Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - Wk 16 Studs, Duds, Rising Stars, #FootClanTitles

Whether it's Dantari Poe doing a jump pass or Tyree Kale taking jet sweeps or Travis Kelsey being involved or Alex Smith running the ball. They don't care that much about, okay, we got to give 20 carries to Spencer. Where are we have to target Germany? Macklin 20 times. I think, do you think it's possible they cared about that last year? Because they were coming off of the season where a, there was zero wide receiver touchdowns. Did that get in their head at all? I don't know. I don't know. I'll show you. We can use a wide receiver.

Yeah, great game for Kelsey, won a lot of people, Foot Clan titles. Charles Clay and Antonio Gates were the other two big names, eight catches apiece. Two touchdowns for Clay. That's four in three weeks. Yeah, we'll talk about him in a minute. Antonio Gates did what Hunter Henry could not and caught the ball eight times. Yeah, I mean, against you wanted the tight end that was going to get it done against the Cleveland Browns. It was Antonio. Raising Cains, Rising Stars of the Week.

All right. Well, it's time. The Raising Cain's Rising Stars of the Week. Look, I think we are all looking at these with two different perspectives. The next week, can you have confidence in playing these guys next week if you're playing in a week 17 title game, as well as maybe a little bit of long-term discussion on these rising stars? I'm going to kick it off with J.J. Nelson.

Arizona Cardinals wide receiver. The last four weeks, he's been double digits, 12, 21, 12, 22, and a half point league. As I would say, four straight weeks of fire because he scored four straight weeks. You have a very interesting wide receiver situation in Arizona. I expect Palmer to be back. The offensive line to be improved. Michael Floyd is obviously gone. John Brown hopefully will be back and healthy, but you just don't know what the sickle cell trait and the issues we've had this year.

And J.J. Nelson has proven himself to be a very capable wide receiver. Hopefully, Larry Fitzgerald's back again. He could retire. You don't know, despite leading the league in reception. Right. You don't know. And J.J. Nelson seems to have solidified himself a role in this offense. He's a field stretcher. He can break that long play. You saw he put a move on Richard Sherman in this game that was turned him around. And then he took the ball, I don't know, 40-something yards. So it was an impressive game from Nelson. I just want.

him to be on your radar, not just for next week, but for next year. I've been pretty impressed with him. The Cardinals go three wide a lot, and he's the third wide receiver now with Michael Floyd gone. So I love that pick. Do we, is it possible to cue the music at all? It is not. I'm so sorry. I was putting you on the spot. There you go, Mike. As you can see, I did not cue the music. Adam Thieland.

12 for 202 and two touchdowns. And I just wanted to point out, I mean, last week he had the big injury. So he ended up with the goose egg because he got just exploded going for a what would have been a spectacular catch. However, the week before that, four for 101. I mean, Adam Thielen is getting far more involved in the offense.

I want, he has a lot of variables similar to J.J. Nelson next year. Who's the quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings? You guys remember that guy Teddy Bridgewater? I've heard of him. Yeah, first, former first round pick was the storting card. Storting quarterback? Storting quarterback. The starting quarterback for the Vikings coming into the season. Obviously they had to make the trade for Bradford. So we don't know who the quarterback is going to be.

There's a lot of moving pieces here, but I think that Adam Thielen is moving up the charts for Sam Bradford. We'll see if he can do the same thing with Teddy Bridgewater. But if Bradford is the quarterback, I mean, this offense is evolving. It's changing. Adrian Peterson will be gone next year. I feel very confident saying that. Their offensive line cannot be rebuilt overnight, especially when you gave up draft picks for Sam Bradford. They're going to have to throw the ball.

like they have been. And Bradford's completion percentage has been borderline historic. When you look at his completion percentage compared to the rest of the league, it's pretty weird, but it's because of the West Coast offense where Adam Thielen can be a huge part. So just keep your eye on him for next year. I'm super impressed with Thielen. I think he is a kind of go-to type of receiver. He's super reliable hands. Makes tough catches. So yeah, I agree. Good call, bro.

Thanks, bro. My rising stars, I was looking, there's a guy out there that, you know, there's plenty of metrics and reasons to go, oh, he should be more on our radar. But the reason he is my rising star is I just hopped on his back and he took me to a championship. There's nothing wrong with this. Charles Clay is a guy that we have to at least pay attention to at the tight end position. Remember last year?

how Tyrod Taylor started getting it together at the end of the year and was really good for fantasy. From week 10 on last year, he was the number seven quarterback in fantasy football. Him and Sammy Watkins were getting it going. The offense was moving. Well, we saw that yesterday with Charles Clay and Sammy Watkins and Tyrod Taylor. And this following week, they end the year with the New York Jets who are being thrown all over.

Just tossed around. They are the 25th best team against tight ends. Charles Clay has three consecutive games with a touchdown. Two in this last game. He looks like the number two target behind Sammy Watkins, at least yesterday. So with this world of barfey tight ends, Charles Clay is rising to me. Charles Clay, if you go back to last Jeremy, he had stretches.

Where he got paid. He was with Miami. I mean, yeah. He got paid big money. Finally making his, yeah, he's like an $80 million contract or something. All right. Those were the Raising Cains Rising Stars of the week. Feed your holiday party, your New Year's party with a Raising Cain's tailgate this year. Their 24-hour marinated, cooked-to-order chicken fingers will make anyone have a holly jolly New Year's. And while you are there, don't forget to pick up your Raising Cain's gift cards.

For the perfect gift, I actually received a Raising Kane's gift card this past weekend. That is quite a good gift. And then I'm going to give myself the gift of some chicken fingers. So right now you can buy a $25 gift card, get $5 bonus for free. Now, that is a Raising Kane's Kind of Jolly. You guys got any lunch plans today? I think that's where we're headed. Yes. I wanted to take a quick time out. We've got to fly through the poop. All right. We're going to fly right through it. We're going to get into the pooped in the big boy pants segment.

But I want to tell some, I want to tell you guys out there, you've just won your title. You hear us say all the time, we're a year-round show. But what is the, you need a taste of what that is, okay? And you say to yourself, well, how can you do that? Well, football is great. It's a year-round sport. It really is. Here's a little bit of what you're going to get. When Mike talked about it last week, the footies. Yeah, the footies. The award show will be early January, okay? We will have a number of episodes. These are so important. You have to hear these.

We'll have episodes, the truth episodes, okay, the truth about fantasy quarterbacks, the truth about tight ends, running backs. Every position will tell you the truth about this past year because there are biases that happen with end of year performance. There are biases that happen with injury and things like that. You need the truth. And that's going to set the landscape out for you. We'll have a rookie rundown. We'll talk about the fantasy impact of coaching changes.

We'll get into mock drafting again, early mock drafts. Free agency is sooner than you think. Yeah. And we'll have a lot of fun doing it as well. That's the cool thing. This is, this is, football's fun. Fantasy football is even more fun. And so the offseason is a blast and it helps us. We've had a number of people who, you know, struggled for years winning championships and when they stick with us.

They brought it home for the first time this year. That has been the fun part of this past weekend, is getting the emails from somebody, you know, this morning. Last year, I was dead last in my league, started to listen to you last year, made it to the title game, lost the title game. Decided I'm going to listen all year long. Tuned in right after the season ended, wrote names down, made trades, did all of that, won the first football team title. So, all right, we'll move on. Poopped in his big boy pants.

All right, so I was wrong about that Cam Newton guy. Not a good game for Cam Newton. 18 of 43. There's some type of mental disconnect that happened with him this year. You know, you say he needs wide receivers, so you give him a second year Devin Funches and Calvin Benjamin back. He's got wide receivers. Ted Ginn. He just needs really fast guys. I don't know what he needs. Really, really fast guys. He needs to kind of write the ship. I mean, disappointing game for them.

At the running back position, we've said their names. Thomas Rawls with the injury, eight for eight, destroyed you. Jeremy Hill, seven for eight. You know, you heard the injury report early in the week. Obviously, that was an impact here. Rex Burke had got more carries. Jonathan Stewart, very disappointing. Ty Montgomery, didn't do it for you. Yeah. You know, Latavius Murray. Bad game. So, I mean, out of those guys, is there anybody you have confidence in going into next week?

teams that need to win. I mean, Tom Montgomery gets Detroit next week, you'd think he'd be an okay played, wouldn't you? Yeah, well, they're playing for the division. Exactly. So it's, there's no rest. I mean, you have, which we didn't even, we didn't talk about, but the, there was a report that the Giants may be resting players next week because, uh, they're, they're locked. They're the five seed no matter what. So maybe you get half a game from Eli, half a game from Beckham, which is, of course, why we talk about it's, don't, don't play.

to week 17. If you want to do it, fine. But this is the fire that you play with, that the team that brought you to week 17 may not be your team. By the way, if you want to make a change for that, because a lot of long-time leagues are the ones that do that or new leagues that just didn't make that adjustment. The time to make that change is right after the season. Just go to the league, say, hey, we want to do this, take your vote or whatever. Establish it for next year so you don't run into this situation. And, you know, you shouldn't have to be playing with a different team.

in week 17. What got you there the whole year? I'll tell you the guy on this list that I'm not fading next week, and it'll surprise you guys. It's Latavius Murray. Despite DeAndre Washington having a good game, Latavis Murray was still the lead back. He got 15 carries, and they lost their quarterback. And they're going up against Denver, who just lost their playoff chances. So Denver's going to have a letdown. Do you remember what Latavis Murray did last time they played against Denver? Yes, I do.

And they just kept running the ball, running the ball. And their offensive line beat their defensive line. That's not a good run-stopping team. I think Latavis Murray is going to be fine next week. Yeah, I can agree with that. Well, what do you think about the two running backs in Tennessee now that Marcus Mariotta is, well, he's gone. He's gone. And you got, you know, Derek Henry and DeMarco Murray both let people down this week. That game script went. I mean, there were people that started that Tennessee defense, a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. And that, which is, I mean, that's fair. You think the Bortals will have.

a lot of interceptions on, except Bortle said, oh, now is the time I'm going to play like a number three overall pick. Now was the time. They did that just so that we can be thinking about him in the office. Just so we can remember what Alan Robinson can do. You know, Borels was playing for his job. Yeah. If Bortle came, Bortles came out and just stunk these final two weeks, he's done. Yeah, with a new coach coming in, this isn't the coach drafted you. So he's playing for his job. Derek Henry is, I mean, you're.

You're playing with the fire. You're playing with a game script there. Yeah. You expect to Tennessee to be out ahead. He only played 23% of snaps last week when he had his big game. His big game was because he had two touchdowns. Yeah. I like Derek Henry, but he's just, he's not going to get on the field because DeMarco Murray has been so incredible this year. All right. Let's talk about wide receivers that let you down. Jordan Matthews. Taylor Gabriel.

Yeah. Taylor Gabriel gave you the example of the, you know, the opposite of Tyreek Hill where limited touches and he didn't score and that's all it takes. You don't get PPR baseline with Tyler Gabriel. The two wide receivers. This was Denver. Crazy. Did you see the completion percentage for Simeon? Yeah. It was atrocious. Emmanuel Sanders and Demarius Thomas. If you combined their stats, they would have been on this list. They would have been four for 46 and no touchdowns.

combined. It does put a little bit of a worry into you as an owner of these guys for them figuring out this quarterback situation. A report came out last week saying, oh, you know, they have confidence now. And Simeon is this future quarterback. How in the world do you have that after last night? I mean, I was going to say, when you're watching the national broadcast and then they do the side by side shot of your quarterback.

and your backup quarterback standing on the sideline, you know that's never ever a good sign. Things aren't going good. I mean, listen, Demarius Thomas had eight targets. Daniel Sanders had three. They only had four total catches. Yeah. I mean, Simeon was 17 for 43. That's a 39% passing. I mean, that's Cam Newton numbers. Am I right? Yeah, you are right. I had moved those two guys down in my rankings, but I never thought we would see anything.