Show 1500! Starts of the Week + Week 10 Breakdown, Fun Surprises! - Fantasy Football Podcast for 11/9

taking on the Bengals who are 5 and 3 and hurting at the wide receiver position. The DK Sportsbook Line Cincinnati minus 6 and a half. The over under is 47. Both teams coming off big win. Cincinnati looked good last week. Houston, the insane 39, 37 win over the Buccaneers. That game was awesome. I mean. It was. Yeah, I mean, if you just keep in mind like that, if you had the over under of 70, you should have taken the over last week, which is wild. Cincinnati's on fire, though. But we got the bad news. I mean, T. Higgins injured at practice. Yeah, that's not good. A hamstring issue that came up, you know, it's a new injury. And if it's legit, it's funny how sometimes we, we don't look at practice injuries the same. You know, it's like, ah, it's just a practice. And the injury's an injury. Right. And it's later in the week. So if he is, if he misses a full practice, you know, he was only limited.

So maybe it's okay. But if he misses a practice, you've got to be prepared to not have Higgins. Well, the worst part is, and, like, I'm sorry, like, this isn't really actionable news or anything. I'm just saying, like, I had T. Higgins last year. And there's a lot of people that had the experience of, oh, T. Higgins is playing. Great. No, because, no, he's not. Your default is like, start your studs when they're active. Yes. Yes. And T. Higgins has a history. of burning us by being active and then going and taking a snap and then he's done. So I'm not at all saying that's happening. But if you had Higgins on your team last year, you've got to be frustrated. You're thinking about that. Because a hamstring injury is not like this could be more than one week. Right. This could be having that level of doubt whether he plays or not, you know, the fact that he could come off the field. And then there's confidence in the building that Jamar Chase is going to be out there.

But he's not been practicing. He's got that back issue. He came down so hard on that. Yes, he did. On that attempted catch. So all of a sudden it's like, Tyler Boyd? Tyler Boyd seems like he might be a legit play this week. He's been more involved. And last year was, or last week was just a hodgepodge of their tight ends as well. I mean, he's always on the field. And if you don't have Higgins, six, seven catches is not out of the question for Tyler Boyd. I would agree that in a full PPR, if they're down receivers, Tyler Boyd, could be okay. This is going on two years, though, where wide receivers have not done very well against the Houston Texans. Some of that's because you can run on them easily. But, you know, I'm not super excited to start Tyler Boyd, whereas because you can run on them easily, if they're down other assets, I expect to see a massive workload for Joe Mixon. Like, very, very good play this weekend. He's been.

Pretty good the previous two weeks. I think this is like NBA Jam rules. He's going to catch fire this week. Yeah, he's a smash star, but do if you were down Chase and Higgins, are you just pulling out the blindfold, strapping it on your head and starting Joe Burrow anyway? Because this is a team that we've, we've talked about, you know, disappointing quarterback performances against them. If both. And if both of those guys are back and you think Mix is going to smash, I mean, it's like he does. If both Chase and Higgins were gone. Would you start Sam Howell against Seattle over Joe Burrow? That might be the smarter thing to do if both guys were out. Here's a real question, and this is for Mike, because we have these two guys. Okay. Oh, yeah. Dino Jr. Champ, champ, champ, champ. If Chase and Higgins are gone, would we roll with Burrow as we currently have it set or would we put Kyler in there? I would.

I think I'd still stick with Burrow. Too bad. I'm the main manager there. I'm going Kyler. I get it. But saying if I had to make that choice just myself, Joe Burrow is back. And yes, he won't have a, he may not have wide receivers. That's the, that's the scenario we're talking about. But Houston 12th, or I'm sorry, 28th against tight ends giving up almost 12 points a game. And we saw both, you know, we saw Irv Smith and who else scored last week? Drew Sample. Sample. Yeah, freaking Drew Sample. What is this all about? I think it's important to remember that this high-flying C.J. Stroud led 39-point offense put 13 points up against the Panthers the week before. Mm-hmm. And so it has not been, you know, 470 and 5 every week. If you played Stroud the week before, it was 140 and 0. If you actually look, when they were at home against Pittsburgh, he was top 10.

When they were on the road against Atlanta, he did not have a good game. They were at home against New Orleans. He had a good game. They were on the road against Carolina, an easy matchup. Terrible game. At home against Tampa Bay. So it's been a little bit of red light green light, but it's specifically split with home versus road games. This one is in Cincinnati. Yeah, I don't like the matchup for him. No, it's certainly, I don't think we should overreact to last week. He is still a rookie. He's going to have up and down games. The defense is going to be good. They're going to want to run the ball if they don't have their wide receivers, them being the Bengals. The Bengals are still favored by six and a half. So I agree. I mean, this, I don't think he's an absolute locked-in starter. For instance, my weekly barometer has been Kyler. Like, would I start Kyler? I would start Kyler over CJ Strap.

Damian Pierce didn't practice Wednesday. Today and tomorrow are going to matter a lot as to whether he's back out there. The Bengals have struggled, Bengals have struggled against the run in the last six weeks. So that would be something where, you know, is he in flex consideration if he's active with Singletary struggling so much? If Pierce is active? Correct. Zeke or Pierce? Zeke. I would go Zeke. And then, but flip it on the other way. Flip it on the other way. If Pierce is out, it was. For fantasy, it was not good for Devon Singletary, despite the shootout that was going on. But 75% of the snaps, 15 opportunities, full bell cow usage. Would you go back to that, trust the peripheral numbers? I would. I realized that it wasn't very... If he was by himself? Yes. Yeah, yeah, I would. Yeah, last week's matchup against Tampa Bay, they're a good run defense and...

struggling with their passing defense, obviously, as we saw. So I would be fine with Singletary. I would take Singletary over Zeke if Damien Pierce was inactive. Put the four pass catchers in Houston in order of who you think would be most effective for fantasy. And I'm talking Del, Noah Brown, Nico Collins, Dalton Schultz. I would go, I'll still have Nico Collins at the top. I don't go Tank. Tank was the one who had the huge game, but he is pretty hot and cold. And then Dalton and Noah Brown just, I don't know, I just can't. I can't give the respect to Noah Brown. I'm sorry, man. I feel like I might put Dalton Schultz number one there. There is not a better schedule-adjusted matchup on the season for tight ends than the Cincinnati Bengals. Dalton Schultz had 11 targets last week. Given positional scarcity.

You know, if you're factoring that in, not just total fantasy points, I would think he might be the most important pass catcher on this team. And then I agree with Mike. I'm still right now going to keep Nico then Tank. Okay. Are you Nico Tank or Tank? I'm always Nicko first. Okay. Yeah, I think Tank's awesome. I mean, I think he's a big play guy, but I just like Nico's size, the prowess around the red zone. Tank's a better, like if I, it's funny because if I had to start like a second flex, I'd rather play Tank than Nico because I'd want that boom potential. And he's going to, he's got that a little bit more in my opinion. The Saints at 5 and 4, the Vikings 5 and 4 the games in Minnesota. The drafting sportsbook line, New Orleans, minus 3 on the road. The overrunners 41. That gives the Saints 22 points. The Vikings 19. Minnesota has won four straight games, New Orleans. They're in first place.

in the South, and they have the easiest rest of season schedule. And I do include this game in that. I mean, it's weird because, you know, Derek Carr is getting it done. And that's the end of that sentence. And part of getting it done is coming off the field at times for Taysam Hill. And whether to take a wildcat style run or to throw the football a few times, you know, Tayson Hill has been exceptional. Payson Hill is like no longer, in my opinion, just a tight-in play. He's a flex play. Like he's somebody that you can, you know, play. If you have a good other tight end, I don't see why you can't play Tayson Hill. Yeah, we talked about him a good bit while you were out saying it. Things are different now for Tayson Hill. He's getting far more snaps. It's not just a week here and a week there. It's he's.

His role looks pretty secure at this point. Yeah, it's a month straight of him averaging 16 fantasy points. His lowest has been 8.8 fantasy points, which is fine. I mean, wide receivers have down games that get to that level. I would agree with you. Chris Oliva is an interesting discussion because, yes, he got back into the end zone, but the numbers, 6 for 46, not impressive. The week before, 5 for 46, 7 for 57. Hasn't been over 100 yards since week 3. Catching 50? No, no, no. Only 50% of his targets this year are deemed catchable. Yeah. Well, because he does not get anything that is easy. Very rarely does he get the opportunities close to the line of scrimmage. Those have gone to Alvin Camara, Michael Thomas before last week. Rashid Shahid is a more effective, deep play guy right now for this offense, which is crazy, but it's true.

So Olava is sitting in this place where, you know, the targets are downfield and Carr is struggling to be on the same page with him. Like it's easy to say, okay, Carr is kind of holding Olaave hostage. That would be one way to put it. Except for he's not holding Shaheed hostage. So like if there's a miscommunication on a play and Olave breaks out and the ball was supposed to go in, that's not a catchable target. That ball's not thrown to where he can catch it and it's not. Carr's fault on those. So I do think it's both sides are to blame on this. He's had some drops too. But the nice thing about that to me, when I think everything you're saying is accurate and correct. We've seen so many miscommunications between those two. They are not on the same page. But that is not something that lasts forever. Not being on the same page is something that is actually correctable. You keep practicing. Tell that to James and Williams.

Well, that's, I think that's, he's on his own page. Yeah, he's on his own page. We have seen Chris Olave in sync with a quarterback. We have seen Derek Carr in sync with wide receivers. These are two capable players. And when they get on the same page and start connecting, I'm not terrified of Olave. I like him in this matchup. On the season, the Vikings are the place where you beat them is at the wide receiver position. So I'm, I'm good with Olavi in my lineup. I'd certainly start him over. Jordan Addison on the other side of the field. I'm not necessarily making any comments that are actionable. I'm just laying it out there. Like even looking, I know another quarterback for Olave has switched situations, but I'm looking at last year's numbers. You know, it's like he was kind of hot and cold. There wasn't a lot of in between. Is this a coaching problem? I just think that like we were really quick through seven weeks of Chris Olave's career to kind of declare something. And I like.

the talent that we saw during that time. And he had a couple more explosive games after that. But he also had a lot of off games. And his catch percentage last year was about 60%. So it's not like we're, you know, this has kind of been a pattern is what I'm saying. And we saw Winston and we saw Dalton and we've seen Carr. But I don't know. I think the, I think the, right now we're seeing Olaves. most mediocre version of himself. We are unimpressed with the fantasy results. If he just straight continued this the entire season and never got better, what he is would be a 94 receptions for just over 1,000 yards and the touchdowns don't come. That's a pretty good season. 94 for 1,000, that's great. Well, I mean, it's not a superstar. The 94's great. The thousand's not great.

for your expectations on a 17 game see i know i hear what you're saying i'm just laying it out there so that people have like i think it's important every every once in a while to pull up you know to park the car for a second and these decisions help or these discussions help like dynasty context for a long term like we don't have we don't know what the future is in in new orleans um he's a wide receiver 19 right now in the year i mean that's that's fine it's not what you hoped so I think we all hope that OLAV was going to step into like the Jefferson Chase shoes to begin the year. Like if you're staring down long-term Olave versus Garrett Wilson, I'm taking Garrett Wilson. Oh, 100%. OLAV was drafted as the wide receiver 12, it looks like, on average draft position. So finishing right now at wide receiver 19 would be a disappointment. Madison, he was your hungry for more yesterday, Mike.

You know, he's going to have every opportunity to fail or succeed. Or succeed. I'm putting it in that order. There's a world where he succeeds. If that world exists this week, I think it'll be through the passing game. Yeah, it's going to be tough this week. It's, but no, look, I think he's a trade four candidate. Sometimes there's those players that are overperforming and running back and then you look at Madison situation with Acres out and you're like, oh, maybe I target Madison. Try to grab him now because the volume will be there. Would you rather have Rashad White or Madison? Rashad White. Rest the season? Yeah. Jordan Addison. Addison is in such a weird position. This is not a great matchup. No, I don't want to start him. And then Jefferson will be back. And then it's like, can Dobbs support multiple wide receiver options? He didn't really support one in Arizona. So you've got to imagine Jefferson's better than Addison. For sure.

So that'll be an interesting thing to watch rest of the season. Edison doesn't need a lot if he makes a big play. But Osborne didn't practice. Hawkinson Limited. He'll be back out there. And that is kind of where you want to be. The last six weeks, Saints' defense has struggled against the tight end. Yeah, it's the one place they've given up a lot of points. They've been pretty good across the board. You cut Michael Thomas in our League of Record. I sure did. Is that, you know, is he kind of out of contention because of the Goose Week? He was someone that when we look at what we are going to get from Michael Thomas, I mean, obviously the Goose Week was bad, but we felt like we could find that. You know, we could go on the waivers any given week if we've got to start a wide receiver and go find a Josh Reynolds to plug in there that's going to do what Michael Thomas can do. And we had some other interesting assets to pick up. Who are they? They were defenses. Chiefs? It was the Kansas City Chiefs, yes. Yeah.

You act like this is not in a public feed. You were talking like it's a secret. It's like I could have looked. Don't tell anybody. The Kansas City Chiefs are. You're going to secretly play the Chiefs? Yeah. Just spring it on somebody. All right. He's still keeping it quiet. Yeah. Green Bay is three and five. Pittsburgh's five and three. The draft King sports book line, Pittsburgh minus three over under is 39. I, I cannot fathom the Packers winning this ball game. I can't even create it in my head the situation where they score enough points to win here. But that line's not huge. So maybe I'm crazy. But Pittsburgh, you know, five and three, I think this is the worst kind of matchup for Jordan Love. There is not. Go on the road and play T.J. Watt. Good luck. It's extremely difficult. I mean, going through like who, you know, Aaron Jones. Yeah.

It looks like Aaron Jones is the is back. But other than that, Christian Watson, who's been incredibly disappointing, Romeo Dobbs is essentially either you get a touchdown or you do not. And then you're just sort of, well, I'm sort of happy. And even in, uh, even in week eight, he, he didn't even hit 10 points with a touchdown, which is, that's a pretty amazing game to, to get the padded six there and not make it. And then what's going on with Jaden Reed? Like he looked like he was taking the next step. You had the game against Minnesota. A huge jump in snaps up to 78% comes through with 4 for 83. And he is rewarded with 39% of the snaps the following week. And I haven't heard anything about it. Jaden Reed's such a good player. Was Reed banged up? I agree. I think Raiden is good. But meanwhile, they're like, no, we got to get Dantavian Weeks on the- He's called him Raiden.

Raiden? Yeah, you did. Did I? Yeah, you took Jordan Reed and made him Raiden? What the God of Thunder? What is Raiden? Lightning? God of Lightning? I don't remember. Something like that. I think Christian Watson is a good player. I think Jaden Reed is a good player. I think Romeo Dobbs is a good player. I don't think Jordan Love is a good player. Do you know Christian Watson, remember the four-game stretch? Mm-hmm. Where he had the seven touchdowns or whatever with Rogers? Yep. He's only ever. had one other game in the top 24 since then, since or before. Like that four game stretch, he's never had another one. Like he's interesting. Even including those games, he's a D in our consistency because he's 41% of the time in a workable number. It's really hard right now to have enough trust. Like you at least need a baseline of Jordan Love week to week to have trust in him. I don't have that. Yeah, and I like the matchup. I like the talent, but you can't trust his body right now. He is extremely banged up.

He's dealing with multiple injuries. And talking about Watson? I am talking about Christian Watson. And so given how banged up he's been in these games, I think he's dealing with like head, shoulders, knees and toes. Knees and toes. And so I can't put him in my lineup, even though I want to with the matchup. Two targets last week. Yeah. Two. Can he picket and company? You know, the one area where the Packers have been slightly weaker has been against running backs, but you've got a committee here. Naji looked okay last game. Jalen Warren, electric, limited opportunities. Lay it out for me. Yeah, I mean, the matchup is really good for both of these guys. You imagine this is going to not be a super high scoring game because you've got...

two weak offenses, but when you get around the goal line, if they do get around the goal line, I think Najee would be the play over Jalen Warren simply because of the touchdown upside in this specific matchup in a low scoring game to just kind of play the power running game against a softer Green Bay defense. But either guy, you could flex in a pinch. Mike, do you believe that George Pickens is the kind of squeaky wheel that gets the grease? No, no. Deontay Johnson is incredible. He's going to keep getting the targets. George Pickens will get targets and they're going to be downfield targets. He will be either incredible or terrible. Tennessee is three and five. By the way, this is our last matchup before.

We have, I guess, some sort of special game prepared. I see nods from Deucer's Alley and the Borgogan. So one more matchup, then we'll do the game, and we got starts the week. And then we'll count down those top ten nicknames, which I'm very excited about. Tennessee is three and five. Tampa's three and five. Wheels have fallen off for Tampa. Yeah, they have. The DK. Sportsbook line, Tampa minus one. The overrunner is 39 and a half. I mean, the bucks really should be, what, four and four? I mean, the fact that they lost that game at the end to C.J. Stroud with like, what do you have, 40 seconds? That was amazing. Yeah, it's an interesting matchup. The cornerbacks for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are their primary corners injured. This is part of, you know, you saw C.J. Stroud put up 470. It's very difficult to run on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It's very easy.

to throw against them right now. I think even a banana could do it. So banana ramma. Is he in starting consideration? Considering what we... He is in DFS consideration. Okay. I don't think you need to put him out there. I think there's probably a handful of guys like Sam Hal, like Gino Smith. Would you go Taylor Heineke against the Cardinals? Yeah. I don't think so. I actually would play Levis on that because... I don't know if Hineke can throw two touchdowns, but I think it's fine if you want to go that way. Hopkins, though. What's the situation on London? Because that would matter a little bit to me. Yeah, I don't know. Last I heard, the bridge was falling down. Sorry. Wow, hold on. On show 1500. Can we hit them all? Yeah. I'll see myself out.

You made fun of yourself on that one. Yeah, well, I knew it before I said it. I was like, don't do it. If I told you, if I told you it was in my head at the same time. Of course, no. And I made the choice to absolutely not say it. You're smart man. Limited on Wednesday, so we'll see for London. I mean, limited Wednesday, that's, that's optimistic. Levis will not have Traylenberg's. He's not expected to play. I want to bring up Kyle Phillips because Kyle Phillips got a lot of targets. Somebody has to fill in. Like you brought up the defense. Tampa has given up like 35 to 37 points to wide outs. Hopkins is a – I was so upset to get into the show doc, and I didn't have the chance to put DeAnder Hopkins in as my start of the week. Well, spoilers. So somebody might have done that. But Kyle Phillips is getting more involved. And I'm just throwing it out there for like DFS. I think he's the bare minimum. Kyle, who is part of the DFS show, have you guys –

considered Kyle Phillips this week. We're going to talk about him today as a punt. Okay. Derek Henry, RB7 on the year. Tampa has yet to allow a red zone rushing touchdown to a running back this year. Yeah, this is a real, your hope it's snowing in Vermont situation because it's tough sledding for Derek Henry in this matchup. The Buccaneers have just been good for a long, long time against the run. It's a very, very. tough defense to run on and they want you to throw. They want, you know, it's like, why would you not throw the ball against a very easy to beat secondary? So Derek Henry might do that too. That's fair. That is fair. Chris Godwin managed two for 16 on a week where Tampa Bay put up 37 points. He was also banged up at one point. I know he essentially played the whole game 88% of the snaps, but I don't remember at what point in the game. Jay, do you remember?

Like there was, he went down, I think he was holding his hand. Yeah, I don't remember the specifics of when that happened. But obviously he did play the majority of game. The matchup is, is great. Is there anybody you're not playing on Tampa's side? Like, would you play Baker over Levis? Yeah, I think I would because of the weapons. Yeah. So Evans, Godwin, Otten, White? Yeah, Otten is, is. He's okay. He had a big week last week, but the Titans are very good against tight-in. Must grave over him? I've cooled on Otten. Yeah, I think, I think Musgrave over him. Okay. Anybody else from this game you guys want to discuss? Nope. I'm supposed to push this button now. Should I be afraid? Is something else going to walk in that door? Don't be afraid. Can I win?

How much money can we win? You can win. I see a picture that says footballers trivia. Oh my gosh. And the Borgogan has this, huh? He's in a suit. Kyle's the host. All right. Okay. Take it away, Kyle. All right. So I went back, looked at some episodes and I got some numbers. So you guys need to write down a number. And the three of you guys can kind of compare your answers and see who's the closest. So it's whoever's the closest between three of you. That's what we're going for. Okay. Okay. So we're doing some footballers trivia. Yeah. First question.

okay before andy's famous intro of ah welcome in he used to start the show with what is going on everybody and welcome to the show what was the first episode number that andy said ah welcome in see i've always wondered this this is like oh i'm i'm i i have no idea how i don't know how it started i don't remember i'm in a I'm going to guess. You're looking episode number? Episode number. And you guys will turn them over at the same time. Yeah, we'll share with the, well, we'll have to share with the listening audience here. The number that I put, I'm locking it in, so I'm going to say it is 45. I'm going to put 45. Oh, you're going that? I was going way later. It must be, it might be way later. I went 233. Okay. I guess there's 1,500 shows. And I went soups early. I went 33. Okay. What's the answer? The answer is 389. Wow.

All right. Okay. So episode 389. I knew it took a while. Mike even made a point after you did it on that episode to kind of like say, oh, that's different. Yeah. Really? So you used to say also welcome in or happy Monday. That means I've only said that for 74% of all the shows we've ever done. Wow. That's still the majority. All right. Next question. You guys have worked through a lot of matchups. I have a point, by the way. That's fair. That's fair. You worked through a lot of matchups since 2015. You guys have declared 1764 starts of the week. All of them hit, right? Yeah, they've all hit so far. Please don't ask us our hit rate. Jason, you've done 122 boom boom kickers. All of them have hit. Yeah, of course. How many different regular season matchup breakdowns have you done? Like you did four today, not counting those, but how many have you done since 2015? How many matchup breakdowns? Oh, that's just math, right? Yeah, yeah. So.