NFC North Breakdown + The Last Dance, Crazy Promises! - Fantasy Football Podcast for 7/27

What's going on with Matt Nagy? I mean, how is he not on a hot seat here for? He probably is getting close. Like, coaches have to deliver, and you didn't deliver with your other rookie. I mean, I just, I feel like this team has a better, better future if you're getting to Justin Field sooner than later. I don't feel like Andy Dalton is going to game manage this team into wins.

His quote, because let's go not just on what we're feeling here, because obviously you've got to read the situation, each of us do. His quote on June 15th was this. And the headlines were different than the quote. Who is he? Sorry, Matt and Aggie, head coach of the Bears. He said, no, Andy is our starter. He said, again, I can't predict anything. You know how it goes. There's so many things that can happen between today and that week one, but Andy is our starter and Justin is our number two, and we're going to stick to that plan. So it sounds.

somewhat hilarious because it's like we're going to stick to the plan and the plan is that anything can happen. When your plan was you went out and you recruited Andy Dalton and you said sign with us because you will be our starting quarterback. Yeah. I mean, you did that because you were not expecting other teams to pass on Justin Fields and like how do you sign him?

I mean, I get it. This is just like speaking as a human being as a man. How do you tell this guy you're going to be our starting quarterback? And like a week later, you draft his replacement. And you're like, well, this court is great. Yeah, you're still starting for us. Okay. He says promises, as we all know, can get pretty crazy. Oh, I mean, we know it. Promises are insane. Oh, where's the cards? Where's the card? Oh, he said promises.

He said promises can get kind of crazy, but what we told Andy is that he's our starter, and he knows that. And that's what Justin knows. Promises get crazy, but listen to this guys. We told him he was the starter. Is that how you? Imagine the conversation with your kids. Now, son, daughter, promises can get kind of crazy these days. But I love you. Okay. I'm with Mike now. By week four, Justin Field should start.

But that still doesn't guarantee something special. I know Dad said he was buying a pony for a career. Promise the pony. Promise just get crazy sometimes. Yeah. But they did add Damien Williams to the backfield. There was news recently. The knee, Tariq Cohen's knee is not okay. Right. Like recently, stiffness started on the pup. He's not going to contribute this year. There's just no way. He's too old. He's too pedestrian.

They want David Montgomery to be the starter, and he's going to be. Yeah, Tariq Cohen is nothing. And for fantasy purposes, I had a friend hit me up, text me. They were asking for advice on a dynasty trade, and they were excited that they were going to get Tariq Cohen thrown in on a deal. I'm like, dude, no, don't even bother. Don't go get someone else. I feel like if you try to drag and drop Tari Kohn onto a dynasty roster, it vaporized. It just disappears when you do that. But Alan Robinson.

Back-to-back top 12 finishes, despite bad quarterback play, he is solid. That is the best way to talk about Robinson. The odds of him being prolific in a new way, I don't think they exist this year with the combination of Dalton and rookie quarterback. He's not going to win you the week, right? But he will probably be, you know, you talked about having, you were talking about DeAndre Swift as your RB2. What about Alan Robinson as your wide receiver too?

Oh, that is a fantastic thing because you've got a little bit more volume and upside. Like I like Robert Woods as my number two. And Robert Woods does not have quite the volume and the market share that Alan Robinson has. Alan Robinson's great. I mean, he's as close to locked in to wide receiver 12 as possible. Finished as wide receiver 12 last year, the wide receiver 11 the year before. I don't think he has top five upside, but I don't think he can fall much past.

you know, wide receiver 15. He's just kind of this safe guy who, if he gets 150 targets, he's good for fantasy and he gets 150 targets. I want to talk about Darnell Mooney, who is one of my favorite up-and-coming young players in the league, although I am worried that we may be one year away from having Justin Field solidify the spot and then provide a lot of upside for Mooney. But with Anthony Miller departing,

You know, he was fifth among rookies last year with Target Share, despite the bad quarterback play. Remember, how many plays was Darnell Mooney open deep and the ball landed catastrophically far away? Just have a real quick search on Twitter. You'll find a good highlight package. Here's some really interesting data for you. If you look at every wide receiver over the last decade that saw 95 plus targets as a rookie, which is what he saw, 90% of those players had at least one top 36 season in their future.

The majority, 76% had at least one top 24 season. So everything I saw in film from Darnell Mooney told me he has a bright future in this league. I just don't know if it means anything this year. Darnell Mooney, there was like, you know, just the whispers out of Chicago, of course, and this is all rumor mill, but it's like the drafting of Darnell Mooney, people have said that kind of.

saved Ryan Pace's job, the GM of Chicago, that he hit on such a late round. Fifth round pick. Late round wide receiver. Yeah. And so you didn't really see a ton of big games from him last year, five for 69, four for 49 and a touchdown. He did end the year. Final week, 11 catches for Donnell Mooney inflating some of those season-long numbers. But he will have an opportunity. Yeah, and those target numbers that you mentioned.

They are sticky with those wide receivers as far as the correlation to their future success because targets are a talent stat. Yeah. Targets are earned. Targets are something where it's like it's not just you're the only wide receiver in town. You got open and you gained the trust. Does that explain John Ross's lack of talents at the NFL level? Sorry, not talents. Target. I mean, I should have said lack of talent. Oh, my God. How many talents does he have?

Not many talents. Yeah. So I would say Mooney is a very nice dynasty target right now because even if this isn't the season, you know, assuming Justin Fields takes over at some point, the halfway point or whatever, the rookie Justin Fields or this current version of Andy Dalton, I'm not excited about them supporting a wide receiver two. But going forward, he projects to be a really solid wide receiver two and.

Alan Robinson is actually a, you know, he's a franchise tag guy. He could be gone and Mooney could become a one here and he showed enough on the field. So I like targeting Mooney quite a bit. So year three he could go to the Mooney? I like it. I like it. Little, little. On the nose. A little corny. But that's on brand. Jimmy, Grandpa, Cole come at the tight end room. Also now Jesse James. Just stay away. Stay away from all of them.

Seriously. I mean, that's what you should do. Cole come at. Yeah, we're all excited. No, no, just stay away from the room. Jimmy Grandpa did not retire. No, he did not. He ended last season with a one-handed, amazing touchdown catch. He is annoying in the red zone. He had eight of them last year. He caught as many touchdowns as Michael Thomas, Julio Jones, Odell Beckham, Kenny Gallaudet combined in 2020. Oh, come on. Which is the stat he would read you if he heard you making fun of him.

All right. What do you think the win total is for Chicago? Give me your guess. I love those stupid. Those stats are great. Two guys who essentially missed the entire year. I'm just going to throw their names. One guy who didn't catch any touchdowns. What was your question, Andy? Win total. What do you think Vegas has the win total for Chicago? I would say you're going to be a nine. I'd say above 500. I'm going under than that. I'm going to lower. I'll go.

I'll put them right at 8. 7.5. That's because I'll give you a hint. This next team has a higher win total. The Vikings. Last year, 7 and 9 started out 1 in 5. Finish 6 and 4. They were 6 and 5 in 1 score games, 11th in points per game as a team. They lived in the red zone. Third most red zone plays per game of any team, which is great for Dalvin Cook, fantasy managers and fantasy production.

I guess their win total before we get into the discussion for Minnesota. I'll go nine. I'll go nine and a half. It's nine. It's nine. It's nine. Which you imagine Green Bay will be back up at ten and a half. I would imagine, yeah. So Vikings coming in at number two in the division. Very efficient last year. You know, Kirk Cousins is such a difficult player to talk about. Sometimes I feel like we waste people's time talking about him.

Because I don't know if you should ever play him. He is a streamable quarterback. I'll put it there. But that's it. I mean, week 10 on, he was the quarterback three in all of football. He was a top 12 in six of eight games. So that shows the ceiling, right? You can stream Kirk Cousins when you get it right. And he has dynamic pass catching weapons. But I don't know if, you know, he still finished at 18. Did he? Yeah.

Oh, no, he didn't finish. No, no, no. He's being drafted at 18 this year. But he certainly didn't finish as a top 12 quarterback last year. Yeah, or you mean quarterback 11? Is that where he was? Yeah. He looked, Kurt Cousins, two, I think two of the last three years, has supported two top 12 wide receivers. So he's at 6.8 touchdown percentage last year, which was the highest of his career. Yeah, definitely the highest of his career. He is more of a...

efficient type of a quarterback, a low volume. And what you saw in 2019 was that the volume was simply too low. 444 attempts. That was it. Like that's so low for a starting quarterback, especially when you're talking about fantasy purposes. Now they had to let it rip more this past year because the defense was so bad. The defense is going to be improved.

Kurt, I'm with you, Andy. I'm not drafting. I mean, I haven't projected right on that fringe as a top 12 guy, but he's far more suited for... If you had cousins as your number two guy in a Super Flex League, I'm very happy about that. Oh, it's very solid. And you can probably wait a little bit on that, but you're not taking him as a one despite all the...

weapons around. Well, it does remind me a little of the old Big Ben debates, okay? Because Big Ben, Kirk Cousers, they're not running the ball, right? They're passers. Sometimes you have, even Matt Ryan, sometimes you have the higher touchdown total year. He had a couple of number five finishes in Washington. Last year he battles into the top 12 at 11, has big time weeks.

But for some reason, you know, you just don't know when that fluctuation is necessarily going to happen. I kind of buy into the narrative that Jason's brought up a lot this off season. Last year was a very weird Mike Zimmer defensive year, right? They were awful. They were the, you know, they spent $41 million in guaranteed money to fix the defense so that Zimmer doesn't have a heart attack watching what they did last year where they were 29th in points again. Here are some of the points given up by the Minnesota Vikings last year.

43, 40, 31, 31, 33, 52, 35. Like, these are not numbers that we have ever seen from a Mike Zimmer defense. And you're right, Andy, I mean, you paid a lot of money. You went out and, you know, you talk about teams like watch their transactions, you know, the money where their mouth is thing. They are at least attempting to massively fix the defense that was horrific last year, which is what scares me for.

Justin Jefferson taking another step forward into fantasy statistic glory or Kirk Cousins repeating the high passing attempt number over the year prior. I think this is a team that prefers to run the ball and was not able to as much last year because they're giving up 30 plus points on the reg. An interesting observation on Kirk Cousins, Andy were saying he doesn't run, which is absolutely true.

But he did have some really high-level fantasy finishes in Washington. Touchdowns? And rushing touchdowns. I remember he had those couple weird years. He had three straight years of four or more rushing touchdowns. Didn't have Dalvin Cook in Washington. And a, like, statistically the real big difference between Washington and his Minnesota time, like the most glaring difference is those rushing touchdowns.

Yeah, and last year he had 35 plus passing touchdowns. It was the lowest fantasy finish ever for a quarterback to have that, QB11. So things have to go perfectly right for him to be outside the top 10. That's where I'm starting to just pump the brakes. Dalvin Cook is being drafted number two overall everywhere. 312 carries, 1,500 yards, 16 touchdowns last year with another 44 catches and a touchdown through the air. High floor. That's what Dalvin Cook gives you. Only two games outside the top 24.