Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - Playoff Primer, Pump the Brakes, News

could follow the example, the humility, the reality. He's living in reality as opposed to in his own little celebrity bubble. I was just really impressed. What's the fantasy implications? Fantasy implications are that Dak Prescott is definitely the starter for sure. We already knew that. And I have been saying, you know, he was almost my rising star of the week because I trust him for fantasy. I think he is productive.

from a statistical, you know, pad the box score capability. All right, Jared Goff is going to make his first start this week. Really? Yeah, aren't you excited? Oh, man, I'm, uh, yeah. I would sign the Dolphins of defense immediately. That's, that's the biggest piece of this. The dolphins are probably going to be my number one ranked D. Jared Goff, there's a reason he hasn't been able to get on the field yet. I will be. It took a case Keenum to get him on.

thoroughly enjoying watching the game. I guess as, you know, we live in Arizona, so this is great news. Yeah, I mean, I don't like golf. I never have. I wonder what he'll be able to do. Like as a person? Well, no, as a player. Okay. As a player. I just have never bought in. I think we saw in the preseason what he has. We'll see, though. He's probably better than Keenham, but probably not this week. Yeah. All right.

Mike Thomas said Sammy Coates is dealing with the double broken finger situation. After the last two gooses, I would cut him. Absolutely. I don't think you can trust Sammy Coates. You can't start him right now. And now that you know he's got the additional broken finger. What do you hold now, hope for? Nothing. And Blair Walsh, you burst onto the scene, you burn bright, and now you're gone. Blair Walsh was cut, released by the Vikings after missing an extra point.

The life of a kicker. It's a rough world, man. I tweeted out, you know, that, you know, he definitely needed to be cut. I'm happy he's gone. But there's always a part of me that feels bad for kickers that just, hey, you don't perform. You are gone. Like way quicker than most other positions. And then all the Minnesota people tweeted and said, no, no remorse. No, no hard feeling. Get out. Yeah, there were some.

If you remember the playoffs last year, it wasn't pretty. And the one thing I'll say is you had Mason Crosby struggle for like two years in Green Bay, and they stuck through with him, and now he's great again. So I wouldn't doubt seeing a big lay league Blair Walsh end up back in the league, but not on Minnesota. So we're moving on. We're talking playoffs. Playoffs? You kidding me? Playoffs. Are you ready? I'm ready. What position do we start with?

I think you start at the top with the quarterbacks. All right. So what we did is we took a look at, basically ranked all the teams according to fantasy points per game, given up to the quarterbacks, laid out their playoff schedules. And so we wanted to give you kind of what we see as the best playoff schedules for quarterbacks, the worst playoff schedules for quarterbacks. This will affect the way you trade, the way you sign guys. And the caveat here is that this is a piece of a puzzle.

this is not the ultimatum. This doesn't mean that because Tyrod Taylor has a good playoff schedule, that you go out and you play him over Tom Brady. We're not saying that. Who has a bad playoff schedule. Exactly right. We are most certainly not saying that, but it is important if you look at last year, you know, the Kirk Cousins playoff schedule was great. He was made because he had great matchups. And we knew, hey, this is a juicy matchup. You should start him. You did start him.

You won your championship. That's what we're looking for this year. Are those kind of guys that kind of have the combination of talent and matchup? I'm a little bit scared of giving the bad playoff schedule matchups because too often people then overvalue that. And so this is kind of our caveat of saying don't overvalue matchups. Just have that be the piece of the process. And if you were going to overvalue, I'd rather you overvalue on the better QB schedule side and stream those guys than I would.

You overreact. I mean, look, Drew Brees took on Denver, right? That's a bad playoff matchup. Took him on this last week, scored 30 points. Well, look, our three worst, I mean, since we're talking quarterbacks, let's just get into it, right? The three worst matchups. On paper. On paper, four quarterbacks are three great quarterbacks. Aaron Rogers. Aaron Rogers, Tom Brady, and Russell Wilson. So Rogers has Seattle, Chicago, Minnesota, and Brady has Baltimore, Denver, the Jets.

It really, Brady's schedule really doesn't, even though on paper he ranks that way, it doesn't scare me nearly as much as Aaron Rogers does. I completely agree. Aaron Rogers playing Seattle and then the divisional game at Chicago and then Minnesota. That's a tough, that's a tough run. Yeah, Tom Brady, you know, look, a lot of people, myself included, found better options than playing Drew Breeze against Denver this last week. And Drew Breeze was absolutely fine. And that's not the norm, but.

Drew Brees is not the norm and Tom Brady is not the norm. So his schedule here, obviously week 16 against the Jets, that's great. Tom Brady can carve up the Jets week secondary. Baltimore is really just highly ranked for that first week because they're a low scoring team. And I'm not really scared off of Tom Brady. Now, here's what I'm going to ask you, though. Drew Brees is the second best schedule for a fantasy quarterback for the playoffs.

Rivers has three plus matchups facing Carolina, Oakland, and Cleveland. I think people are going to win championships with Phillip Rivers this year, and we said it a couple weeks ago. Yeah, we've been on Philip for a while. He is the guy that I would prefer to have going into the playoffs. But Breeze has Tampa twice, Tampa Bay. Yes. And if I were an Aaron Rogers owner and I was securing the playoffs, there's no question in my mind, I would be trying to trade Aaron Rogers as a deal for Drew Breeze.

Oh, for sure. I mean, if you want to put, if I was to have to make a bet to say, okay, fantasy playoffs, week 14, 15, 16 between Drew Breeze and Aaron Rogers, I would give odds. Yeah. So other fantasy quarterbacks with plus matchups for weeks 14, 15, and 16. We talked about Rivers and Breeze. James Winston.

has New Orleans twice and Dallas in the middle. It's a good run for Winston. You've been riding him probably for a few weeks now because his second half schedule was so much better. Matt Ryan, Dak Prescott. Those two guys both have good overall. Yeah, 15 and 16 are better for both of them. Yeah, and they have a hard week one. Both on the road.

Both on the road, both against decently good defenses in the L.A. Rams. That's who Matt Ryan's playing in week one. And then Dak Prescott will be playing against the Giants, whose secondary is much improved. Pass rush looks pretty good. I would trust, I think I would trust either one of those guys in those games. I wouldn't necessarily sit them.

but there are better options. You're just talking about week 14. Yes, just week 14. Week 15 and 16 for Matt Ryan and Dak Prescott are as green as it gets. Colin Kaepernick, Tyrod Taylor, and Derek Carr are the last three that I want to mention in the best quarterback schedules for week 14 through 16. I've told you Kaepernick is one of those guys that I'm, he was my rising star because of his playoff schedule. The Jets in Atlanta for weeks 14 and 15. Tyrod Taylor.

I mean, I really like his schedule in the way he's been playing. Pittsburgh and Cleveland for week 14 and 15. Another great streaming option. And then, you know, Derek Carr, Kansas City, San Diego, and Indianapolis, I'm okay with it. I think, you know, I think you could probably do better than Derek Carr, but he's managed to, those are a couple tough divisional games. I don't mind it. Yeah, and the last name that I would throw out there for fantasy relevance in the playoffs, I always think the most important week.

is week one of the playoffs. If you know you're going to get in the playoffs, focus on that first week because you don't get to the second if you don't win the first. And Andy Dalton, while he doesn't have a great matchup throughout the playoffs, he plays Cleveland that first week. So if you've got, like you're Matt Ryan owner. Exactly. Matt Ryan, Dak Prescott. You got those two guys who've got that hard week one and the great week two and three in the playoffs. Then grab pair Andy Dalton with Matt Ryan or Dak Prescott.

and I love your entire fantasy playoffs. All right. Before we finish up on the quarterbacks and talk about a few of these bad matchups, maybe guys you just want to stay away from and not be tempted to play. I do want to thank today's sponsor of the show, good friends, over at Harry's. Thank you for sponsoring this podcast. We love Harry's. What I love is how comfortable the shave is and the fact that unlike other brands, Harry's...

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The other ones, just stay away from Blake Bortles overall. You probably already are, but he's got Minnesota and Houston. All right. What do you think of Andrew Luck, though? Because Andrew Luck right now, his first two playoff matchups are against teams that are not giving it up to fantasy quarterbacks. Now, Andrew Luck has shown a capacity to usurp those rankings when he faces them. But he does play Houston.

And then he plays Minnesota in those first two weeks before he takes on that juicy maybe championship winning Oakland matchup in week 16. But what do you do with Andrew Luck? What would your mindset be? If you have Andrew Luck on your team, you probably just start him, don't you? If I have Andrew Luck on my team by the time that the playoffs are all around, I am probably going to start him. There are certainly, he won't be my number one ranked quarterback. So, you know, if you happen to have him and.

Philip Rivers, then I'd start Philip Rivers over some of those matchups because you've got the combination of a really good quarterback, good offense with the matchup. If I've got them now and I have the ability to make a move, very similar to what you were saying with Aaron Rogers, I would start at the top and start looking at like, you know, can I get a Drew Breeze for Andrew Luck plus, you know, a throwaway something or maybe just straight across, you know, if the other person buys into the name of Andrew Luck a little bit more. Bies it to the beard.

buys into the good luck. But I think you're right. I'm going to go ahead and start them if I've got him more than likely, but you need to realize that the playoff schedule, when you start out with Houston and Minnesota, it's going to be, I hope you've got a good team behind him. You're going to probably cap your upside at a minimum. Even if luck gives you a good performance, don't you want to start a guy that has the potential to go 30, 40 points and win you a week? He has the potential, right, to.