Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - Rookie Preview w/Matthew Freedman, News, Mailbag

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Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. You know nothing, John Snow. I knew it was coming, and it still surprised me. I was like, what? This is not the right music. Oh, yeah. It is the right music. And it's great because Mike did it himself. You're darn too. So when you hear incredible guitar riffs on the show, it is always... Like the one playing right now? It was always Mike.

And so we have a little Game of Thrones action. We won't give you any spoilers on the show. We just thought it was an appropriate introduction to the Tuesday, April 22nd, or 26th, April 26th, show after the debut of Game of Thrones last night. And it will be the topic we discuss on the show after the show on YouTube. So if you want a little bit of Game of Thrones talk, then you'll want to go to YouTube and check that out. Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers podcast. Andy Holloway here with Jason Moore.

How's it going, everybody? Mike, the fantasy hitman, Wright, back from Hawaii. It's good to be back, America. Scooby-to-back. It is a shame. That sounds like. Scooby-to-back. He learned some new things in Hawaii. It's a very, a lot of scatman. Freewheeling. Do you know why he came back, Andy? The wife had had too much? This week is the NFL draft.

He came back. That's the only reason I would return from Hawaii. Yeah. Yeah, it actually was. It's here. It's happening. I was moving. You were on the way out. You would have been Skyping in. Scatterby back, everyone. Well, we've got a good show for the listeners today, for the Foot Clan. We got Matthew Friedman on the show. Yes. From Fantasy Labs in RotoViz. We're talking, this is our, you know.

really the right show to do a bit of a rookie preview. And so we're going to talk through some of the guys to pay attention to. For whatever reason, Jason's really made this point. This season's crop has some really talented players that will make fantasy impacts. But it just doesn't have the feeling of, you know, what's the right word for it? Like a loaded weapon, you know? It just seems like there's a couple good bullets. And we're not sure if anybody else is going to pan out in the way we want. This is a six shooter.

And the last couple of years have been machine guns where you just keep... I was going to go a Nerf gun with tax. Okay. And the reality is... They could do a little damaged a little bit. I think we'll be wrong. I mean, I think ultimately we'll be wrong. There will be very high-impact players. We just...

The buzz around them isn't there, which means it doesn't translate to Dynasty League drafts and rookie drafts in the same way the past few years have. But we're going to go through the big names today, talk with Matthew Friedman, who knows his stuff about rookies and the NFL draft. We've got some news to break, a lot of big-time news, and so I'm excited about that, and what else do we got going on? We got some mailbag on the show today. Absolutely. And so what else should we talk about here at the top? We've got the awards going on right now. So tell the people about...

Podcast Awards.com. Podcastawards.com. They are in the nomination period, and we really appreciate it. We've had great, great support from the Foot Clan, and we've got to make a tiny little push here to finish it strong. Podcastawards.com nominate us for sports and people's choice. And hopefully we get the nomination through, and then we'll let everyone else, we'll give updates as soon as we get them.

And another exciting bit of news. We have been working super hard in our draft kit. We've been talking about the Ultimate Draft Kit. It is now available for pre-order. So if you want to go and pre-order it on our website, you can actually go to Ultimate DraftKit.com. And if you get it now, if you get it before we release it, which it should be coming out in June, the 1st of June.

You'll save five bucks right now. It's a good deal. This was basically what this, the reason this exists is because last year we had so many people asking for so many specific things. A lot of the times it was where is your draft kit? Right. It wasn't just can you make one? It was, hey, where is it? Where do I get your draft kit? And then we said, so if you want to be able, I mean, this is the thing like I'm building for me. I want to take this into my draft and have every specific number and things that I care about that I use when I draft.

And we're making that available. So go to the website, ultimate draft kit.com. Quick question of the day, guys. Josh Norman over the week, kind of incredible. Madness. You don't generally see this. Imagine, you know, one of the best players in the league, at the cornerback position, certainly in the top echelon here, wanted big money from Carolina, ends up being franchise tagged. And the tag is rescinded, and he's out the door. And it happened really fast.

And now the trickle-down of the impact on fantasy players is here. And so that's the question I have for you. Josh Norman is gone. He has left the Panthers. That wonderful defense is now impacted. Julio Jones loses Norman in the division. O'Dell Beckham Jr. picks up Norman in his division. Delightful. So I guess if you haven't heard, he signed a very lucrative contract offer with a team that likes to give them the Washington Redskins. Dan Snyder saw what Miami was doing. He's like, whoa, whoa.

I am the king of the offseason. The king. Remember Albert Hainsworth? That was me. I feel like Snyder's been in a recovery group for excess spending. And he slept. And he did so well, right? Like during the free agent period. And then this out of left field, Josh Norman just drops into the picture. And he can't, you know, he didn't call a sponsor. He got his day one chip. He didn't call his sponsor. He's back on it.

So Josh Norman's a Redskins. So who do you think this impacts the most other than, you know? Well, I think you got to start with those two main guys, Odell Beckham Jr. and Julio Jones. It is so fascinating that you have those two guys, which I think most people have them as the number two and number three wide receiver, but in different orders. And that was prior to this news. Well, now you have four games of impact of Josh Norman. So the question is,

Four games? Well, like a four-game swing. You've got two less for Julio and two more for O'Dell Beckham. Does that sway you to put, because for me, in my rankings, I had O'Dell Beckham Jr. ahead of Julio Jones. Should that change? And for me, and I'm really interested in your guys' take, I'm not changing it. I think it makes Julio a little bit better, but I don't think that overtakes it. I don't think it very largely impacts O'Dell Beckham because...

One of the things we have to keep in mind with Norman is that Norman was not a – he's not one of those guys that you put on their number one guy and lock him down with man coverage. He was a – He played outside. Yeah, and he didn't come over to the slot. He did a little bit. He did a little bit. Normally he was his own scheme outside guy, and he had great – so he's – it is good that Washington Redskins, you know, they have a good system.

style-wise for him, that's good. But they don't have the pieces around him to make him be as valuable there as he was for the Carolina Panthers. So I'm still sticking with O'Dell Beckham and then Julio is number three. Let me say this. It may seem like an extreme reaction to even consider that, right? It's two games during the year. Last year, however, you had Julio Jones who ended up with two games against Carolina at the end of the year specifically.

where it did affect the playoff run in his performance. Now, he had one big game against Norman and one lower game. I want to give you guys some numbers. The difference, these are big-time wide receivers that played against Norman last year. Brandon Cooks actually put up 1.5 points per game more on those matchups. More than his average. More than his average. Mike Evans was down three points. Julio ended up up a point and a half. And then O'Dell Buckham Jr. does Bryant and Jordan Matthews, all the division mates now of Josh Norman.

Um, minus one, minus four, minus seven. Yeah. Is that? I mean, no, I was, I was very happy to hear Jason say it doesn't change things because it doesn't change it for me either. Uh, I mean, Julio gives us something else to talk about. Oh, absolutely. Julio was my number two in fairness and Beckham's my three. But however, if Beckham was my two, it wouldn't be changing because of this. I'm not, it's whatever, but it would.

What's nice is it is now must watch television. Oh, that's twice a year. If you did not see the Panthers Giants game where Beckham eventually earned himself a suspension, I expect cooler heads to prevail this time, but there's the chance. There's a chance. Oh, man, that's going to be in every.

Every eyeball of every NFL fan is going to be watching those games specifically for that. Can you imagine just the, I'm looking forward to the commercials advertising that game coming up. There's NFL rule changes that were being tested just because of that game. It's going to be awesome. Cooler heads prevail for guys like that until about play three. And when one guy beats the other one at something, then watch out. All right, that's a good transition. Let's jump into the rest of the news.

News and notes from around the league. Hey, big news this morning, the U.S. appeals court has reinstated the suspension for Tom Brady. Uh-oh. We talked about it on the show about, you know, three weeks ago or two weeks ago when we talked quarterbacks. The fact that it's lingering there in the background for Tom Brady.

And here it is. As of right now, he is out this first four weeks. This makes a huge, huge difference. He should not be drafted as, assuming that this stands and he misses the first four games of the season. That's a quarter of your season. You cannot draft a guy in the first six or seven rounds. So if you're thinking about Tom Brady...

Hey, if he drops to the 10th round and you want a guy that's, you know, you could stash on your bench for when he comes back. There's no way. But that's the point. There's no way. People will be taking him in the fifth, sixth, seventh round. And when you're taking one of those round picks that are valuable to a fantasy team, if you're drafting a wide receiver or running back, whatever, and saying, hey, I'm going to start the first quarter of the season. And that's not even including playoffs. So more than that, the first.

third of your of your season to make the playoffs well great enjoy tom brady when he's back and you're out of the playoffs how does this impact grunk gronk uh i think gronk will be okay he'll survive the bigger question to me is julian edelman uh dion lewis and chris hogan who's one of my favorite sleepers which i mean now you're just going into a deeper slumber with hogan because you got to wait a while for brady to be there because i don't