MEGALODON Episode - Week 12 Matchups, Turkey Day Awards & TONS More! - Fantasy Football Podcast for 11/23

The Fantasy Footballer Studio is brought to you by Samsung Galaxy. Visit Samsung.com to learn more. To the Fantasy Footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. Well done. Is that Ron Wolfley? Oh, it was a risk. The dirty bird. Oh, welcome. Wednesday, November 23rd, the Megalodon.

The best thing to do before a two and a half hour show is something that could potentially blow your voice out. I was trying to get out of this thing, Mike. We take risks here at the fantasy footballers. We are here for you to help you through your fantasy season, but we're not taking any time off here. We're not taking it easy. We'll destroy our voices and still keep going. Thank you, Jason, for that proclamation. Welcome to this year's Megalodon episode. Happy Thanksgiving. Dare I say this will be a big one. Jason's wearing his dinner butter shirt. It's the annual, it was one year ago today when dinner butter was created. And reach number two on the trending Twitter topics. So we have higher aspirations than number two. Gotcha. Disappointing. Very disappointing. Later in the show today.

we will reveal a hashtag. And as we do every year, if you make it through the entire episode, I want you to tweet at us, use the hashtag. We will be selecting some very special winners, giving away a signed Seedy Lamb jersey, a signed Miles Sanders jersey, and a sign Stefan Diggs mini helmet. So use the hashtag. We will not reveal it until later. We don't know it. We don't know it right now. We couldn't reveal it right now. Reveal it to ourselves first. But let's go through this. We're going to do ride or die. Some NFL news, never not working. We've got the Turkey Day awards. We got the Turkey Day games with the fantasy forecast. Then we got starts of the week, the boom boom kicker. Smelling salts, insert here. The fantasy forecast, 13 more games to cover the fantasy face off, the wheel of shame. If we don't have time, we'll probably just skip that part.

I'm good. I got time. Oh, you guys are good. Mike, you got time? I got all the time in the world. For the first time this year, I'm spinning the wheel of shame and we'll reveal our draft king's lineup for the main slate on Sunday. Do you think the wheel's tired of you? Well, yeah, probably. This guy again? If there was a murder and police had to come in and dust that wheel for Prince, we're okay, Mike. I went to the same. place in my mind. It's like, well, this is, this person's all up for this. Uh, look, I'm, before it was consecutive, I've been taking a week off lately. That's true. And giving it to Mike. Yeah. Jason hasn't been shamed in a while. That's true. I've been shamed twice this year. So I'm hoping to stay at two. We're only in week 12. So doing really well. Twitter at the F.F. Ballers. That's, uh, our Twitter handle. That's where you want to share that hashtag. Uh, go ahead and tag us on there.

Join the Foot.com or Fantasy Football Community. This is such a fun episode every single year. Let's give an early shoutout because we don't know how they'll screw things up later. But right now it's been perfect. So deucers Allie, we got Papa Josh in the building. We got the judge. Keep deusin. We've got Al Borland. And they are going to try to keep the hard drives from filling up today. And they've done the prep work. But I did ask Al early on. I said, have you scheduled all the unscheduled tech problems? and he had good so uh got big plans big big plans probably a power outage of some sort one of you dies oh no not it you don't know you don't get to claim it because he's already oh he's already scheduled yeah final destination style you want to kick this thing off let's do it ride or die presented by Chevrolet

Well, the week 11 ride or die results. See, I don't suck at everything. I did get two of the three right on ride or die. You beat Mike and I this last week. I was the only one to believe in Chris Olivae. Mike was the only one to believe in Darnell Mooney. And Jason and I were the two that did not believe in Captain Kirk. Well, yeah, we had to push it to a line where one of us. would finally go in and the poor unfortunate soul was me. We could have pushed that line a lot further. We could have pushed it to not top 28. It was top 17 and he wasn't close. Hold on. Hold on guys. He was QB 29. That is shockingly high. Is that above Zach Wilson? No, no, no. But the. There were by weeks. There was four teams on by. That's correct. So probably Bryce Perkins got ahead of him. So he finished behind.

A backup quarterback. That is great. He finished with 2.2 fantasy points. Impressive. Yeah. Completed very few passes from his back. Did he turn the ball over? Yeah. I think he did. I don't think he did. I thought he had a fumble. Yes, he did have one fumble. All right. Week 12 ride or die. The fearless Brooks has put together three predictions for this week. Starting with one around Amon-Ross, St. Brown Brooks. What's the line? All right, guys, will he be a top 15 wide receiver versus Buffalo? Top 15, he's hit the mark only three times this year, once since week two. Buffalo's 30th against fantasy wide receivers. The game is in Detroit where their offense has been better. Top 15 on a week with no buys. It's a little sketch. I think I'm going to play the field here. I'm going to go die. Yeah, I...

You know, you said Amin Ra and I immediately wanted to just be in because I think he's a great start every single week. I just traded for him. I love him. He's going to be a good start this week. But top 15 means you get a touchdown. I don't think you're getting top 15 without a touchdown. The Bill's defense really good. I'm going to ride with you, Andy, and die. Wait, I'm so confused. I choose die. I choose the Thelma and Louise thing. Yes, exactly. We're hand in hand. 30th. against fantasy wide receivers since week six. That's pretty bad. Yeah. All right. Okay, so this is a line mover here. Okay, I'll ride if it's top 20. Yeah, I think I would too. Dang it. So, 16 and a half. All right, top 18. Okay, I'll die.

All right there you go. I'll ride there. I'll ride with you. All right. Ezekiel Elliott is our next. You're out, Louise. Our next ride or die prediction. Andy just hopped out of the car. Let me go. I did. I did. I was like, we were together. You said the whole I'm going to ride and die with you. I was confused. Zeke, against the giants. This is the worst. Also on Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving, Brooks. What do you got for us? Well, he scored a touchdown. All right. I cede my time to Andy. All right. Touchdown soothsayer. All right. I'm going. Well, we got a ride, baby. Yeah, well, let's ride. We're all riding. And you can't change the line on four touchdowns. Yeah, I do think he gets a touchdown. I think Zeke is actually a decent play this week. We talked about the New York Giants last week with my start of the week being that it looks like a bad match. It's actually not a bad match. No, you were spot on last week. I got to give you credit because it.

On the surface, I was more hesitant about Jamal Williams, but this team loves going down on the two-yard line. Yeah, I think Zeke gets in the paint this week. All right. Joanne Johnson making an appearance tight in for the Saints. My dude. Oh, well, we know where this is going. What's the line you've set for us, Brooksie? Top 10, tight end. So does Juwan score another touchdown? That's the question. Mike, you have to be in here, right? I'm going to cede my time to you. I mean, it's my dude, Juan Johnson. Tighten three since week six, three weeks in a row in the top 10. Keeping the sanity, holding Tayson Hill at bay because he's a fantasy tight end over there for the New Orleans Saints. Let's ride, baby. Me and Juan.

I'm gonna die. There ain't no chance. This is a contractual obligation for Mike to ride. Yes. While Andy and I are sitting comfortably over on the sideline, San Francisco 49ers. We're peering over the cliff. You're peering over the cliff. We've been living the high life the last few weeks, man. And I've been starting him in the Dynasty League. You are very high up on that mountain. It is going to be a long fall down that cliff. Stay strong little roots. I will not be in on Juan Johnson against specifically against the San Francisco 49ers defense. That was right. I presented by Chevy Silverado. Learn more about Chevy Silverado at Chevy.com.

News and Notes from Around the League. Presented by USAA Insurance. We're kind of going to book in the show with some news because it's a long show. And so, uh, Brooksie will be monitoring the practice reports. Many things will happen. And we'll update the, yes, absolutely. There will be some eclipses. Uh, ha. Well, it's only... Celestial things. It's only Wednesday now. This is a very weird week for NFL. So we'll probably say this another time or two on the episode. But this is the most important week, just as part of the news, to make sure because news will come late in the week after this show, we don't know the things that are going to come up. Get all your Thanksgiving Day people out of your flex. You're going to want that flexibility this week more than ever. Make sure you...

plug them in your running back or your wide receiver if they're going to play on Thursday. Everyone has a couple of these players. And it's Wednesday now, but by the end of the show, we should have the Thursday and Friday practice reports, though, right? That is true. All right. Into the news we go, Sam Darnold, starting against the Denver Broncos. This will fix it. It was funny because a friend of the show, Field Yates, shout out. Sure. It was sharing that Sam Darnold does have. the best connection with DJ Moore from a fantasy perspective, to which my response was, the least poisonous poison will only make me die slower. I think Darnold is, you know, there's always hope, right? There's always the ambition for or the aspirational DJ Moore will have a game. We've seen it this year. Sam Darnold has to look better than Baker. Does he though? It means the Broncos. Here's the thing.

When Baker came over to this team, we said, okay, I know he was terrible last year, but he's shown flashes in the past. He has to be better than Darnold. Baker was so bad that now we're... But now we're saying, well, Darnold has to be. I know the last time we saw him, he was terrible, but he's got to be better than Baker. Which... But he does not have to be better than Baker. No, which cactus do you want to fall into? Well... I don't want to fall into the cactus. I'll go prickly pear. Yeah. If we're picking cactuses, I think I'm going to go. Baker's like a choia. We've already got some news. Breaking news. Adam Schaefter. During a team meeting. Did you verify it's actually shifty? Oh, gosh. It is. All right. Jets players are informed that Zach Wilson is not starting against the Chicago Bears.

He is being benched. Good for you. Good for you. Oh, man. Team quarterback or wins are a quarterback stat. Those people are in shambles right now. I mean, Wilson's five and two. It's getting benched. Genuinely, it was. Do we know for who? No, I don't. Let us know if it's Mike White. I feel like it's going to be Mike White. Oh, they're taking this thing up to, to kick off. They should just, new policy, walk up to Garrett Wilson and say, who do you want as your quarterback? That's a great threat. You ever thought about doing that? Yeah, I have. I mean, your bar is at three points, right? So we can go up from here. It's a ballsy move.

It is. It is. And you have a season and you can't throw this season away under the hope that Zach Wilson will develop and become somebody that helps you not throw a season away two years from now. I mean, it's just. This is, I mean, a very similar situation. Obviously not completely because Zach Wilson's been terrible. You guys remember the couple years ago, the dolphins were winning with Ryan Fitzpatrick. And then they just were like, eh. It's time for Tua. And you're like, what are you doing? Like, you're winning right now. You have to continue to win the, I mean. Yeah, but they weren't winning. They weren't winning in spite of Fitzpatrick. That was, I'm saying they were, yeah, it's not completely same, but just like a scenario where there was the young quarterback and they were winning with, I don't know, it's a, it's a chaos move. And I am.

Very excited to watch from the sideline with no vested interest in the New York Chess. If you bring that situation up specifically, that might be the argument against making the move against changing because giving two of those snaps and those opportunities and then you've seen what he's developed into, that would be kind of like a potential kind of argument. That's where I was going of like, do you develop the young quarterback? I know. Or do you do what you think is the best move for winning? With your record at what their record is, they need to win. They are going to the playoffs, and they want to win a playoff game, and they want to make noise. And they have a team, a defense, and offensive weapons to do it. They're just wishing. They have a chance at the playoffs. They haven't. Saying that they're going to the playoffs, I don't think that's true at all. Yeah. I mean, that division, they're in third, right? So my memory. I think the whole division's in right now. Yeah, my. All four? I think so. Let me see. So the Jets are six and four.

The Bengals are also six and four. I don't know the tiebreaker situation. So it's either the Bengals or the Jets as the final seed right now. Yeah, I guess the reason that I'm saying that they're, you know, playoff bound, obviously their record says that they're playoff bound, but they play Chicago, Detroit, Jacksonville. They've got a couple of pretty easy wins the rest of the way. They've got a path. Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, it's right now it's the Bengals. Genuinely, like, I'm staring down these start-sit decisions. Let's bring it back to fantasy. It opens up the world for Garrett Wilson to be a relevant fantasy starter. It literally takes just a little bit more to make him relevant every single week. You saw with Zach Wilson, he had a pretty good game in the week before. He was unbelievably good with Joe Flacco. You don't have Corey Davis right now. Elijah Moore has been out of the picture.

Like, Garrett Wilson should be a really good player. Well, we're going to talk about him later in this episode, buddy. And this was part of the hope. Part of it was. It's in the... You figure by the end of the show, you might be really sitting on some gold. It's in the write-up. I was hoping that the quarterback change would be made either way. I'm going to check the Google Doc history. Yeah, no. Go look. But I also think this is... great news, even more than Garrett Wilson. Garrett Wilson could be okay with Zach Wilson, but Michael Carter couldn't. He wasn't catching a ton of passes. Oh, dude, if it's Mike White? But yeah, I mean, either Mike White or Flacco, he's going to have a ton of dumpoffs. He's not rolling out 30 yards backwards and then, you know, throw on the ball.

Away. Flacco or Mike White will dump the ball off to Michael Carter a lot. And he becomes a very legitimate start this week. Yeah, it's been it's been like no first downs. I mean, it's been no hope for that offense. So it's exciting. Speaking of Zach Wilson, we were just talking about Sam Donald. So Sam Donald isn't the answer. Zach Wilson isn't the answer. These guys are the same. Was that a Zam, Darnel? That's what I heard. I heard Zam. I like it. Zam Wilson? Zach Darnold, whatever you want. The Rams waved running back. Darnel and, oh wait, that's Daryl Henderson. Yeah, what? So the little knee thing went to see you later. In his knee, so we don't want him on the team anymore. And he tweeted out like a... Basically giving them the deuses. I mean, saying,

Hooray. Yeah. So no, Darrell Henderson, Cam Acres, Kyron Williams. Right now are the running backs for the, what, three and seven Rams? The Melvin Gordon situation, he cleared waivers, now a free agent. We talked about it briefly on the Spotify show yesterday. I'm not interested in Melvin Gordon. I would drop him. There are a lot of players who talked about on the waiver show that are on the waiver rankings on the website that I have far more interest in than Melvin Gordon going and latching onto some team. Look, he could prove me wrong, but I doubt it. Yeah, I mean, there are a couple of landing spots. The Ravens comes to mind. Mike mentioned that on Spotify Live. What about the Chiefs? The Chiefs would not be good. No, then you get into a full-blown three-way time share. You've got to have a place where he has the opportunity to play because it's not going to be completely talent-based with Melvin Gordon at this stage of his career. You need a place where he's going to get the rock. Yeah.

Yeah, I think he might find himself watching the rest of the season. The Bears placed Chase Edmonds on IR, high ankle sprain, lost season for Chase Edmonds. I don't think anybody saw a midseason trade and the fall from relevance. The commander's designated Carson Wentz to return to practice from IR. Oh, man. He'll be the backup. They'll have a fun decision. They already made it. They already made the decision. They have the conversation with Carson wins. Yeah. Yeah, Matt Ryan was benched for the rest of the season too. I'm saying like when Taylor Heineke struggle. Inevitably struggles. Has that game where he just falls on his face because Heineke is, I think, a competent quarterback, but he's a backup quarterback. And backup quarterbacks, they come out, they have good games, but they always have that game where you go, why is this person our starting quarterback right now?

And then they will have a very difficult decision. It's very similar to the preseason conversations about Mitchell Trubisky saying, oh, he could keep this starting job, but then realizing when you're a Trubisky level guy, when you're a journeyman, yes. You are going to inevitably have that game where you, you're the reason you lost. You had three interceptions or whatever. That will happen with Heineke, but I think with the amount of victories they've piled up with him, he has. Got a little rope. He's got rope. He would have to put, I think, three bad games together back to back to back to back to back to move back to Carson Wentz. Who is also, for the record, a backup in my mind. All right, that was today's news and notes presented by USAA Insurance. Learn more at USAA.com slash insurance. It's time for Never Not Working. Never Not Working. Presented by Head and Shoulders, Scamp Shield Technology, available at Walmart. Welcome in to Never Not Working, the Megalodon.

edition. Oh, no. Is this going to be really long, Mike? No. No, it'll be the regular. It'll be a regular. But in this section where we're trying to dig deeper and give you the fantasy player just some more information, some more context, because the game, there are so many statistics out there. Some of them are very good, but they don't, even the very good statistics do not paint the entire picture of, of how to use that. Is it good? Is it bad? So we wanted to look at, last week was Target Share, and we were talking about the pie and everything. So this week we want to talk about targets per route run because it's a very interesting stat. It's gaining more and more popularity. We've kind of been mentioning it starting with last year. A lot of really, really smart people in the industry go to targets per route run. So we wanted to highlight a couple things here.

Want to compare a couple players. These are two top 12 fantasy wide receivers. You have Christian Kirk and you have Chris Olave. So looking at Christian Kirk, the targets per route run, it's okay. You know, it's almost 21%, which the baseline above 20% is solid, 30% is elite, and then 25%, you know, that... It's in between. In between, in between elite. The 20 and 30. Yeah. Well, you know, just trying to set the. Yeah, no, I get it. Numbers. Christian Kirk. Christian Kirk, like I said, just under 21%. And then you have Crystal Lave, who's at 25.7% targets per route run, which that's a sensational number. But you've got to add it a little bit more context. Christian Kirk has run 363 routes.

compared to 307 routes from Chris Oliva. And then you've got to look at, you know, the average depth of target factors in as well. That's at 10 for Christian Kirk. That's at 15.6 for Chris Olave, which you know that he is, he's boosting his numbers with big plays. And the routes run, look, it's affected by the team pass rate, the team efficiency. His concussion midgame? Sure. But does the team stay on the field? Are there more opportunities? When there's more opportunities, that targets per route run number could go up and down. But just some other, you know, when you're doing a paint by numbers with these statistics. So you got to make sure that you're, that you got everything at your disposal. So, Mike, you bring up Christian Kirk and Chris Olavi, and I didn't realize how similar their seasons were. Target totals, reception totals, yardage. Alavi's got them beat by a little bit. Touchdowns Christian Kirk by a lot.

targets per route run, when you look at those two players, does it differentiate them in your mind in terms of who you want moving forward? I mean, it goes to Jason too. Yeah, it does for me. To me, it says that Crystal Lave. is the better option. And it also says you can target specific matchups a little bit more easily. If you know that a player is getting targeted more on every route he runs, you can look at certain matchups and say, well, they're going to have to throw the ball more to this game. If there's more targets run and he's getting more targets per route run, he's probably the better option there. And then three other wide receivers in there, back to back to back, which is pretty shocking when I lay out these names for you. Curtis Samuel.

Mike Davis, or I'm sorry, Mike Evans, and Gabriel Davis. And you look at Curtis Samuel, how is he used? A low average depth of target. 71% of his targets are nine yards are closer, but with the yards after catch, he has stayed relevant. Looking at Mike Evans, he's fantastic for fantasy football, but he's actually never been a huge target per route run player. Last year, 17, that's under the threshold we want. Or at 2020, it was at 19%. But then look at Tom Brady, who's on pace for 726 passing attempts. The record is 727 by Matthew Stafford. So you could see Tom Brady challenging for the most passing attempts ever in a season. Looking at Gabriel Davis, the target's per route run is dreadfully low. 14.6, only 29 receptions. But.

These are deep targets. So remember when we were talking about the pie and how valuable is a Patrick Mahomes target compared to other quarterbacks? Well, Josh Allen, deep target is worth almost 1.7 fantasy points. So there are just, we want to lay out that fantasy football, when you're going into the analytics, is difficult because there are so many things. There is no. Rip the Band-Aid off. This is the one number that I can focus on. Just make sure you are compiling as much information as you can and filling in those gaps with other statistics. Well, and I want to say it kind of works both directions where sometimes you get a feeling from a certain player over the course of a season that you're playing. And you're like, why do I feel this way when I start Gabe Davis? Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so then you see these.

deeper analytics and they support some of what you're feeling, right? If you're getting targeted at 14.6% on your routes run in an offense like that, that's what you feel sometimes with the up and down of Dave Davis because he has yet to become, he's still a very good player, but he's yet to become a high target per route run player that, that is a upper echelon dependable target. And so you feel some of that. And it explains away some of the inconsistency. Yeah, I love to be able to take those, those things that you know, like you're saying, it's a feeling because you're experiencing it, right? But quantify that feeling into a statistical breakdown and look at, well, if this number went up, this one improved, if this number is, is this person, you know, overperforming, let me look at their targets per route run and be like,