Pump the Brakes, Trade Talk, The Red/Green Dilemma

Of the fantasy football community sometimes. Yeah, yeah. I've had a lot of people asking about trades. Had a friend texted me last night. Wanted to know if they should trade Lashon McCoy. Yes. And Antonio Brown. No. For O'Dell Beckham Jr. and Philip Lindsay. And I said, no. No. Normally, when I want to make a trade, I don't want to be thinking, eh, at the end of it. I don't want to be thinking like this might work out.

Yeah. Another kind of rule of thumb for me is I don't like doing sideways trades. That's how it felt. I just don't like where it's like why. Call that a Giamati trade. Oh, nice. That was deep. I approve. That was one of your best movies, Brooks.

If, no, it wasn't. That was so boring. Yeah, it really wasn't that good. He just drank wine for like 40 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Never seen it. You haven't missed much. But yeah, I don't like making moves where it's just your trading players to trade players and it's a sideways move. If you're not upgrading something clear, why do it? Okay. So here's the first trade that came in on Instagram. By the way, Instagram.com slash the fantasy, or I'm sorry, Instagram.com slash fantasy footballers. David Johnson for Gronk. Ooh.

man would you do that trade right now right here as in we so david johnson being traded away for rob gronkowski so i would do it here's the deal it's obviously a little bit team dependent whenever you're trading a running back and not getting a running back back you have to have the depth

to contend. Let's say you were, you know, the lucky fellow that's picked up some great waiver claims and so you've added depth to your team and you also drafted well and you've got Jordan Howard and you've got other people on your roster, then yeah, I think I like this because here's what we know. The Arizona Cardinals offense is going to struggle to make David Johnson a superstar at his position. He's still going to be fully utilized.

He's going to be a back end RB1 or the highest end RB2 on the year. But his ability to dominate the position looks hampered. Gronk will dominate his position. You know it for sure. So it's about the RB depth because you'd still probably draft David Johnson ahead of Gronk if it was a startup draft today. But since you already have a roster, you know your RB depth. The reason you draft David Johnson head of Gronk is because I don't know what running backs will be available later. I've got to grab them now.

If you've got the running back depth to do it, I think I would rather have Gronk. The problem for David Johnson is, let's take a look at Sequin Barclay, Melvin Gorton, all these running backs. We highlighted this on Monday. The actual ground game struggled mightily this weekend, this past Sunday. But these running backs, they're just getting absolutely peppered.

with targets. So do you believe that was not happening for David Johnson? Right. And it hasn't. I mean, through two games. Now, Steve Wilkes, head coach of the Cardinals, came out and said, we're going to line him up in the slot. We're going to use him more. It makes sense. Do you buy it? Do you believe it? I believe they will line him up more in the slot. I think they will look to get him more involved. And I think there are brighter days ahead this season for David Johnson than what we experienced this past week. Are you ever going to sing his name again?

This year. This season? Because we kind of need that. Yes. Brooks chiming in here saying absolutely. I want to get in here on a Monday and hear you guys belt it out. Man. I miss it. We all miss it. All fantasy football misses David Johnson. Brooks is a Cowboys fan and he is confident in the future of David Johnson. This one. We'll have Brooks sing it.

Since he's so confident. Yeah. Yeah, he jumped in there. I like it. That's not going to sound good, but I'll do it. All right. Another Instagram, David Johnson trade, you can fill out the rest of your thoughts here. He traded David Johnson and Marshall Lynch and received Christian McCaffrey and Alshon Jeffrey.

So let's start with this. Let's start with the... Would you rather have DJR. Christian McCaffrey the rest of season? Exactly. That's the question I wanted to pose to you to. McAfree. So I did not have to answer it. Christian McCaffrey is the safer running back. Because he's actually getting targets. Yes. And he will always and forever get targets. And he's on the better overall team off. But the actual better talent. The actual better player is David Johnson. Of course. But...

This is fantasy football and quarterback and offenses matter so incredibly much. You have David Johnson in the quicksand that is the Arizona Cardinal office, much like LaShawn McCoy is stuck in Buffalo. Exactly. And that's a really good comp right now. You look at a very sad comp. Yes, it's terrible. You look at some of the running backs of disappointed last year.

First player that comes to mind, Joe Mixon. It was a very big disappointment last season. And one of the reasons I was so high on Joe Mixon this year, and I said this at one of our live shows, was because if you looked at total plays run on the season for the Bengals last season, it was astronomically low. It was not normal for the Marvin Lewis era to be that low on rushing attempts or on total volume as an offense.

And that made such an impact on what Joe Mix was able to do. He didn't get, his percentages were fine. But the totals were so down. And that's what I think is going to happen to the Cardinals this year. They have run the lowest amount of offensive snap. I mean, we're only through two weeks. And one of those games was the Los Angeles Rams. So we have to take this with a grain of salt. But I do think by the end of the year, the Cardinals will absolutely be in the bottom three of total offensive plays run.

So I think I prefer Christian McCaffrey. If it's a PPR or half PPR, I would go Christian McCaffrey. All right. John on Facebook, James Connor for AJ Green. Cross positional move. I know there's a lot of subjectivity here. But that's the type of trade that I'm okay with, though, for James Connor. If you're training James Connor, that's the kind of move you're making. Yeah, because you have to get a season long stud.

for James Connor. If I'm not getting a season-long stud right now, I'm just going to ride out Connor as an RB1 until Levi-on-Bel comes back, which as far as I know, there's no updates. We're still talking about up to week 10 for Levi-on-Bel to come back. And at that point, if James Connor is a running back one through 10 weeks, that's huge for your season. Look at Zeke. Yeah. Zeke last year.

Played 10 games, and he still really helped fantasy football teams. Blub blub blub. What are you? Rolls Royce over there. Thomas Rawls has signed with the Cincinnati Bengals. Cool. Sweet story, man. Oh, awesome. Back to James Connor. He heard what you said about zombies. Yeah.

No, just the dead can, what is dead may never die. Yeah, this is obviously, I think consensus, all three of us would much rather have AJ Green than James Connor would take advantage if you could get that high a talent that's not on a 10-week count. Here's a trade that happened and maybe it's just a high five situation. Taylor on Facebook traded Amari Cooper and James Connor for Antonio Brown. I was literally just going to say, would you do that?

Heck yeah. I would high-five that trade all the way to the bank. If you have James Connor right now, just shoot Tonya Brown on a message. Be like, hey, you want to do a little swapski real fast? Just throwing it out there. You're going to get turned down. But this is the perfect. Then add in another wide receiver like Amari Cooper where you trade Amari the second he does anything is the thought. But here's the thing. With James Connor.

And, you know, like I said, the Ajay owner or the Freeman owner or the cook owner or the, you know, there are running backs are a premium. I'm out there looking for one in our league. I'm sitting there going, I've got to start Philip Lindsay. Can I find my way to Corey Clement or Chris Thompson? What can I do to get a running back? James Connor represents that for somebody.

If you can go out and trade James Connor to one of those owners, look at who they have on their roster, whether it's Antonio Brown or, you know, Odell Beckham who's underwhelmed so far or somebody like that. Can you go get season-long value like you brought up, Mike? Can you go get an AJ Green? But this is the, it's important for us to stress. This is the level at which it is required to get rid of James Connor. Is that how you both feel about it? That's how I feel. I'm not trading him for a second-tier type of player. I'm not going to go out and trade him.

You know, who's, who's, I wish Doug Baldwin was healthy right now. I don't, you know, but right now I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade him for Doug Baldwin. Me neither. You know, I want to try to package him and get a star. I want to not have James Connor on my team. Just the way I play fantasy football is I don't want, I don't want him hanging over my team. Let me, let me tell you.

Okay. It's so stressful. It's so stressful. Every day you're doing the Lev Bell watch. Every morning I'm waking up going, oh, man, the Lev Bell report. Because I'm afraid. I don't want that. I want to worry about everything else. No, I get it. And you're right. Your quality of life is better without James Connor on your roster. Quality of your fantasy football team might not be. Right. But quality of life also matters. Yeah, that's true. All right. Facebook, Joe has a trade.

question. Josh Gordon. What the? Is this real? Josh Gordon for Kenyon Drake and Corey Davis. Yeah, you. Nice work. You, uh, you've done a good thing. Kenyon Drake, Corey Davis, definitely the better side of that situation. In fact, this is, this is what I was talking about yesterday where if you can trade Josh Gordon right now for the, for the value of an absolute wide receiver one, because you're, I mean, how about this?

Who else would it usually take to get Drake and Corey Davis back as a wide receiver? What I like about this segment right now is we're reporting actual trades. Right. So anybody out there that's saying this could never happen. You're wrong. Jeff traded Melvin Gordon. My name is Jeff. Traded Melvin Gordon and Flash Gordon. So the Gordon's for Zeke and T.Y. Hilton. So you traded basically sideways from Melvin Gordon.

to Zique. I see those as the same tier. And then secured the guaranteed production of T.Y. Hilton. Well done. Everyone here would trade Flash Gordon for T.Y. Hilton, right? Yes, I would. Everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Instagram. I just traded Alex Collins for Lamar Miller and George Kittle. Well done. That's amazing. Who would you rather have between Alex Collins and Lamar Miller? Lamar Miller. As me as well. Then you get a kiddle on top.

Oh, 44. 44. I can't believe we have a 55 and a 44 on the show. That's what we've got. And an 86. Yeah, well. Don't forget the rules. Chris Herman traded Emmanuel Sanders for Kenyon Drake straight up. Who would you rather have in that situation? Kenyon Drake? I mean, in a vacuum. This is just people celebrating their trades. I thought we were trying to get some hard hitting analysis. Well, we started there, but then we got to just Braggart trades at the end.

Yeah, there's definitely a lot. I think we had over 400 responses of trades that have gone through. Here's a harder one, Instagram. Traded AP for Amari Cooper. There we go. Are you happy with that trade? I would much, much, much rather have the Amari Cooper side of this deal. It's interesting, though, because with Rob Kelly being gone, I just know, like there's nothing that stops Washington from giving the ball to Adrian Peterson 20 times a game. What happens with the 20 times? I have no idea.

Actually, I do. Most of the time it's probably going to be running into the back of a lineman's butt. But I never looked at Rob Kelly as like, oh, now that Rob Kelly's out of the way, now Adrian Peterson's got the work to himself. It's like Rob Kelly wasn't doing anything anyways. It's Somaget P. Ryan is not off the team. No, but Rob Kelly was taking snaps. And Somaget will go into Rob Kelly's role now. That's the way I view it. Okay. And that's fair.

Mike, did you upgrade AP at all with the Rob Kelly News or no? Nope. All right. Well, nope. Would you rather have the AP sign? No. Okay. No, I wouldn't. I'd rather have the Amari side. I'd trade AP. AP is one of those guys that's like, wow they have, it's like a battery with some juice left in it. Like, you might as well trade it now because it's not going to have value later. Right. So I don't know who's trading batteries out there in the world, but if you're trading partially charged batteries.