Early Breakouts & Sleepers + The Panderbear: LIVE in Detroit - Fantasy Football Podcast for 6/21

That's not elite, but those are numbers that are going to easily finish as a top 36 wide receiver. And again, to highlight what rookies have done for Aaron Rogers. The best rookie was actually MVS, 73 targets. He finished with 580 yards and two touchdowns. The great Devante Adams, as a rookie, 440 yards, three touchdowns. Jordy Nelson, elite 360 yards and two touchdowns.

Rookie wide receivers do not make an impact for Aaron Rogers and the Green Bay Packers. Let me jump in for a sec. Because one thing that's crazy about this is I'm looking at the ADP 45. Yeah. Wide receiver 45 on Underdog. And maybe with him reporting to camp, maybe it rises a little bit. Which, yeah, he has signed his tender. He's good to go. He's making his $3.98 million. Yep. What's crazy is I put a poll out that said, who do you think is going to be the wide receiver one in terms of fantasy production in Green Bay?

You've got Christian Watson, Sammy Watkins, Randall Cobb, Romeo Dubs. You have... Amari Rogers. And then obviously, yeah, Amari Rogers and Alan Lazard. Overwhelmingly people think it's Lazard. And yet that's translating to wide receiver 45. Why is that? Because it's so ambiguous. But this is... Like, this is the part of fantasy football where you need to take a stand. When things are ambiguous, we've... Our good friend of the show, J.J. Zachoreson, has talked plenty about...

Those are the running backs you want to target, and those are the wide receivers you want to target. Aaron Rogers, whether you like him or not, that doesn't matter, because he's good at football, and he has supplied us with absolute fantasy dominance at the wide receiver position. And Alan Lazard has the chance to be that dominant player. Do you, where are you at Lazard, Jason? Yeah, I... Tell us story, Jason. No, I mean, I agree completely that Alan Lazard, you have to...

pick one of these wide receivers from the Packers and take a shot. Because I do think someone is going to be very fantasy relevant. And if you want to take the shot on Alan Lazard, there's a lot of reasons it makes sense. He's actually, he knows the system, he's played with Rogers. And the reason that you bringing up the rookies matter so much is not just because they're rookies. Rogers has a very long history of needing to have someone's trust. And once you get the trust,

You're locked in. You're like, you're in the cool kid club. And Lazard has his trust. So if I'm going to take a pick, I mean, I still think that we know what Alan Lazard is, and I don't think he can be 150 target type of player. So you hope that Christian Watson can maybe be the real breakout. But I think that the odds-on favorite to be the main fantasy producer of this wide receiver core is Alan Lazard.

He had eight touchdowns last year. It's tough to accept. Thank you. Are you ready for a Detroit mailbag? Oh, we got some house lights coming up. All right. Everyone, your voices are warmed up. Warm them up. Look at this crowd. There's a bunch of beautiful people. Let's do it. You ready? Are you ready out there, Detroit? Here we go. It's pretty good. There's a lot of people that started about five beats too early.

All right, we're jumping into a live mailbag. Who do we have? Antonio's. Antonio's, what you got for us? So my question is, which player do you guys think is going to rise the most in ADP by the time we get into late August draft season? Ooh. That's a good question. Rookies always move up because we start getting the absolute, you get the rookie fever and the redraft people start catching up.

I think ambiguous backfields where somebody begins to emerge to get first team reps. Somebody like Ronald Jones could skyrocket against our will. One good puff piece out of Kansas City. He'll jump three rounds. It's a lot of those situations. Even like the Gus Edwards or J.K. Dobbins, whose ACL is looking healthier before the season begins? Yeah, absolutely. Injuries will move people up when they say that they're healthy because right now they're tamped down.

You know, the name that comes to mind for me is Rashad Bateman. I think that as soon as, you know, we already know what the report's going to say. He looks good. But as soon as it happens, as soon as it comes out near, oh, he's the number one target. Lamar's got a great connection with him. I think he'll start flying up the draft boards. That's the guy I think right now is under. Yeah, there's an opportunity there. All right, next. You're supposed to say it. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

It's been a couple of years. Go for it. Next question. Thank you. What's your name? Travis. Travis. Travis, please speak into the microphone. It will not hurt you. So I have a Lions question. Lion's question. Dynasty wide receiver. James and Williams or St. Brown? And does it change if you're a title contender? Okay. Here it is.

There's been some contentious St. Brown discussions. I'll say this. I don't know if you got a chance to see. I mean, many of you probably did. The behind-the-scenes war room video with the lions and how in on Jameson Williams they were. So there's kind of two angles that you can take with that. One is they really wanted that guy. They believe he's a foundational piece of the offense. The other part is that they openly acknowledge in that video the reality that lots of people have been talking about, which is he is going to take some time to

get healthy. They hoped that the Saints didn't draft Jameson Williams, and the reason they hoped they wouldn't is because they knew he would take time. So when you look at title contention and you say, I mean, look, Amon Ra may help you more this year. That's a real possibility that he helps you more this year if you're in the thick of it. But I think over the, that's the way, do you agree with that? Yeah, it's irrelevant. I mean, it, you, you,

Amon Ross St. Brown isn't going to win you the championship. Like if you're a contender, I don't think he's going to... He did last year. Sure, there was a... I mean, if Swift gets injured and Hawkinson gets injured and James, you know, that was the situation he found himself. But any player, you know, can... Tim Hightower can win you a championship, sure. Michael Pittman, Sr.

Yeah. No, he had no touchdowns. But James is a special elite talent that is the clear answer here. And, you know, there's certainly a chance he busts and doesn't go on to greatness, but you have to take the shot at a guy that has true otherworldly speed who was traded up for high in the first round. You don't want to look back and have passed on a Jefferson or a chase type talent and then chose...

Somebody that's probably going to settle in as a wide receiver 2 seal. Yeah, you took Golden Tate. Right. Which is fine. Like, Golden Tate's very helpful for fantasy teams, but he wasn't like... Is he playing baseball now? What's that? I didn't know he'd given up. Yeah. He's not coming back to football. Yeah. I meant life. Oh, okay. When you go to baseball. Big baseball fans over here. Yeah. All right. Jason. Jason? Next question.

Hello? What's up? I'm Derek. Derek. You could speak. Okay, you didn't ask my name. No, I was staring at your mustache. So my question is, in drafts, our defenses are pretty much afterthoughts, even though they can impact weeks and championships. So is the future phasing out defenses, or are we going to move to IDP? We're not moving to IDP. Yeah. Yeah.

And this is not an anti-IDP take. It's just a knowledge thing. Like to go to an individual defensive player, the pool of players that the general fantasy community would have to know about increases exponentially. And it can be fun. I have no problem with people playing IDP. It's not for me. I don't have a problem with people playing tight-in premium.

The Superflex people are extremely loud. But the future of fantasy football, it is a slow-moving ship to get from standard scoring, like touchdown only, just getting those people on board with half or full-point PPR was a decade-long process. So IDP, I don't see that happening. By the way, that question was, that mustache, was the listener league champion.

Oh, gosh. I forgot about that. Derek. Congratulations. The people love it. He was cheering because it took one spot away from the next listener league. You realize what he took. You suck, Derek. But I will say this. And maybe you guys can speak to this thought process. But, yes, they're generally an afterthought. But every year I find myself, like, wildly jealous of the two stud defenses when

league mates have them and I don't because every year, now you don't know which one always. Sure. But when you can lock that position in, it is a luxury to be able to do it. It's just not something that gets prioritized due to the turnover from year to year, right? Yeah, it's not the most fun discussion, you know, but it is very important. But you sound so excited about it. The reality is it's more of an in-season discussion. So during the draft process, which we all

Fantasy football fanatics care about the most, there's not a ton of discussion because you're literally talking about the first week or two. Whatever defense I'm going to draft, unless I end up getting lucky and I got that monstrous defense, it never goes away and I'll keep them on my roster, which that is luck because it changes every single year. Then it's more in-season focused. I'm going to drop them two weeks in, three weeks in, and I'm going to pick someone else up. So I think that's why.

You feel like we don't talk about it. It's not going to go away. I mean, we've gotten rid of it in our dynasty leagues. Our dynasty leagues have no defense or kickers. I highly recommend it. It's a lot of fun that way. Add an extra flex. Focus on the players. But, yeah, I don't think it's going away. And it's also an unfair advantage then. If you don't hear, if it's not talked about enough, do deeper research and beat your opponents. Yeah, makes sense. Next question.

Hey, Ballers. Jessica from Detroit here. Really excited. You're in our lovely city. I was born and raised here. I don't know if people know that. Panda bear right there, yeah. Go on.

So my husband Julian is turning 40 this Sunday. Oh my gosh. Jason knows something about that? Coming to the live show was part of his gift. So I was just wondering if you could for us play the Levion Bell or David Bell drop. Followed. The answer is yes. We can. Yeah. You're about to die. You're 40. Followed by the celebration drop. Are people going to dance with us? We got to.

Wait, the celebration. Oh, yeah, the hockey. What, like the hockey music? Yeah. Oh, and a dance party has broken out in Detroit. What is this podcast? Happy birthday. Yeah, happy. Thank you. I remember when I was really happy when we played that drop. Yeah. And he was playing football and stuff. Next question. Did I do it all right? You did a terrible job. What's up? Derek Brown, Akron, Ohio.

What's up? Oh, yeah. Zip it. Zip it. What's up? What's the biggest separator from Justin Jefferson over Jamar Chase in redraft this year? Is it simply T. Higgins over Adam Thielen? Or, you know? Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's...

Is it definitive for 100% of people? I don't think it is, but I think that the answer to the question is volume. You could easily have Jamar Chase outscore Justin Jefferson this year, but it's probably going to come on touchdowns and big plays, not 100 plus receptions. Which is volatility, too. Right, exactly. So I think when I'm looking at those two, that's the difference maker for me is who do I trust?

is going to get the ball every single game a ton. Never let me down because there's only, I mean, there's Cooper Cup, Justin Jefferson. Maybe that's like the end of the list. We don't know about someone like Devante Adams as far as like weekly consistency. You look at Jamar Chase. He was awesome last year. He had a ton of disappearing acts. He wrecked you in many weeks. The second half was rough. That's the separator to me. It's not about the...

target competition. You should also be very happy if you have either of those players. Yeah, absolutely. And Jamar Chase, that was his rookie year. So there is an opportunity for him to be even better. But you also had Joe Burrow just recently talking. I don't know if you guys had thought of it. He wants them to be less reliance on big explosive plays, which I say boo to that, Joe Burrow. Get out there and just sling it and score 50 plus points every single week. But so Jefferson is,