NFC North Breakdown, Stack Attack, Chicken Salad

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Thanks for joining us. It's draft season. That means it's time to head over to ultimate draft kit.com. It's the only tool you need this offseason, this draft season. We've been spending months and months getting it ready. And you know what? We're going to keep getting it ready because we spend the entire off season updating this bad boy video profiles, our rankings, risk ratings, the one and only reception perception from Matt Harmon, tons and tons of research goodness.

Check it out now at Ultimate DraftKit.com. Hi, this is Kyle Rudolph, and you're listening to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast. To the Fantasy Footballers Podcast. Coming to you from pristineauction.com studios with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in.

It's Thursday, July 25th, and we've got a great show for you. This is the fantasy footballers podcast. Mike, the fantasy hitman Wright, is here and present and accounted for. It's my name. Do not wear it out. Jason. Jason Moore is here. Do not drag my name through the mud of those jokes.

over there um i think we have one of these uh oh that yeah that's right so mike went with the don't wear it out don't wear it out joke i remember every once in a while we need to uh don't wear it out uh believe i said do not um we need to review that joke i am far too eloquent for your contractions on the youtube he got a i believe a one a total of one point for that that's weird i wasn't even going for score but

I'll get you. And that's what hurts. You really should be trying harder. This is, uh... You want me to try harder? No, please don't. You've opened up the genie. Uh, I'm Andy Holloway. You can follow Mike at FF Hitman. I felt like Chris Farley right there. Yeah, yeah. Down by the riff. You can follow Mike at FF hitman on Twitter. Jason at Jason FFL. I'm at Andy Holloway, and the show is at the fantasy. Oh, nope, the FF ballers. They don't give you that many characters on Twitter.

But we welcome you in. We've got the NFC North on the show today. We'll be breaking down that division. Got a great quick question. Some news to talk about. A lot more is happening day by day. Teams getting into camp, injury situations, the active PUP list. We want to get you primed and ready for your fantasy football season. We're excited. We're happy you're here. And we're very excited to be giving away a Patrick Mahomes signed jersey, courtesy of pristine auction. You can get in on that.

The giveaway ends at the end of July. So you better hurry up. About a week left. And that's footclan giveaway.com. You can support us over there by voting at the podcast awards. We're going for a fourth consecutive win. The quattro. The quattro, as we call it. And there are other ways you can enter. Footclan giveaway.com. Let's start with this quick question. This comes in from Raymond. Which same?

team player stack. Do you see yourself drafting the most this season? This one is really easy for me because almost every mock I do, every real draft I do. There are two guys from the same team that I am madly in love with as far as value. I think every time I'm considering taking them, they are always there 100% of the time. They're both disrespected. I don't get it because they're on one of the best three offenses in the league.

They were top options last year, but Robert Woods and Jared Goff are great values this year. Yeah. I'm scooping them up everywhere. I will probably have a team with that stack. Yeah, I'll probably win the championship. Okay. That one makes sense. I mean, both high-end options. You went quarterback wide receiver. Yes. Are there running back wide receiver stacks that you see yourself getting into? Like.

I don't know. Maybe you spend a late first on DeAndre Hopkins snag a little Lamar Miller value later in the draft, as I've been known to do in the mock draft. I prefer to get away from that one. But if we're just talking. Aaron Jones and MBS. Team Geronimo over here for life. So I wouldn't be doing that stack. If we're talking, you know, high end wide receivers and a running back where.

I'm actually okay with that combo. And these are both early picks. So I'll just confine my answer to that. I would say T.Y. Hilton and Marlon Mack, I would be okay if the draft fell to a certain point where I end up with both those players. I'm good with that stack. Now, there would be a train of thought here. We talked about the Bengals on the last episode. I said, you know, getting AJ Green in the fourth, if you were so lucky, top of the fourth is stealing.

But Joe Mixing and AJ Green on an offense that you're uncertain about, you know, is that a stack you're comfortable with because of the value Joe Mixin and the late first, AJ Green and the, I mean. If you believe what you believe on AJ Green, which is that he is great and healthy, he's going to be awesome, then I wouldn't worry about the team itself. You can look back to last season.

Sequin Barclay and O'Dell Beckham Jr. were a great stack to have from a terrible offense. If the players are great and the value is there, you don't need to be afraid. I'm not quite as bullish on AJ Green this year as you are, so I probably would avoid that. But if you are correct in AJ Green still being a dominant top 10 type wide receiver, then the value is there. And I think a lot gets made of you want the wide receiver.

receiving or the quarterback receiving option stack because you double up on your touchdown. It's fun. It is fun. But you can also make an argument for a running back wide receiver stack from a consistency standpoint. While they won't score a touchdown on the same play, you'll have a much more even baseline through the year, you know, assuming you've got two really good options. I wonder if the Bengals offense and the Giants offense, that comparison, I think that that's a good one.

I think that that's one that could be indicative of what you see. There were still, you know, Elon Manning had a lot of yardage last year. I mean, that's what you got out of that offense. It wasn't the best offense in football, but you had huge fantasy stars because everything ran through those two guys. I could see that happening in Cincinnati. A light, a light version of it, though, because Joe Mixon is not Sequin and A.J. Green at this point is not Odo Beckham. Dalton's probably more capable of giving you big upper echelon games than Eli, though. Balances out the scale a little bit.

All right, we have some Bengals news. Let's get into it. News and notes from around the league presented by Sleeper. Tyler Boyd was signed to a four-year $43 million extension by the Bengals. Congratulations. Through 2023. Mike, you said this in the studio yesterday. Tyler Boyd decided not to bet on himself, and he took this contract. Probably a smart move considering some things worked in his advantage last year. I know you guys have...

illustrated that Boyd was good with Green. You still have a very small sample of elite performances by Boyd with Green. So I think this was the right move by Tyler Boyd.

And they lock up a young man that that's getting better. It's probably a good move from both parties. Tyler Boyd gets his and the Bengals are, this is not that much. It sounds, I mean, obviously $43 million. It's a lot of quiche. I would accept that. I think it's less than Sterling Shepard's deal. Yeah, I mean. And just above Tyler Lockett's deal. So it's not an extravagant deal to. And as when you lock a guy up early, it's one of those things where every time it happens, you think, oh, no, they're paying so much. But as.

The season goes and larger contracts loom. Locking up players early from a franchise standpoint is actually usually you're not getting the reset market later. So I think it's a good move both sides. The question now is they're saying, okay, we're going to shift to A.J. Green and get a contract done there. Is that just lip service? Do you, you know what I mean? Does this get in the way of saying let's pay A.J. Green a long term big deal?

I don't think it gets in the way. I would think it helps. I mean, it makes sure that the team is cohesive. If it's AJ Green and Boyd once again running through another contract cycle, that's only a positive thing for AJ Green because he, Boyd is good. He's a great. He is a good player. He's a good wide receiver. He's not elite. He's not getting paid like an elite wide receiver. But when we were talking about this, it was, okay, well, Boyd has kind of accepted.

who he is, where he falls in the pecking order. He's not going to take a gamble on health. He's just going to get paid, which is a crap ton of money, enough money that he should be able to live on forever. Well, Marvin Jones could have stayed in Cincinnati and taken wide receiver two, three money. He chose to bet on himself and he chose to go sign a bigger deal and try to be the guy. That's not what Ty the boy did. Right.

Speaking to AJ Green, Green is not going to take that type of a deal. A.J. Green is not going to take a hometown discount at this point of his career. He's going to try and get paid as if he is a healthy, elite, wide receiver. One of those things is still true, in my opinion, he's elite. But the health is definitely a big risk for a franchise to go in and say, okay, we're locked you in. You're our wide receiver one now for four years.

and your body seems to be falling apart. All right, let's transition to another elite wide receiver then, because it's not smooth sailing for the rest of the upper echelon wide outs right now. Hopkins is on the active PUP. Julio Jones, 10 to 14 days away from being cleared to practice with a foot injury. This one's actively affecting Julio Jones right now.

unless that foot is also petitioning for a contract extension for the next 10 to 14 days. But, you know, Tyreek Hill has the, he's one of the upper echelon drafted wideouts. He's got things hanging over him. There's some problems in confidence for some of these wideouts with the foot injuries that have happened to Julio and to AJ Green over the past couple of years.

Does this concern you about Julio? This is the first we've heard that he's going to miss extended time due to the foot. Not the first in his career, but as of right now. It's part of the game with Julio Jones. If you're new to fantasy, welcome to the Julio Jones party where every single week you watch him hobble down the field. You watch him hobble off the field. You rip your hair out screaming, why is Julio not on the field? And then he ends the game with 120 yards because he's just an absolute monster.

Okay. I just want that. It's part of owning Julio Jones in fantasy football is knowing that your stomach is always going to be a little rumbly. Yeah. And because of his history with that, I think they'll still sign him that large, long-term contract. I think it's coming soon. All right. We need to talk Falcons with this story as well. Fifth round rookie Quadri Olison. Yesterday it was reported he's going to help pick up some of the slack in short-yarded situations.

You have a backfield with Olison, Devonta Freeman, and Edo Smith. If we've seen this history of Freeman, not necessarily holding up. Yeah, the last two years, correct. In the past couple of years, and this team has been content to kind of share the load. Is there a potential for fantasy owners to be surprised and disappointed in Freeman's output this year because of...