Fantasy Football look at Offseason Coaching Changes, Fantasy Risers, and Draft Tools

We did see no names like Arian Foster come from the 8th, 9th, no, undrafted, undrafted in most leagues, not ours because I drafted. I'm really, I'm really smart. NFL, undrafted. Gotcha, yeah, but you do love his system. You love the offensive potential of the running back position. I'm just, you know, a little bit. I'm with Jason. I think it's going to be C.J. Anderson. Hey, he is. The hit man, taking out Ronnie Hillman.

Well, I'm going to take a hit out on Monte Balford for screwing me with that. He sucks. Oh, man. I did say that out here, too. He sucks, yet I don't believe. It's all C.J. Anderson's. But C.J. Anderson, he's a good pass blocker. He's a good pass catcher. That's job number one. Yeah, Peyton trusts him for a Peyton Manning team. And a really big question is with Peyton Manning and the thigh, because where the team transformed, you know, all of a sudden, like,

All we do is run in Denver, which was really strange and was a fantasy destroyer of dreams. It was incredible because I didn't have Peyton Manning. Yeah, if you were in the playoffs last year, you weren't winning with Peyton Manning. No, you were not. These guys that would carry you the whole season. That's just the roll your eyes in the back of your head, sad truth of fantasy sometimes. You can do everything right on paper, but it doesn't matter if something...

Doesn't happen on the field. So do we need to talk about Tom Sula, or can we get to Atlanta? Because I just, Tom Sula. Let's talk in brevity. Give me 30 seconds on Jim Tom Sula in San Francisco. Us Cardinals fans, we don't like to talk about the 49ers much anyway. I like Carlos. I like Carlos Hyde. I think Frank Gore will be gone. I like Hyde to be an RB2 with, he could be that guy who makes the jump. One thing I've heard about.

Kaepernick is and Tom Sula is zone read. Zonri. Yeah. It's back to the zone read. Do you think that's... Very good for... If that happens, do we care about Colin Kaepernick? Yeah, you can play him. I mean, it's not going to make you draft them in the early rounds, but it means that you're going to be able to stream Colin Kaepernick and get good points from him. Not a pocket quarterback. He's not. And if they are smart enough to play to his strengths, then he could be a...

worthwhile asset for fantasy? I think that team is a mess in the front office right now, and I think he's going to be there two years and gone as far as a head coach, and I think that's going to be reflected in the offense. I like some of the weapons still, and I definitely like if Frank Gore leaves, I'm all about the running game there, but I think I'm not really excited about the Niners. Yeah, yeah. I sure hope they stink. That's my personal opinion. Agreed. All right, so let's get to some big changes in.

I guess everybody, this is the fantasy bonanza factor here. I am excited. There are big changes in Atlanta. Big changes. Mike Smith, formerly star of hard knocks, Mike Smith. He is gone. As is, offensive coordinator, Dirk Cutter, who is gone. He went to Tampa Bay. He is known as a offensive mind in the NFL and formerly in...

Collegiate Football. He's gone, and in comes defensive-minded head coach, Dan Quinn, from Seattle. Old Danny. Two-time defending Super Bowl. Oh, wait, no. Sorry. Whoops. Sorry. One-time champion. Can you have a half? Former champion. One and a half Super Bowl. Dan Quinn from Seattle. Good hire. A good mind. Not an offensive mind. But in place of Dirk Cutter comes Kyle Shanahan. Oh, yeah. And.

Little known. Don't know if you guys knew this. The passing game coordinator, do you know who that is that came in? I do not. So you have Kyle Shanahan came in, but a new passing game coordinator came in, who is Rahim Morris. Rahim Morris, the former head coach of the Tampa Bay of Buccaneers. He got one year in Tampa. But he's a good offense of mine. So you have that combination coming into the offense in Atlanta. What does this mean to this should be great, wasn't great, was inconsistent.

injury plagued, no Tony Gonzalez offense from last year. The real hindrance of Atlanta last year was the offensive line. I mean, watching them, everything else seemed like it should be just fine. But when you don't have an offensive line, when you can't block a three. Now, they lost their left tackle to start the year. They lost. By the end of the year, they had lost four starters, I think. So.

You have to assume health. You can't just predict that another catastrophe offensive line injury plagued like that. So let's say the offensive line is back to fine, inadequate line. Kyle Shanahan bringing his scheme in to Julio Jones as the ex-receiver. Julio. I am drooling all over myself. And I've already been a Julio guy, but Julio...

Might just be the top guy on my draft list coming into 2015. Another guy that I'm going to keep my eyes on is whatever tight-in they sign. Because I think they're going to go out and sign a big tight-in. But I love the Kyle Shanahan play there. I mean, he went and took Brian Hoyer and Mansell and made them a seven and nine team and did.

He had nothing to work with and did great. And then he put together, and this is true, a 32-point slide presentation to get out of the job in Cleveland. And so that clearly shows that this is a very smart man. He is committed. He also obviously came from Washington, where he facilitated a good zone read offense with the strengths of Robert Griffin III and utilizing heavily Pierre Garsohn in that passing offense. Garsohn was a beast.

I think people might have forgotten that because of last year's debacle, where it was every week, please Garsohn show up. But, what? Man, psyched me. I don't know, there was some looks in the room that psyched me out. You had some hesitation because we're in our brand new studio. Yeah, Stah, Studio. Thank you, Jason. Thank you. That was Phil Collins. Yeah, we're on our brand new podcast studio. Working on some kings. Here in Phoenix.

getting things set up hopefully uh one thing we didn't announce i don't even know if it's the right time to announce it because it's just coming to mind but we we are going to know what we're announcing the fact that we're not going to come it's going to be more than one show this year oh yeah per week we're going to we're going to try to bring you a show on tuesday and thursday and maybe more who knows we might do 14 shows a week morning and evening right we might live stream our entire lives yes yeah we've we've bought a lot of lotto tickets and

If things turn out the way we expect, we'll be, no. But we are going to go to two shows a week. I'm going to be able to drop you a kind of a recap, a recap show, a waiver wire show, and then also give you the set your lineups preview the upcoming game show on Thursday. So look forward to that. And I think that's probably, it's probably a good time to transition to this next segment here. We're going to look at players who we believe will make a fantasy jump.

from their 2014 numbers, from what they finished last year in standard leagues. Each of us, Mike, Jason, and myself, we've each picked out four names at different positions. So we're going to go through here, talk about why we like these guys and why we think they should be on your radar for the upcoming draft in 2015. So let's start at the quarterback position. Mike, who do you think is the quarterback set to make the next big...

Jump. Who's the value guy? Oh, my goodness. I am all over Eli Manning at this point. Oh, man. ODB is... O'Dell Beckham, Jr. Made a name for himself. Who knows that kid might be in the first round of fantasy. He's going to be drafted in the first round, I should say. He's a freak. He is a receiving threat for anything, really, that they need him to do. The Giants...

brought in a completely new offensive scheme, and it really, really looked like it. Last year. Yes, last year. It really looked like it at the beginning of the year. Is that Bob Mcadoo? Or I'm saying that name really wrong. Macadoo? Macadoo. I really hope it's a NBA player. I think that's... You continue talking, I'll figure it out. And it really showed at the beginning of the year, they started just like a tortoise. I was right. It's Macadoo. Well, Dap to you. Ben McAdoo. They were at...

I mean, moving at two miles an hour, everything was terrible for them. But by the end of the year, they had really turned it on so much so that the sandwich king, Ruben Randall, was producing fantasy. He was producing fantasy numbers consistently. And if you throw in, the wild card here is really Victor Cruz, his Patelert tendon injury.

is a one that's really, really hard to come back from. It's not just an ACL, and an ACL used to be a death blow. Now you can come back. Pretellateenant is rough. Maybe he never comes back. Maybe he comes back, and he's only somewhat of what he was. I'm going to lean positive and assume that he can at least play when he comes back. That receiving core, Larry Denel, should...

theoretically take another step. And if everyone really knows what the offense is coming into the year instead of having to learn it as you go, Eli Manning, to me, will be the steal of the draft. He has a big upside. Because people will be scared of him. I think he's going to get some hype going forward, but it wouldn't surprise me if you're able to draft him in the 9th or the 10th round. So let me ask you this. He finished 10th and standard scoring last year. What's his ceiling?

To you. Top five. Top five. Okay. So that's the jump you think you could take. You could get into that category in the top five. So I didn't realize this looking at our pick, Jason, that we had picked the same guy. Yeah. I'm going to go with a different pick. Don't worry. You are? Yeah. Okay. Well, let me tell you who I've got. It shows how much I love your pick. Yeah. Yeah. And my guy is, we just talked about the offensive changes in Atlanta. So, yeah, Matt Ryan.

Matt Ryan is my guy. Like we said, he's lost his office coordinator. Kyle Shanhan's coming in as passing game coordinator. And speaking to what I talked about before about a garbage time quarterback, I watched enough Matt Ryan last year. And in years past, he is not a garbage time quarterback. When you take away his offensive line and you put him in a position where he's down 35 points, which their defense was not good last year. Let's just put it that way.

Dan Quinn is the right hire for that team. If you put him in a position or he's in a competitive game, he's a better player. When you give him this guy, Julio Jones, with good health, he's a better player. Devin Hester, still in the mix there, a spread offense that has some contributors. You still have Roddy White's still there. Harry Douglas is still there.

and we don't know what the tight-in position looks like. But I just think Matt Ryan... Is it still toy low-low? He was seventh last year, and I put him in that same jumping into the top five category. Nice. But, again, it hinges on, like many of these guys, Matt Stafford, for example, the health of that number one receiver. And so Hulu has to stay healthy for him to do that. But I like Matt Ryan going to the next year. Did you have anything to add there, Jason? No, no, I think I'm all on board, Matt Stafford. I approve as well. Yeah. So Stafford's your guy?

Stafford is my guy that I am picking to improve. Now, I do not. I want to go on record here and say, I do not believe that Matt Stafford is what you would call a good quarterback. But you don't have to be mechanically perfect to put up fantasy points. And he is a garbage time quarterback. He is. He is a guy that will throw a lot of late bombs.

This last year, he had Calvin Johnson pretty much gone for, you know, even when he was in there, he was a decoy. He was not there. Calvin's going to put up huge numbers, I think, this year. You have to, like Mike was saying, you have to assume health. I don't think there's any reason to assume that Calvin Johnson's going to be out. And in standard scoring, Stafford finished 15th. He wasn't even in the top 12. And I just don't see a guy with the weapons there. Which two years ago. I didn't realize that. Two years ago, he was top five. Yeah.

So he is a bounceback candidate. Yeah, he's certainly going to finish better, which means as far as where you're going to be drafting guys. Doesn't that come down to touchdowns this past year? Not as much as you think. Touchdowns were down. Touchdowns were down. He threw about five less. Yardage was about 500 yards less, five touchdowns less, a couple more picks. And so I think Calvin's going to take a lot of those touchdowns and yards back up. You've got.

Mr. Hitman's golden boy. 22 touchdowns, 22. I think two years ago he had 42. Yeah, I don't think he was 42, but he certainly was better than that. So I think as far as a bounce-back guy, you're going to be able to get this guy late because he didn't put up great numbers in standard leagues. And with the weapons there, Ebron getting better, I think Stafford is a huge bounce-back candidate. That will give you my quick fantasy hitman tip on Matt Stafford.