The Overreaction Episode with Special Guest Kurt Warner! - Fantasy Football Podcast for 5/9

What's up, Foot Clan? We have a special episode today with a very, very special guest. You don't want to miss a minute of today's show. Click that subscribe button and enjoy. Hey, everybody. Kurt Warner and you're listening to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast. To the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Oh, welcome in. Thursday, May 9th.

Jason Moore, Andy Holloway, the fantasy football is with you today, this morning, this evening, whenever you're listening. Excited to have you here. I hope you're listening at midnight. I just hope you couldn't. Why? Because you couldn't sleep. You couldn't sleep and you're like, I don't know what to do. And then it's like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to spend some time with my best friends. Minus one. Minus one. Well, plus one and Jay Gris. Jay Gris is still their friend. But yes, Mike, unfortunately, still. down with the sickness. Yeah. Yeah, he got, I mean, we said this on the footcast. He got big headed. He got prideful. He didn't think he could get sick. No, no, he was, he started talking like that. Yeah, about January, he was like, I'm impervious. Yeah, I came back, uh, from Columbia in January had COVID, gave it to you. Oh, not Mike. No, Mike didn't get it. No, no, no. He was like, yeah, I can't even get this. I got tattoos. I can't get sick. Oh, look how tough I am. Look how large.

in the world was that. That was the most ill-timed thing I've ever seen in my life. I thought we had technical difficulties. Okay, so let's just walk through this. Oh, I was on a roll. I had, I had so much material ready to go. And then apparently, I'm guessing that the deucers were like all prepped with this Jay Gris thing. And they were so excited to pull out this. Whatever just happened. I don't know what just happened. I'm honest. I just unmuted his mic. You, oh, you know, you unmuted Jay Grizz's mic? Yeah. And that's what Jay Gris did. Right in the middle of our funny thing. So this is a Jay Griz problem. Jay, watch yourself. Watch. I'm telling you right now, there are other cardboard animals out there. Yeah. And I will go get an octopus in that seat if I got to do it. Well, that's a, that's a weird one. But yeah. A cardboard octopus is weird.

I'm sorry, everybody. This is an actual special episode. It really genuinely is. Because we have our overreactions for 2024. We're going to bring up a couple of things that we think the fantasy football community will be overreacting to as they go into draft season. But we also have a very special guest on the show today. The specialist in my mind. Genuinely, there is not a. human being on the planet i i'm guessing that you would rather talk to than the one we're talking to today he is um an icon of sorts for you yes uh as a man as a player as a local yeah hero yes the one the only kurt warner it's pretty cool i'm i'm excited for you like i'm excited i love kurt warner he's one of my all-time favorites but i know for you this is this is like dad

You know what I mean? This is January 18th, 2009, NFC championship game. Greatest sports memory of my life. Mine too. You were there. I was there. Mike was there. You all know we're Cardinals fans. We're a long-suffering bunch, but Kurt Warner brought redemption to the valley. Hope. A moment in the sun. Yeah. And also, you know, not only Hall of Famer, but Hall of Fame analyst. And we wanted to talk to him about some of the. reactions overreactions with a rookie quarterback class where six players were drafted in the top 12. And so we will discuss that later on the show. Very, very excited to do that. And like you said, I mean, we've had Hall of Famers on the show before. We've had Patrick Mahomes on the show. Yeah, we've had a ton of incredible legendary guests. This is the peak for me because.

Everyone has their life. How does it feel to know that there is nowhere to go but down from here for you? Like there isn't someone else to repeat. Yeah, I mean, if Larry wanted to come on, I wouldn't complain. No, but like, that's, I mean, still. But this is the peak. Yeah, no, it's, I'm walking away. This is Everest. Yeah, no, it's, it's very exciting. And, um, I think it'll be a very fun conversation and I have some fun things to bring up on top of the, uh, discussion about Ricky quarterbacks. We'll have to get Michael Keaton to come on the show. That wouldn't be so bad, yeah. But fun show today, like I said, over reactions, the Kurt Warner interview, and then a reminder of the ultimate draft kit comes out on June 1st. That is very soon. It is almost out. We are weeks away. I know we are about two-thirds done with all the statting behind the scenes. It's the new stuff that we're bringing up is great. And you only have a couple weeks left if you want to get pre-order pricing right now.

The Dynasty Pass is out. The best ball rankings are out. The rest comes out in June 1st, but it is still pre-order pricing right now. What are you laughing about? I'm just still, I remember what Al did back there with that drop is just frightening. I'm a little thrown off. It was surprising. And I know that there's some effort that was put in by somebody to make that happen. Yeah. Well, it's just, you know, timing is hard. Timing. Timing is. Timing is. We make it look easy. Right. But like, you know, the guys back there, they're working. We were in the middle of making fun of Mike. One of our favorite things to do. It's a fundamental part of this show. I was just about to bring up his forehead. Like I was ready to roll. Yes, right there. I mean, right there. Right. Yeah. It was a big area to land. Oh, man. They missed the runway. Maybe later on the show. Quick question of the day. This one comes from Instagram from the doc Halliday.

Who will be a more valuable asset this year in fantasy? It's two interesting names. T. Higgins, Stefan Diggs. Yeah, this will be very, very interesting. The whole Houston Texans wide receiver core is going to be one where people are going to call their different shots. And not everyone can be right. There will be value to be had there. it can go literally any of the three, like Tank Dell, Stefan Diggs, Nico Collins, you could sort them in any order. Oh, two of them, very likely to have huge seasons. Yeah, and honestly, that's the hope is that you have two of them with huge seasons. Because right now, my problem is I've got three of them with good seasons. And what that means is that none of them.

have great seasons. So I was very open to the idea that maybe Stefan Diggs could have a resurgent year on the footcast. Somebody brought up the fact that, oh, is he going to be this year's Mike Evans, where he's undervalued because he's changing, well, Evans didn't change teams, so he changed quarterbacks. And I was open to that possibility. I did not in there when I looked at the stats that I put in. I have C.J. Stroud at seven. So C.J. Stroud, I don't have a down year from C.J. Stroud. Why do you hate C.J. Stroud? I've got him at six.

Oh, do you? Yeah, I do. That means he's probably a, I have Jordan Lovett six, and that would probably be the difference. Yeah. But Tank Dell, Nico Collins, I have as top 24 receivers, and I have Diggs outside of that group at 32. So there's a new contract for Dalton Schultz. There's a great pass-catching weapon in Joe Mixon. There are a lot of things to consider there, and I am a little bit worried. That's Stefan Diggs after finishing the second half of the season as the 76th best. Fantasy wide receiver in football might be closer to entering his Odell Beckham one-year deal stage of career than the resurgence that we saw from a Mike Evans or the type of I'm going to change teams and explode like DeAndre Hopkins did in his prime going to Arizona. I am just not confident of that. And I think C.J. Stroud is a heck of a quarterback. I don't think he's the kind of quarterback that's going to get bullied into targeting somebody that.

isn't making a difference on the team. And this is not a situation. Like in Buffalo, you could argue that Diggs is going to get his. He's going to make sure it's known in the locker room. That's what you got to do. And there weren't other great options there either. Correct. And we know he loves T. C.J. Stroud loves Tinkd. Loves Tankdell. You, I hope you listening find someone in your life that you love as much as C.J. Stroud loves Tank Dell. And this is essentially a one-year deal. So if you don't, you cause a problem. You don't contribute the way that we need you to contribute. Guess what? We made the playoffs and we did it last year without you. That's the view that I am taking. And they did it without Tank Dell at the end of the year. So you get those guys back. That is a long way of answering T. Higgins. Yeah, T. Higgins is the answer, I guess, for both of us. T. Higgins is in his own right, quite a conundrum. He came in last year. He was almost a top 12-drafted wide receiver. He was like that 12-13 range.

And deservedly so from what you saw on the field prior to that. The issue now has been he has not been able to stay healthy. He, you know, he missed a couple of games, but really he missed, you know, he had two games last year where he had a very, you know, a few snaps and basically didn't play. When he is out there active on the field with a healthy Joe Burrow, which honestly, I don't know that we really saw that last year, he's a dominator. He is a really, really good, you know, he's a top 15 wide receiver. They lost Tyler Boyd and Joe Mixen. And I think that T. Higgins has an awesome season. He's probably going to be a draft A value because I'm guessing he's going to be drafted somewhere in the, you know, the mid-20s at wide receiver. We are in agreement about T. Higgins there. So, savor it. Okay. I don't plan on agreeing with you more than three, four times the rest of the year.

The year? Not the show? No, the year. Wow. I'm going to try to get one more today. I'm going to front load these agreements. I'll give you a coupon. You can use it on any argument, though. So at some point in time, you can actually break in. I will, I will have it here under the desk. And you'll save it for one argument. Save it for an argument this season. Hey, dozers, write this down. This is a real thing. I want that note. And I will use it sometime this year. But I'm going to, I'm. I'm not front-loading that one. The golden ticket. You're saving it? Oh, yeah. So if we're in a thick argument, you'll bust it out. I'm going to wait until there's one that we both really believe it. Oh, no. Where I believe it and I believe you're wrong, but you know I'm wrong. And I'm going to make you change it. So the producers get that coupon ready and do that instead of whatever you were doing with that jigger is sounds. All right. Into the news we go. News and notes from around the league.

I'm pretty sure the Jay Gris song was good. I just could not appreciate it because it was like being hit in the face with a manhole cover on the show. It was just so it was like. It was like J.D. McKissick drop. Right. It was like they were waiting for their moment but forgot to wait. They were like, oh, this is going to be a good bit. I can't wait for the right. It's right now. The moment is right now. The drop had a countdown on it and you weren't going to be able to hit it if you didn't hit it before zero.

Boy. All right. In less exciting news, what are we doing here, man? The chief's wide receiver, Rushie Rice. He's under investigation for an alleged nightclub assault now. I believe this was in Dallas. This is, it's not good. You know, there was. The dust hasn't settled on this whole multi-vehicle crash suspension. Now you're seeing some of the dust coming off of the scouting reports that talked about. Rushie Rice has. off-the-field issues and it's problematic that some teams took them off their board. So it's not a good look. The NFL, from what I hear from other insiders, it looks like the chiefs are still preparing to lose a significant, you know, a large chunk of games here for Rushie Rice. And it's unfortunate because Rushie was coming into a situation here where he could have developed into the dude this year early often and established himself. Now they...

I don't know if that factored into grabbing Xavier worthy. Maybe it did. Maybe it's like, well, I don't know. We've got to trade up and we've got to have another wide receiver on the roster. Maybe they don't even draft him or they get someone a little bit later if they don't have anything over rushy. But it's not a good look and it's just not wise. Like it's a knucklehead problem. This is a Barkley would say. Yeah, this is a dynasty problem now. It's not just a dynasty problem in as much as, oh, what's he going to get for this suspension?

It's a dynasty problem in like what headline does he make next? There is some concern there. Like that I'm not saying he's irredeemable. I'm just saying that you have to have a fundamental change if in the middle of trying to let the dust settle, you're engaging in an alleged nightclub assault before you can even lay low. Like this is from a fantasy football perspective, I'm going to say something I hate, which is these. You don't care? Well, these things won't matter. They won't. They almost never do. I think they already have. My point is if he's good on the field, he will get back on the field. And he will get paid. He will get a contract. He will get the ball. And so what happens off the field? Maybe it has an effect in like the Xavier worthy situation where maybe they work in other targets. But the truth is talent wins out on the NFL field regardless of off field issues. There was a...

point in time where we thought Tyree Kill was never going to play football again because of his off field issues. And that's when the chiefs, you know, reached for McCull Hardman and they weren't sure. And now Tyree Kill has spent the last couple of years being, you know, he's the number three pick at worst in your fantasy football drafts. So we had a big disparity in our rankings of how many targets we thought Rushie Rice was even going to get this year. And, uh, I am of the opinion that if you. Work yourself off the field with an off the field incident and the team has success without you on the field that your role could diminish. You want players that the team depends on for production is all I'm saying. And if Rice is not dependable, you can build an offense with Patrick Mahomes and you don't need it. Yeah, but Sky Moore and Cadarius, Tony, and Justin Ross aren't going to take advantage of the opportunity. Worthy will.

And Hollywood Brown might. Yeah, I mean. And those are players that can start every snap. Yeah, but they're going to be in 300 super sets. So I think they need one more guy here to push Russia and they don't have it. Well, I would, so you're projecting like Rushie Rice last year, we had a good season. 79 for 938 and 7. As a rookie. As a rookie. And he really was not that involved in the first half of the year. It wasn't until after their by week that he started getting utilized more, being relied upon more. Yeah, yeah. It'll be a weird season. For those of you that have rice, you're going to be waiting to find out what the final verdict is on a suspension. We were talking about T. Higgins, former running mate. Tyler Boyd signs a one-year contract with the Titans. Reunates. Reunates. Reunates. See, that's the moment to hit that drop when I screw something up and we need to distract. Or like it when you stop talking.

Two growls. Okay. It's got a vibe. You don't want to overplay it, but it's nice. He's trying to be the star of the show. But at least then we were like done talking. Yeah, reunites with head coach Brian Callahan, who is in Cincinnati. And, you know, goodbye, Trailing Berks. You came, you saw, you didn't conquer, and it's over. I don't think this affects. Traillenberg's that much because, and don't hear what I'm not saying. Because he wasn't going to be involved anyway. Correct. Yeah. No. If you listen to the coaches talk about the slot role and they need someone to step up and they're excited to try them out. And that's who they talked about. They're like Kyle Phillips has a great chance. He's shows some flashes. Kyle Phillips is who really takes us on the chin. Kyle Phillips was cut from my dynasty team this morning. That makes sense because Kyle Phillips just became a backup slot receiver for Will Levis. So.

Tyler Boyd will go into the starting role as the slot. And now there's three really good veteran wide receivers for Will Levis to airmail it over. So it'll be a really interesting office. I can't like I'm most excited maybe for the Titans of all the teams out there because Will Levis has the opportunity to be great. If he can just be good. And that's what part. We're probably bad. Somebody on Twitter said the Titans wide receiver core is like microwave french fries. And I thought that was very funny because Ridley, he's been through two cycles of teams, Hopkins, two cycles of teams, Boyd, one year deal. It does feel like, it does feel like. It might not be as good as we think it is. No, you're right. We're getting a little caught up in the names. Like Calvin Ridley, DeAndre Hopkins, and Tyler Boyd is a great wide receiving group three years ago. Yeah. Great. World class.

But this is a little old. You don't know who I signed in place of Kyle Phillips. Oh, I can't wait. Justin Ross. Oh, man. Someone's taking the rushy news real personally. You know, just wait and see. All right. That is it for news and notes. We're going to take a break. Come back with our overreactions for 2024. Try to set you on the straight and arrow. All right. Apparently we have a drop for this segment. So I'm going to push that button right about. now right in the middle of what I'm going to do what you all think I'm going to do, which is just flip out. I enjoy this show. This is a good time. I will say this. I know when they, I'm so tickled by the events of today. By the events of today. And then popping in with Jay Gris is the most inappropriate time. But the sad part is, is that when they play that drop for the audience listening, if you're not on.

YouTube, watch on YouTube at the YouTube.com slash the fantasy footballers. It, Jay Gris got the camera. He got the closeup. But that means you couldn't see Andy and I's faces going, what just happened? But I know that we have other cameras recording our faces. And I want to see what our looks were during that moment. And we'll try to get that out on social. All right. Looking at, we each chose, I believe, two overreactions. Yes. Last year you had a home run with not overreacting to the, and really I'm setting you up for your first one here because last year you cautioned us to not overreact. Oh, it was Baltimore, wasn't it? It was the Dallas Cowboys offense. Getting rid of Kellan Moore, wanting to run the ball more. Don't worry about, you know, not throwing the ball enough. And lo and behold.

Yeah, they're pretty good. He was all right at quarterback. C.D. Liam, I think wide receiver checks notes. One. So, yeah, the passing in was okay. And now here you go with pretty much. Very similar situations. Similar. Don't overreact. And I think it's appropriate because what made the Cowboys such a big, buzzy fear overreaction last year was because how fun it was. to simply react to the Cowboys. It's fun. And so we've got that position right here. It's fun to assume this and overreact to it. Which is the fact that you're going to have Jim Harbaugh and the high T offense and Greg Roman befuddle and destroy Justin Herbert as a fantasy football option and not have any fantasy value pop up in the passing game.

This is our favorite narrative. Last year it was, like you said, Mike McCarthy, he wants to run the football. Score less points. Goodbye, Callan Moore, and we're going to run it, and I'm going to call the plays, and it's going to ruin everything. I heard this a long time ago from, what was it, the Isaiah Crowell, was it, who's the Cleveland head coach? I almost said Marvin Lewis, but it's not Marvin Lewis. Hugh Jackson. Yeah, your favorite. So, I mean, look, it's the NFL. Like, you can want to run it more, but that, and, and he's going to do it. I mean, like Greg Roman and Harbaugh, and this team is going to become more high tea. But you know who is high tea as well? The Detroit Lions. And that was an explosive passing game. It's about efficiency and it's easy as fantasy players to swing the pendulum too far. We want an edge. We want an opportunity to say we know what's going to happen and it's going to be different than what people expect. And so we're going to lean in in one direction. And.

We forget that Justin Herbert is a world beater at the position. In fact, he was the quarterback won in points per game through six weeks last year. Jason, he was, you know, you were a big fan of him going into this season. He was averaging 23 and a half fancy points a game, almost completing 70% of his passes. But Andy? Yes, sir. But they lost Mike Williams and Keenan Allen. Yeah, it did much matter. It didn't much matter. Well, it didn't much matter. Well, they lost Williams early last year and he was still leading. I see what you're saying. You're saying in this offseason. Yes, there are things stacked up against our ability in our brains to see what's going to happen. And when that happens, we overreact. We don't have the recipe of the resurgence of Justin Herbert and which receiver is the one. And because of that fog, it's easy to take the easy way out and say,

It's a Gus bus, and it's four passes a game, and they're just going to grind it out. I think one of the things that helps your argument there is talent matters. When you say you want to run the ball, like teams are like, we're going to run the ball so much. Well, when you're down a lot in the fourth quarter because you don't have a good team, you can't. You have to throw it. And so it's like the opposite is true. The reason the Cowboys ended up throwing the ball so well last year. It's because they have Seedy Lamb and Dak Prescott. Good options to do that. Justin Herbert's a great quarterback. You don't have Justin Herbert and be like, oh, let's not use them. It's third and eight. We're going to run the ball because I love testosterone. Let me just, let me throw some numbers out that are going to be kind of interesting to you. Russell Wilson, 452 attempts, 483 attempts, 427 attempts, 516 attempts. These were years in Seattle.

where, and it wasn't like he was rushing for 800 yards in these years. He was rushing for 300, which is in the realm of possibility for Justin Herbert in a Greg Roman offense. He was finishing as the quarterback one, the quarterback four, the quarterback five. You need efficiency. You need a touchdown rate that is higher than the league average. And Greg Roman, we have a lot of data to look at. Four years in San Francisco, two in Buffalo, four in Baltimore. Here's what we know about Greg Roman. They're going to win football games. Because he was double-digit wins in like six of the 10 years he was, and almost, I think, one below 500 year. So they're going to win games. They're going to be very low in past attempts. I'm not fighting that narrative. But the average touchdown percentage for his quarterbacks is 5.3% over a 10-year span. That's well above the league's average. Herbert's last couple of years, he's been lower. He's been at 3.6 and 4.4 in that offense. And.

You know, if you're throwing 5.3%, just given the average, which, by the way, Lamar had a 9, a 6.9, he's had some higher years. You need efficiency from Justin Herbert. If your offense moves the football and you have opportunities to throw it into the end zone. I just think it's being overvalued, this idea that the high-tie offense is going to destroy him. And if you are in a four-point passing touchdown league and you throw 25 passing touchdowns and you run for three, which is something he has done before and can do again, that counts as like 30 passing touchdowns. I was really surprised. And that's conservative. I was really surprised when he ended up in, he ended up in my top 10 quarterbacks.

And I was really surprised that part of that is the rushing volume that I expect to happen. Because you have last year, before he was injured, he was actually on pace for 323 rushing yards and 4.4 touchdowns. So if you're telling me he has 350, 370 rushing yards and four or five rushing touchdowns, that will make a huge impact on fantasy football. And just for, you know, context sake, when I'm throwing out those attempt numbers, this was a player. who, when he finished as the quarterback two, had 672 attempts. When he was the quarterback 11, he had 700 attempts. That's insane. And I'm telling you, Russell Wilson put up top five numbers with 300 rushing yards with 470 attempts or 516 attempts. So the world of efficiency exists. This is the National Football League. It favors the passing game. And I just think that is one of those situations where, look, I...