Fantasy Football 2017 - The “My Guys” Episode + Early Targets

There you go. Because you know I love Zach Kurtz. I do feel like he's, you know, he's been stolen away from me. But he wasn't going to be one of my guys this year. And he's your guy. And I love him. Do you factor in at all that his name starts and ends with the letter Z? Oh, of course. I mean, I'm not. Is that in your analysis? Yeah. I mean, that's, that's probably the third highest reason. Zachary Adamerts. First man. I love it.

First man. Mike, let's kick it over to you. All right. Let's talk about your, my guy. The first guy I'm going to talk about, he was a wide receiver one last year, but he's still being disrespected and he's dropping to those middle rounds, that fifth round, which is absolutely ridiculous. I'm talking about Michael Crabtree last year's wide receiver 11 in half point PPR.

He is an excellent wide receiver. Last year, in the ultimate draft kit, we have Matt Harmon's reception perception, and he charts out advanced metrics, things like how is a player running route? So they have a success against man coverage, against zone coverage. How are they in contested catch percentage? Well, when it was a contested catch, 86% success rate.

which puts him third best of all the wide receivers that Matt Harmon charted for the draft kit last year. He is excellent in the red zone. Sure, he's not a nine-rout runner anymore. Okay, if you want to take that against him, that he has a lower yards per reception, it doesn't matter because he is a technical, he is a maestro at running routes and creating separation in the short and intermediate game.

Last year, he was 10th in targets. He was fourth in red zone targets. Did you see the touchdown that he put in preseason? Not a lot of people are scoring a touchdown there. That was a great move. So why is he so disrespected? Because Amari Cooper's there. So everyone is projecting, oh, well, Amari Cooper is, he's the number one wide receiver there. He was a high draft pick. He thinks he can function, though, as a wide receiver one. He probably couldn't.

Crabtree? Yeah. I don't know. I think you're saying if you take Cooper off. I'm saying if you took Cooper, it's like Cooper is both his poison for respect and his, you know, it's a good thing for him to have Cooper on the other side because it lets him exploit. It's a possibility. I won't rule it out completely, but I think that. Thank you, Mike. I think that he would have. I appreciate it. I think he would still have great success regardless if Cooper was there because he gets open and Derek Carr is.

A good quarterback. He should have 4,000 yards and close to 30 touchdowns. And Michael Crabtree is where he looks, especially when he's trying to throw his touchdowns. You're not worried about Jared Cook? I'm not worried in the slightest. Okay. About Jared Cook. And is the team better with Marshaun Lynch there? Arguably, yes. And with the evolution of DeAndre Washington, I think that the run game only helps. It helps them score more points.

Michael Crabtree is where Derek Carr goes to in those types of situations. I just, I don't understand why a wide receiver one is being just. Michael Crabtree is, he's that comfort food for Derek Carr. You get in the, in the red zone, and he knows he can lean on him. That's absolutely true. And so Mike, you are hanging your hat on Michael Crabtree. I can tell you this.

I target him everywhere. When we first statted out our, you know, players top to bottom, I'm talking a long time ago, whenever it was, February, March, you know, when we did our first run through, I took a look and Michael Crabtree was like my wide receiver 36 because I disrespected him. I was just like, I'm just, you know, I'm thinking, okay, Cooper takes that step forward. So I see how people forget about him. But at the same time, I was like, well, that's. They want to.

to have him as the wide receiver 36. And I completely agree with you, Mike. I think he's one of the better valued picks in this draft. He's going to be at worst a wide receiver two that you're drafting, you know, you could be drafting him as your wide receiver three or four. And I think he still carries the stink of the 49ers failure. I completely agree. I think you've always had the ability, though, to see through the stink with certain players like Michael Crabtree.

Eric Decker, Richard Matthews, non-high profile wide receivers that people don't draft because they don't represent top five performances. Like, what are the odds that Micro Crabtree is a top five guy? Zero. What are the odds that Amari Cooper's a top five guy? 20. 15% maybe? More than zero. Sure. And that's what blocks people. That's what I'm saying. I like that pick. The nine route, it's gone. That's not part of Crabtree's game anymore. He's too old. He's suffered some injuries. So.

I'm going to give you mine. I'm going to start here. And I realize that I think all my guys have a theme. And it's forgiveness. Because all three of my guys. Who doesn't love a theme? They've all disappointed people. Last year they disappointed their owners. And yet there are three situations where because of that disappointment, because of their history and their past, they offer value to fantasy owners this year. So the first one, look, at least one of these you're going to know already. So I'm just getting it out of the way. It's Todd Gurley.

I'm hanging my hat. My guy is Todd Gurley this year. Look, it went as bad as it could have gone for Todd Gurley last year. After a rookie season in which he had 76% of his starts inside the top 24, right? He was an RB1 or an RB2. 76% of the time that was the best in the league, right up there. But last year, everything went bad. But you have a new offense, a new scheme coming in, and at the end of the year, even if you threw out every bad number, which I'm forcing you to do to listen to me here.

You still cannot throw out 278 rushing attempts. Okay, still fourth in the league and broken tackles. Still seventh in yards after contact. 12th in Target, something we weren't expecting to see from Todd Gurley last year. Love what I saw in this last preseason game. Not reading too much into it. If you listen to this show, you know I've been touting Todd Gurley all offseason. So he belongs here. This is his right. This is where he belongs. Mike, careful for a rebuttal. I believe in McVeigh. And here, let me just, I'll close it out. You can ask me a question about it.

Here's what else. He needs confidence, and he needs a good start, and the pieces are there for a good start. His first four games, remember these teams and how they defended the run last year. First five games, actually. The Chargers, the Packers, the Colts, the Redskins, and the 49ers. That's how he starts the year. That's pretty good. That's almost the best possible list you can imagine for teams to start against.

a strength and offensive line with Andrew Whitworth, and I believe in Sean McVey's system, and I believe he's going to get 278 rushing attempts and the target. So. Yeah, according to our UDK, the first four weeks, he has the second best strength of schedule for the running back position. So that point is well received. And I think that it is important. He's at 205 right now. It's far more important to weigh only those first few weeks when it comes to strength of schedule. When you look at the whole season,

Things are going to get murky and we're going to be wrong about a lot of those things. I can't argue with the volume. And that's really all I believe in for Todd Gurley. I'm not nearly as boisterous. I mean, but he's still in my top 10 because he's going to touch the ball so many times. So he went, even though he struggled last year, like I said, his first year, he was 76% of the time. He was an RB 1 or 2. Right. Last year it was 56% of the time.

Okay, so in his nightmare season, still, 56% of the time he gave you a RB1 or 2 performance. So it wasn't good. I'm not trying to paint last year as, oh, you should have been happy with it. You shouldn't have been. But 278 Russian temps gives you a chance to be forgiven. So I'm looking through his game log last season. How did Todd Gurley do against the division? Because that's six games of the fantasy season. And things can improve for him.

But he didn't have one of those games. And that's two games against San Francisco who were, if you had a running back against San Francisco, that was a great matchup. Not one division game to Todd Gurley average more than three yards of carry. He was sub three. I mean, that's, that's impossibly bad for a guy who's getting that many attempts. But it's just, it's the, it's the draft price that.

has me shying away from Gurley. If you told me that I could draft Todd Gurley in the third round, I would be much more responsive and more open to putting them on my team. But I'm not going to pay up the second round price. Okay. That's all right. I'll pay. Yeah. And I know somebody will. Somebody will pay up in absolutely every single draft. Before we move on to another one of our my guys, want to thank today's sponsor, Pro Flowers, fellas. When is the last time?

That you just sent some surprise flowers to someone special. To Todd Gurley? Last week. Sure. Sure. But here's the deal. You don't need Mother's Day or a birthday or just a special occasion. Why not now? Why not surprise someone that you care about with some flowers? And pro flowers, they make it easy. And they're making it even easier with special offers for our listeners right now.

You can send Proflowers colorful rainbow roses to get 20% off of that collection or any of their other unique exclusive bouquets of $29 or more. Proflowers.com makes choosing the perfect surprise bouquet simple and quick. You get to pick the exact date for your unexpected surprise. Man, I'm having...

The words aren't coming out of my mouth today, fellas. But here's what you can do. You can get 20% off your rainbow roses or any other bouquet of $29 or more. Go to proflowers.com. Use the code. Ballers at checkout. That's proflowers.com. The code is ballers. Don't wait. Don't wait. Make someone's day.

Yeah, and hey, we want to tell you about Seat Geek the best and the only way to buy tickets if you're going to any kind of sporting event. And obviously the NFL season, it is right around the corner. Sometimes buying tickets for sporting events can be confusing and there's just annoying. Yeah, it's really annoying. But with the Seat Geek app, it's super simple. They've designed it to where it's very, very easy. You download the app on your phone. You look at what game you want to go to and you've got an interactive map where they show you a color-coded grid.

of here's the best ticket prices in this area in that area we've used it many many many times for every event that we have gone to we just pull up the seat geek app it's super easy they've got great prices it's

the most bang for your buck for sure because they grade your ticket prices so easily. Here's the best part. You can get $20 off your first Seat Geek purchase as a listener of this show. Just download the Seat Geek app. Enter promo code Footballers today. That's promo code footballers for $20 off your first Seat Geek purchase. You will definitely not regret going to these live events. All right. We're back to you, Jay. We're back to you.

Oh, back to me. Give us another my guy. All right. I'm going to give you a my guy that I feel like I'm on an island about, okay? He is my guy, and my guy alone, because nobody else wants him. Brandon LaFelle? Well, yeah, I mean, how many my guys do we get? Here's the thing. No, I'm going to talk about Mark Ingram. I'm going to defend Mark Ingram's honor, and I'm claiming Mark Ingram this year in 2016, 2017.

as one of my guys. Well, it's hard for me with the years because when I look back at other years, Mark Ingraham has always been really good and been worth his draft price. So in 2016 last year, he was the running back nine. Now, all of this is half point scoring. That's our default on the fantasy footballers. He had 205 carries. That was it. And he was the running back nine.

Now, if you had them last year, you were a little disappointed because it came in spurts, and you couldn't always guess the game right. But how about the year before? In 2015, he was the running back 13. He was the running back 13. He only had 166 carries and only played in 12 games, and he was the running back 13. Then in 2014.

That was, you know, when they had Pierre Thomas and Kyrie Robinson actively involved. But Jason. He only had 13 games and he was the running back 15. Yeah. But Jason. In 2014 and 2015 and 2016, Adrian Peterson and Alvin Kumar weren't on the roster. That is why he is my guy because this is a guy who three years in a row has not needed to touch the ball.