Fantasy Football 2018 - The Overreaction Episode, Blake the Snake Gets Paid

You add in the unfortunate injury that happened very, very late for a rushing quarterback, which hurts some of his rushing numbers. And my point is just this. Because he's so young and was so good, was throwing touchdowns left, right, and center, and because they won the Super Bowl, and you're going to go into next year with everyone thinking the Eagles are a contender. They're a great team. I want the quarterback of a great team. He'll be drafted in that fourth, fifth round.

Maybe six. And I'm saying don't do it. Don't do it. You're going to be overreacting if you do that. All right. I'm going to jump in here. I'm staying at the quarterback position. A player who was ranked, I think as a fairly as a top five fantasy quarterback coming into the past season because he always finishes there except for last year. And that is Drew Brees. Now, Jason and I.

He's giving me the eyes right now. It's giving me the look. Jason, Jason's not sure. We said this beforehand when we were in the office. I was like, whoa, really? Because I am going to be one of those people overreacting based on last year. And he said, well, let's see if I could convince you. So I'm all ears, Mike. So here's the deal. If you think that Drew Breeze is washed, you were not watching Drew Breeze play quarterback last season. Drew Breeze was ninth.

in attempts. So still top 10 in passing volume. But however, first incompletions, first in completion percentage. In fact, he said of all time. And if you're thinking, well, I don't want to buy into the outlier, uh, well, you know who owns three of the top four most accurate seasons? That's Drew Brees. So that's not a bizarre outlier thing for him. Now here is where I think that some things start getting interesting because it's all about.

touchdowns for Drew Brees. Yes, the artists did come down, but the touchdowns is where things got way out of, way out of whack for Drew Brees for fantasy purposes. Here are some deep passing numbers of which Drew Brees was, you know, one of the most accurate deep passers. Alex Smith had 33 completions, deep passes, 12 touchdowns. Russell Wilson had 33 completions of deep passes, 12 touchdowns.

Matt Stafford had 30 completions, deep pass, 10 touchdowns. Carson wins, you just talked about him, 25 deep completions, 10 touchdowns. Drew Brees, 33, 5 touchdowns. Those numbers just vanished. So of passers, there was five passers that had over 30 deep completions. Three of five had 10 or more touchdowns. The only guys that didn't Drew Brees and Tom Brady. Here's Drew Brees touchdown rates since 2013. 6.0.

5.0, 5.1, 5.5, 4.3. And here's my final point on here. Here is the passing touchdown to rushing touchdown ratio for the New Orleans Saints over the past five years. So in 2013, 3.9. So as in you had 3.9 passing touchdowns for every one rushing touchdown. That's pretty high. However, then you go 2.1, 2, 2.3, 1.

There was a full one-to-one ratio of rushing touchdowns to passing touchdowns. One of those numbers stands out as a complete outlier for a guy who is going to be a first ballot hall of fame. There's nothing in his numbers or his play that says that he has lost anything or is washed at all. So I think that people are going to overreact and drop Drew Brees out of the fantasy light where he still should remain,

Drew Breeze is going to be a fantasy steal for me in drafts. My only issue there, the deep passing is really, that's quality investigative journalism, Mike. But thank you. Nice pronunciation. Yeah, thank you. That's kind of my role here. The only issue I have is I think a part of why that number happened, speaking in the past the rush ratio, is because they weren't always down. Like they had been, you know, the last three or four years, their defense got a lot better.

And he wasn't having to throw the ball as much, thus the yardage and thus the passing touchdowns going away. That's my worry is that I think the Saints are really good next year. And here's a not, not an ADP question of who would you rather have question, Mike? Breeze or Ryan? Breeze. Breeze or Wince? Just head to head? Yes. I mean, I think it's Carson Wentz, but I can't honestly give you an answer for that right now. Andrew Lutz. Breeze.

as of right now. Tom Brady. Lean. That's lean Brady, but that's really close. And it's less of a question of would you rather, you know, who'd you rather draft? It's just where do you think they'll finish. Sure. So interesting. Yeah, it's so hard not to dismiss, you know, when you have part one, his age getting up there and part two, production going down, you know, there is a beginning of the end for everybody. But what you're saying is kind of like no statistical reason for that. I'm just.

I've talked about this on a few shows ago about wide receivers and touchdowns and how it's not as sticky as we want it to be. And I think that's just what happened here for Drew Breeze is just game situation ended up that they were able to get more rushing touchdowns. And I mean, you flip five touchdowns back to what they're normally at. The fantasy outlook is completely different.

for Drew Brees. All right. It looks like we all went with wide receivers for this next one. I went with T.Y. Hilton. And I know how frustrating it was to own T.Y. Hilton. To even glance upon his fantasy stat sheet from week to week last year. He didn't break a thousand yards. Makes you vomit. He only had 57 receptions. But I want people to remember that T.Y. Hilton is still an elite fantasy wide receiver.

That's what I want people to realize. The overreaction is he's going to get tossed down below Brandon Cooks and Adam Thielen and Tyreek Hill. Those are the players that are going to fight him for average draft position. But last year you saw his catch percentage drop. He's normally been in the 58, 59% for his career. It was 52%. We know why that was. It was quarterback play, right? Andrew Luck wasn't there. He still had his highest yards per catch since his rookie season.

16.9 yards. He's still a game-breaking wide receiver. The opportunities disintegrated without Andrew Luck. Larry Fitzgerald, who's now coming off his third straight 100-plus-yard reception, I'm sorry, 100-plus reception season. He had three straight sub-1,000 seasons when he didn't have a real quarterback in Arizona, and his receptions dropped from 71, 82, 63. That's what you're seeing. Go back two years.

T.Y. Hilton was a 91 reception league leading 1,400 plus yard, six touchdown guy. You're never going to get more than five or six touchdowns, maybe seven touchdowns from T. Yilton. But you're not going to get 57 for 966 next year with Andrew Locke. You're going to have him. He'll be well over 1,000 yards. He'll be well over 80 receptions in that range. And he always plays 16 games, which is not something that you can count on from fantasy wide out. So I'd say don't overreact to the down season.

kind of throw it away the way you would have done with Larry's years with John Skelton and such, and just move on. Yeah, that's fair. I'm going to go with a guy that I, you know, I hesitated putting down, but this is, this is kind of the point. Amari Cooper. What are you doing with Amari Cooper? I am not overreacting. Now, what I am not saying here is that he's going to completely break out and be, you know, a top five wide receiver.

What was that? That was you. Well, it sure was. Is it an inception of Amari Cooper? All right. I thought I had the, I thought I had the Cooper drop. And I found, I found apparently some old, old track of Jason just talking about Mr. Cooper. All right. So Amari Cooper. Sorry. Who came into the league in, you know,

A great fashion, right? He was the highest drafted wide receiver that year. So this is a guy that from his college tape. There it is. There it is. Hang in with Mr. Cooper. Coming out of college, everybody knew this is a really talented wide receiver. He's fast. He runs good routes. All of a sudden, he comes out first year. He shows it. He is a great wide receiver. In fact, his first two years combined, and a lot of people didn't like his sophomore year.

He didn't have enough touchdowns. You know, people were sat on that. His first two seasons as an NFL wide receiver, if you go all the way back to 2000, so we're talking the last, you know, 17 years, he's got the 12th best combined first and second years. This is not a bad wide receiver. And he rightfully gets a lot of grief from this last year. Well, it's perfect that you're choosing this. Why? Because you were the...

You traded for him at the end of the year. You tried to find the value in him. I did because I could trade very low. You got a soft spot for him. I could trade very low on Amari Cooper. And I think he's going to be able to put this behind him. It's recently come to light. You know, you never know if these things are a little extra fluff or true. But Derek Carr came out and said, look, if you knew what Amari Cooper was dealing with health-wise this year, most other players would not have even suited up.

and he was out here giving it everything he had. Yeah, I believe the quote was he was out there playing on one foot, according to Derek Carr. Right. And so he's, you know, he's out there giving it everything he had. He had 10 drops. Everything he got. Everything he got. But he had a very poor season. And I'm just, what I'm saying is don't overreact. It's way too early to know players average draft positions yet because numbers are so easily skewed. But I took a look today at every platform I could.

as far as where real drafts are happening. You know, drafts, best ball leagues that we're in all the time. Where is he actually going in there? The, you know, MFL 10 drafts and just anywhere I could find to see real ADP numbers and some places, and Murray Cooper is still getting respect, but I've seen him as low as, you know, being in the 20s, mid-20s as a wide receiver. He is a talented guy who is going to be, I think, the clear number one.

I expect Crabtree to be back, but the fact that they've talked about cutting him does not instill a lot of hope there. Gruden's coming in. He's going to have to figure out, you know, who are my key pieces to build around? And Cooper's going to be one of those guys. So don't overreact and leave him for dead the way that a lot of people did with DeAndre Hopkins during his down year. All right. I'm going to talk about.

It's a little auxiliary piece here for what Andy was talking about, from James Winston to Mike Evans. We recently released an article talking about our writers put together their way too early top 10. And you can comment on this, Brooks. People are saying they do not like Mike Evans. There are many comments that he should not be in the top 10. They do not like Mike Evans.

Here's my counterpoint to Mike Evans. And this entire argument is about the red zone, efficiency in the red zone, and touchdowns. I have some very interesting numbers here. In 2014, Mike Evans, rookie, sets the world on fire. He gets 13 targets inside the red zone. Turns that into six touchdowns. Everybody loves Mike Evans. The next year, 14 targets in the red zone.

Two touchdowns. Everybody hates Mike Evans. 2016. 17 targets. Seven touchdowns in the red zone. We, we love Mike Evans again. He's great. And then last year, 18 targets in the red zone and three touchdowns. His career is the equivalent to Tyreek Hill week to week. Yes, he's up and down. Here's the thing, though. Mike Evans has never had fewer than a thousand receiving yards in a season.

And last year, there were only, there were three players out of 20, out of 20 qualified players who had 19 or more red zone targets. Only three guys had a catch rate below 40%. Mike Evans is in there. Those other two may shock you, may not, but Adam Thielen and Julio Jones. Three guys who had touchdown problems.

It's funny that Julio did because that means they did give him the ball down there. Oh, he had, uh, he didn't come up with it. He had six receptions out of 22 targets in the red zone. And player, other players on the team were fine. So this wasn't a, I put this up a while on Twitter. And for Adam Thielen, people like, oh, Case Keenum, you know, he's in the red zone. Stefan Diggs, Kyle Rudolph, perfectly fine. Mohamedson knew Austin Hooper perfectly fine. Deshaun Jackson was fine at the.

The other guys from Tampa Bay, their catch percentage wasn't as high, but Mike Evans was by far the lowest. And obviously your point here is that don't overreact to Mike Evans on a down touchdown year. Can I poke you a little bit? Sure. Last year, he had 96 receptions for 1,321 yards and 12 touchdowns. You mean two years ago? Sorry, yes, two years ago. I guess we're now referring to the most recent year. Okay. So two years ago, the big time year, the happy year.