Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - Week 12 Thanksgiving Episode Part 2, Matchups, Mailbag

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All right, let's go ahead and talk about the Rams taking on the Bengals. The Bengals are very heavy, heavy, heavy favorites. We don't know the quarterback situation yet for the Rams. Andy's almost upset of the week. Love it. The Rams defense will keep them in the game. That is all I have to say. I'm not going to say they're going to win in Cincinnati. You said they're almost going to win. I said they're almost going to win.

I love this pick. I could see the Bengals going 0 in three, three in a row. It's got to be in their head. So I don't expect the Rams to win either, but their defense has been great. So I like it. So how confident are you in the Cincinnati skill players? I mean, you got A.J. Green. We talked about this in the studio a lot this week. A.J. Green's season is a result of Tyler Eifert's Red Zone.

proficiency. No team throws more touchdowns to the tight end than Cincinnati does. Well, Tyler Eifford catches a touchdown every four times. Every four times he catches the ball, one of them is a touchdown. Which is a ridiculous stat that is one of those unsustainable things yet.

He continues on. Yeah, I don't know that that is necessarily unsustainable the way they use him in the red zone. Yeah, somebody could have made that argument about Grankowski years ago, and it's very sustainable because you are a high percentage red zone target. That hurts AJ Green. And now that being said, in this matchup, the Rams defense is...

great, and they give up zero passing touchdowns in 40% of their games. They don't give up a lot of passing touchdowns. So if I had to pick somebody to get one, you asked me how confident I am in the skill position players, I guess I'd pick Eifford for one. But I'm not expecting this to be a high-scoring game. And now I hadn't even looked at the line. Vegas has that as a low-scoring game. Okay, so what about Jeremy Hill versus Geo Bernard? We saw the, Jeremy Hill looked better.

Last week against Arizona. It always helps me. Not better than Gio, but better than he had looked. Yeah, that's what I mean. Better than he has looked. And here's what's interesting for me about Jeremy Hill. A couple of things. One, he had that taunting penalty early, early in the game. And I thought there is no way that Jeremy Hill is getting back in this game, the way that Marvin Lewis runs his ship.

But I think Marvin Lewis has learned his lesson because they talked about earlier the Bengals did when they benched Jeremy Hill for the fumble. They were very concerned that maybe that really affected him of shutting him down. Instead of being able to fire him up like it does for some players, it had a completely negative effect on him. So they said, okay, well, he had this. We're going to leave him in. Jeremy Hill has that incident where he runs into the end zone and has the scuffle with Tyron Matthew.

I thought, okay, here we go again. Maybe he gets benched for being a knucklehead again. Nope, he stayed in the game. And so that combined with how easily they marched him in on a goal line carry, which they haven't been doing all year. They've been doing trickery and weird stuff, a lot of throwing to Tyler Eifford. So is Jeremy Hill in line for those touchdowns if they can get to the goal line? I think he's always in line for the touchdowns if they can get to the goal line. I think that Jeremy Hill is somebody I would not start this week. Okay.

Yeah, I mean, I had Jeremy Hill as my set of the week last week. I will admit my, I'll take my lumps there because he got two touchdowns. That's so tough to predict when you're on the goal line. I mean, he wasn't very productive outside of the two carries on the goal line. And it was because you're facing a tough defense. And so the whole offense is probably just.

less likely that you get down to that one-yard line where Jeremy Hill needs to eat on Thanksgiving. This is actually after Thanksgiving, but I agree with Andy. I'm not a big Hill believer. I believe that they've kind of been using him the same as they had beforehand. They give a series to Hill, a series to Geo. If they need to be passing, Geo is going to be in the game with a low-scoring game.

I'm not huge on either of them. I see both of them in kind of that running back three vein this week. I got two other questions for you. First of all, the only player you're playing on the entire Rams is Todd Gurley. Todd Gurley has a 100 yards or a touchdown in every game he's played this entire year. A. Hundred total yards or a touchdown. Start it. Correct. Every start this year. Good point. Let me ask you about AJ Green here because I want to get a little bit more granular than just saying, okay, he's going to have a rough game. I want to see who you'd start him.

Over, okay? Would you start AJ Green in this game at home against St. Louis? Would you rather start Eric Decker? Ooh, that is interesting. I like AJ Green just a little bit more than Decker. Just higher upside. Totally consistent. Yeah, the upside is there, but Eric Decker's taken on the dolphins at home. That's a great matchup. I think Decker is safer, but AJ Green has the higher ceiling. AJ Green or Des Bryant? Oh, I'm definitely going.

Green. Des Bryant, it's not a huge wide margin. You're definitely going green? Yeah. Des Bryant has Norman on the other side of the field in a what I think is going to be a little bit more low scoring. Both of these guys are very similar to me. I see them very similar. These are supremely talented athletes that both have a high ceiling in these matchups. We all have them within two of each other in our rankings, even despite where they're at. That's, um,

That's why I said I see these guys very similar. I was just surprised that, yeah, that you said I'm definitely taking green. Well, because the tiebreaker to me, in both situations, you've got good defenses, good wide receivers. The tiebreaker is one of them is named Josh Norman. Well, you got Jenkins in St. Louis? I would take Josh Norris. If I was drafting as a GM, I would take Josh Norman over Jenkins, right? Would you?

Uh, I don't know. I'm just saying that's an even tiebreaker for me. Okay. Okay. A.J. Green or, yeah, because I, a career does not be, is not just made in a feeling. Right now. Yeah, well, okay. Right. All right. A.J. Green or Martavis Bryant. Martavis has Seattle. I'll take, I'll take, uh, green by a hair. All right. AJ Green or Jeffrey, if he plays. Oh, Jeffrey if he plays for sure. Okay. All right. Well, we'll move it on because we got to move it on.

There's still so much left. The Saints, the Saints go to Houston, another team that's on the rise. By the way, do you realize if New England beats Denver this week and Kansas City takes care of business at home against the bills, there's a two-game gap between them? Because Denver will be eight and three, and Kansas City would be six and five. Kansas City's on fire right now. They have four straight wins in a row when their season was looking not so good. Then they lost Jamal Charles.

And everyone thought it's over, and their defense has just been incredible. It's really funny how you, in fantasy, because we get so tied into what the players are doing. And after the beginning of the season, when a team rattles off like some significant losses in a row, you kind of tune out to their record. And then just, wait, what? The chiefs are back in the hunt. It's kind of like Tampa Bay. I was going to say that exactly. Tampa Bay is one game out of the playoffs right now. They're five and five.

And you know what's funny? It's all the teams that are five and five right now. Houston, I think, is what, five and five? Yeah, and they're back as well. Kansas City and Tampa are all five and in the mix. So the Saints go to play the Texans. The Texans are favored by three. I think the Texans win this game. I really do. I don't think the Saints defense can hold up, and I don't think New Orleans can score enough against Texas or against the Texans right now. That being said, Hoyer, Brian Hoyer was your stream of the week, Mike.

I want to come out and pre-apologize. Yeah. Because I debated you a little too much about Hoyer on the air. And I hadn't looked at the numbers enough. He's been really good when he started. Yep. And how can you not be really good against a team that has given up incredible amounts of fantasy points? I think we looked at this. In their last four games, they had given up like 40, 43, 60 to Eli and like 35. So, I mean, Hoyer...

is in line for a great start. And the Texans average 43 pass attempts per game, which leads the league. So you have that much passing volume against that porous of a defense. And Hoyers are good. That's why you started the show saying the craziness of would you take Hoyer over Brady. All right, we're going to play a little start and sit with this game. Okay, Alfred Blue, start him or sit him? Start. All right. Brandon Cooks. Start. Willie Sneed. Start.

Yeah, you got to start. And Willie Sneed is an interesting guy to me because he's coming off that goose egg. He had the knee injury problems. He's had a bi-week now. And I'll say this. He's a guy you need to monitor what's going on in practice. If he's still limited into practice after having an entire week off, then I'm going to have some concerns for him. Okay. And so let's talk about Drew Breeze a little bit. He had the bi-week. Drew Breeze right now.

Mike, you have them the highest this week. So you like him a lot. You like him over Rivers. You like him over Big Ben. You like him over Brady. You like him over Car. You're feeling good about that? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I could still be confident in that. You have them over Cam Newton. Yeah, they're back to back, but you have them over him. Yeah, I have Cam Newton concerns this week. Okay. Not that I'm sitting him down by the end. Temperate expectations. Yeah. But I have a serious question for Jason. Yeah.

Are you going to start or sit DeAndre Hopkins this week? This is a tough call. I've got him ranked fairly high. I think he's my number one wide receiver this week. Welcome back to the DeAndre Hopkins party trade. I had him at 15. You cannot defend that. All right. Fair enough. I can just see me. What if you saw me going like this? I had Julio at 15.

Well, that would be ridiculous. That would sound ridiculous. Yeah, exactly. How dare you? By the way, we got those water bets that are getting paid out, and Mike's going to edit them today. Videos are done. All right. Anything else from that game? We know the story, right? The Saints, 29th against the run, 31st against the past, a dumpster fire. Nasty Nate. You like Nasty Nate? I think he's an okay play because of the, because of how bad the Saints defense. All right. Is it? Devin Fanchis or Nasty Nate?

I'll go with Nate. The Buccaneers go into Indianapolis and take on the Colts. This is the James Winston experiment. He has been ascending. He had five touchdowns last week. Obviously, he'll have five in every game the rest of the year. No, that's not true. But, you know, he's playing better. He's got a weapon back in Vincent Jackson. The running game is getting it done, right? I think we looked this up yesterday.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were, I believe, second or third in the league in average rushing yards per game. This moves the offense down the field. So James Winston, I'm willing to start this week. I think Winston is interesting this week because for the stats sheet, when you go look back on Winston, he had a monster game, a monumental huge game. But if you watch the entire game,

It looked exactly like the magic year of Nick Foles when he was on the Eagles, where he's getting away with all kinds of mistakes. The running game is a huge part of the game. Because if you remember the Eagles when Nick Foles was there, that's when Shady was going bananas. But Winston got away with so many throws that should have been picked off and were just terrible decisions, but every single one of them connected. So...