Fantasy Football - NFC East Breakdown + Late Round Picks - Podcast for 7/23

Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your hosts, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Ah, welcome in. Huh? What? You didn't like the start of it? No, what's going on? You got candy in your mouth? I think I had some candy in my mouth. Oh, you know what? Just click those Mike and Ikes around real quick. It's taken me 42 years, but I'm ready to admit the truth. Candy is delicious. Is there sugar in there?

I think so. Yeah. Yeah, they haven't really nailed the taking sugar out of candy and making it still taste good thing. They've got some versions of candy out there. I think they're okay. They give you some pretty hardcore farts. Oh, you're talking about the Malitol farts. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Jason knew, right? Sugar-free chocolate is a problem and should not be consumed. Sugar-free chocolate is... The only way they can do it is Malitol and you're going to just... You're going to ruin everybody else's... You're going to leak. It's just... It's not meant for human consumption. Gives you leaky butt. I found that the Sours...

There's a company that does them and they're okay. The texture is different. Like, you kind of know. Yes. You know they're trying to pull one over on you. But sometimes it works. It's necessary. Yeah. Welcome in to the Fantasy Footballers. Mike Wright, Jason Moore, Andy Holloway back with you. We've got a full production crew today. Inducers Allie, Al Borland, Papa Josh, and the Falcon in the building. For now. We'll keep an eye on him. You say he may fly the roost. You never know. We have an NFC East breakdown episode. Eagles, Cowboys, Commanders, Giants on today's episode. And I believe one more divisional breakdown show after this one?

Correct. Should be. Going over to the West. Yeah. The West only has three teams this year. Did you know that? I did know that, yeah. As a Cardinals fan, I am well aware. So that'll be the Saturday episode. And then we'll be through all the divisions. If you missed any of them, we're kind of breaking down the changes. For the teams, additions, subtractions, head coaching, offenses, expectations, players that are kind of, you know, not the obvious draft picks, but the more debatable upside, downside situations. So we'll get into the NFC East today. You can pick up the Ultimate Draft Kit at ultimatedraftkit.com or better yet.

You can and you should. Go to jointhefoot.com. Become an ultimate Foot Clan supporter of the podcast. And you will get everything. The UDK, the in-season tools, the lineup optimizer in the season, everything we have to offer. But what if we make new stuff? You'll get that too. Okay. Yeah. We're upgrading a lot of stuff with the mock draft tool. We know it's still beta. But we're working on Dynasty, getting that added in, and some other cool stuff. We've gotten all your suggestions and we appreciate them and we're going to keep working on it. A quick question of the day. I don't think we're going to do one today.

Oh, no, we do have one. Hey, Ballers. How much do you guys focus on strength of schedule when drafting? Tom in Ohio wants to know. So, I mean, in these divisional breakdowns, if you're paying attention, we always talk about the opening schedule for that team because that can matter. You know, there's players that you don't, you know, I don't give a crap what the schedule is. I don't care how hard you say it is. Every format can say this is the worst schedule imaginable. And there's still fantasy players that you will draft regardless. But there's some where. You're not moving off of Josh Allen because, oh, no, it's a tough defense.

But it's there. There's guys where it can be a tiebreaker. Sometimes you need you. You have a roster construction where, you know, in this round, like, I got to get a player that I know I'd be able to play for a month. Maybe this isn't a season long player, but throughout time through like the waivers, I'll be able to do it. It's fun to look at the playoff schedule and dream at and hope at this time of year. But it's still too early to be doing that. Yeah, there's so much turnover on the defensive side. And what I was going to say is I really pay attention to extreme matchups to start the year.

If I because I know Houston's defense is going to be really good. Sure. But but something middle of the pack or something that rated gets rated as a kind of a bad matchup based off of last year's numbers and stats and players. I'm not overemphasizing that. Like I'm looking for extremely easy matchups. Like I still know that Cincinnati and Dallas are not going to be they're not going to be top 10 defenses. So those are going to be juicy to start the year. But I'm not overemphasizing it myself. Yeah. And then the the only thing I would say that I specifically look at.

I mean, if I'm in my draft and I figure I'm going to end up streaming my quarterback. So I yeah, I missed out on, you know, the top studs and now I'm getting towards double digit round. You're not missing out on Josh Allen the last few months. I'll tell you that. No, no, I'm not. But should that happen, then I look at the schedule for those later round quarterbacks that I don't think I'm necessarily just playing for 17 games. I'm going to say, well, who's he playing week one, week two? And then certainly every single draft, the thing I probably care about the most when it comes to the defenses that I'm picking is what what are they getting off to?

You know, you know, if it's like, oh, do you want to play against the Lions in week one? Right. No. But like the Packers, the Packers start Minnesota, the Jets, the Falcons. They're good defense like that's I'm fine. There's this stuff because I need I need Micah. Sure. To be back. And I don't think he'll be there to open the season. All right. Let's talk news. News and notes from around the league. ESPN's Jeremy Fowler reports Lions tight end Sam Laporta with the herniated disc fully cleared for training camp. So the Laporta train keeps going. Keeps going. Hey. Incredible. Citing your source work over there, Andy.

Oh, yeah, yeah. It was ESPN's Jeremy Fowler that did that. Yeah. The Seahawks officially placed running back Zach Charbonnet on the pup. To be expected. He should start the season on the pup as well. The Dolphins place Chris Bell, their rookie wide receiver on the active NFI list, recovering from an ACL. Not completely unexpected at this point. Slightly disappointing. You know, you hope with the whole. We don't have any wide out situation they have. That as well as just this. The, you know, the year of the peptide advanced healing ahead of schedule. You know, you want him out there. But he tore his ACL pretty late.

So, you know, whether he's there week one is TBD. Albert Breer reporting the Buccaneers are prepared to dive in on negotiations with Baker Mayfield this week. That's good. Is there a team now unprepared to have negotiations with their quarterback? Well, I just want to know the difference between current status and diving in. Like, is this we've been in a big room. We're getting into a smaller room. Yeah. Wait. Are we in a pool legitimately? Yeah. I mean, are we feet in? Are we waist in? No, if you're diving in. You have nothing in? No, not yet. You're about to dive in.

Maybe you can help me with this. The NFL Network's Ian Rappaport says the Cardinals are in agreement that Jacoby Brissett, quote, deserves more money. This is a great news section today. I love this report. Yeah. We all agree he deserves more money. Yeah. No, we're not going to pay him more. Yeah. But, like, dude deserves it. He deserves the world. Oh, Jacoby Brissett is his own agent, which I find to be all the more humorous in my cartoonish mind. Jacoby's agent also agrees. Yes. He deserves more money. Yeah. All of them agree. Jacoby, his agent, the Cardinals. We just can't quite get there on what that represents.

I've never seen the self-agent thing work for the benefit of the player. I feel like we've heard about it working. I mean, if you're LeBron or something like. Lamar has been negotiating. Okay. Well, that's like if you are the most elite where you're basically going to get everything you ask for. Okay. But if you're not, you need an agent. I feel like it's. But the counterpoint would be if you're not, I don't need an agent coming in, putting hands in the pockets. Oh, you want the hands. 4%. You want to give the 10% away because that agent is going to get you more.

Well, both those teams ready to dive in. Just really haven't dove in yet. But they're getting there. There's a chance. Any day now. Let's get it going. Let's get divisional. The NFC East last year, Philadelphia won the division at 11 and six. It was the first time we've had back-to-back division champs in the NFC East since 03-04. That is wild. The other thing I've noticed when I look at all the recent winners, if I count it back from this past year, Eagles, Eagles, Cowboys, Eagles, Cowboys, Commanders, Eagles, and so on is that the Giants haven't appeared in that list since 2011.

Every other team has won the division at least three times since the last time the Giants won it 15 years ago. Which is wild because they're not winning it this year. Yeah. Well, not with that speech. Dude. Harbaugh. I see the New York Giants. It's the New York Giants. No, hold on. It's the New York Giants. If you haven't seen Harbaugh's incredible motivational speech. Yeah, it was. It was on John Gannon level. He did not have a script. Let's put it that way. Yeah. I wouldn't put it all the way to Gannon, but it was disappointing. It didn't work for me.

It was lame. It didn't do much. Yeah. Hopefully, there's been some better conversations. And I don't know Harbaugh. I don't know his tendencies. At that point, you just got to start cursing. You have no material, man. Oh, is that where you got to go? Just unleash it. What about pew, pew, pew? Pew, pew? Got a fire in your belly? I like what the Falcons saying. You know, Liam Cohen was cringed till the winds started flowing. Yeah. Well, but we know who Harbaugh is. Yeah. Yeah, he's kind of cringe. Let's start with Philly. Last year, projected win total, 11 and a half.

Eight and four and one score games. They have whatever the opposite. Ooh, just short. What do you mean? Well, the projection is. Oh, 11. Yeah. They have the opposite of the 49ers situation going on the last two years. They have been one of the healthiest teams in all of football. Well, we'll see if that continues. San Francisco should hire away some of those guys. Yeah. There is certainly a huge amount of luck built into health, but there has to be. Yeah. Better staffs. And like when you have a crap medical staff, or as in you look and your team is always getting

wrecked by injuries, you got to start looking around at other people doing. Yeah. The training. I don't even know if it's the medical staff versus the training staff and whatever you're doing. I mean, they're doing something wrong in San Francisco. There's just no way that you are always that injured. But yeah, it's nice that the Eagles were healthy. Obviously, that helps them get to the Super Bowl. And honestly, last year, despite their health, one of their big problems that we saw was whenever they were missing Lane Johnson, they looked like a different offense. Well, this year, they are projected for 10 and a half wins.

They have a new offensive coordinator, Sean Mannion. Again. Again, another new one. One of the interesting things about their offense, since it's always a part of the debate, back in 2024, they had 48 tush pushes. They converted 81% of those. Last year, 33 tush pushes. Pushes. Yeah. Whoa. They converted 64% of them. I almost made the joke. And oof. Just don't say it three times fast, Mike. Yeah, don't do it. Don't do it. Sixth in points per game in terms of their defense giving up. You know, they were an elite defense. We know that about them. But on the offensive side, it wasn't great.

24th in yards per game. 19th in points per game. That's how you end up with a new offensive coordinator. The problem that I have is that, generally speaking, your offense doesn't take a step forward when you're already older running back gets older and your best wide receiver leaves and you replace him with Hollywood Brown and Dontavian Wicks and... Yeah, Mekhi Lemon. Mekhi Lemon is certainly not A.J. Brown today. Maybe he can get there tomorrow. But I do have my concerns about the trajectory of the offense and whether we're going to see... Like, we've gotten the whole experience with Philadelphia. We've gotten...

Offensive coordinator comes in. They stink. We have offensive coordinator comes in. Kellen Moore. They're awesome. We now have another one coming in. It's just a team that's quick to turn on somebody. It's really... Well, it's not always turning on somebody. Sometimes it's success and sometimes it's failure. It's been pretty much every other year. They went to the Super Bowl. Shane Steichen was great. Ended up going to Brian Johnson. He sucked. They were like, ah, that didn't work. So then they've got to replace him. They bring in Kellen Moore. That was great. He did so well that he gets a head coaching job.

Then Kevin Petulo comes in. He sucked. And he was terrible. One of the worst offenses imaginable to watch. And you can blame Jalen Hurts and say... Some people did. Some people said, well, Petulo's got to dumb down the offense because Jalen Hurts can't read defenses. Blah, blah, blah. We're not inside the building. I have no idea if that's true or not. But I know that we've seen Jalen Hurts run a good offense. We've seen him go out there and rush for 600 and throw for 3,800. So he can do it. Now you're making another change. You're going to Sean Mannion.

And so, yeah. Running back older. No A.J. Brown. Those are negatives. But I do think that the shift of the offense is massively important. It's a huge upgrade. Because what we saw from the system last year was so bland, vanilla, boring. Well, let me say a couple things. One thing we did learn was that they couldn't fix it even when they tried last year. It wasn't like they didn't know something was wrong in week 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. They couldn't get it right. The other thing I want to bring up, and this is a fair question. Like, we've seen this many, many times.

Some players have very special seasons. You go back to 2022. Jalen Hurts, in our consistency metrics, 53% great games. 80% good. 7% bust. Last year, the worst in all three metrics for him, 13% great games. That's a humongous difference on what you're getting week to week. And just 44% good games. He busted 31% of the time. I know we can point to lots of different things. But at least, like, the range of outcomes is there for Jalen Hurts. You could have a resurgent year. Devontae Smith, Makai Lemon, Dallas Goddard, Saquon can run the ball. The offensive line stays healthy. But you can also get this.

And so, I think it is one of those things where fantasy managers are having a hard time knowing whether they should reward the past in their draft spot for Jalen Hurts now. I think they should. Obviously, I've been a Jalen Hurts apologist for many years. Sometimes it's been great. It's never really been bad. It's not like he crushed you last year. But it was very disappointing. And the change, though, to me, obviously, lose A.J. Brown, that's not helpful to the offense. However, I think when they spread the ball around and not having to force it one direction is good. But also, on the goal line, I mean, the tush push has been magical for them over the last several years.

It's not in the news anymore, meaning it's not coming up. It's not being voted on this year. It will be back. If you look at just tush pushes over the last couple of years, there were opportunities that just didn't come this last year. And that's, you know, you had 13 attempts two years ago, 15 attempts the season prior. And then this last year, only eight attempts at the goal. They just found themselves on the goal line. And that's been his secret sauce for fantasy. He hasn't, since his sophomore year, has been double-digit touchdowns every year, 15 touchdowns, 14 rushing touchdowns.

Last year, it was eight. It's just many fewer attempts at the tush push on the goal line. Those are things that I don't think are... I mean, he only had 421 rushing yards, which is, you know, outside of the touchdown argument, you're talking about a pretty big downgrade for him. He's gone from 7, 84, 7, 60, 60, 5, 6, 30, 4, 21. You're going to have to have the rushing touchdowns go up. He is not, you know, he's going to be 28. I think that you, the years of having, you know, 700-plus rushing yards, those are gone. Did you mean passing touchdowns going up, or were you saying rushing touchdowns?

Rushing touchdowns. Oh, okay. Because rushing touchdowns the last couple years, he's been at 14, 15, and then this last year drops to eight. That's a massive amount of fantasy points when you're talking about losing seven rushing touchdowns. I wasn't sure if you were saying he needs to become more prolific as a touchdown. Thrower because his rushing yardage is diminishing. No, I mean, I think those are different things. The rushing yardage will be going down, but I don't think the rushing touchdown totals will necessarily be going down because of the tush push. When they get to the one-yard line, that's not like upping his rushing yardage.

Oh, but they're less successful at it now. They're slightly, but it's still the most successful play in football. So, you know, it's like, did they fail like once or twice more percentage-wise than they had the year prior? Yeah, but they're absolutely still going to call that play. Points per game, Hurts was still the QB7. So, I mean, he finishes at 10, but he didn't play the last week. I think there's a lot more risk to Jalen Hurts now than there ever has been before. Oh, see, I feel like the risk earlier— Because AJ Brown gave him a guaranteed passing game ceiling that I don't think he can necessarily meet.