Fantasy Football - The TRUTH: RBs Part 2 + Playoff Reactions, Tough Guys - Podcast for 1/27

to the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Oh, welcome in the fantasy footballers podcast. Back again Tuesday, January 27th. Welcome into the show. More truth to talk about. More snow to talk about. Oh, yeah. And we have a pair of teams now destined.

for the Super Bowl in San Francisco. Drake May and the Patriots. Goodness. Doesn't really feel like they were down long enough. And they're back on top. The Patriots headed to the Super Bowl. And the Seattle Seahawks, Sam Darnold got it done. Just like everybody had at the beginning of the season. I don't know if you saw the thing circling this morning. There's a graphic from before the season. where every quarterback from every team was walking towards the giant Super Bowl trophy. It was an artistic rendit, you know, a rendition. And the two quarterbacks closest to the Super Bowl at the very front of this graphic in September, Drake May and Sam Darnold standing next to each other. What's ironic about that is you see that and you see it as like, oh, they were the closest. But really from the...

from the photograph they were the furthest from like my homes was in the foreground and all the four but the borough to the trophy sure sure but i'm just saying like when they made it they're like just throw the we should you look at everyone else around them it's like oh it's the jets it's like all the big they were minimized you know it was the closest you know the super bowl champ right this year and they're way over there teensy taincy yeah i mean they um we should have seen the whole pope narrative coming right i mean this is the third time

That when there's a new pope, the Seahawks go to the Super Bowl. And Minnesota officially made the wrong decision. They officially made the wrong decision. And everyone's, you know, the great meme, the great nine meme in the locker room. This is what you're stuck with now. And Sam Darnold, you know, earn everybody's respect. Yeah. Because when the pressure was on, I mean, last year in the playoffs, he didn't produce. He had a terrible game. This year. The opposite. Yeah, he just had one of the highest pass ratings ever in a conference championship game. Has played very well, looks the part. And he's doing this through an injury. So he's toughing it out as well. And now is the first quarterback to make a Super Bowl from his draft class that included Josh Allen and Lamar and Baker and Josh Rosen. Josh Rosen, yeah. No, it's an incredible accomplishment. We'll talk about those games momentarily, but first.

We didn't actually have the chance to make this announcement on the show yet, but I promise this will be the only time we talk about it because they're almost gone already. We had talked to the Foot Clan. We had told them we were working on some special fantasy footballers trading cards. We worked with Leaf to manufacture them and we released them on Thursday. So I think after we had recorded the main show... Some dark day. Some dark... Well, we'll talk about that. We'll talk about that. Jason's in... He's having major physical troubles because of these. But we released 1,000 limited edition sets that include... They're all hand-signed autographs. They're pretty cool cards. We had talked about doing this for a while. We released 1,000 of them on Thursday. As of this moment of this recording, which is Monday...

There are 368 sets remaining of the thousand. So this will be the only time we mention it. Every set comes with all four cards. One of them will be a limited edition gold numbered version of the card. So if you want to be on the hunt for the... Yeah, we're all waiting for it. For the... I want to know who gets the number 55. out of 249 Golden Triple Auto. That's what I want to know. There can be only one. We didn't pull it. It's out there at random. We did pull it for a minute. We were like, oh, we got to hold on to that, right? We wanted to see it. And then we're like, this is not fair. Somebody has to be able to get this. But just go to shopballers.com if you want to get on on that. Or alternatively, if you want to do me a favor and not buy them. Because.

I am sick of signing these. Have we not had this conversation? No, I don't think so. Mike, I could sign a million things a day and it would just be pleasant to me. Mike, how about you? I wouldn't call it pleasant, but it's not a problem. Like a smooth, cathartic. I think I just get in the group signing stuff. My signature is awesome. You know, your guys are just squiggles. And mine takes a while, takes energy and effort. Yeah. It's a project. Takes muscles in the hand. Yeah, you. You are the one that's behind the most. And you're the one that takes the longest to sign anything. I'm coming in an early stand. And I didn't know this was going to be a real roadblock for us. But you're the bottleneck. You're a weird ambidextrous. Right. My strong hand is my right hand. That's okay. Problem solved. But I write and eat with my left. Problem solved. You're your sweet hand. Yeah, it is. It's not your strong hand. Like the hand of the arm that's getting all the.

It's not our fault though. A man who understands that that your weekend doesn't have like a Massimo autograph that takes 50 years. I'm building up strength. I've got the little grips I'm using at night. It's good. It says Jason Randall Moore, the host of the show, number 11. Yeah. No, he's he's working hard for it. I'm ahead of mic right now. That is true. I don't know if you were aware of that. I was not. He worked his way ahead all day long today. Shotballers.com, the final 368 sets available over there, and then they'll be gone. And Jason, you won't have to sign anymore. Thanks. Let's talk about those games. New England, 10. Denver 7. Denver scored seven points on the second drive of the game. Great pass by Stidham. Seemed like they were on their way. Great drive. Yes.

had some third down conversions on that drive ends up that's all the points you get that's all the points they scored they did not score again i kind of give the the new england touchdown to stidham okay because well actually if they didn't blow the whistle definitely would have been directly a defensive touchdown and it was an incredibly boneheaded play of you're like oh after the second drive where it looked like hey j stiddy He's looking cool, composed. And then you have the turnover players where it was, this is a man who has not taken enough reps during the season for this moment, clutches, keeps backing up, keeps backing up. Infinite backup. And instead of just taking either, the easy thing, just curl up, just get hit. Yeah. It's fine. Put the ball away. Your defense is great. Yeah. The Patriots to that point have done nothing offensively. I don't even know if they had crossed the halfway point before that fumble happened. He also could have just thrown it away.

12 times. Yes. But I'm saying once you, he chose to pump and double clutch it because he wanted to extend the play. After that, you just, no, you got to eat it, but he unfortunately made a terrible decision. And that was a game. It does. It does. Yeah, because winter, winter descended in the second half of that game. It really seems like, you know, I know that the Broncos and we talked about it before the weekend, like Bo Nix. Right. wasn't really the star of the Broncos. The defense is the star of the Broncos, and they should be able to get it done. But it does seem like with how close this game was, the poor weather conditions, the great defenses. If Bonix was there, they probably win. I think so too. And I think, you know, in the moment, I didn't like the decision to go forward on fourth down when you're up seven points, when you have a chance to put points on the board with that defense at home, with that crowd, but hindsight's 2020.

How big is Stittem? I'm looking this up. I believe. He's 6.3215. You needed a yard. Just QB sneak it. That's plenty big for a yard. I hate. I was team go for it. I thought the play call was where you're booting him out. It's a cut the field in half. I hate that. I hate that on fourth down. Yeah, and they never got on the board again. The game turned into a snowball in the second half. It was crazy to see the time lapse from the first and second quarter to the. where we were in the fourth quarter. Drake May had another fresh snow dome battle on our hands this morning. Drake May going to the Super Bowl with 86 yards, baby. Shing yards. That's fine. It's fine. It's football. It is. It's football. We have a difference of opinion on the snow game. I mean, some people like it. Some people don't. It seems about 50, 50. 47% of his passes.

yeah completed for 86 yards sometimes you win i'm dirty sometimes you you don't i mean one of these teams was going to win with bad numbers that's what was going to happen in this game uh new england headed back to the super bowl um you know it seems like anybody that is a fan of any team that wins doesn't want to be criticized in any way new england uh they haven't won a lot of games against good opponents but they got they're beating good defenses and they're in the super bowl they're beating good defenses yeah i mean But I don't, I mean, I would say that they're very fairly the underdog of the Super Bowl. Yes, that is fine. I mean, I think that they're, they're four and a half points. The Seahawks are a more complete team. Yes. Vrable's a great coach. He will have a game plan. They will not go in there and get, I don't think they're going to get completely boat race, but it's a repeat, right? We saw Seattle have a Super Bowl stolen from them by New England at the end on an interception. They get to repeat it in a couple of weeks. Seattle with a complete performance to stay ahead of.

Los Angeles, 3127, not in the snow. Both quarterbacks played well. Really just came down to a couple of plays in this game. A fourth down stop around the goal line for the Rams chance to go ahead. I was shocked that they didn't pull it off, to be honest when they were down there, but the Seattle defense is outstanding. Four and a half point favorites in the Super Bowl, Seattle. It's good. For as much fun as it would be to have Jarrett Stidham. going to the Super Bowl. This is, of the options, this is the game I think that it's the game I wanted. So is Buffalo still, is Buffalo still in it or? No, no, they lost. Okay. Yeah, I don't think they're allowed to win Super Bowls. So they just bowed out early. Yeah. This should be fun. We got some coaching news. The Ravens hired Jesse Minter. We didn't get to talk about that on this show. No, I guess. I don't think so. The new head coach of the.

Ravens, former Chargers DC, Jesse Minter. Okay. Yep. Okay. Steelers hired Mike McCarthy. Oh, man. Oh, this is so good. She's a Pittsburgh guy. He's a Pittsburgh guy. He's a Pittsburgh guy. Oh, yeah. It's so funny. I know it's been making the rounds on X, but if you, if you look at Mike Tomlin and Mike McCarthy and John Harbaugh, um, They all are basically identical when it comes to their age, their seasons played, their win percentage, their times winning a division, their playoff appearances, their Super Bowls, they've all got one. And Mike McCarthy is universally laughed at. And the other guys are like, these are great coaches. Yeah, I'm probably, he's on his third job. I'm embarrassingly not as anti-McCarthy in general.

I don't think I am. I thought he did a good job in Dallas. I do. His offense was great. I mean, that was, you know. I thought he did a good job. He doesn't control Jerry Jones. Nobody, there are certain organizations where, I mean, we just talked about this with Cleveland. Cleveland, you made an amazing point because we were saying nobody wants to go to Cleveland and take this job now, right? So nobody wants to go there. But they had Kevin Stefansky. But if Kevin Stefansky was on the open market and hadn't been their coach, he would pass on an interview. Right.

And they have the guy. He would not even, he would not even. That's a funny thought experiment. Yeah. He'd be like, I wouldn't go there. He's like, no, I, there's been in some withdrawals of interviews. Like, do they have regrets right now? Like, ah, shoot. I mean, nobody wants to. They don't care. As a Cardinals fan. The clowns running that show don't care. It feels really great to have Cleveland exist. It's helpful for us. Yeah, it's, it's like, all the coaches aren't bowing out of our job only. They're also bowing out of the Cleveland job. That feels good. So Mike McCarthy takes over in Pittsburgh. Sure. There you go. Maybe that means that Rogers will come back and play one more year under his former coach. I don't know. I thought they left on such bad terms back in Green Bay. I know, Andy, you were saying that it was reported that this makes more likely that they come back, but I don't remember. I think familiarity. Like, I don't think Rogers wants to go.

and deal with one more year for a head coach that's just like a random. Right. I think, I think, so whatever that means, I don't know if they want him back. They shouldn't. He's not a pro baller like Shadour. I mean, you're just. Oh, man. Oh, Shedur Sanders. What is the Pro Bowl, man? The Pro Bowl is E, D. I mean, this is flag football now, right? Which, that's fine. No, no, I'm not. It's just. I'm saying it's fine. Do whatever because we, no one, no one really cares. I was hoping I would care about the flag football, but I still don't, I don't watch. It's just what is dead is other than contractually, because these guys put it in their contract of like, if you make the Pro Bowl, we'll give you $250,000. It means nothing.

It means nothing. You mean 1,400 passing yards and seven passing touchdowns? A 7 to 10 pass to or touchdown to interception ratio? Yes, that is what I'm talking about. And like it was an accolade at one point. It no longer is. For those you don't know, Shador was named as a replacement pro bowler. So he will be at the pro bowl. Like the Snoop Huntley, that was fun to do the jokes, right? The furry, like, hey, every time, because you never talk about Snoop Huntley, right? Well, because Snoop had two touchdowns and three picks. That was his total passing yardage. Whenever his name came up, he'd be like, you got to do the bit. Like, oh, sweet. Okay, guys, that's pro bowlers, Snoop Huntley. Ha, ha, ha, we all chalk. Which now is the case for Shedur. And, and now it's just, now we're done. The bit is dead. Stavansky's only pro bowl quarterback in all of his years with the Browns was Shadur Sanders. Oh, I mean, wow. Goodness gracious.

I mean, it's an insult to anyone making a Pro Bowl. Yes. He was objectively bad. And I wanted him to be good. But I mean, his every metric you can look at is- Yeah, she doer had plays and he had drives and he had games that were okay. But in totality, how you would define an- It's an All-Star. That's what I was going to say. This is an NBA All-Star. Yeah, like Devin Booker's sitting here can't get into one of these things. This doer is an All-Star. Mike McDaniels named the offensive coordinator for the Chargers, and I am excited about that. Yes. Fantasy football loves it. And Hampton, Herbert, Lad, hopefully they could all get it going there. Jonathan Gannon, not our problem anymore. He's the Packers Problem, the new defensive coordinator in Green Bay. Except you know it's going to work. Oh, it'll work fine. He's going to get the fire in their belly. Well, is it like, I don't know when.

Parsons will be ready. But it's like, it was Parsons. They lost. Parsons stays healthy. No one's fired from there. Well, no, they lost Hayfley to Miami to become the head coach. But I'm saying like, I'm saying like no matter who's coming into here, either Parsons is healthy or he's not. Yep. And if he's healthy, you're a great defensive coordinator. Well, and he was in Philadelphia. Yeah, I think he was. They wanted him out. Well, they wanted him out because Philadelphia has no patience. or appreciation, but they went to the Super Bowl with him, is all I'm saying. Yes. And the players, to a man, everyone loves Jonathan Gannon. Like the actual players of the Cardinals, we didn't really love him, but he was beloved in the locker. Just like the new offensive coordinator of Detroit. The blobfish. Oh, Drew Petsing, yeah. The Dolphins promoted Bobby Slowick to offensive coordinator. Okay. That one doesn't excite me at all. Oh. Quinn yours and Bobby Sloak, are we?

Are we rebuilding in Miami? Feels that way. You got to tear it down to build it back up. This is like not good for A-C-N. We- Not good for A-Chimp, man. Slowick was there for- It was Houston. Yeah, yeah, but was that for Stroud's rookie year? Yes. Yes, it was rookie year. Slowick was all the rage. It was him and Ben Johnson were the two young, hot names. Yes. And then it all collapsed. What a weird situation after that. And then Sloak went to, you know, become of Stroud looking like he's a dirty diaper. Stroud's a rookie year. You're like, here it is. Here is this guy's going to be the next great quarterback. Slowick. Here it is. The next great offensive mind. Hold on one more year. Let's run it back. Let's run it back, guys. And then it's just been bad.

Like what in the world happened there? I do not know. But that is all we got by way of news this morning. We want to get into the truth. Help your fantasy teams out as we look back on 2025. Take a break and jump right in. You want answers. I think I'm entitled. You want answers. I want the truth. You can't handle the truth. Can't handle it. Not even. You can't even handle some of it. Mm-mm. Jason. Certainly not all of it. We are back into the running back position today. If you wanted to hear the first and second part of the quarterback truth episodes, we did those on previous shows. You can just click back on those. We did the running back part one. We're going to get kind of through the next group, which is kind of a lot of interesting names. Running back stayed healthy. We talked about that on the last episode, relatively healthy. He had 17 different running backs, top 1,000 yards rushing this season.

That's the most since 2006. That's 20 years or 19 years. So, you know, we have a, we also had a lot of running back twos that people picked late in drafts that ended up being like very valuable. Whether it was ETN who had a really low draft spot, Jason, you were, you know, pretty sure he was going to be the guy over Bigsby. They traded Bigsby, making it even more ETN's backfield. He was the running back 10 in fantasy finish, but drafted at 31. but like Giovante, Swift, Warren was one of those later round guys. Kenneth Gainwell, so like both the Steeler running backs. So a lot of these names we'll talk about on today's show. A lot of interesting running backs and what the truth is about them. I had somebody asked me the question. Because we talked about Gentie on the last show, and I just want to throw this out there real quick, but somebody had been just asking like, is Gentie? Is that the...

Top running back for you in Dynasty from last year's class. Is it still gentie to you? Some of the injuries, I think, have forced it to be genty. Like... Is it genty over Hampton to you? With McDaniel coming in and the like offensive line being healthy. Those guys are very, very close. And then the... He's over hard. Henderson. And Henderson's the other question, yeah. Yeah, I believe it's still genty. Oh, man, that's brutal. Yeah, I think I think that's a tough one because that is all the emotions of like what the franchises have been, what the offensive line looks like. Let's think about redraft. Quarterback looks like. We don't have any, we don't have our 2026 rankings yet. I apologize. We should get on that. But like it's just real quick off the cuff. Who would you take first in a redraft right now? Hampton or Ashton Genti? I would take Hampton. And in the world of running backs for dynasty.

I don't know if I like that makes a statement. I don't know if I push comes to shove would be able to pull the trigger on Hampton or Argenti. I think that's a really tough one. You're going to have a new head coach, a new quarterback. Yeah. In Las Vegas. We all saw kind of the transformation for New York this year, right? You get a new quarterback, invigorates the team. All of a sudden, Cam Scataboo. By the way, he's in the conversation, too. Not above those guys probably, but like, he'll be back. I just think it's interesting how quick a franchise can change. We thought it might happen last year with Gino. Gino now has the worst storyline you've ever heard. Gino is now, you were so bad that when another team got rid of you, the team you went to gets the number one pick and the team you left went to the Super Bowl. You get the one and maybe the 32. Oh, man. That's how Gino Gino was. Oh. And we thought, some people thought,

I don't know if we thought it, but I think some people thought it wasn't much of a difference. Why'd you, you were going to pay Gino, he didn't want to stay, you went and you settle on Darnold. That's a big difference. I mean, a lot of people thought this was a huge mistake for the Seahawks. I mean, you got to really hand it to the Seahawks general manager. I mean, the deafness, the shrewdness, the correctness of these transactions were. Amazing. I mean, they have built this team. Getting rid of Metcalf and having that be a net benefit for your team. Switching to Darnel. Building the defense. Yeah. It's funny because holding Ken Walker back still strategically. So in the playoffs, you could unleash him once you tore Charbonnet's ACL. Trading for Shaheed? Yeah. It is interesting, though. Free agent spending this offseason. The number one most contracts.

in money given out, the New England Patriots, and the Seahawks were the number four. So these two teams went out and spent some big money on free agency, and lo and behold, it worked. Oh, yeah. All right. Well, let's get into the truth. On the last episode, we talked about Christian McCaffrey, John the Taylor, Bejohn, Gibbs, H.N, Cook, Henry, Chase Brown, Kyron Williams, and ETN, the aforementioned ETN. At number 11. Javante Williams. I'm so, I'm so just happy for Javante Williams that we're having this conversation at this time of the show. Because the truth of Javante Williams before this year. Thought it was, I thought it was never going to happen. No, I mean, this was a ninth round, late ninth round pick and fantasy, RB 39 off the board, 25 years old still. I was going to say the age is what, what's shocking. I mean, you know who could have used him? With the Denver Broncos. Denver Broncos. Well.

I mean, they had a bad beat with Dobbins. If you have Dobbins and Harvey, that's a solid combo. 25.7 years old, Jason. Consistency in the second half is 16, 11 in the first half. That's really where he shined. Yeah, he was better in the first half. It was mostly touchdowns, really was the difference. He was extremely hot. A couple weeks. You know, the first half of their season on getting into the end zone, I believe in the first eight weeks, he was basically on pace for 17 touchdowns. After that point, it was just goal line work that was missing, but he was pretty consistent for what he was. The question now becomes, you know, is he a cowboy? Are they going to commit to him going forward? He is young. He looked good. I'm confident that he will be back in a big part of their offense. It's the easiest path forward for them, a team that needs to rebuild the defense.

every which way and make sure that that's not the worst in history again. Should. Please don't. It really seemed like RICO would be back last year or for this to past season. He was coming off of a thousand yards on the ground and would not be expensive, but they moved on. Well, I got even, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, Giovante was the RB5. in the first eight weeks of the season. You talked about it. He was good at getting into the end zone, very productive, really throughout the entire season. So it was impressive. He had 13% great games, so he wasn't winning you weeks very often. But 56% good games, 19% bus games, pretty consistent, 1,200 yards rushing. And he missed the final week of the year. He just got his job done. However, whoa.

51 targets turning into 137 receiving yards is not good that's I that's impressive that's it to be that low yeah yeah I mean he's willing to stand there and catch that thing behind the line of scrimmage fall forward yeah it's funny you do you do run I mean Chuba was though the famous case last year Chuba Hubbard whereas like you are involved in the passing game but like you aren't nothing done doing much with it Cowboys with Giovante and George It's going to be interesting how free agency shakes out in, what, a month and a half or something? Yeah, it'll be here before you know it. Yep. And the draft, I mean, we're looking at the, and I know this will get previewed on the Dynasty show that comes out on Wednesday. Right now, Daniel Jeremiah, he had his first mock draft. And the first mock draft had seven of 32 players that are fantasy relevant. So you're talking running backs, wide receivers, tight ends, and quarterbacks. If you play Dynasty, do not read Jeremiah loves mock draft.