Top 10 WR Rankings + High Expectations, Captain Mike - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/5

Fookland, we have a great episode for you today. Please make sure you stick around to the end of the episode to find out why the door locks have been changed on someone's house. Like this video, subscribe, and enjoy. Turn to the world of sports. The football season is upon us. And that means it's time to get ready for your fantasy football drafts. The ultimate draft kit from the fantasy footballers is the cat's pajamas and only tool you need. The best rankings in the business, sleepers, breakouts, values, it's even got a free companion app. Don't be a pigeon-libered Fusler. The Ultimate Draft Kid will keep you on the up and up and keep all the hordswogglers at bay. Don't even think about entering a fantasy football draft draft draft without it. Don't be a square. Head to Ultimate CraftKit.com today. To the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore.

and Mike Wright. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome into the podcast. It's the fantasy footballers podcast, nasty people. Oh, and it is plural. It is. I am your host for today, Mike the Fantasy Hitman Wright, joined by decently moderate, good friend. Yeah, like we're buds. Jason Moore. Because we can't be best friends today. Andy is still here. He is, he's remote in. Am I here? Well, there he is. You're a little bit here, and that's why I will be, I'm the captain now. Oh, no, what have we done? I'm just along for the ride, this nasty, nasty ride. It's always nasty when I'm in charge. Football happened last night. Sort of. I don't even know where this nasty thing came from. And now it's just, it's even nastier than it used to be. One of the things is getting nastier. Mike, I don't know how you do that.

One of the things that happens on the fantasy footballers, for any new listeners, you'll experience over time, whenever something happens once and we like it, it will never go away. If, uh, if you've ever listened to a two man footcast, yo, yo, yo, you know, so welcome into the show, everybody. We're going to be talking about some news, some notes, and breaking down the top 10 wide receivers, the big boys at the top. Before we jump into the quick question, though, reminder, ultimate draft kit.com. The UDK is available right now. It is getting updated very frequently, just basically every single day. A little bit of things are popping up.

We did some massive improvements yesterday, another fine tooth comb through the rankings, but also looking at depth charts, who should be added, who at the bottom and the back end of these drafts. We don't want you to forget about kind of highlighting some of those players, turning some players on, off, and looking at the sleepers, values, breakouts, busts again. So, yeah, always, always updating, unfortunately sometimes for injury, but. At least you know, when something happens, you don't have to question like, oh, no, is my ultimate draft kit up to date? The answer is yes. And regardless of all of those facts, don't disappoint Gandalf. I mean, right? If you heard the show yesterday, it's important for the safety of Middle Earth that you, you know, get into the UDK. And I mean, if you're going to be riding on a blimp or a Zeppelin.

like Mr. Old Timey Radio there was reporting from. It's really good material for them. If you want to follow the show, please do over on the socials. Instagram.com slash fantasy footballers. We're on the Twitter machine as well at the FF Ballers or individuals. Follow Andy at Andy Holloway at Jason FFL. And I am at FF Hitman. That is the quickest and easiest and freest way to stay up to date with everything. Did they ever have a Goodyear Zeppelin? Like before the blimp? I don't even know what the difference between a Zeppelin and a blimp is. I am literally Googling right now. Zeppelin versus blimp. My guess is... Zeppelin sounds cooler. Well, Zeppelin didn't work out really well. Right, right. I think it has to do with, is it like the gas that's inside or... I'm thinking rigidity. Okay. Someone had to have Googled because how would you come up with rigidity? That is correct.

Zeppelin is a type of airship with rigid or semi-rigid structure. So it means it's got metal rings holding the blimp structure together. Why do those ones go down in a blaze of glory then? Well, I think sometimes you fill them with the wrong type of gas. I don't think it was all of them, Mike. I don't think all the Zeppelin went down. I think a very famous Zeppelin went down. But that's all it just takes the one and you're like, I'm out. It would make me out on Zeppelin to slowly burn in the sky. I mean, I still cruise. You know, I know about Titanic. That's true. That's fair enough. All right, fellas, the quick question of the day, this one comes in from Corbyn in Seattle, not Dallas, which is a little bit disappointed. No, I'm with you, but move on. You don't want to make anymore?

No, fifth element jokes are one a year, Mike. All right. A couple bodies I know, Bada boom, a couple bodies I know purposely try and avoid players or positions with the same bi-week. I think it could be advantageous to have because then your other weeks are stronger. What are your thoughts? I'll go to Jason. Yeah, my thoughts are I don't give two farts about bi-weeks when I'm drafting in redraft leagues. It is one of the, you know, back in the day, I think people have kind of. put this notion to bed a while ago. You know, eight, nine, ten years ago, it did seem like there was like a little bit of kicking the tires on. I'm going to get everybody from the same by week. So then I have none. I'll lose that week. But it's, look, fantasy football is a long and arduous journey through these players, you know, season. So you're going to not have the same roster that you drafted come week.

four when buy weeks might start at the earliest. This week, this year they don't start until week six. So your team is going to change a ton. I'm not worried at all. Now, obviously, if this is a best ball where you're not making transactions, the team you draft is the team you have. And that's it. You're done at the end of the year or at the end of the draft. Then you have to look at buy weeks, especially when it comes to your onesie positions. If you draft two quarterbacks with the same exact buy week, You can still win a league that way. It's not impossible, but it is a guarantee that you're getting zero points on one of those weeks. It hurts you from the get-go. So in best ball, onesie positions, or any position that I think I'm wanting to draft not too many of, I will worry about by weeks. Otherwise, who cares? Yeah, and I'll add to that is I think it's kind of a remnant question that keeps getting asked. Like it is a...

It's a remnant from the early days when there weren't a lot of roster moves. And this was a consideration. Like if you in modern fantasy football, you're, you're transacting so often. I mean, that's why this show exists is because it's a constant, ever free flowing roster. So I think it's something that comes up because somebody, somebody's grandfather used to really consider them. And then it's just been passed down. But Jason's right. I mean, just literally not, it's not even a tiebreaker for me. Like it's a non-thought. Yeah, I mean, it's a non-thought. I guess that's that is the limit to what it is for me. If I was genuinely between two guys that I, and I don't feel like that happens for me. I always like one player more than another. But if I was really like, man, I can't decide between these two guys. They're identical. Then sure.

Does one of them share by week with the other running back you already have on the roster or something like that? Sure, that makes sense. Sure. I mean, I get the question. We get, you know, new people into fantasy football all the time. So, and this show, we want it to be accessible to season veterans and beginners. So totally understand the question, but for me, I am in complete agreement of the roster turnover says, I'm not thinking about that at the draft. Let's get into the news. News and notes from around the league. The Hall of Fame game was played last night. Did you guys get to catch any of it? Yeah, I caught the majority of the relevant part. The beginning. Yeah, I mean, the first half I saw. I watched the halftime show and then kind of trailed off as meaninglessness happened. I didn't have any money on the fun. On the over under.

DFS games or anything like that. A lot was made of Josh Jacobs usage and really all of the running backs and some of the starters usage on this team because usually in any playoff game or preseason week one game, let alone the Hall of Fame game, you don't see players getting utilized the way that you did. Look at Jacksonville. They played nobody. Yeah. So, yeah, that is the interesting takeaway. I've got my take on it, but I want to hear your guys' thoughts on, does that matter to you? It doesn't matter to me as much because, first of all, every team has a different philosophy in the preseason. And more importantly to me is this is a new coaching staff that is evaluating players. So I think if I was going to take the Kenyon Drake where he played depth chart situation is significant. But.

Kenyon Drake wasn't really in play for fantasy either. We may have wanted to know what was back behind Josh Jacobs. And maybe that's a bigger threat to Jacobs because Zemir White was given opportunity before Kenyon Drake. And so like Drake was never a threat to me talent wise to Josh Jacobs. But like Jacob, Jacobs also played well and, you know, chunked away the way he has for years. So I don't know. Were you guys concerned about it? I'm trying not to draw too much from it. Yeah, I'm not overly concerned about it because everybody played. Like if it were just Josh Jacobs and then just the backups, that would be a little bit concerning it on the radar. My biggest takeaway here from the box score hunting on the Raider side, I know we didn't have Derek Carr under center, but the running backs, like, they had a lot of receptions. And yeah, Devante Adams didn't play either, but it was interesting to see.

Josh Jacobs had two, Zemir White had three, Amir Abdullah had two. I mean, you know, we have a completely different system coming in here. Are these running backs going to see the uptake? You can project that because you have McDaniels coming in from the New England system where they have frequently used the running backs that way. I just thought that was interesting that they were so involved there, but then again, so many of the guys were being involved. Do we get? the full-on Patriot system where you're just ripping your hair out because one week it's Zemir White and you'd think, oh, the rookie is going to do it. And then out of nowhere, it's Amir Abdullah doing roundhouse kicks in the end zone. Yeah, I mean, when you talk about the Patriot system, that is Josh McDaniels. He's been there forever. And so he is going to utilize multiple backs. He's going to throw to the backs in certain situations. I don't worry at all. Like I've seen some people that are now they're like,

off of Josh Jacobs when they weren't off before because if he's getting this much run in the Hall of Fame game, then maybe he's not the starter if they're not worried about injury. We are not capable. We as a people are not capable of knowing the ins and outs of every single coaching staff's decisions and what they're trying to. actually do. So I think it's being overblown right now. I don't care very much at all. I agree with Andy. The only telling thing was that, you know, as far as the order of operations between the running backs who all played, Kenyon Drake was at the end of the line. But even that, you know, he was recovering from injury. Exactly. So you don't know the big takeaways. They did show a little bit on offense of some really cool blocking schemes, I thought, which was not something you expect to see in.

you know, in the preseason, but it seems like they're working on their screen game. They're working on getting their blockers out in space. And I think that'll be really valuable, especially for players like Devante Adams, who I think is going to really be worked into successful screen game usage with this coaching staff. Yeah, Jacobs was five carries for 30 yards, so six a carry, two catches for 14 yards. McDaniel says, His quote from last night was, I always think it's good for backs to carry the ball in the preseason. He says there's a lot of things that can happen when you're getting tackled. You can't simulate that in practice. And so that's why he did what he did, at least in the explanation. Yeah, Andy Reid plays his players. Sean McVeigh doesn't play his players. It's just, it's coach choice, and you can't read it as a universal rule and take too much away for fantasy. The Buccaneers, we have a couple pieces of information here.

Chris Godwin returns to practice today for the first time. We're talking seven months away from the ACL surgery. Now, I mean, this was just some light work. He mean, he's not out there getting after it in seven on sevens and that type of stuff. So this is a positive sign, absolutely. This is not where all systems go. Chris Godwin, week one, is a full-time player or anything like that. But through the draft process, this is the information that we need to see. And our medical guy, Betts, still says he expects a better second half of the year than the first. So.

Yeah, he is still a ways away. Like Bowles was saying he's still a ways away. This isn't, this doesn't mean he's just like, oh, well, if he's ready to go now, he's perfect for week one. It's great on the timeline. It really is because a couple months ago, we were worried that it's going to be November and they're going to bring him along really, really slowly. His ADB started dropping. This is good news, but he has not ready to go yet. So don't overblow it. In bad news, though, Mike Evans, Buccaneers wide receiver. He left practice early. We got a report from head coach Todd Bulls.

says he thinks that Evans tweaked the hamstring. That's not a new thing for Mike Evans. He has that type of a situation going on frequently. He doesn't generally miss games. Jay, what was the number that you pulled out? I don't remember off the top of my head, but I think it was like three or four games he's missed in the last five years. You know, he missed one week last year with a hamstring issue, which is actually kind of impressive that you can. Only miss a single week for a hamstring. This is early enough away from the start of the season where hopefully you are fine. What you want to see is you want to see him take some time, come back to practice, practice for a few weeks without reagravating it, and then you've got no fears. The Rams have been limiting Matthew Stafford's reps in practice due to a lingering elbow injury. Sean McVeigh, the head coach, said it's a tricky deal.

This injury is abnormal for a quarterback, adding that this one is more common for Major League Baseball pitchers. McVeigh did confirm this as not a new injury, and he dealt with the elbow pain last year. Matthew Stafford had an injection this offseason for pain. I kind of mentioned this in passing yesterday during our Mayhem draft when we were talking about Alan Robinson, I believe, was the player at the time. It doesn't seem like this thing is going to take Matthew Stafford out. He's not going to need a surgery or anything. Just out of nowhere in the middle of the season unless some kind of catastrophic injury happens like did to Ben Rothensberger. But this will be a pain management thing. This will not be fun. This will not be a fun situation for Rams fans or if you have Rams fantasy players because every single week it's going to be, oh, Matthew Stafford.

Rested, didn't practice. Yeah, and you're like, oh, come on, but then he'll be okay on Sunday. Again, this is not a, this is not full red alert yet on Matthew Stafford, but it is certainly something that we need to monitor. Do you guys have any other takes? Yeah, I mean, it, I think Big Ben's past scares me, because this is how it all started for Big Ben. It was all like, well, it's not really a common leave. football injury. This is more of a baseball injury. And then he was fine with it until that injury became, you know, it was like it was hurt and then it became injured. And so that's just the process you don't want to see happen for Matthew Stafford. They have said and we have seen that when he is practicing, it is not affecting him. He's looked awesome in camp. He's got all the velocity on the ball. Deep balls look great. So it's really a pain management right now.

I'm not going to change anything with regards to drafting him. There's like, oh, Cooper Cup versus Justin Jefferson. If you're worried about it, you can make a flip if you had. Jefferson is the two and Cooper Cup won. For now, I'm keeping everything full steam ahead and I'm just going to wait until an injury happen because anybody could be injured. Kirk Cousins could get injured a week three. Sure. Just because, you know, Stafford has pain in his elbow doesn't mean that that's going to become an injury. The Ravens coach, John Harbaugh on J.K. Dobbins, returning to practice. The quote is, he wants to get back out there. We'll look at it again on Monday. Maybe he starts doing individual drills. Maybe not. It will be up to the doctors. So again, this is just your reminder. They're taking things very, very slow with J.K. Dobbins coming off of the knee injury from this past year. Even if he's ready, week one.

expect a workload management and a ramp up through the season. So the ADP, it's still, it's still tough unless you, unless J.K. Dobbins turns into rookie season J.K. Dobbins in about a month or so. Andy, do you have, have you adjusted J.K. Dobbins in your rankings at all? Or is he just kind of been, you know, flat where, where you've had him over the last couple weeks? Yeah, I mean, it kind of seems like a, he's in a position where he can say. whatever he wants to say because the doctors are going to control the path. Hold me back. Hold me back, Doc. Exactly. Exactly. So, I mean, it does seem like he has a tremendous amount of confidence in the role. And we heard about Gus Edwards. And that, you know, that news was more impactful in my rankings than his desire to get back out on the practice field. The fact that Gus was going to be behind even where Dobbins' recovery is. But, you know, this is a, it's a tough backfield to,

analyze and predict. You have a running back at quarterback already. And you have a number of players that, you know, this team is surprised us. We thought that Tyson Williams was going to get opportunity. He didn't. They gave it to retreads. They brought in Mike Davis. They drafted Tyler Beatty. They, all the news reports on Justice Hill are positive. Like, there is risk without question in the Baltimore backfield. But my best bet's going to be on J.K. Dobbins emerging over the back half of the year as a. as the most difference making back in Baltimore. All right, let's talk about wide receivers. Wide receivers. These are the elite of the lead. Obviously, we're talking about the top 10 wide receivers. And just a quick note, we looked at the top 10 ADP wide receivers over the past five years. We have seen a bust rate of about 44%, meaning that those guys finished outside of the top 15. Of those busts, though,

55% were due to injuries and not just their play on the field. You can't predict the injuries, but you want to mitigate the risk of poor play in the early rounds. Does that mean that, sorry, does that mean that extrapolation here about 20% actually bust on performance? Your math should check out here. You got, well, Yeah, I mean, that makes sense, right? I mean, so you've got like a one in five. I mean, that doesn't seem that bad in the world of fantasy football. Right. When you look at top tier wide receivers, if only one in five on average finished outside the top 15, that seems, seems all right. On performance, that is, obviously. Yeah, wide receivers, they are slightly safer in all the research that I have done, you know, in terms of.

getting an injury, a catastrophic injury and losing away the season. So let's talk about it here. Number one, Cooper Cup. He is our number one consensus wide receiver, had a season for the ages. Andy and Jason have him at number one. I have him at number two. 14 weeks. As a top 12 wide receiver, the fourth wide receiver ever to win the Triple Crown meeting, he led the league in receptions, receiving yards, and receiving touchdowns, joining Jerry Rice, Sterling Sharp, and Steve Smith. His 21.6 fantasy points per game would be second all time to Jerry Rice back in 1995. If you took away all 16 of Cooper Cups touchdowns, he still would have been the wide receiver five.

He had six games where he was either the best wide receiver of the week or the second best wide receiver of the week. It was as dominant as any, you know, look, I wasn't playing in 1995 for Jerry Rice's season. So this was in my entire life the best. fantasy football performance of all time. Cooper Cup was outrageously good. He had that mind meld. You know, we call him Cooper Cup of Coffee because he went and got coffee every morning with Matthew Stafford, and they schemed him perfectly. You look at how often they just designed plays to get him on a linebacker. I mean, I'm not going away from Cooper Cup.

I realize that he will not repeat last year. That would just be impossible. It was historic. But if he loses 500 yards and four touchdowns, he's still unbelievably great and could still be the wide receiver one. So to me, there's not a ton to talk about negatively with Cooper Cup. You say, oh, Alan Robinson is coming in. But, you know, you lost O'Dell Beckham. You lost. Robert Woods. So it's like, obviously there's enough, there's plenty of volume here in this offense to support two good wide receivers while having one be a superstar. You don't have career years every year. I mean, that's the truth. And the best comp you could ever have would be Calvin Johnson, who put up 1964 yards with the same quarterback and followed that up with a 1,492 yard campaign. So 500 yards is what Jason just said.

And touchdown variation is going to happen as well. I mean, Calvin bounced between 16 to 5 to 12 to 8 with Matthew Stafford. You know, you remember the year Calvin Johnson got dragged down on the two-yard line seven times. I mean, the headline is that there is no wide receiver with a higher probability of finishing at number one than Cooper Cup based on his performance and the stability of the offense. I don't mind at all. going the Jefferson route. I mean, it's kind of mind-blowing that Jefferson is six years younger, right? And so if you just want to play that game and the age and the risk of injury and, you know, that's fine. I don't mind you picking Justin Jefferson, but you, you know, you're talking about just a career year for Cooper Cup and who wouldn't want to try to get part two of that? So Jason has been pretty vocal that if he is at the 103,

His pick is Cooper Cup. You still there, Jay? I am still there, yes. And Andy, the other day you had mentioned that you like the mid-round wide receivers a lot. So what is the earliest you are willing to take Cooper Cup? I would probably throw a few more running backs into that group at the front. And so if Cooper Cup is sitting there at like six or seven, Jefferson's sitting there at six or seven, that's when I would start to change my outlook on that. You know, it makes sense. People have hesitation about Camara and Henry and, you know, maybe you're not into Dalvin Cook as much as you are into Cooper Cup. So I just still turn to the running backs because I just find them so much harder to replace. All right. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back with more wide receivers. Our number two wide receiver is Justin Jefferson of the Minnesota Vikings. Andy Jason have him at number two. I have him at number one.

Justin Jefferson is a beast. He has the most receiving yards ever for a wide receiver through his first two years in the NFL. He beat Odell Beckham Jr. He led the NFL with over 2,000 air yards. He destroys at home averaging over 100 receiving yards over the course of his short career. And he is just, he is an absolute go-to guy on third down. I think that the question here. The conversation for Justin Jefferson is not, what's the talent? We're done. It's proven. He backed up his rookie career with an incredible sophomore year. The question is, how do you feel about the Minnesota Vikings passing offense where you have the high-tee kind of crotchety coaching staff? They are gone. And now we have Kevin O'Connell that, at least on paper, projects to be a much more pass-heavy approach.