Fantasy Football Podcast 2017 - This or That Decisions, Tyreek Talk, The Woke One Returns

The volume and consistency of Kelvin Benjamin, I don't even want to deal with that. I don't even want to think about it. I know targets are going to be there for Brandon Marshall. I do. The targets will be there. So for me, it's Brandon Marshall. It's the, you know, the talent gap between these two players, even now is massive to me. And so from those two perspectives, is Calvin Benjamin going to give a fantasy owner a three touchdown game this year? I think he probably will. He'll probably do it.

I don't know which game that's going to be, and I'm going to start him eight times and be upset I did. That's my perspective on those two. Yeah, I know you move Kelvin up to him. Yeah, they're actually very close. I have Marshall slightly ahead. I just, Kelvin was too low in my rankings for what he did last year. I'm just not as confident as you are that Brandon Marshall is going to get the targets. I went back the past three years looking at the number two for the Giants.

2014 it was good old rube's personal favorite of mine 127 targets and donnell Larry danella third option had 92 targets 2015 reuben randall 90 targets shamevereen had 81 and last year sterling shepherd the rookie had 105 and then you had crews behind him i don't know it's i don't know that the targets for shepherd are just going to

evaporate and turn into Brandon Marshall target. So I don't know that he will get the volume. It's going to be touchdowns for Brandon Marshall. Meanwhile, Kelvin Benjamin should still be the wide receiver one on that team. I know he had lulls and I've not been the biggest Kelvin supporter. But weeks 5 through 11, he did average 70 yards per game and he finished strong. Those gaps are...

bizarre though when he just absolutely vanishes when the wide receiver won from a team just vanishes so i don't blame me for going with brandon marshal i i'm starting to lean kelvin even though brandon marshal is just slightly head of my rankings i i lean kelvin but i don't like either one of these guys i mean i you know you talk about okay upside at least kelvin to me is the clear one

for the team. The market share will be there for Kelvin. I'm not worried about Devin Funches. Christian McCaffrey, obviously, will come in and do some past catching work. Did you just say something negative about Devin Funches? Oh, I mean, look, I see I'm not scared about Devin Funches, but I also like Devin Funches. That's for another time. Calvin Benjamin has performed before. I mean, he's one of, you know, the very rare.

rookie wide receivers to finish as a wide receiver one. He'll get the volume. He'll get the touchdown opportunities. I'm more confident in his opportunity than Brandon Marshall's. Now, I think Brandon Marshall's on the way down, but I still like Brandon Marshall's talent far more than the dump truck that we saw in OTAs jogging these routes.

I mean, if you haven't seen Calvin Benjamin at OTAs yet, you've got to do yourself a favor and go to Mr. Google and say, help me find Calvin Benjamin. Oh, come on. It looks so. I mean, I think if I ran a route, it's exactly what I would look like. I've seen you run routes. I mean, I look terrible. So I don't really love either of these guys. Andy, you quarterbacked for Jason Moore. Yeah.

Grade the routes. You saw the Kelvin route. You've seen Jason run routes. Yeah, he runs a route like a power forward. He runs a Charles Barkley route. He can box him out. He can bring it in. And then he just needs to get downhill momentum. See, and that's what I think Kelvin Benjamin is. He's a power forward. He's just a box out guy, which works around the red zone. He's perfect for, he's perfect for Cam Newton because Cam Newton can rear back and fire as fast and as wide a catch radius as possible. And Kelvin, you know, he'll catch a few.

Yeah, I think I mean, I don't like him. Look, last year was disappointing. Now you add Christian McCaffrey and Curtis Samuel. Was last year really disappointed for Kelvin Benjamin? And wait? Or was it last year disappointing because of the first two weeks that Kelvin Benjamin gave fantasy owners? All of the above. All of the above. It was certainly disappointing to anybody who went and traded for him as a one. Oh, yeah. Yes. But it was disappointing for all fantasy owners who wanted to see a step forward. We projected.

Before the injury of the year before. Look, Kelvin Benjamin is three years removed from his rookie season, right? This is going into year four. So he had, he missed an entire season with the ACL. Came out last year was somewhat inconsistent. Comes out this year, at least right now is dealing with conditioning and weight issues. And if you remember when he was drafted, the concern about him was, does he want to play football very badly? All right. Here's my, I'm changing my answer. I'm going Brandon Marshall. Because look,

After those first two weeks, do you want to know what Calvin Benjamin's 16-game pace was? For week three on, so I mean, this is a huge sample. That was the goose egg, right? Was he similar to your pace last season? Yeah. So it's 57 receptions for 848 yards and five touchdowns. Now, could he do better? Obviously. But what we see in him right now, like, I still have to trust my eyeballs and what he looks like and how he's coming to camp. And...

I'm not, I can't look at that and go, you know what? He's going to really step it up from last year. I have reason to believe that. I don't. He comes into can't. He comes into can't. He may be the WR1, but they write him down as 2WR. That's his actual, he's two. All right, we're going to answer some mailbag questions. We'll go over the clock today. Let's do it. Mailbag. You think if you drag and drop him into your ESPN lineup, he fills both slots? No?

You guys are savages right now. Poor Kelvin. Hey, it bugs me when we make jokes, right? We make jokes about Eddie Lacey and Calvin Benjamin. The jokes are there not because, you know, want to make light of somebody overweight or something like that. You have an, to me, with the NFL, you have an opportunity to do something 0.01% of anybody on earth gets to do, and you take the off season off, and you don't care.

And it bugs me as a competitor and as a player. That's the only reason why those things. And, you know. Yeah, it's your job that you're being paid millions of dollars to do. Right. It's not just, hey, look at you, you're ugly. And it's hard. Look. Right. That's true. And it's hard when you watch the shows like, what am I thinking of here? When you watch. I. Like the Hard knocks? Sorry, yes. Hard knocks. When you watch Hard knocks. And you see the wide receiver 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

trying to make the team. And you know they can't make the team over Calvin Benjamin, but they're the ones working. I don't know. Just bugs me. It's under my skin. That's fair. At least today it does. All right, mailbag, let's jump in here. If you want to send a question into the podcast, go to the fancy footballers.com. Click to submit a button or leave us a voicemail hotline. 302-664 TFFB. We're going to answer a voicemail question to start off this segment right now. And my question is, you guys...

seem like you would know each other extremely well doing the show together, knowing each other's rankings and everything. How difficult does that make it to draft against each other? Thanks, guys. Love the show. It's super annoying. Yeah, it's super annoying because in a draft, one of the fun pieces in a draft is whether players will slide to you in an unexpected way and you get to steal them. And I know that when I draft against these two gentlemen,

I most likely will not get to steal the player unless their name is Todd Gurley. Oh, yeah. Yeah, steal away. That's not stealing. I would say that the more you know the other players, the less difficult it gets. Now, in our league, what you're alluding to is absolutely true because the league knows us far better than we know the entirety of the league because they listen to the podcast. They've got our rankings. We're not like putting out our own personal rankings in my closet and then the public rankings to everyone else.

But I do know when I've gone into a draft, the more I know the other players. Like when I do mock drafts that aren't using software, I just use a doc and I mock draft. I try to draft who I think you would draft and who I think Andy would draft. And it ends up very helpful because I realize who's not going to drop to me. And I think what I'm saying here is.

Get to know your league mates better and who they like and who they don't like. It won't make it more difficult. It'll make it far easier. Well, it won't make it more difficult to predict, but it'll make it harder for players to fall to you maybe. Yeah, when you guys, at least for me, I know you guys aren't going to let somebody that we all agree is really good get to me. Yeah, don't share your opinions. Just get theirs. And things like sleepers and breakouts, it makes it a little riskier for those guys because we have to reach. I mean, you have your normal.

Okay, I'm going to reach a round or two for this guy. Yeah. Well, now I know that these clowns. John Brown over here is going to be drafted. I don't know. That's right. Nuts. All right. Here's a question that came in from Josh. How to sell PPR to your league. Hey, guys, thanks for taking the time to read this. Wondering if you had any suggestions for selling PPR format to a 14-man, 14-year-old league. You can see the roster format there, pretty standard. Only one running back. That's going to be tough.

Because of the age of the league. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of lawns that people don't like you stepping on. Look, you get some ammo with ESPN changing their league format, their default league format. It's the new standard. Don't even, here's what you do. I know we normally say you got to vote on everything. That's not a bad. But you just, you, it's standard. You didn't change it. This is standard scoring. Well, it's a great year to actually bring it up. I wouldn't auto change, but just say, hey, everybody.

ESPN has changed what their standard league is. I think we should follow what it is because these are what they make their rankings. You know, use that as kind of an opportunity to talk about this to your league mate and say, this is the new normal. If you want other more practical advice, I would just point out, like, look at a tight end who gets one, you know, 18-yard touchdown, and he ends up scoring, well, that'd be 7.8 points. But if you got a guy who, you know, went.

10 catches for 69 yards and was super involved in the game. He scores less points. That's just silly. Now, I think PPR's too far. We like half point, but it's better than standard. Ask your friends if they still use flip phones. I was going to say the Model T. Are they cruising up? But if they say yes, though, Mike. That's what I'm saying. Just bow out. If they say yes, you say standard league it is. I'm fine. I'm going to go to Footland Leagues and do that. All right, voicemail question. Another one came in.

Oh, wow. Long watch. Hey, guys. My name is Tiffany, and I'm from Orlando, so bonjourno. I was just calling because I want to tell you, number one, awesome job with the ultimate draft kit. I love it. I am kind of intrigued about the tier rankings that you have, and I was wondering if you could speak to how to draft with the tiers. I'm especially interested because my league is a little unique in that.

We have to start one quarterback, one tight end, but then we have five positions that are all flexed, and you can do an additional tight end, and you could do, I think it's limited to do an additional tight end, but then you can do four, you know, wide receivers or four running backs, you can make some match. So that's kind of curious with the tier drafting, if that is relevant or as important when you have a five flex option, like what I have, or if you just want to go for best available. So thank you so much.

I love you guys. I've been listening to you for over a year now. You rock. So keep up the good work. Bye-bye. Bonjourno, indeed. We're moving into the States. If you're on a coastal city, you now get a bonjourno. That's a tough question, I think, because your league is very unique. Well, I would say the more flex spots, the more important.

I would argue the more important that the tier rankings would be. The problem being that our tiers are broken down by position, you don't have a flex tier breakdown inside of the UDK in the sense that if that's how she's trying to view it. How do you know, is a third tier wide receiver as important as a second tier running back? Or that's what the confusion would be to me if I was in a league of that format because I'm not trying to fill those spots. But you're still trying to get the best available player. And so...

I think you can still follow that format. And obviously if there's a great second tier running back sitting on the board, but you still have a lot of wide receivers at a certain tier available, that makes a decision easier. My initial reaction for this league is running backs are not nearly as important. I mean, you have obviously the top three running backs.

give you a huge advantage. There's no more positional. Right. The scarcity goes away. Supply and demand is gone. So if this is a half or even a full point PPR, I mean, I'm loading up on wide receivers. What I would say, which is just valuable for people to know, I think, if they're not aware of this, is that the top end running backs, the best running backs in fantasy football, usually year after year, they outscore the top end wide receivers. So if you can get one of those elite running backs,