Breakout Picks + Austin Ekeler Joins the Show! - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/24

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Before we start today's show, I want to remind everybody out there, this is go time. Your big time drafts are on the way. Big time. The big ones. The biggest. The important ones. Look, I saw a poll on Twitter. They're coming up. Most of your most important leagues are right now. So check out the ultimate draft kit. Do some cramming before your draft. Check out our tier base rankings. All of our player profile videos, sleepers, breakouts, bus values.

We've got consistency charts. We've got printable cheat sheets. We've got player news in the app now, which, by the way, you get access to the app when you get the ultimate draft kit. So learn everything that's inside at ultimate draft kit.com. Hey, this is Austin Eccler, and you're listening to the fantasy footballers podcast. To the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright.

Welcome in. Tuesday, August 24th, Jason Moore, Mike Wright, Andy Holloway, the Fantasy Footballers podcast. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. Or good night, I guess. Thank you, Mike. Want to cover all the, all the basis. You'll be listening at any time. Yeah. Hello would have worked, though. Just, yeah, but that's not very personal. This says, I'm watching you. This says, I could be watching this. This says, look over your shoulder.

I'm there. I have never been one of those privacy freaks that are paranoid about my being listened to by the devices in my home. Yeah, because you already know you are. Yeah, I guess I just accept it. But we did have one of those, wait a minute, moments the other day. Oh, like the ad came through? Yeah, like, so my son has a little echo dot in the room. And.

We've been going, I just started reading Harry Potter to him. And if we're only, we're only, Harry, you're a wizard. So we're like, and I'm doing all the voices, but they're just not the same every night. Oh, man, I know. They completely changed. I think Hagrid was from the deep south last time we did the show. But, uh, so we've been reading Harry Potter. He's loving it. We got the, you know, just father's son time at night. But now he's getting Harry Potter ads on his like, on his echo. Oh.

Wait, on the, you get ads on the... Oh, it's not a dot. It's not a dot. It's the one with the little screen. Ah. The show, the Echo Show. So now he's got a Harry Potter ad on the Echo show. Mm-hmm. So I guess I know we're being listened to, but when it happens right in front of your face. But if that echo were to say, good night, good evening, good morning. You'd feel better because, you know, it's ambiguous. It's personal. And Mike is listening.

I mean, Mike, when I'm not doing fantasy football analysis, I got the headset on. Right. And I'm listening. I'm like, oh, we got another one, fellas, another Harry Potter fan. Big nerd. He's listening at night. Big nerd. Right, right. Yes, us nerds. All right. We do have a jam-pack show. Austin Echler is joining us. Actually, he joined us yesterday. We're going to share that interview with you talking about Chargers camp, talking about fantasy football.

Talking about his potential on the goal line, among other things. It's a delightful interview. Yeah, he's a good dude. He is. We have our breakout picks today. So each of us are going to share a couple names with you, players that we are excited for heading into the season. And I'm going to be honest, we needed another breakout episode because when you do one of these back in like May, maybe.

Well, that's called the early. Things change. Yeah, that's the early breakout show. And we went and we reviewed the early breakouts. And the wrong kind of break. All game makers seem to happen to the players that we were talking about. Yeah. And we're going to talk about the game last night as well, Mike. I know you have had yourself. Respect my rights, please.

Oh, you, you. I will not be answering any Troutman related questions. Okay. Jason and I will discuss the Troutman of your privacy. My HIPAA rights. Okay. A reminder, we mentioned it yesterday, the Meglabel. You can join it right now. I am happy to report. We're over 5,500 people that have joined the Meglabel in one day. More! So my goal of 10,000 people in the largest fantasy football league on Earth.

We're well on our way. So you can check that out at meglable.com. And you can join that's being hosted on Sleeper. And the winner is a member of the 2022 listener league. If we do somehow get the Meglabel to that level, we got to call Guinness. For sure. We got to get this thing verified. The beer company or the? Yes, them. And then we'll call the people who do the records. Got it.

because you celebrate when you break the record. Just to be clear, this show is stupid, right? Yes. Let's make sure. And let's move on. Where there's smoke, there's fire. Presented by Trager Grills. All right, we have two storylines to cover in where there's smoke, there's fire. The first one, I'm really glad it's in here because I fired up the Madden 22 last night.

I got whooped by my 10-year-old. That happens. And he played the Chiefs, and I was Tampa Bay. But my third down running back was G.O. Bernard. And Bruce Ariens told reporters that he's been more than pretty good and will be a major part of the rushing attack. More than pretty good? If he had said pretty good, he'd be like, he's more than pretty good. What would that be good? Great.

No, that would be more, he's been more than good is great. More than pretty good is good. Pretty good is less than full good. Oh, it is? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's pretty good. But if you throw two preties in there, it's above it, right? Absolutely. Pretty pretty good. That's above good. But someone that's pretty good is like they're almost to full good. So I would say that he's better than pretty good. He's good. According to Bruce Ariens, now keep in mind.

Bruce Ariens, what was that running back? He talked up so much last year. Well, sure. I mean, you could go back any year. But I was going with rookie sensation, Kishon Vaughn. Yes. Who he has also talked up this off season. Yeah, I think we talked up Kishon Vaugh, not we, the fantasy community more than Bruce did. But Bruce did say he was going to have a breakout season. Last year? Yeah. Well, Bruce is a lot. Look, this is smoke for fantasy implications for Gio Bernard.

But it is not smoke when it comes to bringing up the name Gio Bernard for Tom Brady. One of the reasons I like Tom Brady and I brought up on our show about Tom Brady was Gio Bernard is going to help him. Having somebody that's competent, a veteran in the passing game, you don't have to, he doesn't have to be rookie year Gio Bernard. He doesn't have to have the level of speed and breakaway ability. He just needs to reliably catch the ball when...

Tom decides to check it down the way James White did, the way that so many of those running backs in New England used to do for him, it's better than having Ronald Jones or Leonard Fernet try to catch a football. I think it's worth discussing Geo's standalone PPR late round value, though, because when he first signed and there was all the questions of, oh, is this, is this a James White type of guy? To me,

just, you know, analysis-wise, I was like, no, this is not going to happen. It's a different system than the one in New England. And in New England, he was throwing to, you know, Jacobi Myers and nobody, you know, then James White got a ton of targets, whereas now you've got Godwin and Evans and Antonio Brown. So I did not think Giovanni Bernard was worth sniffing a late-round PPR pick with.

However, I do question whether or not he can be valuable. If you're a zero-rb drafter and you are looking for late-round PPR guys to kind of hold down the fort until you can get someone off of waivers, I guess the question I have is do you believe?

that he will actually be the past catching third down back, or will it also be Leonard Fournette? Will Kishon Vaughn get involved? Will Geo not really have enough targets in the passing game to be standalone relevant? So last year, it looks like we have the Tampa Bay Buccaneers throwing 20% of their targets to the running back position, which that's a top 12 number. So despite the...

the limitations of these running backs and their hands. I mean, we know that when Ronald Jones actually catches it, great things happen because he's... Because the defense is shocked. They've already stopped playing. Oh, you did it, Ronald. You did it. And Ronald is a very shifty athletic running back who can create big plays, but his hands are very suspect. So it seems like the targets will still be there, is my point. But how many catches per game can you

possibly project for Gio. Not many. They average 12 third downs a game as a team, and it probably went down over the back half of the year. Having that many opportunities, I'm not interested in, even in a PBR league, I'm not personally interested in GEO because I don't think he's going to do a lot with the touches. He's going to get the ball, but I don't think he can do a ton with it. So if you're a third down back and you only get it on the field on third down, when it's second and long and your team picks up the first, are you kind of disappointed?

I would hope, no. You're like, yeah, team. Oh, man. Probably. But I mean, maybe it's a contract year, you know. You need those stats. The, for what it's worth, the fewest third downs per game was Minnesota last year. Oh, impressive. Probably because Dalvin was chunking away every second down. The most Pittsburgh. Yeah, that makes sense when you're throwing the ball one yard from the line of scrimatur. Yeah, that was part of the plan. All right. So, um.

The second thing I want to talk about is what took place last night, the Saints quarterback situation. Sean Payton, he declined to name a starting quarterback after the game. Did he wink? He didn't wink. He essentially, you know, we were watching Winston and Taysam Hill. Winston had basically a perfect performance. He was 9 for 10, 123 passing yards, two touchdowns.

Tayson Hill wasn't bad. He was over a 90 pass rating. He was 11 for 21, 38, and 1. As a coach, you'd imagine there's a more holistic approach to the selection than the stat line from the second preseason game, which is probably why you saw some hesitation here. However, the upside for this team, where do you find it? Are you banking on Winston at this point? So, Andy, you and I both.

Last night, we changed our stats. I changed back. You changed back. You started with James, but we changed to James, expecting him to get the starting nod based on last night's performance. I think it would be difficult for Sean Peyton, who is telling these guys that they have a shot, that this matters, and to have this performance happen, and then be like, yeah.

Yeah, but I was lying. It was Jason the whole time because James did earn it yesterday. And what impressed me the most was actually his one throwaway, which was actually an overthrow of a running back. It wasn't a great throw. But what happened is they got the ball at midfield. And this is the time for him to shine. He's trying to win it. And he started, he was rolling out, looked like he was going deep, and then kind of decided to check it down and play it safe. And it was like,