Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - Top 10 WR, Sleepers, News, Mailbag

He's done it for multi years. As long as his hamstrings hold together, Jordy Nelson, to me, Jordan Nelson, I believe is my number one guy. Is that the way it ended up still? It is. He's your number one guy. That's right. Jordy Nelson. Number one, you have him at 1,500 yards, 12 touchdowns, and 95 receptions. Taking care of business across the board. You take Super Stud in round 1. You get Jordy Nelson in round 2. You go to the championship.

Yeah, it's the value of where you're getting, Jory Nelson is, is unbelievable. And we said last week that he gets no respect whatsoever. When I saw that he was possibly, I tell you, get no respect. That's pretty good. Thanks. You know, performer. When I saw.

Early today that Jordan Nelson might be your number one. The first thing that went through my head when Jordan Nelson might be your number one. There's no way Jordan Nelson could be number one. I mean, I was like, that's a joke. That's ridiculous. No, and it's funny because I think.

That's crazy. And then I run that back in my head. I'm thinking, okay, a guy that's finished number two, twice, who is the number one wide receiver for the best quarterback in the league on a high power offense. Yeah, no, that'd be crazy if he finishes number one. I mean, it's ridiculous. Oh, we all know why. If you're listening to the show and you're thinking the same way, you've got that flawed logic on, Jordy. Well, I'm glad to correct it. Wake up, man. Wake up. Number three. Julio! Julio! Julio Jones. We also talked about him.

in our last show. Yes. Absolutely incredible into the year for Julio Jones. He almost broke a lot of records. They were talking, it got to the point where he had come on so fast that they were talking about him breaking. They actually interviewed Calvin Johnson about the possibility of him breaking that 2,000-yard barrier. He got hurt at the end of the year. You guys haven't projected. You have him at 3 and 4, looking at about 110 catches.

Jason, you have them at 1,50 yards. You just have him a little lower on the touchdowns at 8. So he could easily be a number one type of guy. Are the concerns injury related with Julio Jones? Can he stay healthy? I think he can absolutely stay healthy. He's played a healthy year before. And I realize, and he's got a big body. He's not one of these 5-11 guys. He's 6-3-220. And so I think he can stay healthy. I think he will stay healthy. I think...

I mean, I've got him projected for less yards than he had last year, even though he only played 15 games and more touchdowns, and he finishes up as my number two guy. With the Kyle Shanahan offense coming, who's going to, has always predominantly fed one player. You feed Julio, and he's a monster. He had 1,600 yards in 15 games last year, over 100 receptions. So whether you're PPR or not PPR, he's going to be awesome. And then to start.

To start his career, he had eight touchdowns as a rookie, 10 as a sophomore, and then last year, the Falcons just didn't like the Red Zone and weren't a very good team. But I think the team's going to be improving more total touchdowns, and the percentage is going to go to Julio in the air. I will let everyone know if an ending injury is coming from Julio, because this is a true story. Two years ago, Julio Jones was my boy, and I frequently...

would explain to my wife how much I loved Julio Jones. Too much jealousy eventually started creeping into the marriage. You did, though. You loved it. One, we're watching, I believe it was a primetime game. And all of a sudden, and Julio's not going back in. I'm like, this is not good. And it shows him on the side. And my wife says, oh, he looks hurt pretty bad. And I said, don't, don't you dare say that.

Don't you bring that evil in this house. Next day comes out that the screwing his foot was broken. So here's the deal. If my wife sees that Julio Jones is hurt, run. You need to sell stock immediately. Because she knows she has that woman's intuition because of my love for Julio Jones. So we'll be giving her a section on the blog. Yes. It'll be just a one-word blog of yes or no. Not looking good.

from Mike's wife. I should add that these top three guys that we have were basically not separated, right? They tied in our consensus rankings. Yeah, Julio Jones. So, Julio could as well, this is a three-way tie for number one. Let's just go there. Let's call it a three-way. Yeah, yeah. That just happened. Three-way tie for number one. Julio Jones at number three. Number two is the tried and true.

I think he tries to replicate his exact statistics every year he plays. D.T. Demarius Thomas, the master of the screen game, one of my favorite guys for his consistency. One of the fun fact here from our top four, this wasn't done on purpose, but it's why these guys are here. They are the top four guys who had targets last year, top four target numbers last year. So from a consistency standpoint, from knowing what you're going to get, it's hard to argue with that. And they've done it.

for multiple years. So Demarius Thomas at number two, a little bit of a shakeup on the offensive side of the ball. You have Julius Thomas is gone. Wes Welker is gone. Any things standing out for Demarius this year? I mean, he's coming into, he's a contract year. He's on a franchise tag. You always love that. The thing that stood out to me when I was breaking down the numbers was the reason why he's only fourth.

in my list was the outwire of targets in 2014. He was at 184, which is an astronomical amount of targets. The two previous years in the Manning era, he was at 142 and 143. So I don't see him duplicating 180 plus targets. However, he's great. What's...

You talked about the screen game, and Julio Jones and Des are the same. And Antonio Brown. It's fantastic. And so was Jordy Nelson. But to get a guy who isn't just the deep threat, but a guy who they try and they throw to the screen to him three to four times a game, and you can almost guarantee it's going to work at least once. Yeah, for 20, 30 yards. It's fantastic to get those cheapy points that are just sure-fired.

I wonder how many times the running game of Denver, which was kind of, obviously, C.J. Anderson got it together towards the end of the year, but for a period of time, it was just really messy. I wonder how much of that, because a lot of these teams will screen to, you know, it's a form of the running game, it's quick screens. So you wonder if some of those target numbers being up in the 180s had to do with just, okay, instead of handing it off to Ronnie Hillman or Juan Thompson here, I'm going to throw it into.

And the funny thing is he dropped a lot of those targets. That was the crazy thing. He had a lot of short drops that were infuriating, but he still had a monster year. So did you have something you wanted to say on Demarius, Jason?

I just think his numbers are so reliable. I agree with you as an outlier on targets, but for this year's projections, I gave him 11 less receptions. So, you know, the last three years, he's had 94 receptions, 92 receptions, and then 111. So split the difference, say, gets 100 balls, and I still have him finishing tied for first. So he's tied with Julio as our three-way tie for number one, and then the number one guy, the guy that's been absent so far from the list.

The guy who also doesn't get as much respect as he deserves. True. Just like Jordy Nelson, this guy because he's small. Antonio Brown. Hardest working wide receiver in football. I'm convinced of it. And a guy that had just dominated last year. Absolutely dominated. As close to it as we've had in a while. And have you ever seen him actually interviewed, especially with his son? Does he score touchdowns during the interview as well? Pretty much. He scores touchdowns with your heart. Because the man is a gentleman.

He is... A scholar. He is a fantastic man. He seems like an actual one of those true role models. So... Props to my Tonyo Brown? Yeah, it's just a nice thing to see a guy who you want to root for, real-life fantasy, and you can point to your kids and say, hey, look what this guy's doing and how he's doing it. That's exactly how I feel about Demarius Moore. Denarius. Denerius. Dermarius. That ruined the joke, didn't it? I thought you just made a hybrid. Yeah.

Who is this guy? I don't want to hybrid anything out of Demarius Thomas. Yeah, Antonio Brown was an absolute stud. So having him at number one, I mean, do we think there's a regression just based on how often he was targeted? He was the second most in the league, 181 targets. They have developing talent around him in Martavis Bryant and Wheaton in the running game. Is it possible that he regresses a little bit? It's possible that it regresses slightly, but...

I believe that offense is, it is what it is now, especially with Levion Bell as the motor. I mean, you can't not play eight in the box. If you put seven in the box, Levion is going to gash you. If you put eight in the box, nice little quick slant or a screen to Antonio Brown, or you take the shot with Bryant. I love the Pittsburgh Steeler offense, but Levion Bell and Antonio Brown are the cogs that really make it up.

that turn it from average into high-powered. And you want to know what's so great about Antonio Brown is not so much that his, you know, his floor is low, but his consistency is on... His floor is high. I made that mistake last week. Well, the floor is low to the ground, so it's an easy mistake. But from a week-in, week-out perspective, it is so nice.

to have Antonio Brown on your team where you know he's getting, I mean, he got 129 receptions last year. I expect that to fall a little bit, but I mean, if he has 115 receptions, you're never, if you're in a PPR league, it's just pure gold. It's over. You can rely on him the way that you can't rely on other big name receivers on a week-in, week-out basis because they have their booms and they have their busts. Antonio Brown will give you

points to win your game every single week, week in, week out. And if you are in a PPR league, I think that his targets and his receptions just push the gap to be real and worthy of actually, you know, because my list here of where I think guys are going to finish is not the list that I would necessarily draft from yet. We're not to that part of the season where I'm saying, you know, the value of where you're picking them at.

But if you're in a PPR league, I think his value is worth that number one pick. And I would definitely take him number one. Yeah, he had 12 games of 10 or more targets. Beautiful, right? And he had that 5 for 50 street going the whole year? Yeah, well, it's still going as far as I know. But I was looking at his game log of fantasy. He had one dud. One. And the reason it was a dud because he lost two fumbles. He still had 74 yards.

He's the anti-Dashon Jackson in that regard. He's going to give you consistent numbers every single week, no matter what. And so that is our top 10. If you want to hear a little bit more about some of our wide receiver values, studs, duds, go back and listen to last Thursday show. And we talk about those guys in great detail. And so let's go ahead and move it on. Mailbag. Me!

That was like a delicate soft. How to change it up. Wow. I like it. So this question comes in from Norm D. Norm? Norm. What's up? Norm? That reminds me of this old house. It reminds me of cheers. Yeah. That's what I meant. I've never even heard of the show. What did you say? This old house? Yeah, we'll get back to that. It's on PBS.

It was. You remember that? Now I've got the cheers song in my head. I was just guessing. I think it was. That sounded like a PBS show. I don't remember, but they built houses. It was really exciting. We got time for one question today, and so I chose Norm's question here. I've been offered T.Y. Hilton for Jimmy Graham. This is a standard scoring league. Cubie gets six for passing TD. We can protect up to five, no more than two at one position. So he's got some complicated. You guys can read them there, some keeper rules.

But T.Y. Hilton for Jimmy Graham. What do you think? No way. I don't do it. Because of positional. Yeah, and this has nothing to do with how I feel about Jimmy Graham coming up in the season, as I have my concerns about him. But there's got to be somebody in that league who's going to give you something better than T.Y. Hilton. I like Hilton a lot. But for Jimmy Graham, I'm sure you could get a...