AFC West Breakdown, Melvin Gordon, and a Pink Moose

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Find Primal Kitchen buffalo sauce at grocery stores nationwide or on primalcitchen.com. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Every football fan is different. Some won't wash their lucky mustard-stained jersey until the season's over. Some insist they can't sit down on third downs and some pick their favorite team because, I don't know, just like football fandom.

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This is Melvin Gordon from the Los Angeles Chargers, and you're listening to the Fantasy Footballers podcast. To the Fantasy Footballers podcast. Coming to you from Draft.com Studios with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. Hey. Oh. Hey. Hey. Saturday.

July 21st, the Fantasy Footballers podcast once again climbing into your ears step by step via whatever device you may be listening on, watching on. Welcome in. Excited for this show. Show 570 in our...

storied history. Check out the back catalog. I highly recommend the 2015 Week 3 waiver show. Oh, my goodness. Oh, just, I mean, the insights that you'll receive now. Those were some waivers. Welcome in. We have AFC West on the show today. Our divisional breakdowns, it's time, gentlemen. Yes. Less than 50 days. People ask, how do you know, when is it?

For the general public, it's fantasy football time and, you know, training camp, all these, a lot of different answers. For me, when the divisional series starts on the fantasy footballers, that's, that's when my internals. That's when my organs shift around. My spleen. Oh. My pancreas. Don't get me started on my spleen. My left lung. My right lung is still trailing behind. They're just moving around. We know.

Me and my body parts. We know that fantasy football is very close. Just you. Keep it to yourself from now on. We have best ball bananas on the show today, and we have an exclusive interview with Los Angeles Chargers running back. Melvin Gordon. Maybe you've heard of him. Yeah, I have. Maybe you've seen him. He is a mountain of a man. He sure is. And so we have video of that too, so you can see that on YouTube. That'll be at the end of the show today after we preview.

His division. Yeah. The AFC West. Imagine just how that works out. Yeah, amazing. Coincidence, that is. So follow us on Twitter at the FF Ballers. Subscribe on YouTube. Get ready for the season. Subscribe over there. Click the bell so you know when we're doing a random live stream or something exciting. This week...

Mere Days Away will be in Philly and New York. You can get tickets at Ballers Live.com. Come out and see us. There are a few tickets remaining for both shows, so you can get those at BallersLive.com. And a reminder, we're giving away a signed Keenan Allen, signed Stefan Diggs, signed DeAndre Hopkins memorabilia over at footclang giveaway.com. That's just a giveaway for our listeners. And the entry on that ends on July 31st. So head over there to Footclan Giveaway.com and get in on some of that signed.

Action. So people. August 1st, I don't want to be hearing, oh, what happened to the giveaway? Yeah. You've had plenty of time. Get in there. Yeah. Get in there. It's free. Win some stuffs. Because the show is so jam-packed and because we have the whole divisional breakdown in the interview with Melvin Gordon and Bestball Bonanza, we're going to jump right in with a lot of different questions. Not a quick question. A bunch of different questions. So let's do that. Let's get divisional.

All right, before we get into the team breakdowns, I want to remind you what happened in the AFC West last year. The Kansas City Chiefs won the division at 10 and 6. The Chargers almost slid into the playoffs. The bills somehow beat them out. Right. Nine and seven. Very close. Is that a phrase? I don't think it's a phrase. It's a Mike Wright phrase. Yeah, it is now. Butthair.com. Yeah. That's Mike. Do not recommend. Do not go.

The fact is, my, Jason looks like he may be checking it out. Just the curiosity factor. We're safe. We're safe. Okay. Is it registered? Can Mike grab it? No, it is purchased, but it's, it's just nothing. What are you doing wasting that prime internet real estate? The Oaklandators were six and ten disappointing after the year they had previously and the Denver Broncos were five and eleven. So we're going to kick it off. Chiefs. Oh, goodness. The Chiefs.

10 and 6. Rarely do you see such turnover at such an important position. Yeah. As we've seen this last off season in the NFL, we had this happen, and obviously we'll get to Minnesota when we get over the NFC north. But Patrick Mahomes, the new quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs. Kareem Hunt burst on the scene last year after the Spencerware injury. So there is the storyline of Spencer Ware's return. Tyree Kill, the breakout season. Sammy Watkins picked up.

for a cool $48 million. And then Travis Kelsey was a stalwart yet again. He's Zeus. He is. He does what he does. There was a time, Mike, if you remember, when he was supposed to be Zeus and wasn't Zeus. And now he's just. Because he didn't score touchdowns. That was what the knock was on him was, oh, he's, he's great. He's going to get targets, receptions, yards, but he's not really a touchdown guy. I remember going back and looking at all the Red Zone opportunity to say, no, they use him there. He just.

just, you know, it didn't work out. I think they will continue to use him at near the red zone, even with Sammy Watkins. I was going to say that the question for Travis Kelsey is Sammy Watkins. I highlighted on the risk reward show Tyree Kill of how all of his touchdowns this past season were all very, very long place. He had no red zone touchdowns. He was very, very limited when it came to actual red zone targets. Meanwhile,

with a granted a different team. Sammy Watkins was a red zone nightmare for opposing defenses, opposing 10 zone nightmare. So will that affect what people are hoping for? We're assuming Travis Kelsey's the top three tight end. What happens if those touchdowns start to funnel over to Mr. Sammy Watkins, who they...

They wanted him there. They gave him a contract that says you are a part of the game plan. You're not just a wide receiver too. I don't think it's fair to do what we do in fantasy and say, okay, Alex Smith, he's now out of there and he's in Washington, and he prefers his tight end and he's going to throw to the tight end because he always does with Vernon Davis, Travis Kelsey. Look, if Alex Smith moving teams means that he is more prone to throw to the tight end, we at least have to raise the possibility that we just don't know.

what Mahomes is prone to. Now, Kelsey, fortunately, we're not talking about a checkdown tight end like Kyle Rudolph. We're talking about a field stretching speed mismatch, seam running tight in like Travis Kelsey. So I don't think that even if Patrick Mahomes is more prone to throwing the ball deep because he has these weapons and because he has the arm strength to do it, I don't think that hurts Travis Kelsey, but we still...

have the unknown factor of what is the rapport like between Mahomes and Kelsey. When third down comes around, does he look to Kelsey the way that Smith does? Or does he look to Sammy Watkins? Or Karim Hunt out of the backfield? We don't know it because we haven't seen it yet. Yeah, Mahomes coming in is clearly the biggest story. It changes everything for this team. It's why I don't like drafting Tyreek Hill or even Zeus for the reasons you just laid out there at their...

average draft position. You're paying full price for those players. Exactly. You're paying for what they have done the last two years, which makes sense. They've done it. But with the change at quarterback, I want the cheap option. I want Sammy Watkins near the seventh round as opposed to Tyree Kill near the third round when they're almost back to back in my own rankings. So you're paying for the ninth ranked rushing offense and the seventh ranked passing offense from last year.

Right. And there's going to be a huge change. You know, there can be the narrative that their defense is not what it was. You know, they lost some pieces on defense. The schedule for the whole conference is pretty good. So what do we make of Patrick Mahomes? Since he's going to be the game changer for the Chiefs, what do we think of him for fantasy? I know Andy in the offseason, you were hyped. You were high on Mahomes.

How do you feel about him this season in 2018? Yeah, I think that that is, from a fantasy perspective, I'm conservative. I'm putting him in that 15 range with upside. But from an NFL perspective, I think he'll be able to handle what he needs to handle under Andy Reid. I think he's at the time they saw what they needed to see to let Alex Smith go after a 10 and 6th season. So I think NFL impact is there for Patrick Mahomes. I'm a big patent of Holmes fan. I traded in Dynasty for Pat Mahomes.

But I don't expect to get a top 10 season out of Mahomes this season because I think that the up and down nature, the fact that Reed can depend on Kareem Hunt to carry the load when the time arises. It will come down to, look, last year they weren't a good defense. They were 25th against the rush, 29th against the pass in terms of yards given up per game. So if that continues and Pat Mahomes has to sling the ball around the field, you're probably going to be happy with him. But I have seen your point is great because he's the storyline.

And then when we talk about him or we talk about other quarterbacks, I see comments from people that are, oh my gosh, you're crazy. Pat Mahomes is way better than that player. Or, oh, my gosh, you're crazy. Pat Mahomes is much worse than that player. Nobody knows really where to place him.

But he's exciting. He is exciting because of his arm strength. And one thing that's overlooked, I think because of his arm strength is his rushing ability. That's what gives me a little bit more confidence for those people that are on the homest. I'm the lowest of the three of us. I've still got him in the top 20. I've got him at 19. But he had 22 rushing touchdowns in college. So he can definitely get out and move. He's an athletic. It's a strong point. He's an athletic guy. So his baseline, it's very hard to have a...

A quarterback that can have a good baseline of rushing yards and rushing touchdowns finish at quarterback 25 or worse. Yeah, Deschon Kaiser last year. Right. Was not necessarily how you define a running quarterback by any means, but still scored five times on the ground and had 400 plus rushing yards. And...

When he played, he was a fantasy asset. So it's a very good point. Now what about the other big subtraction for the Kansas City Chiefs? Matt Nagy, he was their offensive coordinator. Now he wasn't calling plays at the beginning of the season, but they did hit a point. And especially for Kareem Hunt, Matt Nagy's second game in, that's when things turned around. That's when the Kareem Hunt fantasy dry spell went away. Do you have any concerns for this offense?

losing an offensive mind like Nagy. Maybe, but not a lot. And we talked about this when we're at the NFFC, we had a Q&A, and this came up, and I said, look, you've got the mustache in the back of your mind. That's Andy Reid. He is the...