Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - AFC West Breakdown, News, Mailbag

thinking, oh, well, we'll just get away with not paying one of the best receivers in football, and we'll just franchise them. You get some real bad vibes around the Cowboys really quickly if this escalates. Yes. Yeah, that would be bad for Mr. Romo as well. So I dropped Des in my rankings, because I've got pretty much seven guys that I...

I see each one of them being able to finish number one. Des is one of those guys. And as of right now, until something becomes more clear, I put him seventh on that list. I would actually look for a Dez owner in Keeper League and see if they're panicking at all. Nab them up. Because if he misses any time, it won't be much, and then he'll be back on track. But maybe you can get a slight discount right now. Let's talk about Tampa. They signed Tim Wright off of waivers.

surprisingly got cut from by New England. He was the acquisition in the Logan Mankin's trade from New England over to Tampa. We mentioned him mostly because of, if you had some excitement around Austin Saffarian Jenkins, you probably don't have any anymore. I mean, these two guys played together already once, and neither guy could string two good games together. Was this the regime that drafted right?

Or was that the... No. Wright was not drafted, I believe. And he wasn't... No, he was not brought on by Lovie Smith. But I mean, then sign him the rookie year, because he had that great rookie year.

No, because Lovie was only, his first year was last year. Yeah. But we mentioned that just so you're aware of it. Tim Wright is no longer a patriot. He is now a buccaneer and 10 teams put in claims on him. Tim Wright went unselected in the 2013 NFL draft. Including New Orleans, by the way, which tells you maybe a little bit of Josh Hill concerned. But I want to remind everybody about fantasydraftwizard.com. Fantasydraftwizard.com. That is the site that we used to mock draft on our last show.

And it was awesome. We had a lot of listeners that were tweeting us pictures of their drafts. It is free. It is just a website you can go on to and very quickly pick a spot and mock draft, all different leagues, formats, PPR, standard, and get an idea of...

where you are sitting right now, what kind of values are out there, kind of put into practice some of the things that are swirling in your head, hopefully the things that you've got from this show. So check it out, fantasy draftwizard.com, and yeah, tweet us those pictures. We're happy to let you know what we think. No sitting around as people turn, they leave the draft and the computer doesn't recognize that they're not there, and then you have to wait an entire clock for them to auto pick and it's so frustrating. Get it all done by yourself. Yep.

Sounds good to me. All right, let's talk AFC West. We're going through. We're going to be doing divisional breakdowns on every single team or every division in football and that will encompass every single team. That's how that works. Yeah. So let's talk everybody's favorite offense. The Oakland Raiders are number one on the board. Yeah. We got blasted by some Raiders fans saying that we had no Raiders love. He just hadn't listened to the show enough.

Yeah, it's true. Because if he had, he knew that I like Derek Carr. I actually did my quarterback rankings this week. Derek Carr is at number 17 for me, which I think it's pretty generous. Higher than the average. I like Derek Carr. He had a good rookie year. He was over 3,000 yards. I think he improves on that again. But this offense struggled. This offense was 32nd in the league. Doesn't get worse than that. No, but where does it go? Nowhere to go but up. Nowhere to go but up. That is astute.

Yes. They were the 26th passing offense, the last place rushing offense. I guess that's why you don't like Latavius Murray that much. Maybe. And second to last in the league in points per game. They bring in Jack Dale Rio, though, a brand new head coach, Bill Musgrave as an offensive coordinator joining the fray there. And there's some optimism here. We got Amari Cooper that just arrived via the draft. Cliff Walford. Clive.

Clive. Clive, I'm sorry. Yeah, Clive Walford was a third-round tight-in draft pick. And they also brought in a guard in the fourth round. What are some impressions of their off-season? I like the moves that they've made. The guy who I am most interested in realistically on their team is Roy Hulu. They gave Roy Hulu a decent-sized contract for a running back. He's getting more money than Trent Richardson.

Roy Hulu is a fantastic third downback, and I believe he is a person to watch. If Murray kind of falters or falls on his face at all, then I would not be surprised at all to see Hulu kind of tick over the workhorse area.

You're shaking your head at me. Yeah, because I could not disagree with you more. Well, here's the numbers. Roy Hulu will have exactly the same fantasy relevance that he's had over the last few years. Here's the numbers on Latavius Murray. There was four games where he got an actual workload. So he averaged... How can this turn into Latavius Murray hate time? No, no, no. We're just going through the numbers. Seriously. We're just going through realistic numbers. So when he averaged 17 carries a game through the four games where he got double digit, he got, he had 64 yards a game.

3.8 yards of carry. He did add three catches, so he can do that. But those are not the numbers, to me, that speak, instant excitement about a guy taking over a job with absolutely no looking back. When Roy Hulu, while his sample size is also small, he's averaged over 4.5 yards of carry. So I don't see why you can shake your head and completely dismiss Roy Hulu when they both have a small sample size, but Hulu has...

better production. Because Roy Huloo is a third down back. He's a pass protecting back, and he's not a guy they're going to hand the ball off between the tackles. If Latavius Murray goes down, I think no problem they're hand the ball to turn Richardson, two downs, and to Hulut in the third down role. But, I mean, it just surprised me that Hulu's the guy that stands out as a fantasy name when we're talking to Mari Cooper, Derek Carr.

Crabtree is there now. Kenneral Tompkins is there. Well, Kimbril, he's not been very good. And I'm not a big fan of receivers changing teams, especially if they're not upgrading their quarterback situation. And Crabtree is not. I think Derek Carr has a chance to become a good quarterback in the league, but he needs a lot of work to get there. A positive for the running game of Oakland, they added.

Lee Smith, a tight end. He's a good run blocker. And they snuck away Rodney Hudson, the center, who graded out as the third best center from Pro Football Focus. So those are positive signs. Yeah, I think I'm actually growing higher and higher on Latavius Murray. And the reason, kind of what you were saying with some of the coaching changes, Bill Musgrave coming in, and Jack Dalrio is not going to finish.

I mean, I don't see him as a great coach personally, but I never see him finishing 32nd in the league and running, as they did last year. He's going to run the ball. He's going to run it a lot. He's going to focus on the offensive line and in the trenches. That's where he has always made a living as a coach. And so... Fred Taylor, Adrian Peterson. The list goes on. It's pretty wide and deep. And, you know, you've got to give Adrian Peterson credit, I think.

You know, you look at the games that he played, Mike, last year when you said, you know, he had 3.3 yards, carry 3.7. And, you know, that stretch was San Francisco, Kansas City, and Buffalo, three of the best run these, you know, last year. And so I think his opportunity is going to be there this year. I think their O-Line's going to be better this year. I think with the addition of Crabtree and Cooper, they're not going to be able to stack the box as much this year. Last year, you could focus on that. You had a rookie.

quarterback. So I think that Lanes will be open. I think that Latavius Murray is talented. I think the opportunity will be there. So he's the guy that I'm a little bit excited about. Well, and you see the disparity here between Mike and I. Mike has Latavis Murray currently ranked as a 32nd running back in standard leagues, and I have them all the way at 16 in standard leagues. So that's a pretty big gap and that's why we're having that debate here. Did you want to add anything, Mike, or should we press on? No, I think that's pretty good. What do we think? Because I like to just

you know, gauge the temperature of each team. Are things going well? Are things going bad? What's the feeling of the Raiders? To me, it's just a little stagnant right now where I'll give them a slight incline of things are, things look like they're headed the right direction with the moves that they've made. But it's going to take a few years and some drafts to really know what, when we're talking fantasy. Well, I'm not just talking about

overall the Raiders. I'm talking about their offense specifically. So let's talk for a minute about Amari Cooper before we move on in the AFC West. Amari Cooper is coming in as a much-heralded prospect. I have him in the 80-90 catch area as a rookie, and I think him and Carr have the ability to do some damage. Where do you guys see Amari Cooper finishing? A lot of people are going to be making decisions on him, both in dynasty leagues and redraft leagues. So...

What is his ceiling? What is a Mari Cooper ceiling? Because all indications out of OTAs is that he's looking really good as well. I think his ceiling is limited. And I think his floor is very high. But personally, I don't see him as, you know, the ODB type, you know, that could blow it up. And the reason is because of the Raiders. I don't think that they're going to be a pass first, you know, team.

under that regime. I think that that's going to limit him. Bringing in Crabtree will take some targets around. And I agree with you, Andy. I think he could catch 80 passes. So I'm not saying that he's not going to be good. But you draft these rookies with that hope that he's just going to come out and be an absolute fantasy football difference maker the way that some of those. You're always hoping you get that blow-up rookie. And I just think that he's limited because of the...

you know, the ideals of the offense that he's in that's going to keep him away from having as high a potential as others, other rookies. The limit to me is the touchdowns. I think he can easily get 100,000 being the... A hundred thousand yards? A hundred and a thousand. I heard the first thing, yeah. I think he can get that, but I'm not sure that the touchdowns will be there to really make the difference week to week.

Yeah, some inconsistency is to be expected there for sure. I agree with that. Any other thoughts on Oakland? Do you see this team winning any more games than last year? Last year they were a 3 and 13 team in that division. Yeah, I think they'll win more games. I think that they're getting a little better in real world. I don't think they'll be great. I think they'll be bad, but not what they were last year. Yeah, they'll have a better defense for sure with Jackman. Yeah, I'll give them maybe four wins, though.

All right, let's turn over to a much different franchise, the 12 and 4 Denver Broncos. Okay, so some big... That was a Bronco. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's really good, Jason. Yeah, I'm working on my audio drops, but I'm going to do it like that. That's going to save us money. Significant losses.

Yeah, that's one of the big ones, right? Gary Kubiak is coming in. The Coobes is the head coach now of the Denver Broncos. Adam Gaze is gone as the offensive coordinator, and they bring in Rick Denison now. They have some significant losses. They lost Julius Thomas. He's a fantasy darling in the tight-in circle, or was. Now he's with Jacksonville, which we will talk about as well. Ryan Clayty lost with an ACL.

In OTAs, a big offensive line loss for Denver, but not something that they haven't had to deal with before. We've talked about Ryan Clayton going out, unfortunately, before for them. They lost Manny Ramirez. Yeah, he's a decent guard. The bigger problem is they lost Orlando Franklin, who's a top five left guard. And so some major losses there. Hey, whoa, Wes Welker. Don't forget about Old Wes. Yeah, it's not just all about Big Poppy, okay?

Yeah. Well, Wes is gone and Wes has not found another team and Wes might not remember very much right now either. He thinks he's still on the Broncos. He might show up on day one. He reported the Patriots camp last night. It's like office space. He's just, he's going to play but not get paid. I got my football. So we took care of the problem. Yeah. Talk to me, Mike, about some of the key additions for this team. Did they make up for what they lost? Uh,