The TRUTH: Second Tier WRs in 2019 - Fantasy Football Podcast

And then I'm going to go with Debo Samuel. Debo Samuel against Green Bay. So you are bypassing all running backs. I am. I am choosing not to Mostert. Yeah, you were choosing not to Aaron Jones as well. That's true. San Francisco showed me so much against Delvin Cook last week. I don't want to see Aaron Jones struggle for 19. I think Debo is more interesting to me in this matchup. I love his involvement. I'm going Debo. Adams, Kittle. Aaron Jones has played.

plenty of bust games when we get to the truth series on running backs. He's not a safe play on a weekly basis. And yeah, Dalvin Cook, who I thought was safe last week, he was taught something. However, I think lineups that do try to guess the right San Francisco running back, if you get it right, they're going to dominate here. So I went with the other game, the Kansas City, Tennessee game, because I wanted Derek Henry.

I'm like, okay, I get Derek Henry. He's on lockdown. You're going to have to beat me with two other people. And I went Kelsey because he's just been too unbelievable if Tennessee is playing man. I think that Kelsey will be great. Three unbelievable this past week. And so then it's a question of where do you go from there? I think Damien Williams is kind of the bell cow right now. You go back and look at his last.

few games. What do you have like one yard rushing in that game? Didn't even, well, I mean, they were down 24 nothing. The run was gone. It evaporated. He also had three touchdowns. Yeah. So Damien Williams, I am choosing to trust him, which has not always worked out along with Kelsey and Derek Henry. And I just want the record to show. I got those in before you, Mike. You did? So what I don't have those three? That's true because you have to pick a different three. Yeah. Well, I, do I?

Yes. Can you pick the same exact three? What if it's the best three? And I'm looking, Aaron Jones, because I wanted to note since you made such a statement, Jason, he has, what, five bust games? Is that what we're looking at with Aaron Jones? That'll be interesting to talk about him because he's been so sensational. But I have two-thirds of Jason's team. I have Derek Henry, I have Travis Kelsey, and I went with Tyreek. I'm going to pivot away.

When I last looked, this Tennessee Kansas City game had the higher over under. So that's why I decided to pick three out of that. And then I couldn't take Damien Williams because Jason clearly loves Damian Williams. How dare you? This week. This week, be nice if you beat. I love them for fantasy. If you get beat by 830 people with Damien Williams. If you could beat like 3% of people, it would be nice. It would be helpful. You know, based on history.

Andy was the punching back week one. I was this last week. Mike, it's your turn. Unfortunately, we share a lot of the same. Well, if we are going with those trends, I've beaten more people each week. That was a terrible end of the sentence. That was terribly articulated, but I beat. You're doing real well today. I beat a higher percentage of people in the weeks. The second week. Oh, my goodness. Move along. All right. Nothing to see here. Beat the ballers. Hey, 1.8. Let's get back into the truth.

You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers. I want the truth. You can't handle the truth. Can you hand your mug over to Jason? I want him to sniff it. What? No. All right, we're back into the truth. We talked about the top eight finishers at the wide receiver position on Tuesday's show. So if you miss that, go back and take a listen. Kind of. We technically.

We kind of do that? No, we kind of talked about the top eight wide receivers for our consistency chart. Because technically, we omitted the number one most consistent wide receiver for 2019. Which, because he played one game. Antonio Brown had no bust games.

100% good games in his single game for the Patriots. We thought that should not be in there. But I, you know, well, I mean, give a man his dude. Like the last game of his career, you mean? Yes. Yeah, I think traditionally in statistics, they kind of, there's like a minimum required. I'm sure there's some running back in history who's only carry went for 43 yards. And a touchdown. And he never played again. And he's not credited with the most yards per carrying the history of the NFL.

And AB is busy with other things. He doesn't need an award. Oh, gosh. We won't get into that. No. All right. As a little bit of a reminder, we break down how many times these guys finish with great games, which is more than 22 points. That's top five weekly finish on average. Break down how many good games they have. That's 10 points or more. Top 24 on average. And then how many bus games do they have? And that's talking about games that really, really.

hurt you as a fantasy owner outside the top 50 on average, fewer than seven points, and we don't count missed games. So if you're injured and nobody started you, that's not being factored in when we look at how consistent you were as a player because nobody was making a decision that week about you. And so that's how we break it down. And we left you just kind of tantalized with the reality that Mike plus breaking down Amari Cooper was on the way. It's been a very interesting.

Year to hang with Mr. Cooper. Yeah. And I still think it's interesting. Like I think you can take a victory lap, Mike, in a way. But I still think that there are question marks around to Mark Cooper. But let's just break it down. Get your take. And then share our opinions. But in 16 games, he went 79 for 1189 and 8 on 1119 targets. He finished at 9.

in terms of fantasy points at the wide receiver position, but his consistency rank was 20th. 20. That's not good. 20. He also had absolutely crazy splits when it came to home and road. Like at home, he averaged 17.94 fantasy points on the road. He was 7.94. So that's a 10 point difference. Not just that, but defenses. When he was playing a top defense,

in the top passing defense in the league, he was averaging under 10 points a game. Meanwhile, when he played the bottom half teams, he beat him up with over 15 points a game. No one has, at least as far as I'm looking at our doc here, no one has splits that are these outrageous of the things that I guess you could say it's predictable.

You know when Amari Cooper is going to have a good game. Is he at home? Is he playing a bottom half defense? Then, okay, then I'll play Amari Cooper. But his bust percentage of 31%. You have to go all the way down to wide receiver 14 before you see a single other wide receiver who busted more than 25% of the time. And I will take the victory lap because I don't get everything right.

But in the off season, the entire argument was Amari Cooper will finish as a top 12 wide receiver, but he's just so inconsistent and he busts frequently far more than the other guys who will finish at the top. And I can't give you a definitive answer why it happens. Okay, so I get all that, but this is the truth. We're trying to figure out why, because you saw that before the season and it 100% came true. However, through the first 10 weeks of the season,

He was the wide receiver three was extremely consistent. Only one bus game through that. It basically was not a tale so much of all these, you know, splits we're talking about so much as in the beginning he was great and then in the end he was terrible. And he was injured. So, I mean, that's where when I look at Amari Cooper, I feel like the truth might actually just be the consistent first, you know, eight or nine games where.

He looked phenomenal because the second half of that year, he looked like a hobbled mess on the field. Yeah, and I think that's kind of my question. Back to Mike will be he was inconsistent by his fantasy, you know, consistency ranking. But this was not the roller coaster of up down, up down. This was like, you're riding high and then there are no tracks on the second half of this entire ride. Sure. And that being said.

injury has been a factor for Amari Cooper previously in his career, even dating back to Oakland days, dealing with, playing through, showing up in injury reports. So I kind of look at it like you're going to have to factor that into his future predictability as well. Can he stay healthy? And if he's hurt, is he going to try to play through it? Because he was out there as a distraction half the time. Couldn't jump.

Yeah, and I get it. I saw the same thing as you guys, but both Amari Cooper and the team, at least to this point, I don't know if that has changed, but they stood fast with saying Amari Cooper is not hurt. They were saying he was playing and he was perfectly fine. He was not. I remember when people said that about Tuck Gurley. But then, I mean, we all knew the truth. Yeah, but let's think about the two outcomes, as you guys predict Amari Cooper. Outcome one.

He moves on. He goes to another team. And then you've got the variable of does he fit? Does he not? But the other option, the more likely option, especially if that gets paid money, is Amari Cooper's paid a ton of money to come back to Dallas. And then you have to judge whether or not you're going to get that wide receiver production, that wide receiver three production moving forward on a big money contract is the centerpiece of the offense. It seems likely.

The narrative for Cooper will be you are the centerpiece of the offense in the passing game next year. Now what do you do, Fantasy Honor? Yeah, so I'm curious. I will be in on Amari Cooper this next year. I believe it was mostly injury. But Mike, are you going to have the same stance you had coming in because you were proven right and you've got a career of him finishing well but hurting your fantasy team? Is he on your like no mic list? More than likely. I don't know what his ADP is going to end up, but.

You have five years. Five years of seeing Amari Cooper do these things where he can be one of the best wide receivers in the NFL and then just vanish. And for the draft price that I imagine Amari Cooper is going to cost, since this is basically what he was costing last year, then yeah, I'm probably on the outlist for Amari Cooper. All right.

Well, there you have it. The definitive answer from Mike Wright. With a word probably thrown in there. Here we go. Look, before we get to the next wide receiver, want to thank today's sponsor, Sonos. When you're at home watching the game, you've got to have that good audio system. In fact, personally, so I had Sonos in my living room. It's phenomenal. Every speaker they have is designed inside out for incredible.

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You won't be disappointed. All right. Number 10. Sorry, is just a quick note on Cooper. Did we bring up that he, that Gallup only had six fewer targets than Amari Cooper? We did not, but you have now. But six fewer targets and Amari Cooper or Michael Galap played two fewer games. Yeah. Is that at all concerning? Because those are not, those aren't alpha level numbers. I mean, you certainly could have Amari Cooper and Michael Gallup.

both be great wide receivers for fantasy football. I mean, it happens every year. You just saw it happen with Tampa. I was just curious if you were reading anything into that. Yeah, and the truth is, is I don't know what the injury truth was from Weeks 11 on because that affects your targets too. Is he out there playing that, you know, I remember when Calvin Johnson got hurt and he played three or four games, just kind of running routes, not receiving targets, but trying to take away defensive, you know, attention.

I don't know if that's too, you know, I think Michael Gallup's a good player. How many rounds after Amari Cooper has been drafted will Gallup be drafted? Oh, several. A significant chunk of your draft. Gallup will come much, much later. Yeah, I would tend to agree, but maybe that's an interesting thing to look at moving forward. Maybe that's one of those situations where, you know, obviously Gallaudet was a lot better than Marvin Jones. Right, yeah. But how do you look? Where's the value? Right.