Starts of the Week + Week 14 Breakdown, Mr. Irresponsible - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/10

outside of Tyree Kill at the wide receiver core. Where's your confidence level with Hardman, Watkins, Robinson? They've all been kind of involved. You got me with the wide receiver core. I was so excited to say, Kelsey. It's nice. Taking it up to 100. Is he a play for you this week? I'm going to put them in. I mean, it's irrelevant. I don't think I would start any of those guys. So let me ask you that DeMarcus Robinson would be my answer.

begrudgingly. I mean, Mike grimaces because, yeah, but if I said Sammy Watkins, you'd grimace. If I said McCall Hardman, you'd grimace. Would you rather take a shot with one of those guys, the ancillary piece for Patrick Mahomes or a T. Higgins CD Lamb type in a low scoring game as the possible wide receiver two on their own team? Because I feel more prone. It is so weird. They're all wide receiver two's here. I feel more prone to move away from Patrick Mahomes guy.

I play T. Higgins over those three players because you don't know who it's going to be in Miami's a pretty good defense. Yes, it's the wide receiver too, but it's not the number two option. Yep. Right. Yeah. And on the Dolphins side, just real quick, like you weren't going to play him, but Miles Gaskin, the gas man, after stopping over at Exxon Mobil, got fueled up.

Running back 17 with 23 opportunities. I know it was the Bengals and the matchup at this week is much more difficult against Kansas City. It's all about the opportunities. But it's the opportunities, man. His last four active games, 20 plus opportunities in each of them. This is fantastic for fantasy football. Actually, I don't know that the matchup is any worse over the last four, over the last five weeks. If you look at the, my, my, uh,

Fantasy points above opponent's average metric. Kansas City's been terrible at stopping the running back. So this is, I think this is a great matchup for a gasket. And surprisingly, the Bengals aren't a bad run, D. You think they are because they're a bad overall team, but they on the course of the season have just been, you know, kind of middle of the pack. All right. Well, then the gas man's in. Yeah, light him up. Don't do that. Don't light up the gas man. What? I want him on fires. But he will explode.

For fantasy points. I want that. I want the explosion. I am struggling with where to go with the metaphor. And I think Jason's right on this one. Yeah, I mean. I think the gas man, look, if all I can see is gas, what are you doing? What are you going to drink it? You got to light that on fire. All I can see is Zoolander. All I can see is NBA jam. I want my guy on fire, dunking on people. Boom, Shakalaka. But if those people were covered in gasoline, there would be a really big trouble. Boom, Shakalaka.

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To get started, go to Zendesk.com slash footballers. That's ZE-N-desk.com slash footballers. All right. The Arizona Cardinals at 6 and 6 take on the 5 and 7 New York Giants. Cardinals are 1.5 point favorites. It's a 44.5 point over under. And the Giants are on a roll. I mean, Joe Judge started 1 in 7. They've won four consecutive games. Arizona's lost three straight. If Arizona loses this ball game, which is certainly a possibility, they are.

Barely favorites. It's going to be a tough week for me. It's going to be a real tough week. The Giants defense, though, it's legitimate. I mean, they had a super impressive performance last week. Nobody saw it coming, shutting down Seattle. They've allowed the second fewest 20-plus yard completions. To me, that's not an issue for Kyler. He likes it between two and 40 yards down the field lately. But they've been great.

Yeah, they have. And I could easily see the Cardinals losing this game. They have a very bad track record of traveling to the East Coast, you know, and especially if it's not a later game. This is going to be difficult for the Cardinals. And Andy, you will maybe feel bad, but cheer up Buttercup because our 1,000th episode was great. And a little toot here.

Andy, right now you are number three on the season in accuracy rankings, not just top 25 or top 20 or top 10 or top 5. You're number three. Boom, Shakalaka. So I will give you the tuttoot. Well, thank you. It does. That did germany up. Yeah, there you go. And the game hasn't been played yet and they haven't lost yet. So that also gives me a sense of potential. That they will.

Well, independent of my own home or bias towards the Cardinals, I'm actually, I think it's pretty cool that the Giants and Washington are both competing for this division and trying to like win games to win the division and things of that nature. Kyler, we've talked a lot about the situation right now. I talked about the route tree for DeAndre Hopkins, which has become a route bush because it's just pathetic. I mean, you have a player that is. It's a finely manicured bush. Yeah.

Newk has as many 20 plus yard targets as Hayden Hurst, guys. That's all you need to say. That's an embarrassment. That's an embarrassment to the talent of D'Andre Hopkins. That's disgusting. It's an embarrassment to the offense of mastermind of Cliff Kingsbury. I mean, if I was Hopkins, I would print out those next gen stats of the routes I've been running. I'd print it up on a giant poster board.

I'd hang it up in the locker room, and I'd write WTH at the top of it. Like, this is not acceptable. That being said, you play him because he's the go-to target monster of the team. What about Kenyon Drake, though? Because this is a tough situation. Drake has been hit and miss.

He's been hitting. He has been hitting, and Kyler's inefficiency on the ground and his unwillingness to run the football has lent to goal and opportunities. Yeah, and I expect them to be here again this week. Kenya Drake, to me, is a good play this week. If you look at the New York Giants defense, look at who their opponents are, both on the season and over the last five and six weeks, they have really, really been good against the passing game, but they are.

actually bad against the run game. So this projects to be a game where Kenyon Drake should be involved. We know his utilization is there. He's been good for fantasy and the matchup is there. So I think they're going to need to lean on Kenyon Drake, which has not been a successful endeavor for the Cardinals so far this season, but the matchup says Drake should be in your line. We've seen a little bit of a difference, though, in the usage of Kenyon Drake. The last three weeks...

Five targets. Five targets, four targets, three. Now, that's not usually how I trend things unless I'm counting off a rocket shipped to fly into the air. But considering that he had never seen more than two targets up until week 11, it's at least a positive sign. I think it's a great sign. And he's been a top 18 running back three straight weeks, a couple of top 12 performances.

I think we need to move on from the narrative street that, look, he had a bad start to the year. But he's been pretty good for a while now. And if you listen to the local, you know, reports around the team, they need to run the football more, not less. They need to take pressure off of Kyla. They need to establish a little bit different of a game plan than what they've been putting out there. So I'm with you, Jason. Now, for the offense of the Giants. Yeah. The wide receivers are obviously

hampered and hurt by the fact that there is a backup quarterback in Colt McCoy. This is a pretty good matchup, though. And Daniel Jones is supposed to play in this game. Oh, Daniel Jones. Yeah, he's going to be back. So Daniel Jones is going to start. It doesn't give me a great deal of confidence choosing between these players, though. I'm not sure, you know, it feels like Cincinnati, where.

If you get the right one, you have a mediocre game. And I don't like that situation for my fantasy team. Shepard's been mediocre. Slayton, if you missed the big play, not good. Golden Tate's there.

I don't have a great deal of confidence there. I think Shepard is the play that you, the safest play. Shepard is the guy that I would start. I think he's just the most overall talented because they utilize him downfield and in short stuff from time to time. He's just been so bad. But yeah, I mean, there hasn't really been any wide receiver, including, I mean, Ebron has only been good because he's in, he's being compared to other tight ends. Any place, any place for the Steelers, which makes him better. What I say? Ebron. Oh, yeah. Evan Ingram is what I said.

In my mind. Yeah. Yeah, he would be the more, the better shot to take. I don't think we need to discuss the wide receivers from the Giants. I agree. But you know who has been good? Wayne Goldman. Oh, he's been great. It's been unbelievable. He's the RB6 since week seven. Yeah. It's bananas. We'll talk about him in a little bit. Really? Wow. Oh, you guys were unaware, huh? I.

That's why I reacted this way. We were unaware of your starts because you didn't have them in before the show started, right? No, I had them in before the show. I'm making them up as I go along. No, I know. You were working on him this morning, but I did not sneak a peek, but now I know. There you go. Interesting. Spoiler. Dan Arnold, we had a question on the show yesterday whether you could start the postman or on the footcast, we had that question. He's had a couple good weeks in a row. I'm not going to mess with the postman in the playoff. He's apparently done well enough that we gave him his drop back. By a couple weeks in a row, Andy, you mean

A couple week. Yes. A couple week in a row. It was great. Was it two weeks ago? I thought he had a touchdown recently. No, he had two touchdowns, but they were both the same game. No, he scored two weeks ago.

Yeah, somehow he scored in week 11 and managed to be the tight end 17. Yeah, that's the problem. It was one catch for four yards. How do you score a touchdown? That's a tight end and you don't finish in the top 12? I don't know. Mike Evans was giving them lessons from early in the season. Ridiculous. All right, Minnesota Vikings, 6 and 6. They're on fire right now, taking on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Buccaneers are 7 and 5. Oh my gosh, do I do this one?

Oh, Buccaneers are favored by six and a half. No, they're favored by, yeah. Coming off and bye. Andy's almost upset of the wig. You know how much time Tom Brady's had to have like shakes and plants? That's a lot, there's a lot of protein shakes. A lot of juicing, but like literally. All right, the Buccaneers are six and a half point favorites. It's a 51.5 point over under.

I just don't know when I can rely on Tom Brady and the Buccaneers. I'm not exactly sure when. I do know that the Vikings are well coached and they've made huge strides. They're now in the playoffs. Do you guys realize that? They're a playoff team. They have the tiebreaker against Arizona based on the winning percentage of common opponents. He is insane. Let's go, Buccaneers. And they've played, they've just improved tremendously.

I mean, we all know the stat, not verbatim, but you get hit over the head of it. A team that starts 0 and 2, their chance of making the playoffs just almost evaporate. The Minnesota Vikings started 1 in 5. Yeah, they've won. What a turnaround, man. They've won 5 of 6 weeks, and it's what a shame, too, because their one loss was a nail biter to the cowboys. And if that one comes back to bite them, that will hurt.