Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - Live Mock Draft, Interview with Brian Tesch

as they kind of say they're going to, or are they, like you say, Mike, are they going to split it up and have him and Trent splitting only the first and second down role? That's exactly what I see it. But I don't think it's going to happen. If they do that, they do it for like a game. I mean, if you ask me, the reason the Colts were so committed to Richardson was the investment. They had to keep putting him out on the field because they didn't want to look idiotic. And now you bring in Richardson and you're not going to play a guy who...

runs into the back of his lane. They are. They're going to play. We should do an over-under bet on carries for turn interesting, because I'm going to win that. So we'll have to think about that. We'll think about that. All right. Last bit of news here out of Philly. It's something that's been actually, it seems like it comes up every few days, actually. This isn't the only report of this, but Jason Lock and four is describing Sam Bradford as still hobbled and noted that he did very little work in team drills. He really hasn't been...

active in any form in camp his ACL recovery well we're all getting very spoiled by some of these guys miraculous recoveries from ACLs where we've kind of jumped to the conclusion that it's it's not a big deal anymore it's still a big deal for your need to lose that ligament just ask Gino Atkins yeah exactly right like there's still guys who the recovery doesn't go exactly like a Peterson or Charles so and I'm

really high on Bradford, assuming he's back to... You're high on the hypothetical Bradford. Exactly. And so I'm monitoring this situation very carefully and really hope that he's healing up. So I did, I redid my quarterback rankings, and this was before that news, and I finished those up. And Bradford was my number two shock to me of where I had him finishing. Lower or higher? Literally, I was on the Bradford train intellectually.

And when I statted him out looking at him and the Eagles of the years pass and what they're planning to do, he was 17th. So I'm not necessarily on the Bradford train right now. You're not moving him up with the news that he's still hobbled in camp. Yeah. I just really, my heart goes out to those guys and I bump him up. One of the quarterbacks that we do want to talk about is Russell Wilson out of Seattle. And so we want to bring in Brian Tesh.

of Fantasypros.com right now and chat a little Seattle Seahawks with him. Fantasy footballers are now joined by the incomparable Brian Tesh, who is a correspondent. He's a correspondent for Fantasy Pros. He heads up the NFC West Division as well as writing up some fantastic articles, especially on sleepers, getting super deep. But...

So welcome to the show. Brian wants you say hello to Footballer Nation. Hello, Footballer Nation. I, at least in Fantasy Bros land, I am Mike's boss, but I don't want you to think of me as Mike's boss. I want you to think of me as a friend. Kind of, because you're my boss for the Cardinals, but then I was the boss for the NFC South people. That's true. Well, if you guys, I will say this, that if you do want to get your foot in the door as a fantasy football writer,

Starting out as a fantasy pros correspondent is probably the best way to do it because you're not shouting into the void. You've got this huge platform that they just turned over to us, a bunch of Yahoo's. And yeah, if you want to get your foot in there and start making a name for yourself, as a correspondent. That's a company man right there. It is. No, that's the, because when back in the, I am a company man because I was. That was the site. That was my go-to site.

I mean, when I first started playing fantasy football, I mean, I'd read, I'd read like the Yahoo expert. I'd read the guys on ESPN, and I'd kind of just ballpark it from there with my own observations. But fantasy pros, I mean, it really does. It just puts everybody together. You get the consensus rating. You get a really good lay of the land. And it's not, it's not so much a, like, hey, you need to get player X. It's, hey, this is what the landscape looks like.

Make your own decision, which I like a lot. Yeah, we are big proponents of fantasy pros. We use them a lot. So let's get to know Brian real quick, because we like to do this before we get into the meat. Brian, what is your favorite food? Are we talking value? Are we talking upside here? We'll go, well, I mean, you can't see here. Fun fact, Mike Wright and Fantasy Football Nation, the best sushi you can ever have is in Omaha, Nebraska.

So I would never have guessed that. Neither would I. I mean, raised on the West Coast, been down the West Coast, Ben Dolance Vegas, been all that. And yeah, best sushi I've ever had, Omaha, Nebraska. But it is. That's the highest upside food. The sushi? Okay, what's your favorite movie? Favorite movie? Oh, man, let's see here. If I ever had to be, like, stuck on an island, I'd probably either, I'd bring the double disc, Shank Redemption, and I'd sneak in Zoolander. Oh. Sneak it in.

Okay. All right. And who was your favorite football player of all time? Oh, man. Because the Seahawks, I mean, they were in the desert there for years. And then Matt Hasselbook came in. He was garbage and everybody wanted to bench him for Trent Dilfer. And then he turned it around. And that was, and the Seahawks had a great little run there at the beginning of the aughts. So I will. I will always, I love the Seahawks now, but I,

I will always go back to Matt Hasselbeck, bringing the team out of the lean years of the late, nice, early odds. I like it. That's not bad at all. So when you are drafting, do you favor a particular drafting style, which, like, the new hotness, which is the zero RB, do you tend to see yourself usually going value-based, running back heavy? What do you usually think about for your strategy?

Well, it was, it's the classic, I'll save you the terrible Mike Tyson impressionation, but it is. Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face. And after the first couple rounds, you really have to roll with the punches in fantasy football. Like, if you go in thinking, I'm not going to draft a running back within rounds five and six, and there's Arian Foster slipping to the bottom of round two.

and you're taking a wide out, you're a terrible player, and I want to play in a league with you. I tend to be value-based, but do the leagues that I play in. Most of my hometown leagues are pretty standard fair, but I like to have a running back in the flex simply because, A, you're hoarding a very valuable resource that's rare.

And B, you get that upside of, hey, even if the running back has a bad day, you get like six to eight points instead of taking a bagel from a wideout. So I tend to be value-based, but I skew kind of on the slider towards the traditional running back heavy. That's good information. So let's get into it. We talked a little bit about it, or you did. You mentioned you're a Seattle guy. So we're going to focus a little bit on the Seahawks for the fantasy side of things.

So you saw firsthand that Lynch, still a beast, we saw last year. However, when Max Unger was not in the lineup, he wasn't as beastly. And as we know, Max Unger is gone. He's not even an option. What is Seattle doing to replace Max Unger? And does this affect Lynch going into this season?

I, it's not, it's not all doom and gloom, because it wasn't so much Unger. It's, I mean, it's the classic that if Max Unger goes down, the line in Vegas isn't going to move. But the Seahawks, actually, in 2014, they started nine different guys along the offensive line. That it was Unger going down, James Carpenter missed time, Russell O'Coon. I mean, he missed two games. He played hurt the whole year.

The two guys that were healthy were J.R. Sweezy, who was a seventh round pick last year, and Justin Bred, who was a rookie right tackle. And so, I mean, they were just, they were shuffling guys in. And I mean, his yards per carry didn't dip a ton. It was like he went from 5 to 4.4, which is good, but I looked into something. They were playing better run defenses. They drafted, they're throwing, they're kind of just throwing bodies at the problem right now because they...

They brought in three guys in the draft in the middle rounds. They brought back this Lemuel Jim Pierre, who has been. He's been on and off the practice squad. That was. That was extremely, extremely professional there. Yeah, you're getting, yeah, you get on the fancy footballers, you're getting, you're getting Seahawk practice squad offensive line knowledge. No, this is, this is meaty stuff. Yeah, so, ooh, ooh, it's meaty. So you still have Lynch top five?

I would. I actually, I probably would take, I would even think about him top three. Okay. Just that I, well, we'll get to it later. I'm not a big fan of some of the backs that are being, are being drafted in the top five running backs. Because he is, the floor is so freaking high for Marshawn that even if he does dip down in yards per carry, he's still on the field. Three downs.

The offense isn't going to just turn into this spread style offense overnight that even if he falls off, he's going to get the volume to still be an RB1. That he's probably the safest pick outside of the Charles, Antonio Brown, Grunk, Eddie Lacey, kind of top four. That if you're sitting there in the middle of round one, I mean, I'm either going Gronk or Marshaun Lynch.

So let's move to the new hotness of Seattle, the player that everyone wants to talk about coming in, great pass catcher as we saw. Chris Matthews is, of course, the guy I'm talking about. Who was? Oh, no, my notes were all on Cooper Helfit, Mike. We can't do this segment. Oh, no. The playoff hero, he caught the onside kick. He was a monster in the Super Bowl. He was one of the key reasons they were in the game.

And we haven't really heard anything about him because there was a trade with a guy we're going to talk about in a second. But is it ridiculous to see the Chris Matthews momentum propelling him to be a top option in that offense? Or is he just, is he done now? He's not done. He's kind of in that nebulous, non-fant fantasy relevant.

but still, he's in that like Malcolm Floyd zone where it's like he's going to be, he's going to be pretty good, but I mean, you don't want him starting every week that the Seahawks, the way that they view receivers under Pete Carroll, it's so weird that you're a special teamer first and then you're a wide out, that everybody on the roster is, I mean, Doug Baldwin made the team as a returner, Ricardo Lockett, I mean, his main duty is playing special teams, Jermaine Curse was a gunner.

Paul Richardson, the guy they drafted in the second round last year, they drafted him as a returner, Tyler Lockett, and the first thing they said about him, oh, he's going to upgrade our punt return game, which was really pretty horrible last year. And then, well, Chris Matthews, he came on, he was hurt all last year. He was recovering from turf toe. But the thing that you should be encouraged with him is he can play special teams, that he can at least earn his keep.

up into the receiver rotation. And I think personally, he's a better option than Jermaine Curse, who I think is pretty replacement level as a wide receiver too. But Matthews' upside is like 40 catches, 600 yards, and 6 TDs, which is, like, it's nice for DFS that if you want a guy that you're going to punt, if you really want some high-end options that week, Chris Matthews, you can do a lot worse.

than putting him in. But there's just an equal chance that he gets cut too. Because, I mean, it's, there's the, they have a fairly, there's, there's not a lot of separation between the options in Seattle. The only guys are really guaranteed to have roles next year, a Lockett and Baldwin. So all the rest is into the wind. I would take Matthews as a, as an upside pick, but I mean, don't, don't expect too much from him. Okay. So let's get to the guy that,

who I was actually alluding to. The people that, the guy that players really want to talk about is Jimmy Graham. He got traded up to Seattle. Now, most of the community still have Graham easily as the number two tied in, but he's going from an offense that always ranked near the top for passing volume to a team that was at the very bottom of pass attempts for the past two years.

So what are your thoughts on Graham? Do you have him still being that number two guy easily? Or is he maybe he's going to slip? It's not so much easily because I mean it's the, but hey, fun fact for the listeners here, Mike. We love fun facts. Who is the last Seattle Seahawk pro bowl tight end? You got me. I'm stumped. Trick question because it was never. Seattle Seahawks.