Wildcard Players! Breakout or Bust? - Fantasy Football Podcast for 5/28

Oh, it's good to be back. We have an awesome show today. We're talking about the fantasy wild cards, those guys that can be great or could be busts, and we're going to debate them on today's episode. Don't miss a minute and make sure you subscribe. To the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. The Fantasy Footballers Podcast, Tuesday, May 28th.

Mike Wright, Jason Moore, Andy Holloway. Good morning afternoon, good evening, everyone. Hope you had a tremendous Memorial Day. Yeah, that's a fun holiday. Yeah. Jason, how are you doing? Welcome back. It's good to be back. The boys are back in town and we're all together. I'm excited. Are you burgers or dogs on Memorial Day? What's the... Nice try. Not today, Satan. I'm both. Okay, okay. I was going to say you can't say boat. Well, I can't pick one. If I have to pick. Yeah. Oh, man. Burgers. This is the hardest decision you've ever made. It brings me joy like how much Jason loves hot dogs. I love them. Why do you loan so much? I'm good hot dogs, they're great. They're so good. Now, a good hot dog. A good hot dog is, is real. I mean, you can get crappy, you know, Circle K dogs. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about like a nice.

you know, big jumbo dog with a good crust on it. Are you a ballpark man? What are we talking about? Probably go Hebrew national. Okay. All right. I mean, you know, I don't want to exclude any of the brands here. Okay. All are welcome to sponsor. I'm a hot dog manga. Glad to have you back. Yeah. We are talking fantasy wildcars today. NFL news. It's a mailbag if we have time. And, um, yeah. Long weekend. Glad to be with you. Four days. Four days until the ultimate draft kit is here. Four days and counting. That was your contribution. Yeah, it was. Letting us know that time moves. Yeah. Did you not know that? No, I, I got to be, you got to count it. Yeah, that's his point. Yeah, no. So the ultimate draft kit on Saturday this, this year. So make your plans, you know. Take care of those.

Things you got to do on Friday. Yes. And then spend the weekend with the UDK. That's what I would do. Ultimate DraftKit.com. Four days left to get the pre-order pricing over there. You can follow us over on X at the FF Ballers at Andy Holloway at Jason FFL at FF Hitman. And no quick question today. We're going to jump right into the news. News and notes from around the league. Took care of all the quick question material with the hot dog debate from earlier. It wasn't a debate. Okay. I have a weird relationship with hot dogs. A lot of people do. Okay. Let's unfold here, man. There's a lot to dig into. I mean, there's really not that much. I just feel like the percentage of times that I have for whatever reason. And I don't know what's, I don't know what's in a hot dog. I'll be honest. No one does. No one does.

For some reason, the handful of times of my life that I have had to give my food back to the world. Ah. Where I've had to vomit. Oh, we're talking up to top. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I know you get back. My food returns to the earth every time. I know you give your food back the other direction, Jay. But listen, I'm just saying like of the percentage of times I've vomited in my life, there's a high percentage of them that have been hot dogs for some reason. For some, we can't figure out why. Look, there's a reason they say you don't want to know how the sausage is made. We're all trying to figure out who did this. This is not a surprise. No, it's not a surprise. Have you thrown up some hot dogs? I'm sure I have. I've had a lot of hot dogs. You know, but sometimes it's no pain, no gain. It's funny because it colors my perception of what I would choose. Like, I actually love hot dogs. I just don't eat them anymore because I don't want to throw up. It's fair. That's fair.

And I think part of it is like they do the movie theater hot dogs. That was one of them. Yeah, that's not. You don't want to do that move. I had a Disneyland hot dog situation once. Oh. Hot dogs? I don't know, man. Of course. Yeah. Well, they have the giant corn dogs. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Don't click the two. He's like, I know everywhere. Hot dogs are. And I will never. The Disneyland corn dogs are. They're fantastic, but that's not a hot dog. Anyways. I was a small child. I don't know if they sold Disney dogs back then or something. I must not have, you've got a bad memory. Doug Peterson said during OTAs, by the way, this is the random news part of the year where we can talk about whether you even care about some of these things. But he said once again, Doug Peterson did his offseason OTA discussion about leaning on Travis E.T.N. last during the 2024 campaign in order to keep him healthy. Mm-hmm.

They want to make sure Tank Biggsby gets opportunities to go out there and take some of the pounding off of Travis, which last year, 340 opportunities for Travis ETN, third most among all running backs. Bigsby had 50. 50 total carries had the lowest rush success rate among all running backs. And what's crazy is his reception success rate was, that's not something that's like measured, but it's worse because his targets turned into just, What do you call it when you're in volleyball? You bump, then you set. Bump set spike? Yeah, he did the setting on all of his targets. And the spikes were interceptions. That's correct. Yes. No, it was a really disappointing year for Tang Biggsby. So my first reaction to this is most teams want this for their offense. Most teams want the Rams. They don't want Kyran to have the workload he had last year. If you're not Christian McCaffrey, every other team wants.

balance so that you're running back is fresh and they are more efficient and they don't get hurt. But Tank Bigsby was the worst running back in football last year. He sucked. By that measure. And when push comes to shove, I just don't have a lot of fear of ETN being underutilized to the point of not being a top tier guy. This is just things that get said and they get said every year and you're 100% right. Of course they want to give him fewer carries. It's wise to do that. push comes to shove eventually and you've got to have your best players on the field. So it's really a matter of can't tank Bigsby take a step forward and develop as a player because who's a good college prospect? I liked his tape. And then, day two pick has the capital. And I'm sure they want him to spell E.T and more. But also, don't be afraid of those things because we've seen it so many times, so many times where high volume can.

just turn into less efficiency. Lower volume, you know, you see the very efficient lower volume players and you think, oh, if they get the chance to be high volume, they'll just crush. And then they get the chance, Tony Pollard. And it's like, you know, Lamar Miller, it doesn't always work that way. So if they take some away from ETN next year, that doesn't mean that his fantasy production is going away. Yeah, I am on the side of, like, It's all, it is. It's all up to tank. Can he be good enough to get on the field? We had Doug Peterson up in Philadelphia, and there was not workhorse usage. I'm trying to quickly go back through everything here. It looks like, so Miles Sanders year, he had 179 carries. That seems to be the highest I can find. I remember having debates back then.

Of the Doug Peterson backfield. Yes. And whether we felt like there were players that were even capable of being the workhorse. You know, it's a chicken or egg thing to a degree. Sure. But it's like five years in Philadelphia didn't have an ETN type of output from the browning back position. And I don't know. 267 carries last year, 340 opportunities was what. I do believe. You mean ETN? I'm sorry, yes. I do believe that this isn't just talking about. Like, they really want to do this. They really will try to do it. Can they? That's the question. But I think they will try to do it. I think if they wanted to do it, they would have signed a running back. That's my opinion. Yeah, I agree. No, they are hoping that Tank Biggsby develops and is better this year. If that doesn't happen, then it's same old, same old.

Testing on Christian Watson's hamstrings revealed an asymmetrical stride. Never want that. That was the cause of his persistent hamstring injuries. You want it symmetrical. Yeah. Okay. Been hurt a lot. A lot of soft tissue issues went to a specialist. Well, that's the hope here. The hope is they were trying to figure out. Why do you outrun your hamstrings? Why do you do that all the time? And then, you know, they found the... The asymmetrical- There's a pebble in one of the shoes. This happened to, was Alvin Camara? Someone a couple years ago had this going on and they were able to- Did it work? Fix the process. To fix the stride? Yeah. How do you learn to run? It's basically, it's not, it's not your, you're changing your stride. It's a muscle imbalance between your right and your left leg that are, that's, the discrepancy is too large. So I think it's a matter of working out, you know, you don't want to be JK1 leg, you want to be JK2 legs. And so.

Hopefully, this is, I don't know, maybe it's nonsense, but I mean, this is scientific, you know, doctoring towards. Wait, wait, what? Yeah, doctoring. What? You know when a doctor does stuff. Sounds like you're doctoring the whole message. Doctering is usually for like fraudulent. Yeah. Just. Okay, that's that's fair. You want to start it over? This is. actionable work being taken towards hopefully a healthy season. Because Christian Watson's biggest knock has obviously been his ability to stay on the field. Matthew Betts came out and he just reminds us that the number one predictor of future hamstring injury is past hamstring injury. And he's a fan of him working on this, but he's still a greater risk compared to other players. Yeah, greater risk. But Jason's overall point thing is something is being done. It's not a, well, we hope that it won't happen again.

Give him a little rest. No, they're doctoring this thing up, you know. Did you find an old quote there, Al? Yeah, about Camara having some muscle asymmetry in his legs that he worked with a new trainer to get fixed. You were correct, Jay. Well, sort of. You're saying it didn't work. Yeah, I mean, that's the part where it's like the tweet from Nick Underhill last off season was that he didn't have all of his burst the year before. Got with a new trainer, fixed the asymmetry. Oh, wait, this was last year? Yeah. Oh, it didn't work. No, it didn't. It slowed him down. The reason he was so fast is because one of his legs was lighter. All they did is they didn't beef up the other leg. They just brought the one muscle smaller. It's so much easier to just go. They atrophied one of the legs down. Lowest common denominator. You got to. Well, this was August 6th last year, Nick Underhill. He looks more explosive and the Saints have the data to prove it.

Well, you know. Okay. So there you go. D'Amico Ryan's. I want your reaction. Texans head coach D'emico Ryan says he thinks of Joe Mixing and Damian Pierce is a one-two punch. He has praised Pierce's work ethic this offseason, changed his body, has everything it takes to be a really good back. He's 24 years old. Mixing is 27 going on 28. This one's harder to believe in. Well, we've seen Pierce be great. We didn't see that with Biggsby before. You know what I mean? When you talk about the desire to have a one-two punch, Pierce was like visibly incredible for his entire rookie season. That is fair. And last year was. And then last year, don't watch. It was atrocious. Don't watch. But he was hurt. I mean, he missed time in the beginning of the year. So maybe things got away from maybe he went a little, what was Josh Jacobs again, Fat Thor? Maybe. And they said he changed his body. I'm not, I'm not predicting anything special for Damien Pierce.

But Joe Mixon is an older running back. Older running backs deal with injuries. And Damian Pierce is younger running back. So to hear, I always thought DiMico Ryan's really like Damien Pierce. And I think it really hurt to have him take him off the field last year. This one, though, like if this one happens where, let me back up, if Travis Etienne's workload does go down, he will still be great for fantasy football. If Joe Mixen finds himself in a full-time share, he will be bad for fantasy football. Yeah, I agree completely. The hard part is this one seems a harder pill for me to swallow because last year, you know, it was the first year with DeMico Ryan's with Damien Pierce and they tried to use him in the beginning. And then they're like, you're not fit in the system. It doesn't work well. You know, and that's not true. That's not what happened. Well, at the end of the year. They started to try to use him. He got hurt. He missed a bunch of time. Singletary proved himself. And you're right. At that point.

They had made the choice. But it wasn't like it was a performance-only situation. I mean, he sucked. Up until the- No, I know. I mean, until the injury, he was at three yards. He was forced Singletary into onto the bench is all I'm saying. So seven games and your average over that time is three yards an attempt. Yeah, he was, he was an abomination on the field. He was really, really, really bad. And that's averaging 15 carries a game. And then once he came back and was healthy, he was basically not used. I think he was trash. He was trash.

I agree with that. I mean, and like you said, it was the first time we've seen what he's doing there. And yet they didn't bring Singletary back, obviously. And they went out and they traded for mixing. They signed them to a new extension. The actions of the team are what make me think of this as more coach speak. You're going to talk up your players. Oh, it's a great one-two punch. Damien's in the best shape of his life. Nonsense. I mean, maybe it's true, but it's not. It's weird. Damien Pierce is weird because. Year one was different than year two in a very, very big way. Yes. New system, though. I mean, we talked about the line, right? The line was terrible, but Singletary succeeded over the back half of the year. It's just weird. Last year, I mean, he was one of the biggest misses. Yeah. He was a 4.3 of carry as a rookie on 220 attempts. Yeah. That's crazy. And then last year was like, I mean, he's like, Tang Bigsby for the roster. Lamar Jackson dropped the weight.

in an effort to become more agile. Ooh. Okay. As did Tua. Yeah. Oh. Hmm. What? I don't know. I feel like Tua is. You want him to bulk up? Yeah. I mean, you know, when I... You want to be doing neck exercises. Yeah. Oh, for sure. For sure. Neck exercises. I mean, Tua still scares me from... I didn't want to say it. And you took it. You took the bait. Boston. Hey, bro, you think I didn't think of that immediately? I bet if you check the tape, you can hear like a hitch in my giddyup as I'm saying neck exercises. Yeah, like, oh, that'd be too dumb to put those together. I said I tried to say quietly while you were talking to. Exercises. 40 now. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I still worry a little bit about the big injury risk of Tua.

You know, I mean, he's an injury risk for Lamar to lose weight. Yeah, I'm just saying we've seen like the scare on the field of Tua from the concussions of the head injuries where it's like, I don't know. I want him to bulk up, be strong, be big. I mean, we've seen it with Lamar Jackson. We've seen injuries. Yeah. So it's like, is there any concern with like, are you excited or not excited about the news? He played 12 games in 2021, 12 games in 2022. 16 last year. I don't care. I don't care. All right. That's part of the offseason figuring out what you don't care about. Source. Okay. Just one note for Lamar, he needs 851 rushing yards to break the career QB rushing. That's not the note I'm looking at. You see the, you see the, no. You see the source for the final bit of news here? Somebody put something out. Oh, yes. Reports from camp are that the fantasy footballers could.

also drop weight this summer. Oh, man. It's a big. It's in the range of outcomes. The word could is doing some real heavy lifting in that sentence. It's like a wild card. This is the wild card episode. And listen, the opportunity is there. I mean, we've got great opportunity. We have, we have weight to lose. Yes. There's always opportunity to lose it. But most likely, you know, we've got, we've got a decade of history to fall back on here and make our bets. Are you a better podcaster if you cut weight in the all season, more agile with your words? I don't think so, man. You get that big boy voice. You know what I mean? Bulk up. Get that neck thick. We've talked about the fact, Jason, that your voice has changed over the years. Yeah, I've changed. So do you want me to be better for audio or better for video? Which one? Just tell me what you want. Video or audio?

You don't want me to say video? No, I don't. I want you to say audio. That is not a joke at all. We just heard one of the early episodes of the show, and Jason's voice, Jason's voice was noticeably higher. Yes. Yeah, and then I started bulk season for a decade and listen to this. And you got a man voice. Yeah, I did. Yeah, I do. You can't lose weight. No, no chance, man. I had Poli for lunch. Don't you worry about it. Oh my gosh. I wouldn't. I hadn't connected those. I know. Just wait to see how low I can get my voice, guys. I'm going to be Barry White by the time we retire. All right, we're going to take a break. Come back with some wild card players. All right, let's jump in. No, I'm saying the brakes working. Wild card.

Yeah. We have selected two players each that are tough to rank, wide range of outcomes, players that we could see making a really big impact positively or negatively in fantasy football, depending on how things go. So I'm going to begin with George Pickens of the Pittsburgh Steelers. I like it. I love it. Okay. I want some more of it. Just saying, I've, I, your emotions are better. I am, no, I'm very in on Pickens right now. George Pickens is, uh, well, it's very interesting because there's hype around several of the other year three players, right? Chris Oliva, Garrett Wilson. Yeah. And, um, well, let's do this. Oh my. Because I want the world to awaken a little bit.

to George Pickens. And so we'll do the... Wait, so you're thinking, are you more bullish? We're going to find out, man. Okay, we're going to find out, because I am more bearish, so... Yeah, I... This is a perfect wild card, because I could see both, but I convinced me here. Play a game. Well, look, through two years, let's look at George Pickens and Chris Olav. And those other guys? Chris Lave, specifically. Oh, man. So... So, this, this game is Pickens versus Olav. Yeah. This... brought Kyle so much pain. I, you know, I think that Kyle and Betsy are pretty in on George Biggins. Okay. All right. Let's go. All right. Let's go receptions. More. Who has more? Yeah. Who's got more? Olave. Yeah. Yeah, by a lot. Chris Olaven. Yeah, he's 159 to 115. Yards per reception. Oh, we're going per numbers. I'm going to switch over.

No, we're going all over the place. Okay, I'll go pickens. Pickens is at 16.9. OLAV is at 13.6. Yeah. Total receiving yards. 16.9 times 115. Oh, yeah, you could do that, couldn't you? How was it? I'm going to say O'Lave. It's very close. O'Lave hasn't beat. 2165 to 1941. Receiving touchdowns over two years. Oh, man. That might be. Yeah, I'm going to go pickens. They're tied at nine. Oh, top 12 weeks. Pickens. Pickens. Pickens. Seven. Olave, five. 20 plus yard receptions at the NFL level. Pickens. Yeah. 27 for Pickens. 15 for O'Ale. So those numbers are... My game was easy. They're fairly close. Did you get 100? I got 100. They're fairly close. And here's the biggest change that you saw in George Pickens game. In 2022, his rookie season, you were like, this is a deep...

play guy and you were kind of right 35% of his routes were deep routes and he was making big plays down the field and that's kind of what you thought of him as a jump ball type of player last year it was a big difference he had 39% of his routes were intermediate routes and another 36% were short routes so you're talking about 80% of his routes were shorter intermediate he had 21% deep routes So this was not the same player that you saw as a rookie. In fact, he had one more intermediate route. This is crazy to me in 2023 than Garrett Wilson had. And you think about what Garrett Wilson was running in that offense. Yeah, sorry, intermediate reception, yes. So he had improved across the board in terms of the types of routes he can run. You lose Deontay Johnson. He's a go-to. And the team, you know, it says something to me.

that the team was willing to go in with what we view as a thin wide receiver room. I mean, you pick up Roman Wilson a rookie. You don't bring him in to depend on him on day one. And then Pat Fremuth has dealt with injuries. He's going to be a part of the, like this is Pickens' wide receiver room. Yeah, we got what Van Jefferson, currently the other projected starter. This is Pickens' wide receiver rooms. Yeah, I mean, and to put up numbers that you look at what a lave, there's a lot of expectation last year and then this year for a lave to break out.

Do you guys love Derek Carr? No. No. Okay. So, like, it's not like the quarterback is the fundamental reason we're in love with Chris Oliva. It's the talent. And we don't love Russell Wilson. But he's an upgrade on what they had last year. And George Pickens had his moments and ran a lot more rounds. And so I think it's very interesting when you look at this season. I mean, he's the wide receiver 26. He was very inconsistent. with no quarterback play. But I think he could take a step forward this year, and the value you're going to get on Pickens, it's a lot better than what you would get on OLAV. He had 1140 yards, which I think would surprise a lot of people. The issue here is you still kind of expect inconsistency if for no other reason than Russell Wilson. This is not a quarterback, you know, solution. This is hopefully an upgrade, but.

We're certainly not even sure about that. We had success with Cortland Sutton last year with Russell Wilson. Not really. I mean, I know what you're saying. He had 10 touchdowns, which is, I mean, that's a massive number. But Sutton, where did he finish with 10 touchdowns? Was he even a top 24? I don't think so. 35. He was a wide receiver 35. Yeah, we'll see what it's like without Deontay Johnson. My point isn't to necessarily argue for George Pickens, but bring up. both sides of the equation. I mean, obviously the Wilson coming in, dependency on Pickens is going to be interesting. How run heavy will they be with Arthur Smith? They should be in two wide receiver sets more often, which is something that Pickens has been good at. But, you know, we've only seen him play, I think, four games without Deontay Johnson. He was great, but we'll find out this year. I think Pickens is a huge gamble with really high upside for fantasy players.

No, and I like it. Where he's going in drafts right now is, like, I think it's, you're in a sweet spot for risk reward where. Where's he going right now? So you have it up? Sixth round. Yeah, it looks like. Let me see if I can pull it up here. On sleeper going about the middle of the fifth and underdog towards the back of the ninth. But I mean, so. No, back of the fourth. Or fourth, yeah, 409. Which speaks to his perception. And it's like, big play. He's right around, you know. Zay Flowers, T. Higgins, Omari Cooper, Keenan Allen, Christian Kirk. There's some safer players there, but they're not going to, I don't think they have the same ceiling as Pickens this year. Cooper's the only one that you named is that's the primary target, right? Of those other names? Well, yeah. Like Pickens should be the one. Flowers is the wide receiver one, but it may not be the number one target. Right. You would look at Andrews. Andrews, yeah.

All right. I'm going to hop in here with a player that it terrifies me. Wild car. It says wild car. It terrifies me to be wrong because I can, I'm pretty out, but I can easily see the clear cut path for the most glorious fantasy season. So I'm going to talk about both sides of the coin of Josh Jacobs. New running back for the Green Bay Packers, he has, you know, he has to be great. Because you're taking him as an RB1 right now. He can't just be good. He needs to be great. Here's the pros. The Green Bay offense is the biggest pro overall. They're sixth in yards per play, eighth in points per game, second in red zone plays per game. And that's really, really, really where Josh Jacobs could thrive. Because last year, the Packers, they had four total rushing touchdowns on 368 total attempts.