the OC, but he's like this, is he actually this run heavy guy? I mean, that's what Zimmer wanted him to do. That's what the head coach thought the philosophy, and that's what the team needs to be. But a coach who has spent most of his time coaching up quarterbacks, will he really bring that exact same ground-to-pound philosophy down to Cleveland? I think, I believe he will. But I think...

the reason they hired him is in part because he has that ability to bring Baker along as a professional quarterback. I think the way you're going to get through these next couple of years is leaning on the best piece of your team of Nick Chubb and building the offense around that weapon and letting Baker be more efficient, get him into the red zone, put him in that position where he had a lot of success in year one. Ultimately, I don't think this means great things for the Jarvis Slandry and O'Dell Beckham's of the world. I think Beckham can bounce back for fantasy owners.

respective of last year because last year was awful. And he was dealing with sports hernia and other excuses. And so I think bouncing back does not mean necessarily top five performances from Odell on a regular basis. But do you agree with that? Do you think that Landry is somebody that you're going to see struggle? You think that Baker is somebody that you're not going to be able to stream very often? I think you'll be able to stream them just like other quarterbacks.

He won't be drafted as a top 10. He probably won't even be drafted as a QB1 heading into actual draft season. But I'm with you that if one of them, if one of the past catchers for Cleveland is still going to contain value, I would lean on it being Otto Beckham Jr. Jarvis Landry needs volume where Otto Beckham can be just the efficiency guy. Haven't seen it for a while. But.

I still just, I still believe in the talent of Beckham, so I lean his way. Yeah, it is interesting that both of these guys, both the new head coach and the offensive coordinator, Alex Van Pelt, were longtime quarterback coaches. So that is, that is at least telling that they want to train Baker up and get him better. But some of the things about Alex Van Pelt, you talk about, well, this long history of being a quarterback's coach, some of the things, you know, people that have been quarterback coaches.

A lot of times they still believe that the running game is more important. Not always, but in this case, it seems to lean that way. All right, Dallas. Oh, Brooks. How excited are you? Really excited. How's the judge doing with Mr. Mike McCarthy? Really excited. Oh, man, Jason Garrett. See later. Yeah, it's not Jason Garrett. Yeah. Is that a win? Are you in the win category? Change is good? Yeah. Are you sure this isn't Jason Garrett? Like,

I think you just kind of zip. Exactly. It's me. Jason Garrett's wearing a Mike McCarthy suit. Mike McCarthy with the year off becomes the head coach in Dallas. Oh, and now he's analytics now. He took the year off. He did. He was studying. He was working on computers, figuring out how to lie to the owner to get the head coaching position. Yeah, he talked about analytics like somebody who.