Starts of the Week + Week 16 Breakdown, Playoff Pressure - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/19

The Fantasy Footballers Studio is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your hosts, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Ah, welcome in. It's football time! Woo! We hit that pretty well. In honor of... Mike... H... Wright. Where'd the H come from? The hitman. Oh. Yeah. I mean, I know that's not his actual middle initial, but...

Welcome into the show. Jason Hall and Jason and Andy are here. I'm just giving you my last name. Jason Hall and Andy Holloway. And a Big Bear extraordinaire in the building today. Semi-final week. You can hit it. Hit the drop. I'm Jay Grizz! Jay Grizz. Very proud to be in the building. We're very excited to be with you. We got news to talk about starts of the week. The fantasy forecast. The parley partay. The clown show. As I call it. And, um... Yeah. I... You know... I'm starting to feel it. I'm starting to feel the pressure of the weekend. Because I have...

I have one big start-sit decision of my own. Yeah? Which is? Tight end. That's not really a... You don't have a big start-sit decision. You've got a small start-sit decision. You're saying because I don't have great options. I'm saying you're like, do I want... Am I going to get six points? Or am I going to get four points? That's kind of your... That's what you're toiling over right now. I think there's a lot of other people with me. Because I got a lot of messages about the Brenton Strange, Kate Otten. As soon as I added Brenton Strange to the roster, we got news that he's hurt.

Yeah? So, he's got an AC joint sprain. So, he is... He's probably not the best option. Now, you had made the decision after the show to go with Strange over Otten. Am I correct? I had been getting closer to that. Yeah. He had been in the lineup. I got messages, though, this morning about Laporta or Strange. I got messages about Mark Andrews and Strange. Mark Andrews. Yeah, that's the answer. Like, this is not... This was a one-week performance by Brenton Strange. We've had one-week performances. Yeah. By Schoonmaker. Parker Washington, a couple weeks ago, had like a billion targets and was the...

You know, it was like, oh, that was the player that Mac Jones just targeted a lot in that game. And then, poof! I watched the whole game. All the Brenton Strange targets. The Jets just didn't cover the middle of the field near the line of scrimmage because they didn't care about that. And it wasn't meaningful. It was 11 catches for 73 yards. So, I am... I'm going to make a proclamation right now, Jason. I will tell the Foot Clan my official tight end start tomorrow morning. I'm not doing it today. Oh, really? No. Coward? I've got... I've been researching. I've been thinking.

Is this because of the waiver wire? Like, you want to... Oh, that is this! This is... You want to pick someone up and you don't want to give them the advice. What if the Foot Clan's out there and they need advice and that guy gets picked up? No, I don't know what I'm doing yet. That's the truth. I don't know. I'll know tomorrow. Okay. All right. Mm-hmm. Hey, if the show runs long, you can tell us what happens with your waivers after it goes through, which... I'm looking at the timeline, all the stuff we've got to get to in the show.

I think by the end of the show, waivers are going to run and we're going to know who you picked up. And then you can give the Foot Clan advice. See, you are... I have never... I mean, I just... I'm sitting here in the same studio as one of my opponents. I just... And it's not a game we're breaking down, you know, today. So we'll see. We'll see. This is... This is not a... This is not special. They should not have attention on the show today. Okay. Someone's calling their shot on Cole Komet. Well, here's the actual point that does make sense in the context of where we're headed

is that these isolated one-off games from tight ends are very rarely repeated. And we've already got news like Stone Smart. We got news this morning that Hayden Hurst is returning for the Chargers if you're chasing a Stone Smart performance. And we had a Schoonmaker performance and we've had a Britain Strange game and we had three weeks of Voughten and like generally... We've had a Calcaterra game. Yes. Calcaterra? Yeah, we had a Grant Calcaterra touchdown. Like chasing that as opposed to looking for the next one, I think is the difference. So you have the next one. I have the next one.

That's great news. And it will be revealed... After our waivers run. In 50 minutes. All right. Jointhefoot.com is the community. We want to give a shout out to everybody over there supporting the show. You get access to all of our premium tools. You get access to an extra episode every week. And we move to a two shows a week schedule once the season's over up through the NFL draft and into June. But if you want an extra episode every single week and you want to support this show, if we brought some value to you, you can go to jointhefoot.com. That's just one of the perks there.

We just recently pulled all the advertising and banner ads and stuff off the site for all members. So they can have a better browsing experience. And our team is working really hard to upgrade the app, which is brand new this year, the in-season app. There's a lot of tools and resources that we try to bring a lot of value there. We appreciate everybody that is on board. For sure. And it's worth reminding people, like, we do go to two shows a week, but we don't go away. So stick with us through the off-season. There are awesome shows. A lot of times we hear that people found us in the off-season with, like, the Truth of

series that we do. The Truth of Wider Series. Truth of Running Back. So we get into that early after the season wraps up to make sure we're not a little bit too zoomed in on certain weeks and certain performances. Certain emotions. Yeah. Try to get it right. So, yeah. So we'll break it down. We've got a lot going on. Let's jump into that news. News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance. Well, I mentioned it. Hayden Hurst coming back tonight against the Broncos. So stone smart is not a smart play at this point with Hayden Hurst, a higher depth chart

tight end coming back. Yeah. Stone dumb. Ha! Oh, I did get word Mike might be back by the off-season, too. Oh, that's true. That's great. You know, because we were talking about the off-season. We might get him back. No, he might be back tomorrow. We'll see. I hope he's back tomorrow. He's the shame. And now he might not be, now that you reminded him of that. Sincere McCormick was placed on IR. Goodbye. Sincere. We will miss you. Aiden O'Connell returned to a full practice on Wednesday. He had no practices last week. Seems like Aiden O'Connell should be back. That's good news for Jacoby Myers, Brock Bowers.

Yeah. Those two guys go from pretty much, well, Brock at tight end. You're going to play him no matter what. But Jacoby goes from not playable to probably should be played. Isaac Garendo did not practice on Wednesday. This was news because that was not the injury he mispracticed for the week before. Yeah. Right now he's listed with both foot and hamstring. So, obviously, a little bit banged up. The matchup against Miami, they're kind of middle of the pack. Are you going, Taylor, if, are you prepping if you have Garendo? I'm prepping, yeah, but it's not a good feeling because, I mean, Taylor had zero opportunities last week when Garendo finally played.

So, that would be the guy we would imagine. But it could be Keyshawn Vaughn. It could be Israel Abanakanda. Would you pivot? You know, he's injured in, you know, not a great matchup. Maybe he's inactive and we're saying, okay, is it Taylor? Is it Izzy? Do you just go with someone like a Jacoby Myers? Yeah. Or Thielen. Yeah. Or Jalen McMillan. Yeah, I would play all those. Jalen Waddell didn't practice with the knee. Probably not playing. Geno Smith did return to a full practice. That was big news. Great news. We did get breaking news yesterday. Zach Charbonnet did not practice.

He's dealing with an oblique injury. Kenneth Walker still not practicing with the calf. It's a Wednesday. It's a Wednesday and Charbonnet's, you know, obviously been getting the work without Walker there. So, I'm not going to overreact to him not practicing on a Wednesday. If he doesn't practice on Thursday, I'll start saying uh-oh. Yeah. Yeah, it just makes me a little nervous right now. Baker Mayfield with a knee. He's been limited or not practicing on Wednesdays. But Kate Otten also has a knee injury because if you put a tight end on my team, he will get hurt. He will get hurt immediately.

Thank you for getting rid of Jonu then. You gave the people some freedom. I did. I kept him some freedom. Brenton Strange, AC joint sprain, supposed to be ready for the game on Sunday. So, we'll see. We've heard that before with Evan Ingram and he got thrown on IR. So, we'll monitor those two tight ends. And Clyde Edwards-Alaire, I guess we got this in here. He signed with the Saints practice squad. He's going to maybe play football. But, I think the important news here is not Clyde Edwards-Alaire related. It's Alvin Kamara related. So, if they're going out and they're signing someone, you know, signing Clyde Edwards-Alaire,

it just gives me even more heebie-jeebies on a Monday night football game for Kamara actually starting. And Kamara is such an exceptionally important piece. If you have Kamara, you made the playoffs. That's like, he was such a good pick. And then he helped in round one. Either you had the bye or he helped you get through it with that, you know, touchdown. So, this is a really important piece of round two playoffs. And people have to figure out what they're going to pivot off of Kamara. I would try to move him to your flex and get someone else in there in case he doesn't play.

Yeah, don't ride dirty into Monday night just hoping he's going to be out there. You need to either play somebody Sunday or have news that he's going to play or have somebody that you can pivot in there for sure. So, that was today's news and notes presented by USAA Insurance. Learn more at USA.com slash insurance. Starts of the week. Well, Jason, it starts of the week time. And, you know, you're probably playing the guys that brought you to where you're at. But there are also decisions to be made. people with committee quarterback situations where you've been bouncing players back and forth.

So, I wanted to throw my endorsement behind Jordan Love this week on Monday night in that exact Alvin Kamara game. I think it's going to be a better than average week for Jordan Love at home against New Orleans where the Saints have struggled tremendously against quarterbacks in passing yards allowed. And, you know, Jordan Love has not been a difference maker for you this year. We've had that segment every week. Jordan Love has not been a difference maker. I do think he is going to be better than expected this week. Yeah, you look at the last month. 15 fantasy points. 19 fantasy points.

15 fantasy points. 17 fantasy points. He's not disappearing or playing poorly. But he's not having great fantasy points primarily because of touchdowns. You know, all those games, they're scoring 30 points. And so, Josh Jacobs is really the kryptonite here to Jordan Love's fantasy success. But you think the touchdowns come in this through the air? Yeah, I mean, I think Jordan Love gets it done on Monday night. I think, you know, 202 with high upside. And I think the potential is there. So, I think it'll be a better than average game for Jordan Love. The matchup is really good. All righty.

I am going with Jaden Daniels. Probably one of the most asked and talked about quarterbacks this week. You know, Jaden Daniels has been awesome. He's gotten you to this point. And the scare is we saw Jaden Daniels play this Philadelphia Eagles defense a couple of weeks ago, about a month ago. And he was really, really bad. He had 13 fantasy points. And that was thanks to a late Ertz garbage time touchdown. So, I get being scared. I really do. But since then, he's been the quarterback one, the quarterback three, the quarterback seven. He also was not healthy in that game.

You know, he was not fully what he is now. His scrambling, I don't know if you know this, Andy. He is on pace for the most scrambles of all time. So, that was kind of absent in that Philly game. I believe that Jaden Daniels, if I have him on my roster, I'm going to start him. I'm going to put him out there. And I actually think he has a good game. This is a really unstoppable type of player. You can't always get him in the backfield. And his weapons with Terry McLaurin, you know, I'm not scared off of the matchup.

This is, you know, one of the top three quarterbacks in fantasy football. You're in the second round of the playoffs. If you got here with him, I'm playing him. If you wonder for a moment and you're listening and saying, well, who wouldn't play Jaden Daniels? The answer is tons of you who are asking. Like the sixth most popular start sick question, and we get thousands and thousands every week. Is Jaden Daniels or Kyler Murray? It's Jaden Daniels, bad matchup. Kyler Murray, good matchup. Yeah. Projected points are similar. But Carolina gives up seven points more per week to the quarterback position than the Eagles do.

It's enticing. And so there is a fear there. And for good reason. The Philadelphia defense, like if you had Brian Robinson, let me put it this way. Jason does not have Brian Robinson as the start of the week. No. Because that kind of a player is probably not overcoming that kind of a defense to the degree that you need in this semifinal matchup. But there are Jordan Love, Jaden Daniels decisions. Kyler Murray, Jaden Daniels decisions. For sure. I mean, if Josh Allen was playing the Eagles, I don't think you'd have a question. Kyle, your start-sit decision this week is who?

It's your two starts of the week. Oh, it's Jordan Love and Jaden Daniels. Yesterday I said I think I would go Love over Daniels. But then Jason, I think when we talked through it, it persuaded me to bump Daniels a little bit ahead. And there is an emotional piece. Like, who do you want to have made the mistake with? You know, like if you put Jaden Daniels on your bench and he has a vintage game. And you lose because you pivoted away out of kind of overanalyzing the situation. I think that's harder to live with. I think if you go down with your superstar, it's easier.

Yeah. Jordan Love was my quarterback. Jerome Ford is my running back start of the week. He was the RB10 on nine opportunities last week. IR for Nick Chubb. He's had big plays. He had a 62-yard run. He's had some bigger ones. Last year he had three over 60 yards. This year he's had a number of over 30-yard runs. He's going to get 15-plus touches. Cincinnati is not intimidating. They just gave up three touchdowns to Pollard and Spears last week. I mean, they are, if you zoom in even more on the strength of schedule, they're even worse against running backs. 31st in schedule-adjusted fantasy points given up to running backs.

This is a tough one for players because Ford's probably been on your bench. You probably didn't play him last week. And it's a decision-making process now to flex him in versus somebody else. You know, an Adam Thielen in the, you know, a Jerry Judy in the same game where Judy's been great, but now you have DTR. I'm going Ford. What if Garendo is active? Ford. Okay. So that, I think that's a perfect, you know, grab off the waivers, put it in your flex over a questionable other option. Ford should have enough volume to have a safe floor. Ford, the question is, will he have the chance of a touchdown with DTR?

Hopefully. The Cincinnati Bengals, man, they love giving up touchdowns. My running backs for start of the week. First of all, the start of the week is James Conner. James Conner was the running back one last week. Carolina is such a good matchup. You've got a banged up Trey Benson. James Conner should eat. Congratulations if you have him. Oh, thanks. My, yeah. My other start of the week is Brees Hall. Brees Hall has been, I mean, there's no secret here. I am not the biggest fan of the Brees Hall experience. I do think this is a... Yeah, you paid a ticket for that ride and you didn't have a good time.

Yeah, no, I threw up. No. I threw up. Your seat restraint didn't even work. Yeah, the vomit just came right back in my face. We were right on the loop-de-loop part. And I threw up. But you know what? I got off. I took a shower and I'm willing to try it again. No, you're not. I am. Well, I'm not because he has knocked me out of the playoffs wherever I have him. However, I do think Brees Hall is a good play this week. Not just because he can't hurt me and so he's going to go nuclear. We talked about the running back schedule for a long time for the Jets.

The playoff weeks and how good they should be for Brees Hall. He got a touchdown last week. He is healthier this week than he was last week. Zach Rosenblatt was tweeting out that he's further along with his injury than Braylon Allen is. So, you know, if you've actually got Braylon Allen a little bit banged up, you've got the Rams allowing the fifth most rushing yards per game. The matchup is good. He should see 15-plus touches at home. Good chance to get in the end zone. There's a good over-under. I think Brees Hall is a good start this week. Real decisions for people with Brees Hall.