Fantasy Football - Week 2 Waivers & Streamers + Drop Candidates - Podcast for 9/9

The Fantasy Footballer Studio is sponsored by Walmart. To the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Oh, welcome in. The Fantasy Footballers podcast, Tuesday, September 9th. Welcome into the show.

Right before the show began, Jason had taken a sip of what he called very gross coffee. It was very bitter and not good. And then as the show intro was playing, you took another set and here you go again. Oh, I'm going to finish it. Okay, okay. It's just bitter? Yeah. It's a bitter like your... Sometimes you have to do what you don't want to do. Bitter like your losses to me this week, Jason. Oh, you know what? Plural? Plural losses? Yeah, plural losses. Just the two most important. Oh, Mike, right, Mike wrong. That's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm Mike, I'm going to be honest with you, Mike. This is far worse than those losses. This coffee is not good. Wow. But also in those, those leagues, I expected L's going in. Okay. So does that make it go down?

Smoother? It does. Unfortunately, sometimes you, you know, it's like you look at the, you look at the schedule. You know, the NFL teams that they go out and they lose to the, you know, the bills and they go, dang, I wanted to win that, but it's the bills. You go out and you lose to the Saints and you're like, oh, no, kill me. I got it. We are done with week one. We had a eventually fun Monday night football game. Oh, man. It turned from the worst to a great game. The whole world tweeted enough to where, I think at halftime, everyone was like, okay, guys, we gotta do something. It was so bizarre watching it unfold of JJ McCarthy at the beginning, the Vikings versus the Bears of what we're talking about. McCarthy at the beginning seemed frazzled, seemed very nervous, which, I mean, the energy.

of that stadium and the and the Chicago Bears at the beginning was like I felt I could feel it radiating off of the television screen like they were hyped and for so like it took a while for McCarthy and Caleb Williams starts on nine for nine fire and yet I'm watching going I don't think he's playing that well but it's like to say that out loud it sounds real stupid you know he's literally completing 100% of his passes we just he is And he's looking so athletic. Eventually, you had the, uh, the, uh, freaking laser cannon down the, like, as he rolled out, an unbelievable arm. I mean, there were, there were throws and plays in the game that were elite. Yes. But it has been sort of his story to.

intermix that with mistakes and looking incompetent. I thought he got to 10 of 10. He did. I think he got to 10 of 10. And then he finished 21 of 35. I had a, we had like a group that was all doing the same kind of prize picks lineup. And one of, I took the less on 65% completion percentage for Caleb Williams. He comes out. 10 of 10. And I'm like, well, I lost that one. Did you end up winning that? Yeah. Oh, yeah. He finishes 60%. And if you start 10 for 10, you got a big lead. You, the rest of the way, he was wild. It kind of felt like the scripted start to the game went really well for Caleb. And then, you know, it's hard. You don't want to make, you know, season long conclusions from a game in which you're facing probably, you know, one of the best defenses in football in Minnesota.

Caleb, like I said, he made plays, but not enough. And the team, you know, eventually JJ McCarthy got it going and figured it out. And I tweeted about this last night. Like one of the reasons I love Kevin O'Connell so much is because I think almost any other coach, they do not win that game because what they do is they start to try to manage J.J. McCarthy in such a fashion. A comeback is almost impossible because you start to go all short area targets and screen game. And let's protect JJ because the young quarterback is on the road and he looks frazzled. He threw a pick six. After the pick six, let's just manage him and do inside handoffs and let's run the ball a bunch, which they did. They ran it successfully to help get the play action going.

But Kevin O'Connell, like, he just doesn't overcoach. He lets his players figure things out because that was the only way they're going to win that game is let JJ make some downfield throws. He started completing them. You know, you can't. Some of these coaches just, they frustrate the heck out of me. And Kevin O'Connell is just one of one. It was very Phil Jackson-esque in the sense that you just. Yeah, very Zen. Yeah, you just let him go. And it was funny, too, because I remember at one point after the pick six. You know, you saw the, you know, the quarterbacks coach, you know, the offensive guys kind of talking with JJ. And you look at the head coach, he's just, he's just stoic, no problem. He's not over there kind of like trying to rally him up. And, you know, it was just like, let's keep pressing forward. And it was, it was an impressive game from the Vikings to overcome, you know, in a harsh environment, such a bad start. Because it was a.

It was a bad start. Bad opening first half for them offensively. What, 176, long into the third? I mean, it was an impressive comeback. It gives you a lot of hope for McCarthy. I don't know what it does for Bears fans other than make them feel the same way they felt for a long time, which is, you know. Ben Johnson's aging fast. He's going by the end of this season. Like a presidential term. He is, I just watched his press conference and it was like, He is doing an outstanding job of trying to not show how upset he is. You know, it's like, he's like, he's talking about the, like, you know, we all have things to work on, myself included. I made plenty of mistakes, you know, trying to say the right things, but you could see underneath. He's like, oh, I told them to kick the ball out the back of the end zone. There was the, and just the, the, the place that Caleb missed. I mean.

There was. DJ more wide open. DJ more touchdown that is like can't miss that. You cannot miss that throw. But he did and Minnesota ends up stealing the win on the road. Jordan Mason is a dog. Yeah, I mean, it was crazy because both of the running backs did a great job in this game. Jordan Mason was much better on the ground than Aaron Jones. Aaron Jones had the big touchdown catch and some blitz pickups that were impressive. Still looks like he has some juice. But they did the right thing. They went to Mason, the Mack truck, who could just, you know, he just ran with a ferocity that opened up the entire game. JJ got into the end zone.

And, you know, there will be reinforcements coming for Minnesota. You know, Jordan Addison will come back after a couple of weeks, which will help things out. And it was fun to see. I want to invite you before we get into the waivers today to head over to join the foot.com. As we get into this season, this is your opportunity to support the podcast, become a Foot Clan member. You get premium in-season tools, including the ultimate dashboard lineup optimizer, all of our advanced stats, a bonus weekly episode. you get the game day alerts as of today i would say the most important feature is the waiver wire tool you can connect it with your league look at your waivers which players you know we're talking through on this episode about the order of the players and and who is potentially out there we've got more players than we will discuss on this episode in the waiver wire tool and it will look at your league so it's like we might talk about someone that you're like ah well he's not available we'll show you who is available yeah yeah so you can learn more about that

Get access today. Support the podcast at join the foot.com. Let's go ahead and get into the news. News and notes from around the league. Presented by progressive insurance. Okay, we had a trade yesterday. Yeah, what? And we're still trying to confirm. No, that's that's confirmed. Yeah, that's the official Jacksonville. So now we're back to the original report. Yep. So who was it that posted that it was a swap? I don't know. But they were incorrect. So Tank Bigsby was traded after one week of barely being used by Jacksonville. It's a big trade. Jacksonville trades Tank Biggsby, who was listed as a co-starter for week one. I wonder if the usage had something to do with this of like they had already been talking about a trade. They're like, okay, well, we got to make sure he doesn't get hurt. 100%. And we've got to see what we've got an ETN. That's what it feels like now knowing what we know is like they went into this week.

saying, okay, we've got a potential trade for Tank. Let's go see how we would do without him. So Tank Bigsby is now a Philadelphia Eagle. The original report said Jacksonville received a fifth and sixth round pick. For a while, it was being reported that it was a fifth and sixth swap, which that made more sense considering the depth chart in Philadelphia. Now this morning, as of moments ago, confirmed it was a fifth and sixth round pick. So Jacksonville gets a fifth and sixth. Mike was confused from the jump. It is because you had, like you had Will Shipley, and I know he got hurt, and there was not really much reported on that. Ribs, that's all we know. Yeah, and then they have AJ Dillon on the squad. So it was very strange of just the trade overall. They're going to go get tank. Then the compensation comes out, which for us, you know, we're like, oh, a five and a six, that's nothing.

But in terms of trading players, we see good players traded for pennies. This is two picks, even though they're day three picks. And then they're like, hey, we like him as a kick returner. So this whole thing is so mind boggling. I don't know what's going on. Will Shipley got hurt in the first week. He actually had worked himself into, I think the first and second drive, looked good on his two opportunities and disappeared. So we'll see. Tank Bigsby departing Jacksonville also gives you just like pretty darn clear. Oh yeah. Like Travis E.N. Yeah. In a Liam Cohen offense after one week of seeing what he was able to do in it. I mean, this, I mean, this is who Jason believed in. Yep. And this is. We knew that one of these guys was potentially getting traded this offseason when the rumor started. Team tank massive L here. If ETN's going to be incredible and and Bachel Tutin.

skyrockets. How ready were you? I was a hundred. I have been waiting. I'm holding my breath. You have not spoken in a while. No, I'm waiting for tooting. He goes from this like, oh, you know, a day three-ish. He's behind two co-starters to he will be. He'll be worked in. He'll be used a good amount. But it'll be interesting to see how much will be just Travis E.TN in this offense. He had 16 carries three targets last week. And, you know, What's he going to be? He's the number three running back after week one. Is that right? I mean, he got 140 yards. Yeah. Oh, 143 yards. Yeah. He looked excellent. And Carolina continues to look terrible on rush defense. Every 49er seems to be hurt. We got some good news. It's still injured news. It's good within the realm of you're still injured.

I love the tweet from Benjamin Solac. I'll give him a shout out. He said, update out of San Francisco. Nobody has any legs or hands or internal organs or skin. They'll be re-evaluated later in the week. Brock Purdy injured with a left shoulder or he injured his left shoulder and a toe. Just throwing that in. They said the toe is the bigger concern. He's now uncertain. We have solved this problem. Drop it. Put that thing off, man. Oh, I forgot about your Malik neighbor's advice. Are you a dog or not? You want to play? No, Brock's a dog. He'll say, he'll pop that off. Say bye to that toe. He's not even going to the doctor. I think you really don't know how important your toes are. George Kittel. I also wonder. How terrible that would be. This one is. Jason doing his yearly my guy gets hurt in week one routine. It was week two last year for Pacheco. Thank you very much. He got two solid weeks. Pretty proud of that. George Kittle now expected to miss a few weeks because of the hamstring injury and it might be IR. Yeah, I bet it is. I heard.

even five or six weeks. So it will be very, it will be very, very telling as to whether they put him on IR before this week's game. I mean, that, that will, we'll know whether they hope to have him back earlier than that five and six week timeline, but that is brutal. He was dominating and is so important to this depleted offense. When he went to the side and immediately had a hat on, it was, oh. He is hurt, hurt. Yeah, Juan Jennings, I guess, was the news you said is positive. He did get hurt. He just avoided serious injury. So, you know, the MRI didn't show extensive damage. He could suit up in week two. I mean, there's not a world where I'm feeling comfortable playing John Jennings right now anyways. No, no. No, I mean. He didn't do much in week one and now he's hurt and might not play. And if we get Mac Jones, I mean.

Well, and they sign Kendrick Bourne. We should report that as well. Yeah, Kendrick Bourne will be out there. Two for 16 in week one for Jennings. Does Mack Jones come in and throw Ricky Pierce all the ball 12 times? Do we get the Brian Thomas treatment? And then DeMarcus Robinson will probably matter at some point. He might. He's only out two more games from his suspension. Kevin Stefansky said we'll see when asked if Quinchon Judkins would play in week two. So we're waiting on that. And then Brian Dable. he confirmed russell wilson was starting week two it was reported catapult this man into the ocean it was reported that he had gone to management about out about asking to have jackson dart start a dart start so the head coach who makes oh you know you know you don't know no come on come on they make the decision for sure

Wink. Yeah, I thought the arrangement is the general manager gives you the players. You think Dable paid Daniel Jones? No, no, the management decides what players are on the team. The coach decides what players are on the field. Oh, I think this was above the, was this not him going to the ownership? Yeah, was him going to honor. Yeah, and this is not general manager. Then put James in. I agree. That's, that would be. That was what I would do. I was telling Mike. Not Russell. Team not Russell. The problem that they have is they wanted to show their support of Jackson Dart before the season. And so in order to show how good he did, they said, you know what? You're elevated to number two on the depth chart. And so now he's the backup. But it's like, well, we can't go to him yet this early.

But you can't have Russ out there. And now you screwed yourself because what you should do is go to James. So this is one example of why Malik neighbor's situation was less appealing than a lot of other top tier wide receivers is, I mean, are we going to see all three guys at some point? Because it feels that way. And there's an, you know, James would be, James would be great. It's just. James would be great. But Jackson Dart is not a guarantee to be great for Malik neighbors. It's so wild to me. If those reports are. true because it's just the grapevine of that your head coach is is coming to you saying we can't play this guy anymore we need somebody else and they're like nope you need you just need to keep playing and be like and then and then you're just going to fire me because you wouldn't let me put the guy out yes thank you i mean if if i'm brian dable there's a there's a power outage while russ is in the elevator this weekend nice

It's not falling people. It's just stuck. Right, right, right. No, there's nothing wrong with that. Just, he's going to be there for a few hours. Yeah. Battery backups were cut. I mean, leave a couple bottles of water in there. Oh, for sure. They were just having to be a Costco. There'll be some snacks. There's a cooler in here. They left a bucket in there. They are thoughtful. Oh, because you can, you can. If he's got it's a humane. I mean, it is rust. It's a humane trapping. You know. There's a diarrhea. Speaking of diarrhea. Did you see, I mean, I don't know if it comforts you, Jason, the diarrhea of Kyla Murray, but he was up at 4.30 in the morning with like throwing up in diarrhea. That does come for me. I genuinely, genuinely, my only hope as a Cardinals fan is that he was horrifically ill because if he's up at 4 a.m. That's what I mean. Both ending. Both ending. He was 25. 25 fantasy points. 21 for 29.

And seven rushing attempts. Didn't look great. Yeah. Still played bad if you watched. We are. We are his worst critic. We are his worst critic. At this point, we're burnt out. Do you think ownership is just basically saying with the Jackson Dart, like he is not allowed to start until Andrew Thomas is back? Yes. Like, yes, absolutely. I wouldn't start him without an offensive word. No. Just give the team a chance. Put James out there. All right, that was news and notes sponsored by Progressive Insurance. Quote today at progressive.com, progressive casualty insurance company affiliates and third-party insurers. Not available in all states or situations, coverage subject to policy terms, limits, and conditions. We'll take a break, and then it's into the waiver wire. This episode is brought to you by prize picks. You and I make decisions every day, but on prize picks, being right can get you paid.

Don't miss any of the excitement this season on prize picks where it's good to be right. Look, prize picks is the best way to win cash this football season, which players are going off, which ones are not. Make your picks in less than 60 seconds and turn your takes into cash all season long on prize picks. They also invented the flex play, which means you can still cash out even if your lineup isn't perfect. You can double your money, even if one of your picks doesn't hit. Price picks is the best place to win cash while watching sports. Join millions of users and sign up today. Download the app today and use code footballers to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. That's code footballers to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. Prize picks, it's good to be right. All right, it is week one. It is time to find some options on the waiver wire. The waiver wire presented by Walmart.

All right. Well, I'm curious. Before we get into the names, we're starting at running back. We'll go to wide receiver tight in and we'll get into our streams of the week at quarterback. But like I would love to know just how you look at the waiver wire in week one, right? Because, you know, we don't want to overreact to player performances. Very, very, very, very frequently you have week one performances that, you know, they're great. They disappear. They fade into nothingness. You don't want to waste all your fab or your waiver priority. You do want to pick up players you think have a long-term future, but how do you, like you have a lot of leagues? How are you thinking about it? Yeah, week one and week two waivers are exceptionally important. We did a study looking at the quality of waiver pickups, not just how many total fantasy points that they have scored on the course of the season, because obviously if you get them early, you get more weeks. But actually, how many points per game do the waiver wire pickups score per game?

in different weeks. And the first two week pickups are worth so much more than the rest of the season. Yes, there will be someone in week four, eight, whatever, who gets thrust into a starting running back position because of an injury ahead of them. This week one, we literally had almost no running back injuries. I mean, there was very little, a little stinger to Jonathan Taylor's neck. I mean, backups got hurt, but this was a very healthy week one, knock on wood. That being said, this is where you see the emergence of certain players, whether it's snap percentage or just quality of how they've leveled up. And so I think you want to go hard in week one. I will say that in 2025, this season, the running back pickups, I feel like there's four decent options, but there's not a Kyron Williams sitting out there. There's not one of these great like, oh.

You got to go spend a lot on this player necessarily. So what are those four names? Because, I mean, Judkins is on the list, but he's rostered in 85% of the league. So most situations are not going to have the opportunity to go get him. He was drafted. Yeah. He's one of them to me. To me, it's the Cleveland Brown's backfield of Quinn John Judkins if he's there. And Dylan Samson, who I think retains the pass catching role, I say Bayshall Tootin. Yeah. Because he's now going to be... Tootin's at the top of the list for me. To me, it's Tutin and Trey Benson that you're hoping are flex with benefits. They are going to be somewhat startable. They will get enough work to where you can throw them in in a flex and a pinch. They're not just a complete insurance option backup, but they still have that insurance policy where if the starter goes down, now they're real fantasy gold. I don't know if...

philosophically I agree this year at running back like I wouldn't go very hard if Junkins is not out there I'm actually not going very hard at running back this week I don't see anybody I can guarantee start next week and that's gonna you know I know a lot of people are thin at running back players like you know if you had Tink Bigsby he's not he's not an option anymore right like people drafted him to maybe be a running back option maybe you don't feel very good about you know Nick Chub or some of these other guys that you you like I don't feel like I can

play tooting next week and feel good about it no i don't feel that way about trey benson i mean i could get lucky but he had eight carries so it's it's one of those situations where i'm actually probably going to conserve a little bit and look for we're in agreement just to be clear i when i say i go hard in week one that's where i caveat the running backs aren't where okay okay yeah and then uh i think toting can be a a 10 plus opportunity guy i feel that way but they also put they had LeQuint Allen, right? Yep, yeah. So they had other players in there, so I'm a little bit more hesitant. I do agree. He's probably the top ad. Samson looked good, but now with Judkins and Ford and the Brown's offense, it makes me a little bit more concerned about weekly starter potential. Menangai, we were hoping to see something from him. We didn't. He had zero carries. Karim Hunt. Look, Kareem Hunt, I think, should be rostered.

He got a lot of snaps. He didn't produce. The Chief's backfield, if this is really what they're going to do to us. It was a mess. Yeah, then there were. It was the chargers. They were down. I mean, there will be games when they're ahead. Sure, but the game opened. Isaiah Pacheco took the first nap. Then rookie Breshard Smith came in and took the second snap. And then Karim Hunt came in and took the third snap. I mean, if this is. the approach that they're going to go that literally all three players are going to get time, then it will be touchdown or bust. Drop candidates, you know, not a lot in week one. A lot of people are holding, but, you know, Tank Biggsby, I think is a drop. I think I would absolutely, you need flexibility this week. There's no world where I'm holding Tank Bigsby. Yeah, no, I'm fine dropping Tank Bigsby. I love Will Shipley. He came in early. Looked great. There was a report out that said,

They were looking at Tank as a kick returner. This had nothing to do with Will Shipley's injury. Okay, let's just assume that's true. I still now wonder, do you hold on to Will Shipley or do you cut him with Tank there and A.J. Dillon there and Will Shipley. I don't want any of the backups. I agree. It's like I have a lot of Will Shipley on my leagues. I was happy with what I saw. And now I'm like, he's probably someone I'm cutting. I want to throw one more name out before we move on. I think DJ Giddens is someone that absolutely needs to be rostered. First of all, there was an injury to Jonathan Taylor's neck. We saw, they were up so big against the Miami Dolphins that they said Jonathan Taylor was fine, he got checked out, but because they were up so much, they didn't put them back in. We thought when we were watching live that they just were like, we're up 30 in the fourth bench him, which I would have done the same. Jonathan Taylor looked awesome, but it was clarity was given to us. DJ Giddons, the rookie,

running back, he was the guy that came in and took everything. So if Jonathan Taylor goes down, DJ Giddens is the guy. So I think he's a good insurance. Like I would drop Will Shipley to pick up DJ Giddens. That makes sense. And to go along with Shipley, would you drop, we talked about Bigsby, but would you drop Caleb Johnson, Jerome Ford, Braylin Allen, Pam Scada Boot. You need to drop somebody if you're going to pick up a waiver guy this week. Yeah. So I would drop Tank. I would drop Ollie Gordon. I would drop. Braylon Allen. I would probably drop Jerome Ford. He's tough because right now he is a starter and we don't know with Quinshawn Judkins, so I might want to hold on to him for one more week. I'm not dropping the rookies in Camp Scataboo and Caleb Johnson. I drafted them knowing it might be a couple weeks before they get more involved. So it's if you have to have a roster spot, you can. Wide receiver top pickups. Ironically, the