Fantasy Football 2018 - The TRUTH About Fantasy RBs in 2017, Part 1

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And Mike Wright. SMH! Whoa! Shaking my head after that week into football. Thoughts we're going a different direction, but all right. Can you believe? No. No. Impossible. Impossible. And yet, NFL football, playoff football. Welcome into the show. It feels like it's been forever. You're talking about the...

The Titans just getting smashed, right? Yeah, impossible. I was so sure. No, no, no. I was obviously talking about the Jaguar. That's who? No. Stefan Diggs, Case Keenum, the end of that game, absolutely bananas. At a loss for words, how does that happen? I don't know. If you watched it, this is why we love football. This is why we love fantasy football. Not so much why you love sports betting.

I believe that pushed the line. I believe that made it a push. And it also ruined the over under for those that were under. But that's not what this show's about. I could watch that last play a hundred times in a row and not grow tired of just the incredible human reaction. The fact that it was a home game. Right.

for that team to pull it out at the end for the Vikings. I mean, it was, I've watched every angle, every broadcast, and I could do it all over again and again. The radio call. It's just unbelievable. I can't imagine being a Vikings fan. No, it's to be at that stadium in that moment, I can't even imagine. Now, I was at a Cardinal Packer playoff game.

where it was a walkoff, right? It went to overtime, and there was a fumble, and that was the closest that I can get to, you know, feeling that emotion. Not as dramatic. No, not as dramatic. Yeah. So incredible. We'll talk more about these playoff matches as well. We've got a good quick question on the show today. We are the fantasy footballers, and we are your year-round fantasy football podcast, always bringing you what you need to win. And we are sitting here. It's Tuesday, January 16th.

And today we begin our journey into running back consistency. This is the truth. Tell the truth. So what are we talking about with the truth? I mean, we did these episodes last week with the wide receiver position. But break it down for me, Jay. Yeah, so the truth series that we've been going through. The truth serum. The truth serum is what we do is we take a look at the positions and we break down, okay, regardless of how a guy felt.

Whether you owned a guy and you felt those really bad games or you felt those really good games or maybe you didn't have any stake in a certain running back who might have been a whole lot better than you remember. We are now taking a look basically from top to bottom at all of the running backs and saying let's actually see how did they do, who helped people, who were the guys that were very consistent and did not crap your team. And the more that we've looked into this with running backs.

the more that I am fully convinced, you have to have a top running back. The difference between the top few running backs, especially the top 10 running backs, and anyone else at any other position, with the sole exception of maybe gronk alone at tight end, it is an unfair advantage that is so weighty you can't really make up for it in any other way. If you don't have one of those guys and you were going deep into the playoffs,

You needed three top 10 wide receiver type of guys to have this level of consistency. Yeah, and you ran an interesting Twitter poll we'll get into later. Sometimes you do need truth serum because when a player starts the year a certain way or they finish the year a certain way, that permeates your feeling about a player through the offseason. It affects their draft position. And you don't realize what actually happened. I mean, Kareem Hunt is one of those players that.

There's a distortion, right, to the view of Kareem Hunt. And we're going to look into all of that today. I'm excited. We're removing the emotion. Yeah, yeah. And you need that. You need that to be able to look clearly for next year and be able to balance building a team the right way. You can find us on Twitter at theFF ballers. Our community where you get an extra episode every week is join thefoot.com. The website's the fantasy footballers.com.

And we're on all the social media platforms, Facebook, and YouTube. You can watch our show. You can find us everywhere. Mike is waving. Here's a quick question for you, a fun one. Who is your favorite player to watch in 2017? And Brooks pre-selected this. Brooks is actually out of the office today. What a slacker. This is the first time that's happened in more than a year. Last time. Yeah, last time.

But he set this one up. It says, who's your favorite player to watch? And he says we cannot pick Super Camari. That's a fair stipulation. No Alvin Camaro allowed. Watching Alvin Camaro is incredible. I'll kick it off. It's, it's Kareem. Well, we'll get into the truth about his actual numbers. But watch Kareem Hunt when he's actually getting carries. And he is unbelievable. I mean, the guy very, very rarely goes down with the first tackler. I mean,

Just shedding, shedding tackles, causing guys to miss, making professional football players look foolish. So Green Hunt was by far my favorite guy to watch as he takes a three-yard carry and all of a sudden he got seven yards. Yeah, he was my favorite. The rookie running backs this year were a delight to watch all the way around. For me, I actually think the guy that I enjoyed watching the most was possibly my biggest miss coming into the season. I was not high.

at all on DeAndre Hopkins and his outlook coming into this season. I was wrong because he's good. But he won me over this year because of watching. He was such a delight to watch. I mean, his hand fighting on every single play against every team. That's what we'll call it. Yeah, we'll call it hand fighting. No, no offense to pass interference here. All the good ones do that.

They fight through. He seems a little more egregious, though. I don't know. I think he just got really strong. People just want to take away from him. He's got like clampy strong hands. He has clampy hands. Like him the clamps. Yeah. I mean, I feel like he could take this mug and just shatter it with his hand. And he's using these things as they go down the field right off the line just always. You've seen this, right? You've seen what he does to his gloves, right? Do either of you know this? No.

His hands are so big. I'm not joking. He puts the biggest gloves on. On the sideline, he takes scissors and he cuts in between the fingers and the thumb. Is this true? This is absolutely true so that his hands can stretch better in the glove. This is not a joke. He actually has to modify every new pair of gloves he puts on, and he cuts the brake so that his hands can stretch properly. If I were another wide receiver. Clampier. I would be going.

Huh. Maybe I should cut my gloves. Attention Nike. Did you know that DeAndre Hopkins needs bigger gloves? Maybe you can help him out. It might not just be the size. It might be the dexterity. Like he can move his, that way he can move his hands. So the gloves just suck. Nike. We're going to need some more dexterity built in. All right. So you went with DeAndre Hopkins. I'm going to go.

deeper. It'd be easy to say Todd Gurley after this season and the amount of big games he had. He's pretty fun to watch. He's fun to watch. I'm actually going to go with just a personal favorite, a player from late last year that I just loved to watch play football. And that's Adam Thielen. A.O. Always open. I mean, Adam Thielen is always open. And he makes those big time. I mean, you saw this yesterday. He climbed the ladder against Marchon Ladamore. He went up about, I don't know, three feet higher than I can jump.

So he went up three feet. Three and a half feet. And look, he always holds on to the ball. I love players that can finish the play, right? Like you notice that when new, young, wide receivers, rookies, they come in. And you just, they don't have that it factor. Well, he's had it. And he proved himself to be an elite wide receiver option all year long. Big plays yesterday. So I'm going to go with Adam Thielen. I think he's a blast to watch. I love that.

All right, let's jump into some news. News and notes from around the league. All right, let's talk through these games a little bit. Yes, I just wanted to give, you know, let's give a quick takeaway from each game. Okay. Or just what you noticed. I'll start it with the Falcons and the Eagles. And this is, you've got to give a tip of the cap. Actually, I'll go a tip of half of my cap. Okay. For Nick Foltz. Because the second half of the game, Nick Foles was absolutely incredible. He was not.

very good during the first half of the game. But it was enough. I gave the Eagles very little chance to overcome the Falcons. But the defense is so strong for the Eagles. They shut the Falcons out in the second half. I'll just say lost opportunities for Atlanta. I felt like they should have gone into halftime, probably winning by 20 points. And they couldn't get it done. Maybe keep giving Kevin Coleman the ball. He was playing so well. And it came out after the game that,

Yeah, Devante Freeman was dealing with a, it was an MCL and a PCL sprain. I mean, you're right, Jason. Kevin Coleman, every time he starts the ball, it seemed like it was a chunk play. And then they get down to the goal line. They go, hey, uh, it's a Ron Ward. How about you come in and we're going to flick the ball to you? Where is Kevin Coleman? Steve Sarkeesian in these like, outthink myself goal line plays. I just don't understand it. It seems like that's a pre, it's a requirement.

All that being said, I have watched that Julio last second play so many more times since the end of that weekend. And I'm shocked that he didn't make the grab. I mean, I don't think his feet were coming down to bounce. See, I actually. His feet came in like an inch on the white, but my guess is if he had the ball in his hands. That's my guess. He would not, I mean, he didn't have the ball on his hands. He wasn't trying to get his feet in. Yep. So I think, I watch it. And I'm like, wait, that throw was good.

It was timed well. He got surprised by the ball a little bit because he was coming up from being tackled. So, I mean, that was a play that you, I'm not saying you should have called that in that situation, but it obviously surprised him. He came out and said he should have made that play. Patriots and Titans, take away from that game. Hope he played Corey Davis in your DFS lineups for those nice. It's a nice catch. Yeah. Made me, I made a tradeoff for him in our dynasty league after seeing his involvement in the red zone.

Otherwise, I mean... Not much to take away. The Patriots are better than the Titans as... There you go. Everyone thought they would be. I mean, are there any major takeaways there? Just Dionne Lewis. Rex Burkhead may play next week. It'll be interesting to see what they do. James White is back. He loves the playoffs. He loves the playoffs. And Dionne Lewis was great as well. Jacksonville. Ho! Pittsburgh. So here's... I got a snake, man. I got a snake, man. That's the snake.

I mean, you're talking about. This is an anaconda now. An anaconda is about to swallow the world. If Blake Bortles, it can't happen, right? It can't happen. If Blake, the snake can be in the Super Bowl. I will just be so great to watch the world burn. Now, if everyone is not aware of the Blake Bortles facts, Twitter, it's on fire lately. I mean, you've got to give it a follow. It's so good. But Blake Bortles and more so the Jacksonville.