Week 1 Studs & Duds + Rapid (Over)-Reactions? - Fantasy Football Podcast for 9/14

to the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. You've been healed. I'm back, baby. Week one was good for Andy's soul. Yes. Welcome into the show. Monday, September 14th.

I am so excited for this episode because we, I mean, we were together all of yesterday watching all of these games. But this is our first chance to kind of like touch on all the different things we saw and how it impacts fantasy players. And, man, what a spectacular day. Yeah, it was. It was really fun. I don't know why. Hold on a second. But it's going to, oh, oh, wait on. There's some changing happening to the set real quick. Let me just do some things. Changed out the centerpiece. Yeah, that's fine. All right.

That's a signed Cardinals. We're doing a mid-podcast change? This is an early podcast change. He is now putting on a Cardinals jersey. He has replaced our footballer's hat with a David Johnson. Our helmet. Oh, man, that's tight. All right. They're supposed to be fitted. He's got a Cardinals hat. And we are all in on the Cardinals. This is a little shameful. Oh, here's Justin Herbert on the desk.

Oh, Justin Herbert. Goodbye Justin. Goodbye, Justin. Oh, hold on. Lamar, you had a good week. All right. Why are we replacing Lamar? And he's just going full Cardinals. All right, I'm ready for the show. Full Homer. I'm ready for the show. We good, guys? Sound a little winded from changing. I did. Jason. That is an embarrassment. Is it immature of me? No. No. Brought a Cardinals hat today, too. Yes.

Because this is the only chance to get all season. Oh, yeah, Matt, when we walked in Mr. 49er over there, the Falcon, he's like, you know, he thought it was a dig when he's like, oh, you're going to celebrate while you can. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, we are well aware that this is our only opportunity. Nine and a half point underdogs. Congratulations. Called it right here on this show. You did have an almost upset. Although that was just a full upset. Yeah. My Twitter was filled with, well, two things. Impressed people and depressed.

Charger fans. Oh, the Chargers found a way to Chargers. I mean, come on, Chargers. I mean, they are who they will always be. Just accept a disappointment. Charger fans are like Cardinal fans, but they like pretend. Now, hold on. I will say this, because look, it's all fun in games. We are in Arizona. We're Cardinals fans or we try to be. It's impossible. So it's fun. Most people might remember all of our negative comments all off season. Yeah. It's, it's fun to celebrate. Which I don't.

But we also, you know, leading up to week one, we kept saying, how do you not overreact to week one? Yada, yada, yada. It's impossible. But you have to be aware. And I would just like to remind people last year. Oh, yes. The Raiders went on the road in week one to the New England Patriots. Oh, man. And they beat them 20 to 13.

And it was like, hey, maybe the Raiders are okay. No, they were literally the worst team and they got the number one pick. So you're saying we can still get the number one pick? I am. Absolutely. Okay. And I'm saying that the Chargers could still go to the Super Bowl like the Patriots did. And I'm just saying that the Cardinals are at home, home opener against the backup quarterback Drew Locke of the Seahawks. That's all I'm saying. That's going to make it even worse. I'm just saying the division, they got to come through what? They got to come through Arizona. So yeah, part of the ridiculous weekend. We had the highest scoring.

opening weekend. Was it ever? Yeah. 53.3 points per game average NFL record for opening Sunday. Wow. Thanks, bears. Kind of pushing that average up. Yeah. It was a crazy week. We got so much to talk about. Mike was there with you Sunday Live, which was spectacular leading into kickoff. So many of you were on the ultimate dashboard.

at jointhefoot.com loading up the rosters and optimizing for week one and all the rankings. We still got a game tonight. We still got a fun game tonight. Kansas City and Denver. We get to see Kay Bone. Hopefully we have a game. Hopefully it's fun. Oh. I could see this being a defensive battle. We had so much offense yesterday. And you know what? That's all right. And I will say this. It's all right. We did escape with not too many injuries. Not that there were zero. But I would say for an opening weekend, it was pretty.

pretty good, especially after the Wednesday, Thursday barrage of injuries started the week. It was like, oh, no. That was a great weekend of football. Yeah. Or great Sunday. Yeah, I mean, the only real injury, there's a couple, and one of them was another my guy. Yeah. So that's cool. That's cool, lad. The only singular charger. Yours had an excuse. The singular charger that did anything, right? He was very good. The only contributing factor to the entire Chargers offense that week.

injured. Ladd looked like... Maybe his organs are scrambled. He looked like it just... It was immediately like, whoa, this was the call. This was a great call. Ladd is going to be the dude. He scored. And then Justin Herbert was like, hey, lad, how about you? Go to the hospital! That was not a good pass. No. You can't... He threw a little guy into coverage. You can't do that to your... You can't do that to your guys. But he didn't. Then Lad suffered the consequences.

Mike, you posted kind of a quick question. What did you post on Twitter? Yeah, I posted, look, after week one, what is the hottest offseason question you believe is already solved? Oh, we figured it out. Yeah, Cardinals went to feed it. Because we say don't overreact, but you do need to react. Like there is stuff that happens in week one where you're like, that is going to end up being what the truth is for that player or their team.

The Arizona Cardinals, here's my answer. The Arizona Cardinals offense will be what I thought it was going to be. It's going to be a good offense. You could say the Chargers are bad. Cardinals have too many good weapons to not be a good offense. So I think for fantasy, they may never win another game. In fact, the odds are probably against them doing so. But Jeremiah, I love, Trey McBride, Michael Wilson, Kendrick born in the slot. What's it all about? The Cardinals had one catch from Marvin Harrison.

If you swap jerseys with Marvin Harrison and Kendrick Bourne, we'd be so happy right now. You'd be like, dude, Marv eight catches? That is true. He had eight? I believe so. I think it was like eight for 75. I mean, I do think that the Cardinal's offense is what you want. For fantasy. Is that what it was? Yeah. I agree with you that. I think the offense is going to be great. The Seattle is a much different defense. Oh, my gosh, these comments. So we posted that. Mike posted after week one, what is the hottest offseason question you believe is already solved?

Here are some answers you guys provided us. The Chargers are still the Chargers. Fantastic wrote in. McDaniel is more weird than good. I still think that they would not be as bad as what you saw this week. You know what was wild is the Cardinals had like no pass rush last year. And the Chargers got their top tackles back. And why couldn't they protect him? Why couldn't they protect him? Did you see the play? There's one constant on that offense, guys.

Oh, the quarterback. Yeah. The one who keeps just Matrix dodging all blame around him. He's the one who's always there. Did you watch the highlight? He's the one, like the play where three Cardinals ran in free. The quarterback is the one who has to be like, hey, I think we might need to change protection here.

That's his job. But I can't imagine his protection was, hey, you three offensive linemen go block that one dude. No, but he got confused. Because did you see that play? Yes. Three of their linemen went and blocked one guy. Yes, because the edge on, I think the left dropped into coverage and confused them. And then they were like, we don't know what to do. You can't. I just look, if it goes south for the charges this year, you have no choice but to lay it at the feet of Herbert. We can't do the excuse making anymore. When you can throw the ball.

Like he can throw the ball. Yes. You, I mean, you look at that and you say, well, something else is going wrong, right? Yeah. But we have been there with some gunslingers in the past. Very, very physically gifted. Take Cutler is one of them. Maybe it's a week one, snafu. Yeah. I mean, it's week one. So what are the things that we think we did get an answer to? Phil says, is the Cowboys defense better? Nope. And that's one of the things to me as well, that it's like, oh, okay. That one's.

That one's tough. You got to give the credit to Jackson Dart and the New York Giants. That offense was just absolutely firing. The addition of fields and likely make such a difference to some optionality. You didn't have to just lean on neighbors. Also, Malik Neighbors. Yeah, he's good. Did you see how neighbors was able to finally decide to play? I did hear that. Yeah, John Harbaugh tackled him? Yes.

John Harbaugh, before the game, tackled him. And Neighbors was... Can you imagine if he injured him? Can you fathom that? I had the thought of... Have you really hurt? Harbaugh? Well, no, I don't. But, yeah, I mean, Neighbors' family didn't come to the game. Like, that's how... Wow, really? He was really not sure if he was going to play. And he didn't want them to come if he wasn't going to play. And then Harbaugh was like, well, I'm going to tackle him. He's going to be fine. Yeah, I mean, you traded me. We did a CD Lamb for Neighbors trading me off. I'm drinking this into my own hands. And I'm not sure I wouldn't rather have...

neighbors uh phil says uh or sorry sam parker washington is the top dog for the jack yeah that one i'm in on you think that's salt yeah i think that's salt matt fernandez there is no one a one b in Tampa bucky is the dude oh just like i knew baby you knew that right when you were on the clock right when i was on the clock and decided to draft him i was like the sun started to shine in and i could see but clearly my dude bucky looked good and you know what looked great seven targets yes yeah i'll say

TBD on that one. I think mostly solved for me. I can't read that name. DJ Moore is still really good, is another statement from a Twitter. I think for fantasy, he's going to be pretty good. I do. That one, I think is tough because it's like his huge play, the, what was it, whatever, a 50-yard touchdown. Awesome. But it was the type where the DB fully sold out to catch the ball. And he-

I like eight targets. And DJ Moore is just free to house it. So not taking away from the play, but I wouldn't say it sounds like you. That's exactly what I'm taking away from the DJ more is still really good. Okay. John says no one on the Tennessee Titans is startable for fantasy football. Holy moly. Okay. So Carnell Tate's my guy because Carltona is an amazing player. And I'm already week one like, crap, did I, is Cam Ward?

that bad he can't get just even a smidge better i was hoping that you know brian dable coming in and obviously the preseason was vanilla and they were going to skein some stuff up but this was the jets i've never seen a more boring terrible looking it was like a preseason vanilla office like wait did you not realize this was week one cam ward stinks man solved it feels solved it feels it feels it feels bad awful

Ryan said the 2025 Patriots were a product of an easy schedule. No, I wouldn't do that. I'm not going that far. That one I disagree with. Did you, so the Titans ran 49 total plays and only three in the red zone in that game. Did you see that the, I think the Saints ran 84 plays. I did. You look at the Saints numbers. That's almost. Oh, Kellynmore. It's almost double. Yeah, you had the extra time, but they ran so many plays. Yeah, and they also won the game.

The New Orleans States lost by one. Congrats Lions home fans. But that scoop and score on defense was an absolute nonsense call. I still don't understand how that was not a fumble in any way, shape, or form. And I don't see people even discussing it. No, it's not coming. The NFL's not coming out and defending it. Anyways, there was a play where golf was dropping back to pass. Don't worry, guys. His intention was to throw it forward. So it was not a fumble because in his heart,

He wanted to go forward with this past. I mean, is this just us waking up to the rule? Maybe, maybe, but I haven't seen someone, like Mike's saying, I haven't seen like someone coming out. I've seen some posts that are like, should this have counted? Yeah. That type of stuff. I don't know. I don't understand it. It's like, so if I'm, I just, I don't, it can be pure easy. No speculation. It's black and white.

If the ball goes backwards, even if you're being hit with a forward passing motion, if it goes backwards, it's a lateral. All right, okay, all right. This is item one. Does it talk about the heart? If contact by an opponent, materially affects a passer after the passer begins his throwing motion, it is a forward pass if he passes the ball regardless of where the ball strikes the ground, a player, an official or anything else. When this occurs, intentional grounding rules do not apply.

when the passer intends to throw a forward pass and is contacted by an opponent before beginning the throwing motion, the direction of the pass is the responsibility of the passer if he passes the ball and intentional granting rules. It sounds like they got it right, but I feel like we can go back and find a dozen plays in the past where they have then got it wrong. You can say the rules are broken. Yeah. If you want. Yeah. Well, all right. That was a turned into an exciting game after. That pitch I threw, I intended to pitch it forward. Yeah.