Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - Fantasy Impact of Coaching Changes, News & Mailbag

Emergence and then... No, I think Diggs is... So you like Diggs? Yeah. In the future. I dig him. Yeah, me too. All right. So before we move on to the...

kind of the meat of the show, which is we're going to go through the coaching changes and how it impacts your fantasy football teams. I do want to take a second and thank the sponsor today's show Squarespace. You've heard me say before. Before we did this show, I worked in web development and web publishing and those type of things. So I know exactly how hard it is to build a website, the expenses and things that come into that, and it can be tough.

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I thought it would be a homage to David Bowie and just throw that to fit. I thought it would be appropriate to pay homage to David Bowie and just throw that in there. We're talking coaching changes, so it seemed to fit. However, when I brought up the idea to Jason. Yep.

He had never heard this song before. Never once. And when you play it, it doesn't strike a bell because I had never heard it. And so I want to know because Mike and Andy. And so I mocked him. And to Mike, Mike wasn't in the studio yesterday morning. So I told Mike this news, which I'm sure floored him. Well, I thought, what kind of uncultural swine am I working with that you don't know changes by David Bowie? And I said, look, I think half of our audience is not going to know that song.

No disrespect. Did you just call half our audience uncultured swine? No, Mike did. However, I want to know if you go to YouTube and tell me if you have not heard the song. If you have heard the song, just keep silent. I like that Jason represents half the demo. I know. He told me that. That was the exact point he made. That's how highly he thinks of his opinion. If I don't know it, half the audience won't know it, so we're not doing it. It's not just like, well, maybe 33%.

Of the eye. No, Jason's half. He was doing it by weight. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. I'm out of here. I'm out of here in the league. All right. Speaking, speaking, speaking time. Of, uh, terrible, terrible things. Uh, let's talk about the coaches. Mike Mularky. Oh.

is the inn for the Tennessee Titans. So we'll start with Tennessee. We'll get this out of the way. Yes, get it out of the way. I don't want to come on here and just completely disparage the hope of Tennessee Titan fans. But we don't have a really positive spin for Mike Malarkey's signing, and we don't think you do either. The reporting out of Tennessee is the same sort of befuddlement that we have here.

and the numbers back up that befuddleman, am I right? Well, yeah, because you say, okay, who left, Ken Wisenhunt? But he didn't leave at the end of the year. He left really early with nine games left. Well, he didn't leave. Well, right. He was fired. He was asked to leave. Escorted out of the primies. Took that team to a great two and seven record. Finish strong. And while doing that, looked very poor. I mean, the team didn't, it wasn't like a really tough.

You know, oh man, they just lost some bad breaks. They were a bad team under Mike Malarkey. And so to everyone's surprise, considering that they were, for the first time and a long time, a really hot destination. You have a franchise quarterback there. There were a lot of Chip Kelly rumors based on Mario to being there. Yeah. And so you bring in Mike Malarkey and you hope that he does better than he has everywhere else.

18 and 39 as a head coach. And speaking just for fantasy purposes, as a head coach, his offense, when you're talking about yardage has not done very well. He was the head coach of the Buffalo Bills for a couple years, 25th and 28th in yardage, head coach of Jacksonville for a year, 29th in yards. He just...

It's hard to get excited about the potential he brings. Now, the players can overcome these situations. When you have good players, good things happen. So I'm not abandoning the Tennessee Titans. You have to question the higher of was that really the best choice. So the hope here for Tennessee, Marriott is going to grow.

With or without a good coach, Marriota is going to take another step forward over the next couple of years each year and get a little better, which when the quarterback gets better, your offense entirely gets better. So there is still a little bit of silver lining for the future of fantasy players from Tennessee. Doyle Green Beckham has a nice chance to develop something with Marietta and have a future.

But I'm not going to be investing in any of the running backs personally. I don't trust kind of the rotation on a not great offense. The only player I really want from this team is maybe Marriota. Well, and the thing is, is if you want an optimistic spin, you have to go to the offensive coordinator position because they did hire Terry Robisky at the end of January. And he's somebody who was the receivers coach with Roddy White.

and Julio Jones in Atlanta and could do some more innovative things there. And so you kind of hope that what you see is, you know, malarkey is over it all and you see some innovation from Rubisky and you start to use the multiple skill sets that Mariotta represents because he should be the kind of mismatch that we've seen with, you know, he's not Cam Newton. Okay, he's not the same type of runner as Cam Newton, but he has a multidimensional.

Offensive skill set. A Russell Wilson type of gameplay. Yeah, I mean, yeah, any of these comparisons where you need to drop innovative play calling for them and take advantage of them. Capernick a few years ago. And so that would be the optimistic spin, but you're right. The only guys to own right now for me are Mariotta and obviously Delaney Walker based on his involvement last year. I like Delaney Walker. I don't think there's any reason he won't be involved and give the opportunity for...

Green Beckham to emerge. He can be a late round flyer right now for me. We've talked about him a little bit already in the rookie show. So you can go back in here that. So let's move on to Tampa and let's talk about Lovey Smith. He's out. Dirk Cutter has arrived or better yet, you know, he got a bigger chair. Right? Yeah. They moved him up. They said everybody, Lovie, step out. Everybody moved down one. Yep. Sort of. So Dirk Cutter. Musical chairs. Yeah. So Dirk Cutter is the head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

There are some things to like about that. Is there not? Yeah, there's a few, from a fantasy perspective, I actually think there are. We should do the fantasy perspective one. Yeah, from a fantasy perspective, I think that it is, it could be a good move because what you're doing is you're taking the offense and making them the center of your team, right? Lovie Smith.

was a defensive-minded coach. He wanted an offense that fed to his defense. He wanted to slow the game down and do those things. And now, as a franchise, they're saying, let's get rid of the defensive-minded coach, take the offensive coordinator and put him in place, and let's make this team. Well, they're building it around Winston. Absolutely. He's the first pit. I mean, when you draft a guy like that, you kind of, I think at the high levels, you've got to be thinking,

We build our team around his, given every chance to succeed and not blow this pick. You know, and so from that perspective, you know, Matt Ryan had a lot of success under Dirk Cutter and Atlanta. He had his three best seasons fantasy-wise. You know, we already talked about Winston, but Winston was 14th at the quarterback position last year. You guys both told me that you thought he's a top 10 guy. Yeah, I like. And you'd both put him above Mario. Yeah, I like the.

I like the move from the point of all the rumblings in the bushes were the team thought that Dirt Cutter growing and grooming James Winston into a professional quarterback was the most important thing to that franchise, and they felt that they might lose Dirt Cutter. So they did the only thing that you can do to ensure that Dirk Cutter stays around. He said, okay, well, now you're the head coach. So to make that move for...

for the investment of Winston said it's good things for fantasy for me of you got a franchise quarterback you have a franchise wide receiver you maybe have a franchise running back if you can resign Doug Martin but all the pieces are there for

for some delicious fantasy. I wish you guys didn't know the stat that we just talked about before the show, because I saw this yesterday, and I was going to ask you blindly what rank you thought Tampa finished in yards for the league. And I'm pretty confident that no... I would not have said what the real stat is. Right. They were the fifth highest team in the league in total yards as an offense. So, you know, there are things to like moving forward. But 20th and points.

Right. So they moved the 20 to 20s pretty well and Winston got things moving, but 15 yards. There's a lot of good things. There are teams, right, in fantasy. Cincinnati last year is a good example, where you kind of get a lot of fantasy relevance out of a specific team. I could see them being that team this year where you have Evans, Martin, Sims, Winston, Safarian Jenkins, and maybe Vincent Jackson. Vince Jackson's still there. But I mean, that's like, I don't know how many fingers I just.

pointed out, but that's a lot of guys that could be relevant. And, you know, they had like up and down relevance this year, but if they find consistency, if Winston makes the next step, we could see a really explosive offense on a team that really is pretty, could be pretty good. Yeah, and I don't expect their defense to get better with Lovey Smith going away. Sometimes that, you know, you take a look at what Jacksonville Jaguars, you got to keep scoring. So if they can be a garbage team, then, uh,

A garbage time team. Team. Yeah, we don't want them to be a garbage team. No. Unless you're playing against them and you're the head coach of the opposite team. All right. Chip Kelly out, Doug Peterson. Peterson. Peterson. Who? Peterson. Yeah, Pedersen. Pedersen. Yes. No T. It's a D. It's a D in his name, which is weird. Very, very off-putting.

very off. But that's where we're starting with the analysis, is spelling related. It is, I will say it is as unconventional as his hiring. Oh, here we go. So why don't you drop the take on us? Because if you have a really strong opinion about Peterson that is aligned with that sentiment, I'd love to hear it. Yes. So I think this is one of the most head scratching, nonsensical moves of the coaching carousel here. And I completely admit.

I could be wrong. Look, Mike Tomlin and other guys that are young and up and coming where everyone talks highly about them who don't have the head coaching experience. They can come in and just say, look, I'm good. There's a reason they hired me. That could happen here. I don't know a whole lot about Doug Peterson. But the point is, nobody's been talking about this guy. You didn't hear about, you know.

Adam Gase is a very similar situation and no head coaching experience. You heard about him for years. He's just waiting to get that opportunity. Yeah, but they missed Andy. They miss Andy. No, I think that's honestly what it is. They made a mistake letting Andy Reid go and they go, we need to be that type of franchise. Let's take Andy Reid's protege. So here's who Doug Peterson is for all of you out there, all of you.