Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - Starts of the Week, Matchups, Debate, News

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Coming to you from the fantasy jocks.com studios with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. The Jason dancing during this intro has been so fantastic. At one point, he had the snap going like, he looked like Frank Sinatra. He is the resident.

Hillsbury Dobley of the studio. I think he's excited for tonight. Well, yes, I'm excited for football. And it's here. It is tonight. Even just hearing, you know, your fan duel read talking about, oh, oh, there's real football. I know. It's going to matter. It's going to be worth something. It's going to give us points. It's going to give my opponent points. I have two players in tonight's game.

Which I'm not super excited. I was going to say I'm sorry. I'm not very excited. I'm sorry for your loss. I have Jonathan Stewart and Emmanuel Sanders going tonight. So we'll see what happens there. Let's start off this. Do you guys have picks for tonight's game? I have a, I can give you my score pick. Oh, you've got a score pick? Yeah. You have the specific score. I want to hear it. I definitely know who I think is going to win the game. Somebody asked my opinion about it. And so I thought about it.

I think that the Broncos are going to win tonight's game, and I think it's going to be 19 to 16. I think it's going to be a little bit ugly, a little bit dirty, and I think the home team wins. You are reading my mind because that is exactly how I see this game going, low scoring, high defense, ugly affair. And I also think that the Trevor Simeon-led Broncos defeat the Cameron Newton-led Panthers, which.

technically both of us are predicting an upset because the Panthers are a favorite on the road. Favorite to win. Before Mike gives his, did you see this news where Elway actually sat down with Simeon yesterday and told him he does not have to look over his shoulder for Paxton Lynch? He wanted to let him know. And him and Kubiak have a good relationship too. And I wanted to let him know you can go out there. If you make mistakes, just bounce back. Mistakes are going to happen. That's how you coach. Don't look over your shoulder. That's what he said. He said, go out there. You have to play. You've got to let him play. It made me feel better about Simeon.

Yeah, and I would, I'm agreeing. I'm taking the Broncos. I have one dispute with Jason's logic of saying it's the Samian-led Broncos, because I would call the Vaughn Miller-led Broncos. Sure, yes. And so that's, that's where I'm going. I'm taking the home team. It was more of a joke. I mean, it's a lot like Houston has been for years. The watt-led, the watt-led Texans.

Let me set the table for the show today. We have a great one for you. We have our debate of the week, the fannings.com debate of the week. We're going to be talking Mike and I. We'll be facing off in the debate talking about T.J. Yeldin. We have our news and notes. We'll get you caught up on everything you need to know about fantasy football so you can make roster decisions this weekend, start and sit decisions. We have our fantasy forecast. We're covering the matchups for the first half of this week.

which is awesome because we have football to cover. And we have our starts of the week. Yeah. And maybe, just maybe. I've got a surprise during the show. I mean, I'm going to be bringing back something from last year, but you're going to have to wait for it. If you were watching the video, Andy, in fact, snatched it out of the air and he said he's bringing it back. I'm bringing it back. It's great to be. It's great to be back. It's good to be back in the regular.

season mindset here. So we have essentially a jam-pack show that won't possibly be as short as it's supposed to be. And that's fine. Who cares? Who cares? Drive around the box. It doesn't matter. So before we do the debate, I do want one more thing from you guys. It's not fantasy-related. But maybe it is, in a way. I want to know some Super Bowl picks. Oh, we're kicking the season off. You've got to do it. I want to know, we're going to go NFC, AFC winner and Super Bowl pick.

So you got 60 seconds. Lay it, lay it down. I'm going not right now. All right. I will go right now. My AFC pick is going to be, I think there's only four teams that could actually contend. I am going to go with the Patriots. Yes, I know they are the front runner. It's not the beautiful pick. But Tom Brady is going to come back from his suspension on fire. And he's going to take them all the way. And spoiler alert already, they win it.

Okay, they win the Super Bowl, but who they play against, you two are not going to like at all. Yeah, this is Seattle. I am picking Seattle. I think it's going to come out of the NFC West between the Cardinals and Seattle. And the reality is I trust Russell Wilson more than I trust Carson Palmer in the playoffs to get it done. I think that is reasonable. I will argue that I don't think New England's a frontrunner in people's minds. I see Pittsburgh out there a lot more than New England right now. But they're a frontrunner.

and they always end up the front runner. Okay. I'm going to give you mine because I think Mike actually doesn't know his yet. I'm filtering. Look, I'm going to take Arizona. Okay. Out of the NFC. And the more contrarian out there pick, I think, for a lot of people, this is my pick. I'm taking Kansas City out of the AFC. It's not bad. I think Kansas City is the team that I thought looked the best towards the end of last year.

I thought they looked the best in the preseason this year. And obviously they need to get some of those defensive line pieces back into the fold. But I think that there will be a force at the end of the year. And Alex Smith, I'm going to project can have a Joe Flacco-esque type of competent playoffs to get them through. That's my pick. And in the Super Bowl, I'm going to take Arizona over Kansas City. Sure.

But Andy, you're from Arizona. All right. Yeah, you're right. But you know what? I'm taking them. People can't really say that it's. I'm taking them just like Sports Illustrated took them. There you go. All right. From the NFC, I'm going with Chase. I'm going to take the Seahawks. I think they're a tremendous team. And it's, that's where I'm going. And with my AFC pick, I'm taking a team I think could have gone all the way to the Super Bowl if their quarterback had not broken his thumb.

I'm taking the Bengals. I'm taking the Bengals. I love that. I think the defense is still strong. I think that the offense is still strong. And I do. We remember the playoff game where the Bengals snatched defeat out of the hands of victory with some buffoonery there at the end. But I think if Andy Dalton was there, they would not have been anywhere close to that situation. So I'm taking the Bengals. They were one of my four that I said could contend. So who wins it? Uh, um,

You just made the Seahawks. Yeah, I'm going to take the Hawks. All right. So there you go. Seattle, Arizona and New England. Well, let's fight instead. Let's get into a debate. All right. It's time for thefandings.com. Debate of the week. Now, we need your help on this debate. So we'll tweet out a link so that you can participate with us. Mike and I are participating in this week's debate. Jason will serve as judge.

And jury. And jury. The debate is simple. The question is this. Will T.J. Eldon be a top 20 running back this week. This question came about because when you look at our week one rankings, which by the way are published on the website, the fancy footballers.com. Mike has T.J. Eldon. I like how that changed. What? I thought I was arguing him as a top 12 running back. But I stand by that he will not be top 20. I can promise you yesterday I said top 20 and you agreed.

Well, I already, I already, guess what? You have him ranked 30. So it makes it really a simple battle. I'm still in on this. All right. So T.J. Eldon will he be a top 20 running back in week one? I have him as a number 12 or 12 to 14 range, depending on your scoring system. Mike has him at 30. I think 30 is where Lindo White hangs out. I'm not sure. So who wants to go first? Do you, do you want to, I'll let you start. All right. So I have T.J. Eldon as a, as.

a 12 to 14 range this week. I've loved everything I've seen from him in the preseason. I think people are off of him because they don't know how the workload and the carry split's going to be, but we've had feedback from that coaching staff that Yeldon and Ivory will have a lot of work. Ivory is not going to be the passing downs guy. There's a report this week about Ivory dealing with what Ivory deals with, which is soft tissue issues all the time. I think it was a hamstring or a groin. I don't remember at this point. But a report came out yesterday saying he's struggling with that.

I think you're going to see Yelden get off to a solid start in this game against Green Bay. Be involved in the passing game heavily. I have him catching five or six passes and delivering a top 14 week, no matter what your scoring format is. That's my case. Sure. And I can agree with some of that. I think he will be involved in the passing game. I will say if he caught six passes, that would be a career high for T. G. Eldon, who was the...

running back last year. He was the only guy in town unless you have Toby Gerhardt countered at the goal line. No one does. And so here's the deal with T.J. Eldon last year, last year when he was the man, he was an RB one twice. Sure, he had, he had two great weeks. But if you take the average of every other week in last season, he was the running back 27. He's been over 40 receiving yards only twice.

He's been, which if that's where you're counting his production from the passing game, when he was the guy, only over 40 yards twice. He's only been over 64 rushing yards three times. That's with a full workload. If you give him, you want to give him the 100 yards, okay, but there's just no way he's getting to that combination with Chris Ivory involved in the game. It comes down to touchdowns. If he gets in the end zone a couple times, sure, then he'll be a top.

a top 12 running back. But unless, if he does not score, I don't see any way his production going from a full workload to whatever the percentage is, even if I'm going to give him 55% of the work, I don't see any way he comes close. Andy, would you like a retort? I'm going to let Jason weigh in. I'm going to say two things. We're going to get into this game a little bit more. So we'll talk a little bit about Green Bay and Jacksonville in a little bit. Mike knows how to debate me because he'll get under my skin with.