AFC South Breakdown + RB Insurance Policies, Gigantor! - Fantasy Football Podcast for 7/10

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Visit on-demand.labcorp.com slash football and use the code football to save up to 15% on select tests. That's on-demand.com slash football and use code football. Know yourself. This is the story of the one. As a shipping manager, he's running the dock, stocking supplies, and making sure every order goes out on time. And Granger helps him stay prepared. From shipping supplies to PPE to hand tools.

He counts on Granger to keep products moving and trucks rolling. So his operation runs smoothly no matter the shift. Call 1-800 Granger. Click Granger. Or just stop by, Granger, for the ones who get it done. Hey, this is John DeTeller, running back for the Indianapolis Carts, and you're listening to the Fantasy Footballers podcast. To the Fantasy Footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore.

and Mike Wright. Oh, welcome in. Saturday, July 10th, the fantasy footballers podcast. Back with you. Jay Grizz is in the house once again. Jason Moore is here. Hello. My best friend. Aw, he's too kind. We do have, we don't have Mike. He's almost back from his barefoot backpack trip.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Feet are going to be destroyed. Yeah, but he's had a great time from what I understand. And he'll be back for the Tuesday show. We are in the midst of some divisional breakdown episodes. I'll boil and Judge Giamatti in the house as well. Heyo. That was nice. Brooks bringing the fire today. I thought I was going to have to put it on the tea like, how are you doing? But you just came in with the hail. Screaming at us. But how are things going, Mr. Moore?

Pretty well, pretty well. You know, everything in Phoenix is great right now. That's true. I didn't see you out at the basketball court last night. I was playing some ball, some B ball with my friends. You played B ball. I chose to live. And so these were the choices we made because had I gone out there and played for longer than, wait, full court? Full court. Longer than 30 seconds. I'm dead. Here's the trick that I've learned because I go out there and I play and I'm.

I'm 37 years old. And everybody out there is mostly like 28, 29, 30, somewhere in that range. Some of them in incredible shape, like physically, you know, muscles and stuff? I remember that. Yeah. They've got all those just as tired as I am. None of it. It doesn't matter how many muscles you have. Full court basketball is not made for people to play. Yeah. Muscles take oxygen and all that science. That's why I choose to not have them.

But there are plenty of cherry pickers out there. See, I cherry pick on defense. Right. I mean, you could come down and just stand at one end of the court. Yeah, but I'm going to choose to play defense. You're going to go to the defense outside? Oh, absolutely. That's probably the same. I hate the offensive for the team. Yeah. Okay. All right. A quick question for today's show from Instagram. Brian wants to know, do you like to use a late round draft pick to grab the backup running back to your RB1 as an insurance policy?

Or do you view that as a wasted pick? I have adapted and changed over recent years in my views for these insurance running backs in the draft season. Now, these, I think we can universally agree. Once you're prepping for the playoffs, you look like you're set there. Strategy will change. You'll grab maybe an extra defense to prepare, which you would never draft two defenses. And you grab your insurance policies because you know you're going to make it. And in draft season,

You know, usually I've been against drafting your backup to your main guy. But I have found, depending on how your roster construction goes during the draft, that there is a situation where I'm really comfortable grabbing my backup for my starter. And that is a roster construction where I end up really loading up on wide receivers. And I've got to, you know, basically I take, maybe I go running back, running back in the first round.

First two rounds. And then I don't grab a lot of depth at running back. At that point, instead of taking some meandering, mostly worthless, you know, Giovanni Bernard pick that maybe he'll catch the ball or whatever, I'd rather grab Chuba Hubbard if I'm the Christian McCaffrey manager and kind of lock that position in. I will say that my answer is I rarely will do it, but there are certain situations with certain running backs that I would.

So, and I was going to lobby some of them, but an example would be like, if I'm the Rahim Moster manager, I'm taking a late round shot on Trey Sermon. There's no questions asked. Now, maybe you would say that that, you know, does that count as an insurance back or do you view Sermon beyond that scope? Like, do you view him more in the Gus Edwards realm? Yeah, the problem with saying that you take a late round flyer on Trey Sermon is because Jeff Wilson is out of the way, Trey Sermon will be involved. He's.

currently getting drafted higher than, you know, those super late round guys. And I think really as this, as the hype train goes. Okay, so you're thinking, you're just talking about a full backup in the last round. I'm probably not doing it because what are you saying when you make that pick? You've got to hold on to the player, which you won't. Nobody does. I mean, unless you have a, unless you stumble into a first, second week injury and you're the lucky one with your bat, like Chuba Hubbard.

So here's... CMC comes out. He looks fine. You think you're going to lock your roster spot up with Chuba Hubbard? No, I'm not. And that's something that people need to adapt their mindset on. We talk a lot about your last round, your last two, maybe three round picks. Taking a look at drafting someone where you will know week one. Are they going to break out? Are they involved in the offense? Did their role...

do what the coach has said, or was that all just smoke and mirrors? That way, week one waivers, you can drop those guys. I am fine drafting tuba and then moving if there's another running back in week one and just cutting them if need to. Here's a name that I would look at that you can get with your last pick. You can get Tevin Coleman with your last pick. Do that. Is he an insurance policy? He's the starter. No, I'm just giving you a late round. So you would take him over the insurance policy you're saying.

I'm saying that if you drafted Michael Carter earlier, Tavin Coleman with your last pick to see how things shake out is a good pick. You will get to see the payoff in week one and whether or not, for some reason, what if he comes out and he's the guy? What about a Tony Pollard or an Alexander Madison? Are you grabbing them at the end of your drafts if you invested in Ezekiel Elliott and Dalvin Cook? Yeah, but with the same short-term view that you had with Chuba Hubbard. You know, Pollard's had some good games, but I...

I just think it's going to be really hard for people to hold any of these guys. You don't want to have to go compete for them if your guy gets hurt, but that's true of every single player on your team, right? I mean, if anybody on your team gets hurt, you'll wish that you had the backup that everyone's going to rush to the waiver wire. I just wouldn't build too much of my personal strategy around that. I agree. So in conclusion, to wrap it up, all in all, as we would say, this isn't something you need to focus on targeting.

You don't need to target your primary running backs backup. If that turns out to be the best option late in your draft, it's a fine pick, be willing to move on from him. But this isn't something where because you draft CMC, you have to leave that draft with Chuba. And I would not draft other people's backups in order to trade them to those players. No, that never works out. No, because you will just drop them and then they'll sign it. But then you're especially unwilling to drop them.

because that other person looks you in the face and says, I'm just going to pick them up when you drop them. And you're like, I'll never drop them. You're stuck in the trap. And then four weeks later, you're forced to drop them and you wish you did it three weeks earlier. So yeah, don't draft other people's unless you're in baseball. This is redraft keeper league focus. In bestball, I would draft other people's backups. Yep, yep. And obviously it changes as well in Dynasty leagues where.

You know, you might want to have more insurance. I wish I had Chuba Hubbard in my dynasty. Yes. Or Tony Pollard, if you're the, you know, you have Ezekiel. Do you have Tony Pollard? Unfortunately, a very rich man did not give up Tony Pollard. He didn't include him in the deal? I tried. That was really the deal breaker where we broke off communication once and decided we weren't going to do the trade because I wanted Tony Pollard. He was unwilling. Just to, I want to make sure people understand what we're talking about. Jason and Brooks made a trade.

Ezekiah Elliott, Devante Adams were two of the big components in the trade, Jason getting Zeke. And Brooks, you wouldn't include Pollard. I said I would really want to try and keep Pollard. Find a deal with Zeke that I can keep Pollard. So in essence, what I'm getting at here is Brooks is going for ultimate dunk mode. Oh, yeah. Because if he kept Pollard. Full 360s dunk on my face. And so Rogers comes back. Adams is great. Zeke's done. Pollard rises to the top. Brooks.

jumps all over your body. Yeah. Rogers comes back. Zeke gets injured and I, and me and Brooks are switching seats. Right, because you're dead? I'm dead and he's, he knows everything. All right. No news to talk about on today's episode of the show. Like I said, Michael will be back for Tuesday, Thursday next week. We'll be right back into more divisional breakdowns. We just did the AFC North on our last episode and discussed debated the Ravens Browns.

Steelers and Bengals. So check that out Thursday's episode if you want to listen to that breakdown. Today we're into the AFC South, so let's get going. Let's get divisional. Let's begin with the division winners. Two teams had the same record at the top of the division last year, but the Tennessee Titans were the winners. That being said, Jason, the Tennessee Titans are not presently.

the Vegas odds on favorites in terms of win total. Does that surprise you? Because this is a division where here's the hint for you. The Texans are not in competition for that division victory. Jacksonville's not in competition. Correct. This is not a powerhouse division. This is two good teams, two bad teams. And it does surprise me a little bit post-Hulio that they wouldn't.

be the favorites. But I mean, pre-Hulio, I certainly would not have. They were too thin at too many important positions for me to have the, I would have the Colts as the division leader. So the Titans are, because you love Cars and Wins. The Titans are 11 and 5, or were 11 and 5, as were the Colts. What do you think their win total is set at this year? At the top of your head. Nine and a half. Nine and a half is the answer. All right. I have no idea whether you cheated. I did not cheat. Okay.

But I have no idea whether you'd admit to cheating. Sometimes it would. Sometimes it wouldn't. But Scouts Honor on that one. Okay. Were you a Boy Scout? No. Okay. Does that mean something? I don't know. I would imagine that Scouts honor thing means more if you were a scout. Oh, okay. On our, on my honor. Okay. No, I believe you. That's good. All right. The Titans last year, another one of those teams that, you know, it's not a surprise.

If you had a great record in the NFL, you were good in one score games, but they were seven and two in one score games, had the best turnover differential in the NFL, which is interesting because they had a really, really bad defense. I mean, they allowed the second most passing touchdowns and fourth most passing yards per game. It wasn't good. And I think that's exactly what you're staring down when you look at Vegas picking the Colts to win this division, is you're looking at a defense that was really, really bad.

And so it begs the question for fantasy purposes for the offensive side of the football with this hyper-efficient offense we've seen over the last two years in Tennessee, Ryan Tannahill, A.J. Brown, Julio Jones, Derek Henry. Is the poor defense on this team going to force them to continue to put up points and make this, give us another year of sunlight for the Titans? Because efficiency is tough to come by. Second and rushing attempts last year.

fourth in pace of play, fourth and points per game, and that's the headline, right? Are you expecting a top five points per game this year with Julio and Fold? I think it should be more of the same. Yeah, I know it's been really efficient two years ago. We talked about there's just no way the red zone efficiency could stay there. And then it didn't necessarily stay there, but it was still way above average. This is a highly effective team at scoring. And I think the defense has improved. They spent a lot of capital this offseason.

They let Corey Davis go. They let some offensive pieces go, Jono Smith, and they've shifted their money and their focus to the defense because they saw that being a problem. Their cornerbacks still are non-existent. I mean, their secondary is bad. So, yeah, they're going to need to score. My big concern.