Starts of the Week + Wk 15 Matchups, Gut Feelings

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What's up, Foot Clan? Today's show is brought to you by our friends at Fantasychamps.com. The best place to grab a fantasy football trophy. Whether you want a trophy for this year's winner or a perennial trophy, some rings, some belts. They got bundles over there. They got custom fantasy football jerseys. A toilet bowl trophy for when you smash your opponents. Yeah, Brooks, the future champion of our Dynasty League, is going to get that for all the other owners in the league. Very kind, Brooks. Fantasy.

Champs.com, get ready for the end of this season and use the promo code Ballers to save a little extra cash. This is Melvin Gordon from the Los Angeles Chargers, and you're listening to the Fantasy Footballers podcast. To the Fantasy Footballers podcast, coming to you from Draft.com Studios, with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in.

I think there's a lot of injury tilt going on right now, Jason. Oh, there has to be. It's playoffs. The big names are... I'm dealing with my injury tilt by trolling Mike with the Melvin Gordon intro. Ah, I like it. Melvin Gordon introducing the show. He's got extra time on his hands. He's big. He's strong. And... Probably not going to play. Probably not going to play football tonight. I'm so excited for this game tonight.

I am too. Is there a better situation in the semifinals of playoffs than kicking it off with so many fantasy relevant players, including pretty much the week-winning type of players like Pat Mahomes and Tyree Kill that we get to get a head start on the semifinal week and go, what do I need? Do I need to swing for the fences? I'm already up big. I'm so excited. Well, it's my...

10-year-old's birthday today. He just turned 10. Caleb, happy birthday. And this game makes me feel like it's all our birthday. That's what I'm saying. I mean, the production. It's going to be half of our birthdays tonight. Oh, because you and I are kind of opposed in what we want Tyree Kill to do. Yeah, this is not going to be a happy birthday for half the people. Half the people out there. Look, there's no, I mean, how many leagues are Pat Mahomes and Tyree Kill not still in the playoffs?

They're playing in almost every league tonight. Yeah. And the Melvin Gordon owner is probably made, he probably made the playoffs too. And it'll be a fun one. It'll be an exciting one. And we're hearing that Melvin Gordon's unlikely to play. And that is because they have called up a practice squad running back to back up Justin Jackson. In the off season, we say follow the money. Look at what the team is actually doing. You know, look at their transactions.

What they actually choose in the draft says what they believe about their team. When they promote a guy. Yeah, Troy Main Pope promoted from the practice squad. You know him. Troy Main Pope. Yeah. Stellar running back out of, he was out of college. And back when he was younger, he went to college. Yeah, he did go to college. He played football there. Yeah. And so they promoted him. Everybody knows all about him. Yeah, the Pope. The Pope.

Oh, we can get some good nicknames going. Shouldn't he be playing for the Saints? Yeah, the Saints or the Cardinals. One of those two. But yeah, that indicates that there's a good chance Melvin Gordon. And it's not to say Melvin Gordon is out. He's going to test it, be a game time decision. But the team clearly is preparing as if they will not have Melvin Gordon there. As should you. As a fantasy owner, have a plan.

Have a plan for tonight. I got a plan. I have a plan, Arthur. All right, quick question for today before we get into news and notes and all of, well, all the matchups we can handle today. Tom in Pittsburgh says, what are your thoughts about hanging out with your opponent during playoff or championship week? Both of my opponents are very competitive, or both, I guess, he and I are very competitive. What do you think about that? Wow, that is, that's a good time.

That's a good time to be had. I am 100% behind being with your opponent. If you're both good peoples, which, you know, look, you're listening to the fantasy footballers. You're part of the Foot Clan family. You're good people's out there. You can talk some trash. You can get some trash talk to you and be good friends in the morning. I love the idea because usually, look, fantasy is a roller coaster. I mean...

This year alone, the amount of times I've gone into the week projected to win by 30 and losing, or like all my wins I'm projected to lose and all my losses I've been projected to win. So there's this fun time where you get to gloat, shove it in your opponent's face, and then lose, and they lick your tears. Is that what they do?

That's what my opponents usually do. That's what if you play together, the loser has to do that. Cartman style. That's gross. They're looking. Yes. It's not a good time. But I, why not? What normally happens, though. I mean, I've done this. Mike and I took, I took him on in the Dynasty League title game last year. And it was really fun and competitive. And then when Gurley broke off like an 80-yard run, you could see Mike just slowly melted away. The mood shifts. And then he left. He left. So.

No, I would do that. Follow us on YouTube. You can subscribe, click the bell. You'll know when our live stream happens on Sunday morning. And you can watch the show over there, YouTube.com slash the fantasy footballers. Twitter at theFF ballers. Follow Jason at Jason FFL. Follow me at Andy Holloway. And then you can follow Mike at FFHitman. Mike will be back soon. Join thefoot.com is our fantasy football community. And don't forget to head over to footclang giveaway.com. Win some autographed.

NFL gear. Let's get into the news. News and notes from around the league. Right before the show, there's an update about Odell Beckham Jr. and that he is not practicing today. He is actually being further evaluated outside the facility. Most recent report I had read was at a local hospital getting the quad bruise evaluated. Now, this is not a good thing. I wanted to hear he's practicing. Yeah.

He did go through the walkthrough this morning. So for whatever reason, he's either being evaluated to see if this is more than a thigh bruise. So the team could be precautionary here. They don't want to let him proceed and play if it's more than. But right now, I'm looking at Odell Beckham Jr. as highly questionable for this week. You have to have a backup plan. You have to have somebody you're willing to rotate in there if he's a game time decision.

You can't get caught off guard like last week, like we all did, when suddenly he couldn't play. And here's the most important thing. We were talking about this beforehand. Footland, if you're in the playoffs, there's a good chance you've got someone that's someone injured coming into Sunday's game, and you need to be prepared. But to this week, it's different. There are two Saturday games this week. So perfect example here. You know, Andy, you were talking about.

You picked up, you know, not a lot of options on the waiver wires. You picked up Robbie Anderson. You were thinking about maybe he is your Odell Beckham replacement, if need be. Correct. Yeah, I mean. But you won't know come Saturday. Well, we could. We could know. We could know. If you don't know, you want the option to play Odell up into the final minute. Yes. And because of that, you might need to look somewhere else. You might look at Muhammad Sunu.

against Arizona with Peterson matched up against Julio all game long. Right. So the Texans, if you're looking at like Kiki QT, the Jets, if you're looking at Robbie Anderson, the Cleveland Browns, you know, try to get Calaway, Denver Broncos, pick up Deshaun or someone. Those players are Saturday. Yeah. So be prepared. And also same rules apply as the flex. Try to get them out of your flex. Well, and the Giants game to make it even worse, it's at 1 p.m. on Sunday.

Oh, perfect. Oh, 1 p.m.R time, right? Is that 4 Eastern Brooks? No, that's 1 p.m. Eastern time. Oh, okay. So it is the morning game. Yeah, yeah. All right. So tune into Sunday Live. Thanks for putting the time zone in there, Brooks. Sorry about that. I'm hard on him because I love him so much. He's... He's like a son to me. I mean, when you're talking about a future Dynasty League champion like Brooks...

Man, I really hope I win this week because we all know you're going to be in the championship next week, Brooks. And then it would be mono-imano head-to-head. I'll bring you balloons and gift cards. Oh, you got to do it up. And we'll put that on Instagram. When he pre-celebrates his title, then he knows he's going to win. As he's done all week. As he's done relentlessly. It's like a different man. Yeah. Yeah. Not humble.

That's all I can say. Breaking news near the end of yesterday's show was Carson Wins, not expected to play. He's going to probably miss the rest of the season. Nick Foles takes over under Sinner. Nick Foles, you know, you weren't excited with Philadelphia's offense and the predictability of it anyways. It doesn't get better with Nick Foles on the road against...

Los Angeles after a loss? You're certainly not upgrading Alshan or Golden Tate or any of those options. You're probably going to stay away from all Eagles wide receivers this week. I mean, you're going to play Earths because you've got to play Earth and he should be okay. He'll be fine. The Saints have released Brandon Marshall. I remember him. I don't know if there are Survivor fans out there, but in the second half of every season of Survivor, the people that get voted off, they go to this cabin and they live there because they're serving on the jury.

And it's just for the losers. It's a loser's cabin. You've been voted off and you just hang out there and eat food. I feel like Brandon Marshall, CJ Anderson. They're all in this. They're just eating the buffet, waiting for someone to call them up. Waiting to judge other people. Not going to happen. I don't understand why C.J. Anderson is not a chief yet. Oh, come on. Stay tuned. Brandon Marshall released by the Saints. Saints claim tied in Eric Swope off the waivers by the Colts. This was crazy news.

Darius Geis, who tore his ACL in the preseason, was highly regarded. It would have been one of the players we'd been talking about all year long. Torres ACL missed the season. Apparently he required three additional knee surgeries due to infection. Yeah. Which is the same thing Alex Smith is dealing with. If you or someone you love is in the Washington, D.C. area and you need surgery. Please leave that area for yours because apparently the D.C. area where, I mean,

I'm assuming. Yeah, as a red skin. Maybe it's, maybe it's, uh, something. Why? I'm in the red skin facilities water. Bring some Purell to your own surgeries. And they just squirt it in. Everywhere. Have a, Bannaca style. We're all over. Make sure you wake up once during the surgery. Put a little in there. Purell is the new. You know what? I feel bad about this joke line. Because these have really happened to them. Like we're running away with it and it's really funny. It's super fun. We're Bing, bang, boom. Boom.

Boom, bam. Just drink Puro. But get well, my friends. I feel terrible. Now you made me feel bad. Oh, Jay Gris thought it was still funny. He's a monster. Literally. All right. I think we got all the news. Thursday-day football updates. We talked about it. Tyree Kill, we expect him to play. Sammy Watkins officially out tonight. Keep your eye on Tyree Kill. Make sure that he's in there. The game time decision for Melvin Gordon is going to be challenging.

for him to play Justin Jackson. You can start him if Gordon is out. Where is Damien Williams if Spencer Ware is out? Because he is listed as downful. I am, Ware is not going to play either. It's going to be no Gordon, nowhere. It's a little, a trade. Yeah, they called each other up and said, hey, what if we both just said our starting running back? Is that fair?