Fantasy Football 2018 - Early WR Rankings Part 1

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With your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. That was very rude. Welcome in. Well, I, you know, we don't have the kind of budget to redo the intro when Jason's not here. So I tried to drown his name out with a bear growl. Interrupting bear says, roar. It is not Andy, Mike and Jason. Just Andy and Mike. And, well, Jay Griggs is here. Making his presence known, Jason is...

Well, he's out sick. He's out sick. I don't know if it was word of the Brandon Cook's trade. I don't know what it was. Maybe just thinking about his future facing me in our dynasty league. I would skip if I were him. But Mike and I, we're holding it down today. 100%? Should be easy. You know what? I'll give you 150%. Okay. And if you give 150%, then we're back to 300. Sounds like a plan. Was...

Let's do it. We'll give Brooks his regular 2%. Yeah. And then Jason, I mean, he would have been, he's only normally about 10 or 15%. That's fair. Welcome in to the early top 10 wide receiver episode of the podcast. If you missed last week's episodes, then you would have missed the running backs. The running backs. Today's Tuesday, April 10th. And I'm excited to talk wide receivers, talk about some of these big names. See where Mike and I differ.

And it's going to be a lot of fun today. I think we're going to differ on this quick question. It's very exciting. Well, I'm going to, I'm going to do a small social media introduction first, Mike. I want to introduce the people. Fine. To Twitter at the FFFballers. Okay. To the website, the fancy footballers.com to Patreon. Our community of listeners, supporters, join thefoot.com. And then we're also on Instagram.com slash fantasy footballers.

Footballers. I know our name. You almost got it. Instagram.com slash fantasy footballers. And we're on Facebook as well. YouTube, Fantasy Sports Network. And right here in your ears. Now, Jay Gris did, he decided it was important to let you know that we are recording this show a couple of days early. Brooks is heading out of town. So if there's big news that breaks, we'll definitely cover it on the upcoming episodes. But yeah, today's all about rankings. So here's the quick question.

We haven't talked about it on the show yet. So we're talking about it right now. The Rams acquired Brandon Cooks last week. All right. Acquired Brandon Cooks and a fourth round pick from the Patriots in exchange for first and six round picks. So the Patriots, they played rent a Cooks. Unbelievable. For a year. And then look, for the Patriots, they had to decide were they willing to pay him? It's not the Patriot way.

No. So they said no. And maybe they wanted to see if they'd catch lightning in a bottle with him last year, and you'd get this amazing rapport between Tom Brady and Brandon Cooks. But it hasn't happened to the degree that they were willing to pay him. And they ship them off to the Rams who had been rumored in the Odell Beckham Jr. sweepstakes. And now the Rams, instead of trotting out Sammy Watkins, good friend. Good friend.

Instead, they're chatting out Brandon Cuts. More than friends. Andy and Sammy. Just friends. Just friends. With Benny's. Friends, Mike, keep it under control, or I'll stick the bear on you. All right. Brandon Cooks is now a ram. Look at this. Let's talk about this from all angles. Let's talk about it from the Patriots, what they lose. Let's talk about it from the ram side. Talks to them guaranteeing a contract.

extension coming for Brandon Cook's to invest a first round and a sixth round pick. What's the headline though? Like if you had to just say one thing about this trade, what's the thing that stands out to you the most? Stop helping the Patriots. That's number one. I know that's not a fantasy take, but the New England Patriots rented a seasoned veteran.

wide receiver, who, in my opinion, Brandon Cooks isn't the best wide receiver, but he's great at what he does. He's very fast. His hands are pretty sure. But they got him for about a million and a half dollars for last year instead of taking a flyer on a wide receiver at the end of the first last year. And now they get a higher first round pick. They have two first rounders. In return. Well, I'm saying they traded.

a, you know, back, very, very back of the draft pick because they were coming off a Super Bowl victory. They traded pick 32, and I believe it's 23. Yeah. And they got his services for a full year. Yeah, it's very smart. Very smart. I will say this. No matter what the Patriots do, though, I feel like the response is going to be you're helping the Patriots. Maybe. This in particular. Because it's not every day that trading away a very talented wide receiver is considered a good thing. You know, Tom Brady has how many years left?

You've taken away a huge weapon. That's part of the equation here. Do they believe that Edelman's return just completely eliminates the need for cooks? Is Malcolm Mitchell's return important? Do they really believe in Kenny Britt? That's the headline for me is... Oh, you're skipping the name that I want to talk about, too. Which is who? That's Philip Dorset. Yeah. And you can check out player profiler.com. The comp for Philip Dorset coming out of college.

was literally Brandon Cooks. They are almost an identical player when you're talking size and athleticism. Production on the other hand? Of course. Of course. But Philip Dorset is a sub-4-4 guy. No one else on that roster has that speed anymore. I like Chris Hogan, but he was already solidified into the role. It's who is going to take over that ex-receiver. Now, I know that Julian Edelman will be the slot. Julian Edelman will.

more than likely be the receiver on the field when they go into one wide out sets. But there is a gaping hole at wide receiver. There are many, many snaps and many targets that need to be filled. And that'll be, to me, sorry to cut you off. No, no, go ahead. To me, you're not going to replace 65 receptions over 1,000 yards and 7 touchdowns with Dorset. I think you're going to do it with a couple players, maybe two or three players. Possibly. Maybe it's Britt and Dorset. Maybe it's Malcolm Mitchell.

Yeah. Maybe it's another draft pick that they invest one of these picks on. It could be. It's just we got to talk about the information we have right now. And to me, it's either Malcolm Mitchell or it's Philip Dorset. I know they picked Kenny Britt up when he wasn't claimed on the waivers. They gave him a two-year contract. And they picked up his option for this year. So I believe it's about a million and a half dollars in a contract. But that's not guaranteed at all. They can get rid of Kenny Britt at any moment.

And does Kenny Brett really have anything left? The Patriots have a history of taking wide receivers that people thought were washed. Randy Moss, I know I'm talking about possibly the second best wide receiver of all time. But they take these players that everyone else says they're trash. I mean, like they picked up Troy Nicholas, a second round tight end from the Cardinals. What's going to happen with that? 25 years old. So I just, I think there's an opportunity.

for Dorset because he is now the speed on the team. Let's talk about the other side of the trade. The win now Los Angeles Rams acquire another big time piece. They lost Sammy Watkins, didn't resign him. Brandon Cooks, at least production-wise, much better wide receiver than Sammy Watkins has been in the NFL. Certainly. I think if you're in the hype circles for Sammy Watkins. To be fair, Brandon Cooks has played with two Hall of Fame.

quarterbacks. Well, at least he did what he was supposed to do with him, right? Are you telling me that Sammy Watkins with Tyrod Taylor and Jared Gough didn't get the same thing? Yeah. Okay, that's fair. But they went this route. They went the Brandon Cook's route. Apparently they had tried to trade for him a season ago before he was shipped to New England. Reports came out that he's already been working out with golf. So either this was known or this was brewing for a while.

And you combine him with Cooper Cup, very talented slot receiver with Robert Woods, Gurley out of the backfield, weapons galore for an offensive mind. At a minimum, yes, he loses the Hall of Fame quarterback, but you gain a very competent top five offensive mind. And you have, you know, the coverage is not going to circle all to Brandon Cook. So where are you adjusting him?

Let's spoiler alert here. He's not in our consensus top 10 at the wide receiver position on today's show. He went from a back in wide receiver 1. I think I have him around 20 now. So you moved him down. I would still project Cooks to be the top receiver on his team, but I don't see the level of production being similar to what it was for the Patriots or the Saints. Okay.

All right. It's going to be exciting. It's going to be fun to watch what Los Angeles can do with all of these pieces. And I think that there is a wide range of thoughts, philosophies about what they're doing and the all-in mentality. But it's kind of the fantasy football mentality. We're on the show all the time. We're talking about, are you a win-now dynasty team? Are you a win-now team? Do you make the next big move to put you over the top? What does it take to get over the top? And we've mentioned.

At least casually. They're listening to us is what I'm saying, Mike. What I was going to say is I brought up the point of Mick Vey. Is he the first coach in the NFL who grew up in playing Madden? Right. In that era. He's opening up another pack. He's got build that old. He got Brandon Cooks. He thought he had Odell Beckham. He got Brandon Cooks. That would be upsetting. There was a lot of talk about New England. New England maybe flipping the two first rounders for Odell Beckham Jr. I would.

At least at the time of this recording, that has not happened. And I give that a very low percentage chance. Like I said, it's not the Patriot way to pay. It's not the Patriot way. And there's more talk about them using those picks to move up and get a quarterback. My point was McVeigh grew up in the fantasy football era. Is he younger than we are? It's not just McVeigh, of course, pulling all these strings. I think he's younger than us. He's getting all the credit right. He's way younger than us. Oh, yes.

We are elder statesmen. What in the world happened, Mike? I was... What are we doing with our lives? I was giving kids like McVeigh, wedgies. Wedgies, okay. So that's what we did. Back in my day, we gave every kid we just all wedgis. Wedgies and swirlies. Yeah.