The TRUTH: RBs Part 2 + Title Game Talk, Musical Chairs - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/31

On today's episode, we react to Sunday's games. There's a lot of coaching news already starting to happen that's going to make some big impact for next season. And it's the truth about running back to part two. Make sure you subscribe to this channel. Like, leave us some comments and enjoy. To the Fantasy Footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. Tuesday, January 31st. Is that a question? What is? You said that time, really. Almost like you weren't sure if January had 31 days. Is that right or are we on to Feb 1? Where does the time go? I would not be willing to confirm any of the speculation around the way I said the date. All right. But some of you could be right. Welcome in.

Mike, right, Jason Moore, Andy Holloway. January, February. I just can't believe it's already almost February. Yeah, it's Super Bowl time, baby. I know. Oh, brother. So, uh, Jalen Hertz is all right. Yep. Managed to get through Daniel Jones and Josh Johnson. You know, he's, aka the gauntlet. I, I recognize that that is true, but there's too much crap being given. for, oh, this is the easiest path. The Eagles were gifted. They blew the socks off of both of those teams. And so, yeah, you can say. They don't have any socks. Yeah, they were like, get out of here. Right. Due to the easy nature of those teams. Well, look, the giants got to the second round of the playoffs. They, you know, now in hindsight, we're like, oh, Daniel Jones so easy. I think it's more, it's less the reality in, and actually being.

a criticism of the Eagles. I don't think anybody disagrees that the Eagles have the best roster in football. I think it's more the comedy of glancing at the playoff matchups and saying, well, you didn't go through Brady and Rogers, right? It's a quarterback specifically. It's not the teams. It's saying Daniel Jones was the back end of a joke for the better part of his career. And obviously, Josh Johnson, no disrespect to the man, you were the fourth option. And they had to go to the fifth option, which was Brock Pretty without an arm. Right. So, no, it was, you know, Philadelphia did everything that they could do and their favorites in the Super Bowl. I mean, they're two-point favorites over Kansas City. Arizona is set to be home to a great one. Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hertz, the Andy Reed Bowl, the Travis Kelsey Bowl, you know, the legacy of, you know, Patrick Mahomes, again, he can add to it.

And I know the his third time there. Yeah. Third time in four years. And he. That's crazy. I remember when when they won their first Super Bowl, how somewhat disappointed he was that they didn't get to have the fanfare. Because it happened to be during the 2020 season when they're, you know, like COVID kind of stopped the. I guess you would call it the celebration tour. Yeah, a peopalist parade is not quite as fun as one with crowds and a peopleist parade. Yeah, and all the germs involved. So, I mean, he's sitting here and I know the play specifically, the late hit, which was a late hit. Yes, it was. I know that that play specifically is kind of taking, you know, the majority of the conversation towards the end of the game along with the referees.

You know, that's what you get in games like this. You get a lot of controversy. But I still, like Mahomes getting on that ankle to turn the corner. Like he got around the corner. It wasn't like he got stopped short and then the hit happened. Like for him to go out with his body in the shape that it was in, it was a heck of a game, certainly a better game than we got with the unfortunate injury to Brock Purdy in the 49er matchup. But here we are, Kansas City, Philadelphia. Very excited. It's going to be awesome. Yeah. I didn't know if you had any more to add. I was going to say, the Shanahan quarterback magic ended at Josh Johnson. Honestly, I know some of us, like people out there, trust me, it's okay to admit it. There was a little bit of us inside that when Brock Purdy got hurt and Josh Johnson came in, you went.

Well, Josh Joss is about to have some success and make it through to the next round. And then Jimmy Garapolo will be the started quarterback in the Super Bowl. Because backup quarterbacks just come in and dominate. But the stakes, I think, were too much for the other team. The defense. The other team was too up for the game for that to happen. Jimmy G. did say, quote, I wish I had my helmet. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure there's plenty of... You wouldn't have believed what I could have done out there. Then that's the best case scenario for Jimmy Garoppolo. I know. Yeah. If I got put in, we would have been there. And at this point, who the 49ers quarterback is for next year? Oh, man. God only knows. I mean, right now, if I had to place money down on it...

Let's all say a name. Okay. Okay, just the last. At the same time? Yeah, same time. Okay. Let's say a name of who you think will be starting week one of next year. And we'll count it down. Three, two, one. Lanty. So I said Lantz. I said, Purdy, because I followed your rule of just say the last name. He went full name. Yeah, that was bad. You went to Trey Lance, huh? I did. Okay. I did. I mean, there are, I mean, we'll see. I mean, there's an MRI coming for Mr. Brock Purdy. Trey Lance can do a lot of things that Brock Purdy cannot. That's why I think he'll be the quarterback. But that's just an untested physical skill set. Brock Purdy has now shown that he can do things that maybe Trey Lance can do on the field mentally and working in offense. Hold on a second. I'm becoming greatly offended. Ducer's Alley is producing some messages in the Slack channel. Andy Holloway noted Trey Lance Stan. False.

There's no shame being over there of what could be. Just because he starts doesn't mean he'll succeed. He probably will. He probably will. Whichever one of them is the starting quarterback week one will do very well. Josh Johnson? Sure. All right. Moving on. Let's jump into some news and we have quite a bit of it. Yeah. News and notes from around the league. The coaching carousel is not complete. We still have teams as of this recording, which we're recording the afternoon on Monday, January 30th. But the Broncos, you know, a big opportunity. Arizona doesn't have a head coach yet. But we do have a few announcements. The Panthers have made a decision that grabbed Frank Reich. He is the new head coach of the Carolina Panthers. Steve Wilkes, they're moving on. And quick thoughts on Frank Wright.

I think it's a great hire. I think Frank Reich got the shaft by the Colts. He did not deserve to be fired or deserve to have to go to, you know, rookie quarterbacks and be put in a bad situation. I think he's a solid coach. And they said the Panthers said from the beginning, they wanted someone with head coaching experience. They went out to the college ranks the time before. They wanted someone that could really, you know, run an NFL franchise with experience. And I think Frank Reich, I was, he was one of the players or one of the one of the coaches I was hoping, you know, could have made his way to Arizona. And he doesn't have the solidified quarterback situation in Carolina the way that you would have, you know, he certainly was the bad luck loser of the Andrew Luck situation and it's persisted. He finds himself right where he left off. Yeah. Which is.

on his knees praying for a quarterback. Wait, right through the first touchdown pass in Carolina Panthers history? That's correct. That's a fun little trivia nugget. The Carolina connection apparently allowed him to overlook the lack of a quarterback. Perhaps he will be a player coach. Perhaps he will take over the reins at quarterback. Carolina is an extremely interesting team of they have. It feels like they have a defensive nucleus that you can build around for the future. The offense has, I mean, you at least have DJ more, if nothing else. There's a lot of teams that don't have a superstar or a potential superstar wide receiver. They're a little bit away, but also like what's going on with that division right now with. Yeah, Tom Brady leaving. If Tom Brady, even if Tom Brady stays.

They were a sub 500 team and won the division. If Tom Brady leaves and then the bucks are just in a free fall of a scenario, the Saints, they're keeping Dennis Allen. They're a quarterback away. Like they have, every team in that division has major problems. So why not go and bet that you can turn your team around faster than everybody else? That's fair. Are we willing to make a commitment here that we can be? Can I get you guys to commit that we can be pessimistic about whatever quarterback starts for the air? Sure. I'm in. I am dedicated to that. I mean, it's Sam Darnold. Oh, that's going to be easy. I mean, like, that's Frank Reich's the guy to turn that around. I mean, like they, yeah, they have a top 10 pick. Maybe they're real aggressive and they go get the third quarterback, whoever happens to be dropping of kind of the big three right now.

But otherwise it's Sam Darnold and you're trusting the process for a year trying to get some experience and then get a quarterback next year. All right. Well, what else is going on? The Cowboys. They let Kellynne Moore go as their offensive coordinator or a mutual parting of ways is what Jason informed me. And I think it's great news for Kellan Moore. This is bad news for Mike McCart. It's great news for the Chargers because they're hiring Kellyn Moore. And to me, this is like when you're shopping for a car. and you stumble across the really, really nice car that the old person has that they put no miles on it. But they just wanted to change. So they got rid of it. And it's got like 5,000 miles on it. What is this car doing here? This car shouldn't be here. No. And so it seems like the Cowboys just decided like, you know, as a habitual thing, like somebody has to take the fall for not winning a Super Bowl this year. Yeah. And Mike McCarthy.

The buck stops with him, and so now we'll stop with him even further. There's a good chance to call his own place. This is such great news for the Chargers for Justin Herbert. I love going from Lombardi to a new thinker to Kellan Moore. I mean, you look at the offense that Dallas has run over the last several years. They've been top six. most of the time when he's been their coordinator. And, you know, and that's even dealing with backup quarterbacks taking the field. Say, I have a tweet here. Matthew Barry laid it out exactly how my frustration when I've been talking, but here it is on just with some statistics. Kellyn Moore, so four years.

as the OC for Dallas finished top six in points scored in three of four, led the league in yards in two of four, top eight in passing yards three of four, top ten in rushing yards, three of four, average three hundred twelve yards a game and went four and one with Cooper Rush. Mike McCarthy's final two years in Green Bay, 18th in total yards per game, 16th and points per game with Aaron Rogers, who then went on to be the NFL's back-to-back MVP. Yeah, Kellan Moore's good. We're pro-kellen more. I'm just, this is like, coaches don't exist. I'm so, well, coaches exist, but like it, the hiring of Mike McCarthy, I thought was buffoonery when it happened. Then you had the whole thing of Mike McCarthy was like, well, like, basically admitting that he lied during his job interview, still got the job. And now, now like the good part of the offense, he's like, no, you got to get out of here so I can try and do it. There are only two types of coaches in the NFL.

retreads that don't work out and young guys that don't work out. Yeah. All the rest, I mean, that's all there is. I think there's a third type, which is the guys that don't ever leave because they're good. But they're so, I mean, when you really think about it, if you added up all the coaches that had head coaching or coordinator jobs over the last 10 years, you can count on one hand how many are in that category. Oh, yeah. I mean, your odds of succeeding are essentially nothing. Yeah, you've got. Oh, yeah, they're very low. But I mean, McVeigh is still a massive success. I think Staley's the biggest example of like how quickly it can turn on somebody. Yes. Like we weren't sure he was getting fired. But it, and that could easily flip around this year. I mean, Zach Taylor looks like that looks like a legit move. You went from worst to Super Bowl contention year after year. Yeah, they added Joe Burrow, but.

Just adding a franchise quarterback doesn't catapult you to be one of the best teams in the league. So the odds are against you, absolutely. But it can be done. Yeah, and we'll be here next year talking about a bunch of moves. The Jets hired Nathaniel Hackett as their offensive coordinator. Let that breathe a little bit. Now, you might be saying, wait, wait, remind me who Nathaniel Hackett is. That's not the guy who is just hired. for the Denver Broncos and fired the same year because he was supposed to be an offensive guy. Now, here's the thing. A lot of people believe, whether it's correct or incorrect, when the Broncos were going hard after Aaron Rogers that Nathaniel Hackett was hired in part to help be alluring for getting Aaron Rogers to be the quarterback of the Broncos. Now he goes to the Jets where there's all these rumors, including, you know, reporting that they would pay the price to get Aaron Rogers.

It's like, okay, Nathan Hacker worked with Aaron Rogers and they, that was when he was the back-to-back MVP. He is getting some jobs on the like, what is this interview process like, I can get you. My question was the job interview, normally at the point where you pull out the wallet and you're like showing photos of your family. Is it just photos of Aaron? It's just photos of him and Aaron Rogers. I'd be like, oh. I can't believe this is still on my wallet. That's so embarrassing. But here we are dominating as the Green Bay Packers offense. As he turns in a resume missing last year. That does exist. Yeah. It's just like, man, imagine if, imagine if Aaron Rogers was on the Jets. What could we do with this team? Okay, I'll talk to you guys later. If you're the Packers, you trade Aaron Rogers now, you get something. Right? And you don't trade him.

He's suns setting next year. The Packers will absolutely look to trade Aaron Rogers. They should trade Aaron Rogers for sure. The question is whether or not Aaron Rogers gives them enough time of saying he's coming back. Because he hasn't made his decision and they can't, you know, I doubt they're going to get another franchise to trade for him before he's committed to playing. And that's a really tough situation. But the Packers have to trade him. I mean, they just have to. Imagine. Like, what do you do with your decision-making process on Jordan Love if he's still going into year four? Yeah, they have to make the decision. Garrett Wilson, a top 10 wide receiver next year if Aaron Rogers arrives in New York. That's probably. That's pretty high, but. Yeah, I mean, why do you do this year? 1100 yards. It will be far more consistent and you'll have more touchdowns. What other news am I missing here? Michael Flore.

Mike LaFleur, who was removed as the Jets' offensive coordinator, immediately scooped up by the Rams as their new OC working with McVeigh. What are we doing here? It's musical chairs, man. And then Bill O'Brien. Yes. This one I'm on board of it. I'm good with this. Bill O'Brien is back in the NFL. Good old Bobby. He's going to be the offensive coordinator again for the New England Patriots. And this has a lot of connections. He spent the last two years as the Alabama OC. So he did not coach Mack Jones. Mac Jones was already in the NFL when Bill O'Brien was the O'Brien was the O'Brien. There was a relationship there part of the preparing for the draft situation where Bill O'Brien was in town for Alabama. But I mean, Bill O'Brien has run successful offenses in the NFL, certainly an upgrade over.

Matt Patricia and Joe Judge trying to figure out how to run an office. So I think this is actually a really good hire. Bill O'Brien's... I can't wait to see him on the sideline again. I've been missing him. His... I feel like Bill O'Brien's true downfall was he just thought he had a skill set that he didn't have. And we've all... We're all guilty of that from time to time. His just happened to come on a stage where the entire nation looks on and judges... If you do something right or wrong. I assume that skill set you're referring to as general manager? General manager, yes. And a lot of, to be fair, to him, a lot of coaches think that they can be the head coach and the general manager. And it turns out, no, you cannot most the time. If he had just been the coach of the Houston Texans and someone else had done all the general managing, Bill Bryan might still be the coach of the Texans. Yeah, that's true.

Deshawn Watson might be the quarterback of the Texans. All right. Any other news we need to talk about? Oh, Vic Fangio. Yeah, that was a big one. The Dolphins hired Vic Fangio as their defensive coordinator. Huge hire. What a great move because this is a team. It reminds me a lot of what McVeigh did when he got son of bum and just hiring a great older. You don't like the son of bum. No, I like it a lot. Go ahead and explain who it is. It speaks for itself. Son of bum. Yeah. I mean, he was indeed the son of bump. Now I don't even know. Wade Phillips. You don't. Yeah. But he brought in, you know, just a great defensive mind and said, hey, this is your. Let me do the offense. You just take over the defense. And they had such a great defense that worked with the Rams. This reminds me here of a similar situation.

Fangio has a great defense everywhere he is. He's as good as it gets on the defensive side of the ball. And I think he's going to get paid a lot of money to come here and just run that half of the team and, you know, not have any interference whatsoever. By the way, Wade Phillips has a son of his own, right? Oh, son of bum bum. Grand son of bum. Son of bum. Son of son of bum. And what was yours like? Son of bum bum. Okay. I'm not sure about that one. I think I win. Mine's funnier. Yeah, okay. You win on that. Yep. All right. We're moving on into the truth. You want answers. I think I'm entitled. You want answers. I want the truth. You can't handle the truth. Harold Wade Phillips. Harold? That's his real, his real first name. Wow.

Son of Bum is now a... How old is Harold? You know, he's the head coach of the Houston Roughnecks in the XFL? Oh, I did not know that. Yeah, son of bum in the XFL. When does that start? Isn't that coming back sometime? Eh, doesn't the Rock own it now? I have no idea. Anybody know? There's also the... What's the other way? USFL? Yeah, USFL. Yeah, they keep showing me commercials of that. And they're like, remember this day? And then it's like, who? What football teams are these? Bum is not short for Harold. What? Oh, is Josh trying to. Yeah, Papa Josh. You talk about skill sets that somebody doesn't have. Get right into humor. All right. We're into the truth episode, part two for the running back position. Jason and I talked through the top 10 running backs last week. If you want to listen to that one, there was Echler, McCaffrey, Jacobs, Henry Chub, Barclay, the combo of Pollard and Zique we talked about.

talked about Swift and Jamal Williams, Aaron Jones, and AJ Dylan, and Dalvin Cook. Woo! We got more names, more people to talk about. And, you know, this year running back scoring, it was down, receptions of the running back position, they were down. The average RB2 score this year, 12.2 fantasy points. That is not great. That's... just barely above our good metric for running backs and down from what we've seen in the last couple of years. Yeah, so we look at the truth data. We break it up into how many games did they give you that were great, which is 21 or more points. 12 points is the threshold for good, seven or fewer. You busted. All right. And so. Busted. Thank you. Thank you very much. Do you see he was, Mr. Gronkowski said he's, he's open to coming back next year.

Did you guys catch that? I did not see that. So he's just wondering where Brady is going? Stop. Yes. Wow. Actually, he was, if you. Don't forget about me. He was interviewed and he talked about coming to Tampa and how he pretty much let, I mean, it's the most grong thing you'd ever hear. He just let Brady do the research on where to go and just trusted that Brady would pick the right place and he would just go with him. And he's like, that's the best. And then he hears he's like, Tampa. It's like, what? You know, and then he shows up. He's like, and then I realized it was really great. That's, that's a good life. Yeah, he's just in his pocket. That's like, when you have your own personal, like, you're a travel agent. Mm-hmm. Like your friend is, like, I have a friend of mine, and she's like the travel agent for the group. Yeah. And I was like, she's like, hey, we're going to do this. This, this, like, whatever, man. You just tell me where to go and tell me it's going to be cool. That's.

That's amazing. That's a great life for Grog. Gronk is the same age as Travis Kelsey. So you have the possibility that he goes somewhere next year and has relevance. Because if he's with Brady, he will have relevant. Brady will just throw him the football until they both just. But what if it goes to the Raiders? That would be a problem. I mean, there's a room for Waller and? Yes. There is room for Bob. I mean, would you pick up Gronk under that news in Dynasty? Yeah, I mean, most dynasty rosters when you're 30 deep have some cuttable. Don't look at the tight ends that I pick up during the off season. It's embarrassing. All right. Number 11 on our list here, Ramandre Stevenson. All right. He finished at 11. He was drafted in the eighth round by fantasy managers, the RB 36 off the board. Obviously a huge win for anybody that grabbed Ramandre. His consistency rank, it surprises me. It was 16th.

Good or bad? It surprises me on the bad side, simply because I'm looking at his game log. If you go to the website, the fancy footballers.com, we have the consistency chart. And it was really, you know, it was like. seemed like you were happy you started him all but five games. Yeah. So what happened is three of his last five games, he busted. And the first two games of the season before he really took over that role were complete and utter bust. So you've got a pretty high, I mean, on the course of the season, that's 29% of his games that were bust games. And really the second half of the season after their by week, he had like one really good game.

And the rest were either those bust games or mediocre. That being said, he also got injured during that span. And we don't always remember the injuries when they play in the games. Because you look back last year. You know, once we're into 2023 draft season, we're going to look at his game log and see he didn't miss any games and not remember that he was playing through injury during that stretch where he was bad. To me, the truth of Ramandre Stevenson is more like his first half consistency rank, which he was number 10 overall. I think he was as rock solid as it came and then he got injured. That's the way that I look at his season. Damien Harris is a free agent. Ramandre Stevenson is very young. Dynasty players want to know what they have in Ramandre Stevenson.

what we can expect next year in New England. You have a new offensive coordinator coming in? You have a stick of dynamite in your hand that may or may not light is what you have with Ramandre Stevenson. Because even going into next year, the Patriots will do something. They'll do something at the running back position. And most of the time when we have that scenario, you can say, oh, okay, well, it's a day, it wasn't a day to draft capital running back. I'm not going to be very concerned about them eating into the workload of the start of Ramondry Stevenson. But draft capital is switching for running backs. These guys who are, they're starting to make a splash getting drafted later, getting drafted on day three. And the Patriots, they're a wild team. You're never exactly sure how they feel about certain players and players who were drafted late, taking over the job who you felt like should have had the job.

But if Reminders Stevenson keeps this role, he's going to be fantastic. Now you have an actual OC coming in with Bill O'Brien, and it will be better on offense for him. But you're, you just, at any moment, there could be another running back who comes in and Remandre Stevenson's role completely changes away from what it was last year. So I have a concern. First of all, he was third most targets at the running back position. Fourth most receptions, awesome, right? A stabilizer. Third most evaded tackles. You watched him play football. You're like, oh, that guy's really good. Am I? I need you guys to really, Jason, do you have the same concern about another bat coming in and hurting Ramandre that Mike brought up? Because in history, you know, history passed. That's been a regular concern with New England. I don't know why I'm not as concerned about Ramandre's situation. And I think it's because I'm biased.