Week 1 Matchups + Mark Andrews Panic Alarm? - Fantasy Football Podcast for 9/6

We got a great show for you today. I want to invite you to check out our community at join the foot.com, the foot clan, mighty and strong. We've got tons of premium tools, resources, and perks for you this year, including the brand new ultimate dashboard. You get discord access to thousands of passionate fantasy football players. Check it all out at join the foot.com. To the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. It's football time. Still. Always. Forever. I forgot. Oh, what a bum. We got a game tonight. Yeah. Friday night football. Why not? Friday night, Thursday night lights, Monday night lights. The lights are pretty much on all the time. Look, I was encouraged by some of my Twitter followers. I'm going to give it a go, everyone.

Esteempo de football. Oh, all right. My Spanish is the worst, but that's what you get. I couldn't have done that well. Is Spanish the right choice there, not Portuguese? Oh, is that right? Look, I got told to say it in Spanish, so. I think it's Portuguese. Is it Portuguese? Portuguese. All right. Well, let me, dude. Look it up. Let's go. Let me know when you're ready. Hey or de football. Okay. Amazing. I was so entertained yesterday. We had so many tweets of like, We had people with their kids that were singing the It's football time at the same time that we all did. The energy was amazing. The game was played. We had a, you know, down to the wire Thursday night football game. What a game. And we need to talk about it. Yes, we do. We also have news. The rest of the fantasy forecast. We got a new segment today. We need to talk Mike off of multiple ledges. I'm okay. I'm okay.

The rankings are on the website, Fantasyfootballers.com. I mentioned it at the top. We have our community. Jointhefoot.com. If you want to become a part of that, get access to literally thousands upon thousands of amazing Foot Clan players in the Discord server, premium tools and resources, premium week one rankings, the Sartsit tool, and the brand new ultimate dashboard. All of that, you can learn more at join the foot.com. People are enjoying the dashboard so far, and we are adding. So many more features. It's going to get better and better. And honestly, like, we did our draft yesterday, our League of Record draft right before kickoff. It was intense and crazy, and we probably won't do it that way again. It was exhausting. But it was amazing to be able to, like, personally, go in and use the dashboard and be like, oh, this makes it so much quicker and easier. And it, I loved it. It was awesome to go right from the draft immediately into.

Incredible amounts of pain, guys. Really? Because I had a great time. Right into the pain. So look, the storyline last night, Chiefs 27, Ravens 20. 26. And from a fantasy perspective in this game, we saw some things that we hoped for. We saw the heavy involvement of Rashi Rice. I am really curious about. what you thought last night meant for the Chief's offense because you saw a very poor game from Travis Kelsey from a target perspective, just four in the game. You saw two highlight plays from Xavier Worthy, which were incredible showing off his speed. You don't have Hollywood Brown back in this offense yet. No gray got involved. Pacheco in the passing game. But Rashi Rice had nine targets. He was seven for 103. I believe.

and I don't remember, but I believe every one of them was like the same plate. It was the unstoppable slant. So, I mean, this is the middle of the... Michael Thomas is somewhere just furious because we're all... That's my move. We're like, Rashid, he's great. And meanwhile, people are like Michael Thomas only ones from one route. It's the thing that, like, in this offense, you can be somewhat one dimensional and still provide weekly fantasy value. And I'm not... Like Rice is... Rice is not a complete wide receiver in the sense that he doesn't run down field. He's not doing a bunch of deep dig routes or outs. But his role in this offense and the speed he has after the catch provide tremendous upside. Now, I do think some rice is going to come at the expense of some Kelsey and some Kelsey of some rice in the middle of the field. We saw that a lot last season. I mean, if you look at if you remember how last season went, the first half of the year, Kelsey was on.

believable. Everyone was happy they spent the fifth overall pick on him. And then it was, you know, as Rice got more and more involved in the second half of the year, Rice was, you know, a top 20 wide receiver in fantasy. Kelsey started going away a little bit because it was, you can't pass to both guys on the same play. No. And so if they dominate the same part of the field sometimes. Exactly. So if you're passing it to Rice over and over and over on a play that can't be stopped and just works. Why would you stop it? Then Kelsey can't get in on that play. Foot Clan, do not leave this episode for one second because I have to finish this recap, but Mike has been put into a laundry machine since last night. Jason said he was rooting for some things to happen just for the entertainment of the show, and they don't stop. So just stay with us when we get into the news. I want to get to the headline story here by a wide margin.

And that was Mark Andrews struggles in the game and Isaiah Likeley's 9 for 111 and a touchdown in the game. The panic, look, I had my fatherly moment on the show where I said, don't panic because that's all we can do. And an island game, a problem like that for Mark Andrews where Mike had just literally picked him in our draft and had the joy of getting to watch a Thursday night football game with your player, Mike. Oh, man. How was, how fun was that? It was great. I yelled at the, I yelled at Lamar a lot to please just throw the ball to Mark Andrews. I yelled at the Chiefs a lot to stop being weirdos and dumb double covering Mark Andrews on every single play. But their plan worked. Yeah. I mean, it was, and so people want to know from us right away, do we tell you that your panic is valid in the Mark Andrews, Isaiah likely, or do we tell you to chill?

because, you know, is it proper reaction? Is it improper reaction? And to me, as the person that has Mark Andrews, the lowest ranked in his draft order, not super low. Get him five. I had him at five, but that was kind of low compared to the show. I wanted to jump into the film and take a look and say, what was true about last night's game? And... What's true about Isaiah likely and how should you be reacting? What I came away with, I watched every snap that Mark Andrews was on the field and I came away with a message of do not panic. This is not a situation that I believe you need to worry about Mark Andrews. He had very, very few opportunities in this game to even be targeted. He was bracket covered every single time he was down the field beyond about five yards minus.

a handful of times where he had opportunities to get a dump off, a yard away from the line of scrimmage. He had one-on-one matchup in the middle of the field that he won and caught the ball in the second half. But he basically was the victim of several things in this game. Number one, Steve Spagnola and the Chiefs defense made the decision they've made five times in a row, which was to remove him from the offense. So they bracket covered him. On the last two plays of that game when they were in the red zone trying to score, there were three players. It was a triple. The one play where so likely goes down in the corner in a heap and you're like, oh my gosh, is Isaiah, after this breakout game, is Isaiah likely? Is this a collarbone? What is going on? And so the next play, likely is not on the field. Mark Andrews is triple covered in the end zone. In the first half, Mark Andrews had.

These are the only opportunities for a target he even had. A dump off didn't get targeted. A dump off. He caught it. It was a penalty. It was called back. And another dump off opportunity. He didn't get targeted. That was it. That was the entire first half where he wasn't, if you weren't the worst quarterback in football, like anybody can force the ball to anybody. But these were like not even choices. Lamar Jackson could not try to target him. And in the second half, a couple more. He actually caught two passes in the second half. But it was like non-existent. They took them out of the offense. Yeah, against the Ravens here, the last five games. You have a game with zero for zero, a game with three for 15, three for 22, five for 57. He had one mediocre game and then two for 14. I wanted to look at the film in particular to see if there were routes that he was not able to separate that he wasn't winning. Did he look slower because of an injury? Could he not get away from a one-on-one defender? There was none of that.

That would have been panic alarm for me because I went into the season saying like there's three things that are true in my opinion on this situation. One, the chiefs took him out of the offense. Don't panic. Two, Isaiah likely is a great player. We said repeatedly they can't keep him off the field. There's no way. And three, Mark Andrew's peak is behind him. I fundamentally believe that. His peak of his career is behind him. He's gone and for multiple reasons. Offensive coordinator changes. injuries that he has sustained multiple times and different personnel in the offense. That doesn't mean he's not a top five tied end. It just means that people's careers change. I still think these are scored a ton of touchdowns. And the best way I think you can look at this as a fantasy player is to pretend for one night that Isaiah likely is a wide receiver. Yes. Because if you pretend that Isaiah likely was a breakout wide receiver for the Ravens last night, if you threw all his numbers on Rashad Bateman for...

Just a moment in your head. Oh, what a dream we can. You would then be able to look at the Mark Andrews situation objectively and say it was an off night. It's not like there haven't been those in the game log in his career. He was also coming off a car accident where he didn't practice for three entire weeks, which game planning wise, the Ravens basically just said, we can't do stuff downfield, we're going to throw it in the screen game, we're going to dump it off to Justice Hill and Isaiah likely. Likely, the majority of its catches were. Very short. Was Andrews bracketed downfield and likely basically being an out route that was two feet from the line of scrimmage. He was playing the Evan Ingram role. Yeah, his one big play, the touchdown, huge credit to Isaiah likely, amazing play. The chance of a touchdown on that play was 0.3%. There was a broken play. So to me, there's two conversations. One is Mark Andrews done. The answer to me is no. He will be fine if you can buy low, buy low. The second one is what is Idea likely? I'm going to toss it to you, Jason. What is he moving forward?

How do people react to him on the waiver wire? Yeah, and so forth. He's a worthy pickup. I see this as a situation that could be the reminiscent of the Hernandez and Gronk scheme, where it's like you just have, he's their next best receiver. You have Bateman and Aguilar. Those guys are great at running down the field and making the defenses, you know, back up a little bit. But they're not good wide receivers. They're not like. There's certainly not going to be massive target getters. So I think Isaiah likely is necessary for this offense, and now there's three targets here, which is not what we prefer. I would prefer it to be two. Sure. You know, target consolidation for fantasy football. But the other issue, the one thing that you haven't brought up yet, and this was a concern before the game, is what is the Ravens offensive line?

The Ravens offensive line, they lost three starters from last year. And the answer is out. They suck. They're going to have to figure it out. They're going to have to get better because they were just trash. And that means a little bit more blocking for either. Isaiah likely is a good blocker. Mark Andrews is a good blocker. They're both good pass catchers. So you're just going to have it spread around a little bit more. Thankfully, I mean, this is a good pass rush. You know, you're not going to play Chris Jones every week. Yeah. And he was just dominating them. So, yeah, I mean, that's a good point. And it hurt Henry. The game script hurt Henry. That would be the other storyline. He got in the end zone. This is what a bad game for Derek Henry looks like, which is a goal line opportunity. If he doesn't convert, it's a huge dud, but he normally converts. And he did. He was fine. And if you watched him, you might be freaking out that you saw so much Justice Hill and that he wasn't in as much in the fourth quarter.

The truth is you're not going to be trailing in games very often as the Ravens. You're playing the back-to-back Super Bowl champion Patrick Mahomes led team in Arrowhead. With an elite defense. Yeah, it was a bad game script for him. And for people out there, can other teams see this and then just duplicate this against the Baltimore Ravens? If they have Chris Jones. And I would say no, because of that. One, different coordinators have different ideals of this is how I stop an offense. Two, they don't have the personnel to do it. The offensive line is a problem. I agree with that, but it's, you are, you won't be playing this ferocious of a pass rush every single week. And the, like, the zoom out of this is hilarious to me. It's just, it's a perfect snapshot of fantasy football.

Mark Andrews catches two passes for 14 yards. And look, when he fell down on his little short outbreaking route, that was kind of like the exclamation point of like, you gotta be kidding me. So he puts up that and likely is great. And it's, I mean, my time. Panic industry. My timeline is do I do a full fab dump on Isaiah likely? Do I drop Mark Andrews for Isaiah likely? And on the other side. Travis Kelsey drafted higher than Mark Andrews and I would say 90 plus percent of fantasy football leagues catches three passes for 34 yards. Really not that much better. If Noah Gray went 9 for 11 11 and a touchdown, this would be the conversation. And then so you have that situation, which I'm sure the people who have Kelsey were mad and as well. They're just the Mark Andrews took over Twitter.

And then you look at the running back situation. People very concerned about Derek Henry's splits, which this is, this is who Derek Henry is as a player. Like this is what happened last year in Tennessee. Tadj Spears. Kyle, how many passes? He out snapped him. Yeah, they had the same snaps. It was like 50, 53. But it was like Tajay Spears caught so many passes. And you're like, okay, Derek Henry 13 carries, 46 yards with a tutty. Long on the night was nine yards. He had two targets. And then Isaiah Pacheco. We're celebrating the workhorse role of Isaiah Pacheco because he was on the field so, so, so much. 15 carries along of five, one touchdown. So two more carries and one extra target. He caught two of them. And one fewer yard in the running game. I'm not saying don't celebrate Pacheco because that was that was fantastic, Jason. You're my guy hoping for the workhorse role.

It looks like it is there. 80% of snaps. He basically only left the field to vomit, which was awesome. He must have got hit right in the liver or something. He got hit so hard. He was down. Don't forget, these were the number one and number two defenses in football last year. So like from an efficiency standpoint in the running game, I mean, obviously there are personnel changes, but things are going to be more efficient for both offenses. For Kelsey for Andrews. for Pacheco, for Henry. You can be really excited about Xavier Worthy and the explosive plays. That's what you're going to get. You're not going to get eight receptions from him. And I think that's kind of where you leave it. Zay Flowers was heavily involved, but right now they. That was still, that was the same exact Zay Flowers we saw last year of. This is, this is a player who in the NFL is twitching fast enough to make real NFL defenders look bad a lot. And it's still.

It still didn't turn into very much for fantasy football. And then my final comment here was Lamar by the end of the game. Oh, gosh. 122 rushing yards. But Lamar Jackson looked like me playing Madden. with Lamar Jackson of me in the second half. Nothing's working for my passing game. Screw this crap. I'm doing it myself. That's what it looked on. He looked like he got really, really flustered and said, I'm just going to keep. I'm going to run. And you know what? The truth is, is they were a tippy toe from this being an overtime game. So don't. Not an overtime. They were going to go for two. Yeah, they were. So I mean, this game was when you say, oh, did it work to take out Andrews? Yeah, barely.

Right. When you say, did it work to have no offensive line for Baltimore? Barely. Like, I mean, Baltimore has got bright days ahead. Yeah, they're so well coached. You know they're going to figure it out. All right. We have a lot of news to talk about. Mike was, I think we talked them off the ledge with one player. We don't need to do the news, guys. We're good. Nothing to report. But before we jump in, it is Friday. Put Clan Friday. All right, every Friday during the season we give away a $100 gift card to Fantasychamps.com along with this year we're going to give away a footballer's t-shirt as well. So I'm throwing that out there to the people that send that out who's nodding with just kind of a dang it I have to packet something else up. All right. Josh. So $100 to fantasychamps.com and a footballer's t-shirt. We give it away every Friday to somebody that supports the show at Jointhefoot.com. And today's winner is K-Flo.

K-Flow. Congratulations. Now we can talk some news. News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance. Okay, we do have football tonight. Packers, Eagles, the game in Brazil. Marshawn Lloyd and Emmanuel Wilson are questionable at the running back position for the Packers in Brazil where Josh Jacobs will get a heavy workload. We did get some more injury news. So. I don't know where you guys want to start, but I'm going to start with the most entertaining. The Bengals. So Mike has been petitioning for Jamar Chase to be signed. He's still not signed. Yeah. And then last night, I mean, we had our League of Record. We shared a lot of stuff on social media. If you saw it, you saw that there's a player who's back on my team for the third year in a row.

Blue our minds. I couldn't believe it. I was the pick after him and I already knew. Guys, I'm trying to be a new man. Let me, let me go deeper. Let me go deeper because this draft started. It's a keeper league. The top three picks, four picks, not the same names that you see in a redraft. Jamar Chase was on the board. He went number one. Mike's sitting at number two. He could take AJ Brown. Yep. And everyone expected him to take AJ Brown. He then. starts playing his famous No Pants song. Oh, man. Music with Marvin Harrison. Hold on. I got to find it. Who, you know. I don't know where it is. When he was drafted, Mike made a song about not wearing pants anymore because he was so excited for him to come to Arizona. He starts playing the song and he shocks the world. Yeah, so he starts playing that. He takes Marvin Harrison at two.

He shocks the league. He starts screaming about how no one's ever going to have him ever again because he's going to be his franchise player. Yeah, forever. And he, you know, Mike, he lives on the kind of potential hatred of others. So he takes Harrison, which then leads him into a Mark Andrews selection instead of Trey McBride because he didn't want to double up on Cardinals. And then he was punished for that choice. Oh, big time. By Mark Andrews. Big time. So he's in a somewhat, he's in a very slouched couch position for the whole game screaming at Lamar Jackson. Then in the draft later on, we expect him, he's got other wide receivers on the board. He's gone through a painful, painful life experience with T. Higgins repeatedly. I'm one pick away. There's Tank Dell and T. Higgins, like in a tier by themselves sitting there. And I, I just knew.

I knew there's no way he'll take the pain of T. Higgins. No, he's not opting into the chance of pain like that. No way. T. Higgins has hurt you deeply the last couple years. You've said it so many times. I opted into optimism. Glass half full. T. Higgins is ready to roll. He's on the franchise. He's playing for that bag of money. You took him. Now, what's the news? So there was a report right after the draft that T. Higgins was added to the injury report. Oh, man. He was limited in practice yesterday. With a hamstring injury, which he's had every year of his life. And so that's cool. And then today did not practice with a hamstring issue. Now, I just like the Mark Andrews thing, I do want to, when I see in general, there is a hamstring.

pop up and then you don't practice afterwards, that's red alert for me. Yes. However, in this situation, I don't think it is red alert. If you watch, is there, I do need to give you the Zach Taylor comments on from 10 minutes ago from 10 minutes ago. When asked about Jamar Chase's availability, he said, quote, we'll see. When asked about T. Higgins availability, he said, we'll see. Well, no, okay. Look, I'm, I'm signing up with team optimism. All right. All right. A couple, you know, what was it? It was like a broken man right now. It was a week ago where Zach Taylor said something nice and then said, I learned my lesson. I put my foot in my mouth. I spoke too soon. And since that time, every comment to every question is basically. T. Higgins has dealt with a hamstring injury to some degree in every year since 2019. Ian Hart is pointing that out. That is a lot. That's five years of your hamstrings hurt. There was an interview with him after his limited practice yesterday.

And in that interview, he is talking about how he's 100% fine. He feels amazing. He feels like he hasn't gone into week one feeling healthier than this week. And so to me, if I'm the Bengals and there's any worry, I'm going to give him rest. Now, obviously, if he. Zach Taylor came out and said he tweaked his hamstring. Yeah. So that's not good. But I'm saying, yes, of course you give him rest because he tweets his hamstring. Look, I'm saying when you have a history of hamstring injuries. There's no place for optimism here. And you don't play. And your head coach says you did tweak it. That just gives me a pause. Yes, as you should. And this is fancy football. Of course, you should. And one of T. Higgins' favorite things is to start games. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. Mike is set for misery this weekend. If he goes out there, I mean, obviously you're starting T. Higgins this week. Currently. If he's active for the game, you're starting them.

And if he injures his hamstring in this game, week one, I don't, I feel like you're going to rage drop him. It's just going to be like, I don't, I won't deal with this this season. I mean, this is bad for Joe Burrow. He might not have his top two receivers. That is a, in the range of outcomes this weekend is to have neither. That is unbelievable. Also, if I'm Yoshi voss, and then if I'm, if I'm Jamar Chase and I see my, my man T. Higgins sitting out and like maybe not being able to play on Sunday. I don't think I'm practicing guys. Yeah, that sends a good message. Like, you really need me now. Yeah, we're like, week one? Kyle Pitts. Without both of us? Kyle Pitts was dealing with the hamstring. He practiced in full. He said he was, he also came out like T and said, I'm fine. Yeah. He did practice in full. Russell Wilson was added to the injury report on Thursday with calf tightness. From what I had seen. From Ian Rappaport. Yeah, Ian Rappaport had said that like this team is traditionally very conservative with calf injuries.

So you could see Justin Fields. Also, this is, I mean, this was his injury he had. He was dealing with a calf injury earlier. That's why he missed some time in camp. So now if it's re-agravated, I mean, you should be picking up Justin Fields. Justin Fields, for a fantasy football perspective, is a great quarterback. If he starts for a week or multiple weeks or whatever, and this is against Atlanta, I believe, week one, that would be, that would be awesome. Mike, who else was on your team? Because I see a report that... Oh, just the best running back in football. Christian McCaffrey is listed on the injury report with the CAF and Achilles is expected to play. And it... What was the last news on it? The quotes coming out on Christian McCaffrey are... I have seen everything from 100%. He is good to go. But then we... John Lynch on the radio said he's doing great. We have to finish the week. This was this morning. Yeah, we have to finish the week. Looks like Christian.

And that's a good thing for us. Obviously, we want to see him progress through the week. We had confidence he'll be ready. He'll be ready to. No, you got to get the tense of everything. Go ahead. We had confidence he'd be ready. Dot, dot, dot. He'll be out there and ready to go. What? We don't need this in week one. Listen, coaches, we don't need this. We need to, this is the whole, why do we play again? For pain, only for pain. Antonio Gibson on the injury report as well. And then, yeah, I think that's it for the news. So we've got so much to talk about today. It doesn't really affect things. But for tonight's game, Marshawn Lloyd and Emmanuel Wilson are questionable. Josh Jacobs might play 100% of the snaps for the Green Bay Packers tonight. All right. That was today's news and notes presented by USAA Insurance. Learn more at USA.com slash insurance.

We'll take a break and jump into the forecast. All right. Time to get you ready. Time to, you know, week one's weird. Week one's weird because we don't have anything on the, you know, the history so far this year about how these teams are trending. So it's all about the storylines. You're normally starting your studs and playing the guys you just drafted. So we're going to jump in and see what storylines matter. It's time for Fantasy Forecast, presented by Draft King Sportsbook. We covered seven games yesterday, Packers, Eagles, Steelers, Falcons, Cardinals, Bills, Titans, Bears, Patriots, Bengals, Texans, and Colts. And we're jumping into the rest of them today and have something fun at the end of the show as well. Jacksonville travels to Miami to take on the Dolphins. The Draft King Sportsbook line here, Dolphins minus three. Over under is 49. This morning, the Dolphins made Jalen Ramsey the highest paid cornerback with a new extension. He is probably still good.