Fantasy Football 2017 - Week 17 Fears, Pump the Brakes, Key Questions

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Hi, this is Eric Dickinson, NFL Hall of Famer, and you're listening to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast. To the Fantasy Footballers Podcast. Coming to you from the Playdraft Studios with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Good morning. Welcome to the show. It is Wednesday, December 27th.

And we're back once more with another episode of the fantasy footballers podcast, Jason Moore, Mike, the fantasy hitman Wright, and myself, Andy Holloway, back again. How are you guys doing today? I'm doing great. I'm a champion of the listener league, so I'm doing great. How are you doing, Mike? I was a loser in the championship round. Also this morning I had to pull the old trickeroo ski where the recycling man had driven by. Okay.

Of course, it says post-Christmas. You put it on the other side of the street. So this thing is overflowing. I went to the other side of the street successfully. Pro move. So the recycling bin is empty. Cannot miss the recycle bin after Christmas. Christmas week. It almost happened. Now, Jason, you're a champ, but it's taken a toll. I see some gray hair in that beard of yours. Oh, yeah. A lot of gray hair. A lot of wrinkles. How many of those came while you were watching Michael Crabtree goose?

I'll tell you what. Michael Crabtree needed to do something to keep me away from the title. And he didn't. Thank you, Mike. But when I was watching that game, I was so nervous I didn't want to move. I'm like, I'm frozen. My wife's talking to me like, what's wrong? Are you angry? I'm like, no, don't talk to me. I was like the tin can, the tin man, you know, needing an oil can. I couldn't even talk. But I was still nervous. And this makes no sense. This is how dumb it is.

I was genuinely nervous watching the plays when the Raiders had the ball while Michael Crabtree was not on the field. He's not there and I'm still like, what's going to happen? Did he change numbers? Like, how is he going to score? Is he in as a tight end right now? Yeah, so maybe he just pops in for a red zone catch or something like that. I mean, the actual play. Like they snap the ball and I'm like, maybe I just didn't see him. Does it count if he like overthrows it and on the sideline he catches it?

Well, you know, you survived. A few gray hairs, but you made it. Sure did. You can follow us on Twitter at the FFBallers, the websites of fantasy footballers.com. The communities join the foot.com. I want to say thanks to everybody for all the kind words coming through on Twitter, Facebook, social media, email, everywhere. You know, our goal here at the podcast is to make your season more enjoyable. And we take a holistic approach to that. We say, look,

Winning is a piece of the puzzle. We want you to win, but you need to take credit for winning. You are, I compared it to this on the Periscope a couple weeks ago. You are the captain of the ship. We're simply the first mate. Yeah. I mean, we're here to give you our observations, our opinions, but you're the captain. So you won. You turn that wheel. Yeah. Sometimes you listen to Jason and, you know. You win the championship? Sometimes you listen to Mike and.

Win your championship? Icebergs ahead. Sometimes you listen to Andy. You win your championship. Either way. To you. No, really, congratulations to you guys. Our goal is to make it fun, is to make it enjoyable. We appreciate all the thanks. I'm glad that we could be some part in you having a more enjoyable fantasy football season. But look, you want to say thanks. You want to show thanks to us. Just keep listening to the show. Just keep tuning in. We do this as a, you know.

It's something that brings us joy to go out there and make your league more fun, to make your season more enjoyable. And if you won this year, congrats. It was a perfect capper to the year, but you probably had fun along the way, whether you won or lost. Absolutely. And if you didn't win, just know that there are other listeners in your league. And there are, I've had a few questions. What can I expect for the offseason content? Number one, we launched into the truth, which is we take a look back at these players.

Yeah, sure. You finished as a wide receiver one, but were you actually a helpful fantasy asset along the way? Are you just fools gold and you blew up twice? And then you just were killing people because they kept starting you. We look at every position. We're going to look at the rookies, see how they panned out compared to coming into the season. How did we feel? Then it's free agency time. And then it's combine and draft. The party never, ever stops.

with fantasy football. Once again, you skipped, you buried the lead here. Oh my goodness. The footies. The footies are coming next week. The footies. Because I have accepted the fact that Todd Gurley wins everything. He's not going to win the nickname footy. Oh, that's right. Which is the most important footy. That's very true. I don't, man. There's going to be like 30 names. There are a lot of nick. We'll have a new nickname shirt on the website too. Oh, very nice. Season three.

of the nickname shirt will be a lot of fun. There's also the Foot Clan title shirt if you want to brag about town. That's what I call it. Just brag about town. This town is great. Yeah. Not a very sophisticated understanding. Give him. That's for him. You knew what I was saying. Yes. I know. Yeah, like a man about town. Right. I got you. But if you're going to brag about a town. I was imagining the scene of John Travolta at the end of staying alive when he's just.

Or Saturday Night Fever. I apologize when he's just strutten, but he's got the footland title. He's pointing that people. Hey, champs. You can get those at shopballers.com. All right. We're going to pump the brakes. Oh, for week 17, guys. Mike, who's your pump the brakes? All right. I'm pumping the, the, uh, the affirmation when I was talking about the truth about fantasy players. Yeah, this, this guy's nicknames the lie. Amari Cooper.

If you were, oh, if you were courageous enough to say, hey, he's back. I'm going to play him in championship week. First off, take a look in the mirror and make sure you're making correct choices with your life. It did pay off three for 66 with the touchdown, but he was only in for 63% of the snaps. He was still healing. And here's the deal. Amari Cooper, week one, he had four.

10 zone targets, which he was, many of those were dropped. And then since then he's had three. He is not, if you get the bomb touchdown, you're going to be happy. If you don't, you're going to be very displeased with him. It's also Casey Hayward time because they're taking on the Los Angeles chargers who have been absolutely brutal against fantasy wide receivers. So I'm just for those who are like, oh, I'm already. He's back. I'm pumped the brakes.

The Chargers are fighting for their playoff lives to boot. Yeah, those things matter in Week 17 as who's playing for what. I'm going to pump the brakes on the running back nine on the season. Jordan Howard, who if you had Jordan Howard last week, you were very thrilled with, had the multi-touchdown game. But if you look at how he's been running lately.

Over the last five weeks, it's been very, very poor. He had a real good game against Cincinnati within that stretch. Outside of that, the other games, here's his yardage in all of those games. Six yards, complete game, 38 yards, 37 yards, 44 yards. So yes, if Jordan Howard gets you two touchdowns, you'll be happy. But he plays Minnesota this week in Minnesota.

who's playing for a buy week so that they can rest their guys and make sure they're healthy for a Super Bowl run. I don't like how Jordan Howard has been running. Again, if you take out that Cincinnati game, you've got four-game sample size where he's running for 2.4 yards of carry, and now he's playing against the number one rush defense over that same time period. So Jordan Howard, to me, if you need to throw him in,

You know, you can hope for those touchdowns because if they get on the goal line, it will be Jordan Howard's opportunity. But I would prefer to go with a guy that I can trust a little bit more this week. Jordan Howard is also a guy. I'm excited to break down when we're talking about the truth about running backs because like you said, running back nine and half point PPR with a line of 267 attempts over 1,100 yards, nine rushing touchdowns, even has 22 receptions for 120 yards. That sounds quick.

And it still feels like Jordan Howard has not helped your team. Because if you look at how boom bust he's been, he's had games where it's 36 carries for 167 yards. And then he's had games where it's nine carries for seven yards. It's just quite the season for Mr. Hill. You just, when you put them in the lineup, you kind of close your eyes, plug your ears, and just.

Hope when you open him again, he's got a couple of touchdowns. And if he doesn't, you're disappointed. But that was the thing about Howard coming into the season was last year he was a monster, right? But it was yardage. He was almost guaranteed 100 yards from scrimmage. But the touchdowns were not there for Jordan Howard. Also, now the touchdowns are here. You need to watch Howard this offseason because if they rework the coaching staff and the offensive coordinator, Jordan Howard's good enough. I'm not saying he's going to be next year's Todd Gurley.

I'm saying that a change in the offensive scheme could make big, it could pay big dividends for Jordan Howard's season. Yes. Because John Fox and company probably not getting it done the right way. You could see Mitch Trubisky have a step forward, some better weapons. You need offensive consistency for Howard to give you the week-to-week performance. All right, I'm going to cheat a little bit. No, I love it. Now, if you're in a week-17 title game.

Congratulations. We're here for you. Absolutely. We've got the tips and tricks, and we're going to lay out the teams that are going to be playing starters and not playing the starters because that's what we do. We're here for you. We want you to win that title. But I'm pumping the brakes on all the week 17 leagues. Mm-hmm. And by extension, the week 17 commissioners. I'm talking to you. I'm talking to you. I'm talking to you. There's the camera. I look at the wrong camera. I'm talking to you, Brooks.

But look, if you're running a league right now, right here, look, you can't change it. You're in a week 17 title game. That's the way you're finishing. But please, look in the mirror and make a change. It's time to go into 2018 with a 16-week league. We just said we're all about making your league more enjoyable. You know what's not enjoyable? Having to wonder if the Rams or Eagles or Patriots.

or Vikings or any of these teams are going to play their starters. Are they going to play them for a quarter? Are they going to play them for three quarters? Are they going to play them like some of their starters, but not the other ones? Look, this is not the way you want a year to finish. There's enough unpredictability in fantasy football that we don't need to build more in by playing championship weeks and week 17. Oh, yes. But Andy. Yes, Vopo. Yes. But at the draft that it was week 17, so I can.