The Footie Awards! + Top 10 for 2019, Brown Bombshell

And number 10, rounding it out, I have DeAndre Hopkins. So, Mike, you brought him up as your first wide receiver. I thought about it as well. And he's in my top 10 at number 10, which means that James Conner's not in the top 10, which means that Joe Mixin, David Johnson, Nick Chubb. Tyree Kill. If it was a standard league, I would have had Tyree Kill higher than DeAndre Hopkins. And I've got DeAndre Hopkins at 10 as well. My number 10 is Joe Mixin. Interesting. He was almost in my top 10. And then I...

thought better of it. I think it means more with you having him there to me it means that you give him the nod over a player like Nick Chup, right? Yes, David Johnson. David Johnson. Some of these other potentially, I'm Sony Michelle. I mean, I think Sony Michelle belongs in the second round. This is, you know, my take obviously. So interesting. Obviously, it's going to be hotly debated all offseason. We're going to have a lot of discussions, mock drafts, a lot of free agency draft implications.

And I will. The questions like Mark Ingram, that'll be very interesting too. Yeah, yeah. Before we move into the news, it's the last time we have to do this. So that excites me greatly. That is the last time we have to do it because look, you're exhausted. I'm exhausted. I get it. But we got to finish strong. Footclanvote.com. Help us secure that I heart radio podcast award. The first one ever. Your votes and your time has been so appreciated, Foot Clan. Thank you. You're not going to hear me talk about it on the show anymore.

That's because voting is almost close. Yeah, close is on Saturday. Yeah, go vote right now forclanvote.com. And it's rally time. It's fun to finish strong. All right, let's get into the news. News and notes from around the league, presented by Sleeper. Well, if you got that Sleeper app alert this week, you probably read a few things about the very unsettling Antonio Brown. It.

escalated rapidly. As the Antonio Brown owner in our dynasty league, I don't like it. I don't like it at all. Let's give you the bullet points because maybe the last thing you heard about Antonio Brown was fresh off of an incredible near-20 target week in which he had almost 200 yards. Or did he have over 200 and two touchdowns? He didn't play last week. Well, he was injured, right? No, he wasn't.

Um, maybe. Apparently, uh, well, there's, there are reports that he turned down a, uh, a test on his knee. But basically, look, he went AWOL again on the team. He left practice. He was angry. He was upset. There was frustration. He yelled he was done. Uh, he talked again about why don't they just trade him and.

something happened where he was away from the team showed up on Sunday wanting to play. They said, no, you're not going to play. So bizarre. You're disrupting this team. Now, this team has gone through headache after headache lately. The Lev Bell saga continued through the majority of the year. They started 7-2-1 and didn't make the playoffs. Mike Tomlin has been questioned repeatedly in the press. And he was pretty forthright about the Antonio Brown situation coming out and saying, look, he was a no-show at walkthrough.

At that point, he said it became something different. And look, Brown said he felt better, was ready to play. Tomlin said it doesn't work like that. You don't get to skip things and then play at your own volition. Yeah, and there's reports leaking out of the locker room that teammates believe Antonio Brown was not hurt and that, in fact, he quit on the team, which that's a serious accusation.

That's, in my opinion, that's when things changed for Levion Bell earlier in the, it really seemed like Levi-on-Bel was going to come back after a week or two. But then this started happening where the team turned on him and he said, okay, well, I guess I'm not coming back. This is, it's rough.

for Antonio Brown. And you might have seen the report that he's requested a trade. I believe Jason Locker Forrest said that. But that seems to be overblown. That was him saying as he walked off, like, well, then why don't you just trade me? That's not an official request. I don't believe they're shopping him. But whenever anything comes out like that, you know that if I'm another team, I'm picking up the phone. I'm going, ring, ring is Antonio Brown there? Can he come out and play? And you're right, Andy.

From the fact that if they trade him, the Steelers will still eat a huge dead cap situation. $20 million that they trade him before June 1st. Of dead cap. But it actually frees up their actual money. And in the long run, if they choose to get rid of him right now, they will be saving a lot of money. If they think that this has to happen. It would be a monster cap hit for this season. You're saying over the lifetime of the contract, it would be a savings. I get that. It also, if they wait beyond June 1st.

It's a $15 million cap hit. Right. I don't think he's going anywhere. I don't either. I think this is Antonio Brown doing what he's done three times this year. I don't know whether they give him a – I mean, it sounds silly, but they may give him a raise to assuage the emotions of Antonio Brown. But I've told Jason this for about three or four weeks. I'm questioning the whole Steelers' offense in the situation there with Mike Tomlin. This is just another iron thrown onto the fire, so to speak, where this locker room has changed.

And everything's fine when these problems happen. Left Bell's contract, Antonio Brown, everything's fine when you win. They didn't make the playoffs for the first time since 2013. And that's why I don't think they can trade Antonio Brown because can they do it without Lev Bell? Yeah, James Connor can step in. Jalen Samuels can they do without Antonio Brown. Jujo's great, but no, that is much more difficult. Look, they barely, barely beat the Cincinnati Bengals in a must-win game without Antonio Brown. His presence was sorely.

So for sake of fantasy, give me the odds that you think Antonio Brown is back with that team that has massive dynasty implications. I think we'd all agree if he goes somewhere else, it is not a good sign for his fantasy value. No, Jason and I, before the show we were looking. Okay, let's just play make-believe GM. Is there actually a spot where Antonio Brown can go and you get maybe a boost or just expect the same?

It is not, nothing jumps out as San Francisco wouldn't be bad. You got Garoplo, no other star wide receiver there. Maybe Detroit. Maybe Detroit. Everything is just, it's not better. And I say 85% is my number. I think 85% that he is returning next year to the Steelers. I would put mine at 65% back. And I'm about 90%. About 90% sure he'll be back.

But good news, though. He did like the San Francisco 49ers on Twitter. He's doing this new wave of athletes, the way that they communicate. The way that they speak is by liking and following. Passive aggressive money. Oh, it's amazing. Social media pouting. I'm going to go like some tweets myself. Speaking of, you know, finding validation from tweets.

Oh, yeah. Michael Keaton did like one of our tweets, Mike. More than that. We didn't talk about this? No, we didn't bring this up. Oh, I thought we did. See, we've, if you don't know, if you haven't seen the great moments of this show before, long ago, multiple years ago, Mike and I simultaneously said, I love Michael Keaton on the show. It was just a serendipitous moment. And ever since then, that's been what we say when we have a kind of a jinx moment on the show.

Say I love Michael Keith, because we all three love Michael Keith. Yeah, who doesn't? I mean, really. And he, the man's a national treasure. He's my Batman. And Michael Keaton, shout out, if you're listening, we do genuinely love you. You're welcome on the show. Anytime. You can come in and guest host. Also, he wrote us back on Twitter. He said he loves us back. So there's kind of a mutual growing best friendship happening here. I feel like it's not.

too early to say we're best friends. I don't think it is too early. I feel like we're at that point right now. I mean, we can still take it like next level, but not for there. Not like BFF. Not forever, but at some point we'll be having dinner from him across a very big table. And he'll be on one end and we'll be on the other end. But we'll have one of those speakers where we can easily talk. All right. Eagles coach Doug Peterson said Nick Foles is going to start this week against the Bears. Steve Sarkisian fired. The Falcons cleaned house. O.C.

DC. That sounds like a band. And special teams coach, gone. Yes. I love it. I love it. If I was a Falcons fan, I'd be ecstatic. The absence of Sarkesian. The hard thing is, as much as two years ago, I would have been all about this. Their offense was pretty dang good this year. And we talked about this. Matt Ryan, it takes him two years in a system. He had an off year last year. He was the number two by fantasy points per game. Quarterback this year.

Julio Jones ended the year on a touchdown hot streak. Hot streak. I love Michael Key. So I don't think it's great news. No. Yeah, I don't know. We'll see who they bring in. The devil you know equal very good fantasy values. So I'm a little bit less inclined to be behind it, although I know Thalcons fans are very, very happy. Jim Bob Cooter, JBC. He's going. I love Michael Key.

It's a lot of that happened. Agreed to mutually part ways. The Lions have fired their office coordinator. Cardinals fired their offensive coordinator Byron Lefwich. Thank goodness. Speaking at Monday's season ending presser, Winston's going to remain the quarterback moving forward. And the Bucks General Manager has come out and said, look, any new head coach we get in Tampa is going to be all about James Winston. This was a complete, if you look at these comments, these comments weren't just like, we're kind of confident that, you know, Winston's going to give us a better year. It was.

He's 24, 25 years old. He's done stuff nobody's ever done in the history of the National Football League at that age. He is our quarterback moving forward. He's our guy. He's our franchise guy. That's the framework for next year. I always thought when watching hard knocks, the dirt cutter hated James Winston. He hates too strong and word. But he was like, that's not the guy he wanted. He was always like just trying to reel him back, try to focus. Like, you know, if you think you've got this shot, but it could be dangerous.

Don't do it, James. And, yeah, I think they want someone to support their franchise quarterback. I would say half the teams in the league, if James were cut, he would be like, oh, he would be picked up. Come on board. And his age and the ability that he has shown at times, he needs somebody, he does seem like he has the psyche that needs a coach has confidence in him. Yeah, the contract situation will speak volumes too for James because he's in his fifth year option, which means.

He's in a contract year. Do they actually bring in a new coaching staff and just lock that up and say, James, you're the guy for the future? All right, that was today's news and notes with fantasy football ramping down. Now is the time to ask your commissioner if you are using the right platform. It's a good question. Use sleeper. All you dynasty owners out there, check out the sleeper platform, the sleeper app.

All right, we're going to get into our playoff picks real quick because we do this every year. We've got the playoff challenge, the Foot Clan. We'll all compete together, and then we'll get into the Footy Award winners, all right? Okay. Brooks, are you on board with that plan? Sounds great, Andy. Did you have a nice new year, Brooks? Yeah, I actually made it up. And you stayed up. You made it. Incredible. What did you do? Did you and Dylan stay in? Yeah. Were you watching, like, Office episodes?

We watched the ball drop Eastern time. Okay. Oh, wait a minute. Is that what you meant by made it? Wait, you made it up. Yeah, but then we made it until midnight too. Okay, all right. That is 7 p.m. he drank the five-hour energy. He timed it. He's like, I've got to stay up. Oh, congratulations. That's better than I did. How many slices of pizza, Brooks? Only a few. Yeah, my man. My man. My man. All right. Hey, we want to thank Fantasy Chance for sponsoring today's show. If you need a trophy, if you need a belt.

If you need some hardware to celebrate your big time title that you just brought home, check out Fantasychamps.com. Use the promo code Ballers. Get a deal on a great gold trophy, crystal trophy. There's loser trophies. There's rings. Custom engravings. It's pretty cool. And that is Fantasychamps.com. Absolutely. And, Fookland, you're missing the footballers. I know. I know.

You don't get it five times a week. You get us twice a week. They can play us in half speed, though. It's not advised, but you can do that if you want twice. We're pretty funny. Yeah, from time to time, we get the, hey, play it at half speed. You sound like you're drunk. Sound like you're having a party. Maybe that's true. I don't know. But you can get a third show if you help support the show over at join the foot.com, among with many other perks, but just.

Consider it. If you want more footballers in your life. You can get the episodes earlier. Absolutely. We report them the day before, so you can get them earlier. All right. Let's jump in here. Every year we do a playoff challenge over at the NFL Playoff Challenge on the website. You can enter our group and compete against us in the playoff challenge. It's super fun. And you do it at Footclanchallenge.com completely free. And what are we giving away?