Fantasy Football Podcast 2017 - Regress or Impress Candidates for 2017

And so it doesn't mean you can't, like, take some of that. See, I look into these reports that are happening right now, and I do draw from them. With the beat report, it's the beat reporters are as plugged in as we can possibly get right now. Okay, but the disclaim. The disclaimer is, is do you have a mountain of evidence?

Or do you have a off-the-cuff statement? Because a couple, you know, you get these same comments from people like the offensive coordinators, you have different spin. And all I'm saying is that if you don't have a lot of sources pointing towards, look, is Samadjap Ryan the starter, Mike? I think he will be, yeah, I think it will be. But is he? Oh, we don't know that yet. I mean, we don't have any other than this guy, one person saying he thinks it'll be the case.

There's no real reason to believe it other than, hey, I think he's going to be Rob Kelly, which is fine. An opinion is what we go on. I'm just saying it's not factual. It's not news. He doesn't have a number one spot. That's fair. But you also need to take into account these beat writers. They're talking with coaches. They're talking with managers that maybe they're getting information that they are not allowed to report on. I mean, you take everything as a piece of the puzzle. But I agree with Andy that these are very small pieces. I'm going to.

listen and remember that, you know, this beat writer said that. But then that's, I don't give it a lot of weight because, you know, also, I believe out today, Leonard Fournett is going to have to compete for that starting job. Because that's Tom Copland's team, of course he is. But I'm saying, like, if I'm a beat reporter for Washington and I have a conversation with Gruden, he says, this is off the record. I think that pre-rine is going to win the job. I would say, fine. And then I would put out my rumor calling that says,

I have a pretty good feeling that P Ryan is going to get the starting job. I agree with you, but this specific time, I believe there were a lot of ESPN writers that basically had to put out their projections for her starting. So this is more like a, this wasn't, oh, I got news and I'm doing it. This is like, hey, everybody, it's Thursday. We need your, we need your depth charts. And then speaking of news to go, we're talking about these rookies showing up out of shape. Eddie Lacey.

He made his first weight threshold. 253. He made it. So he's on, he's on his way. $55,000 bonus for being two pounds under that weight limit. Oh, man. That's what everyone needs. That's exactly what I need. I've been trying to lose weight. Well, someone out there, 55,000, give me a reasonable goal. I will come in under. All it takes is 55,000. That's it. That's it. That's it.

Any other news you guys want to get into? This is happening because, of course it is. At J. Gris FFL, he's sweeping the nation. I got to give a shout out to the writer. They're doing a bear mock right now. What is a bear mock? They're drafting the best bears. By breed? Well, I believe the rules are. Or is there like the Berenstein bears in there? It's up to interpretation. I'm a...

If someone has not drafted the Berenstain Bears yet, then there's a steel waiting. Are you allowed to do like Mike? Is Bear Grill? Has Bear Grills been drafted? They've both been picked. Yeah. I knew Bear Grills, but hashtag Bear Mock, if you want to follow around with that buffoonery. Yeah. All right. Well, let's get to the main event here. Regress are impressed. And of course, Mike was sitting around with his guitar and set up a little intro for this segment. I told you that it's a disrupting ensemble of genres just colliding.

I just, I can't even find myself. Hey, you're going to regress, you're going to impress. Those are oppositesies. You know, the music's got to, the music's got to reflect that. Let's start at the quarterback position. Am I the only person who, when you hear the word impress, one of the first thoughts is Shania Twain. Not, not me, sir. Oh, that's, my brain goes right there. For a lot of people, for a lot of years, one of their first thoughts was Shania Twain. This is very fair. Very fair.

Quarterbacks, regress or impress at the quarterback position. Here's the two names I want to bring up. Kurt Cousins and Dak Prescott last season, 2016. These guys were number five and number six in the fantasy rankings. So do we believe that Kirk Cousins and Dak Prescott will regress from that finish or continue to impress with top six fantasy numbers?

So I did a historical look here for Kurt Cousins because my gut says he will likely have some regression, but I'm not going to bury him. And I looked up, you know, what are the yardage of historical quarterbacks lately? So since 2000, 15 times a quarterback has thrown 4,900 yards or more. And that's where Cousins was last year. Eight times.

coming off of that season, the quarterback played 16 games. So those were the only people what I looked at. Am I making sense? Yeah. Andy's giving me the fun. I don't know. I'm with you. Okay. So only eight times after these 15 quarterbacks through for 4,900 yards, they played a full season. And what was also interesting in that... Does that meaning is the 50-50 shot of getting hurt? No, well, some were 15 games. Just saying, so I didn't have a full season of data to go off of. What was more interesting to me off of this,

Six of those eight times, quarterbacks had 39 plus touchdowns. So the touchdown number that Kirk had 25 last year did not match the historical output that these quarterbacks were putting out. I thought that was just interesting. So the regression that people had, there was really only three times there was a monster dropping yardage. Eli dropped 1,000 yards. Peyton dropped about 700 yards, and then Tom Brady had a season where he dropped 400.

Other than that, it was either 300 yards or less, so not a huge drop. So to me, it's more of a, are you expecting a complete regression of the yardage? Or can you expect a positive regression of his touchdowns, which did not match what these other quarterbacks have been doing? When you look at Kirk Cousins, you give the lay of the land, and you lost Pierre Garcin and you lost Deshaun Jackson. He still has his number one target in Jordan Reed. And I look at that touchdown number, and I see that's a...

fairly low touchdown number. That is something he can easily repeat. I don't know if he'll repeat four touchdowns on the ground. But how similar is his situation to what Andy Dalton went through last year where he stole at his number one target, and AJ Green, but you lost Mohamed Sunu, and you lost Marvin Jones, and you lost, well, he lost more than that. He lost Tyler Ifer eventually, and he lost the backfield. But.

Which side do you lean on? I tend to believe that Kirk Cousins is a top 10 fantasy quarterback for the upcoming year, but you can't really project anything higher than what he did last year, probably lower. Yeah, I'm not raising the yards up, but I think at the end of the day it's just, it's a wash because let's say he loses 300 yards, but then he gets his touchdowns up to 29 or 30, which I...

Personally, I think that's capable. I know he lost the weapons, but he got Terrell Prior. Josh Doxon. I still have a lot of faith in Josh Doxon. Jameson Crowder. So I think that he can.

I think that he can impress. So final verdict, you got impressed. I got impressing. I'm going to go impress as well, Jason. You can finish this up. Yeah, I do have him regressing. I still like him as a player, but there's too many things that are changing here to say that he can replicate those near 5,000 yards. I mean, not only, you look at this last year and you go, wow, he had a real, you know, as you called it, a banner year. Well, yeah, you want to know what helped him with that banner year? It's the fact that he had his entire system.

His entire team, his offensive coordinator, just complete cohesion going from 2014 or 15 to 2016. That really helps people. Look at Matt Ryan. What that did for him. Fair. For what Shannon. And now you have Sean McVeigh, the guy who really transformed Kirk Cousin.

Then you've got him leaving. You've got his number one and number two targets from the wide receiver position leaving. There's just a lot of change. And, you know, so for me, and with Samage P. Ryan coming in, hopefully their running game is better. I doubt you get another, you know, four or five touchdowns on the ground from Captain Kirk. I like him. He's my quarterback 15. But I do think he's going to regress this year. There's just too many changing parts. Would you...

What do you think the odds are that he repeats his 2015 year where he finished number 10? In that season, he only had 4,100 yards, but he did have 29 touchdowns. He's kept his interceptions low back-to-back years and had five rushing touchdowns. So do you think 10 is a reasonable range for Cousins? If Cousins finishes as the quarterback 10, I will not be surprised at all. I think that is very reasonable, but I still don't project that because, like you said, he had 29 passing touchdowns. To go with five rushing touchdowns, I don't see that happening.

I have him at 11 in 6.9 in standard leagues. Let's talk about Dak Prescott. Dak Prescott is somebody that I think is very easy to throw personally. For me, it's very easy to put him in a regression category. I have seen years of that kind of efficiency that seemed very hard to repeat, specifically what, 23 touchdowns and four interceptions on the season. I find it hard to believe in Dak Prescott as a young...

quarterback in the NFL will be able to sustain efficiency numbers that would put him in that top six category. So for me, I don't buy into the fact that Deck Prescott can get there. I think I have him at 13 range just outside the top 10. So he's a regression, but not to a desperate point of view. What I'm looking at for Dak, or I guess I'll say my biggest questions for him are.

What's going on with the defense? We know they've lost a ton of pieces in the secondary. And I guess that's the biggest question for me, because the offensive line, I take it back. That's another question. They've lost a couple of big pieces. Oh, something changing here live on the air? The questions just keep coming up. But can that offensive line keep it together? Because where his system, what he's asked to do.

I think you can repeat those efficient numbers where you give a quarterback a ton of time. Even the worst quarterback is going to be able to find an open receiver. The running game keeps the defense honest on you can't just completely key in on DAC. But last year, so many positive game scripts for the Cowboys, and you saw that come out in Ezekiel's numbers, and that meant that there wasn't a lot on DAC's shoulders. Weren't they 13 and 3 last year?

That sounds about right. Is that the record, Brooks? Yeah, I think so. 13 and 3. But to me, a bigger question then also for DAC is the rushing touchdowns. He had six touchdowns. And I talked about on a previous show that I feel like those numbers can continue. And I took a look at rookies and, you know, they're rushing touchdowns. What has happened for them? And you had Cam, which...

He's really an outlier situation. He had 82 rushing touchdowns his rookie year. He went from 14 to 9. So it's hard to use him. James had six. He went down to one. But then Andrew Luck went from five to four. And I see Dax rushing touchdowns more in line with Andrew Luck where it's not like Cam where they're designing everything for him, but they frequently draw up the second read.

is for Dak to just run it in. And he has that tool set. He has that tool set. I agree. Jason has him the highest of all of us. I have him impressing again next year. He's my quarterback seven, which is a little bit hot to throw that out there for a second year quarterback. And you wonder, is there a sophomore slump? You just brought up some of the better rushing touchdown rookie quarterbacks in recent memory. Well, over the last decade, if you look at other people who have...

fared as well in their rookie year as DAC. So, Dak, just so you know, since 2006, he had the third best rookie fantasy season for a quarterback. And if you look at the top five around him, so six really, because he's in the middle of it, but we don't know how he's going to fare yet. You've basically got a list of guys that just continued to impress. You got Cam Newton. You've got Robert Griffin who got injured that second year, but was...

pacing well that year. You have Andrew Luck, James Winston, and Russell Wilson. Those guys all came out their second year and were absolutely fine, barring that injury. And so I look at Dak, he gets Des Bryant for a full year now. And we saw that as the year went on, he figured out how to use Des a little bit better. So I think a full... Did you wink when you said for a full year? No, I love Des. Des is playing 16 games.