Fantasy Football 2017 - Fantasy Superpowers + NFC East Breakdown

All right, Jameson Crowder has been banged up. Hamstring injury. It is the season of hamstring injuries. It's missed the last three practices. This is probably why no Jordan Reed out there, no Jameson Crowder. This is why? TP-11 can show off. Yeah, and Docs. Yeah. And Ryan Grant. And Ryan Grant. Why? You just don't want that. Because-hypless character to come into the fantasy fold. Because Josh Doxon.

is very talented, and I want to see him get an opportunity. And I would hate to see that opportunity be wiped away by a guy named Ryan Grant. Jordan Reed or Greg Olson, if you draft today. If I was drafting today, I would take Greg Wilson. All right, Jay Jai sustained a concussion. He's going to miss a week. Talked about James and Crowder. Sean McVeigh has raved.

About Todd Gurley as a pass catcher expressed desire to get him more opportunities there. Reports from camp lining up as a wide receiver, catching the ball on DBs. I'm sorry, on linebackers. So you buy into any of the passing game hype with Gurley? Does that raise his floor if at least they're committing to staying with him in the passing game? Because there was concern. You were concerned. Yes. They bring in Lance Dunbar. Dunbar is now hurt. And then McVeigh reinforces the passing game role for Gurley. That has to be good. Of course.

If you're catching passes as a running back, that raises your floor. And it would be great to see him get more than last year. But we were talking about before the show, if he gets the amount of receptions he got last year, then that's great because I trust Sean McVeigh to do wiser things in the offense. You're going to get him in space more and get him better targets versus just running the same.

play over and over. You're playing 21st century football instead of like 1983 football. I am super, super curious. The Sean McVeigh trial here this year of that coach that I am older than.

which is, I mean, he is so young. And when I watch, you know, I tweeted out the other day that the more. Sean McVeigh did not own a Nintendo. Yeah. The more I look into the Rams, the more I realize they're really bad. Part of that was because of Sean McVe. Watching him coach. Breaking news. Watching him coach, I was really concerned with, maybe this will work. Maybe this will motivate people. He's high energy. He's young. He's motivated. But he looked like a position coach.

And it's like, well, you're the head coach. You have to lead this team and do all these other things. And he's taking on the offensive coordinator role. Sean McVeigh still gets carded. Of course, Jason Moore puts Sean McVeigh on blast after putting Jeff Fisher on blast.

Well, I mean, you swing the pendulum too far. There is a good middle ground. This is quite an indictment of a coach that you've yet to see coach a regular season game. I'm not, I guess I am indicting him a little bit, but it's more of a curiosity. I'm really, I think it will not work out well, but I believe you said that they're very bad because of Sean McVeigh. I believe that was the actual court. They are very bad, but part of it was watching and me not believing that that method will work well. It's going to be an uphill battle for them.

For sure. All right, Sterling Shepard. I hadn't seen this news until just now. It's about 20 minutes ago. 20 minutes ago. No. Wow. Sterling Shepard on the sideline in serious pain, taken off on a cart in tears. What? By the time you hear this, maybe there'll be more information. This just came through. It's very disappointing. Sad news for Sterling Shepard, if he is indeed seriously injured. I mean, turning.

Turning that news to fantasy, you know, Evan Ingram comes to mind as a beneficiary of Sterling Shepard if he's hurt. Brandon Marshall as well. I mean, we're talking NFC East today. So, you know, we're prepared to talk on Sterling Shepard. There's my five hours of Shepard research, guys. Yeah, and Eli Manning, I think this would be, you know, this would be a slight bump down to Eli Manning, who I've been rising on, but a slight bump up for Brandon Marshall. Part of my work.

Part of my worry for Brandon Marshall has always been targets because I don't think Sterling Shepard is going away or being uninvolved. If this is a serious injury, Brandon Marshall will rise up my rankings. I was just going to say, I wouldn't adjust Eli at all. I don't think having Sterling Shepard, you know. Do they have like eight or nine touchdowns? Yeah, but you have Brandon Marshall and Evan Ingram now. This is this is big adjustment. Well, what I'm adjusting is I had just recently moved Eli Manning up because I think.

their team is so much better offensively than it looked going into last year. Yeah. But now it wouldn't be. Also, I just want to. That's disappointing for just want to throw out there that now the Bay Area reports. Oh, I was going to bring that up to. Carlos Hyde appears set as the starting running back for the 49ers. Yeah. So stop. Stop who. Stop with all of the news craziness on. Well, they said Joe Williams got off to a real slow start too. So it's been.

Definitely 100% training the right direction for Carlos Hyde this season until he's hurt. Yeah, I looked at Carlos Hyde yesterday and Hightower in my rankings, and I was very happy. Carlos Hyde was, I think, my running back 14. I think that's about where he belongs. All right. We are going to jump right into the NFC East preview. Before we do that, I want to thank the sponsor of today's show. Keeping this podcast going, and that's Harry's longtime sponsor of the show. Absolutely love.

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Right now, that's harries.com slash footballers. So thanks to Harries for supporting the podcast. Let's get divisional. Let's get divisional. Such a bittersweet time of year, isn't it? Dude, I'm trying to recover that Sterling Shepard News has me bummed out, man. And it's just so strange because when all of these things happen, the injuries, we get talking about Jordan Reed or Eric Ebron and players are moving around the rankings, obviously. If Shepard seriously hurt, he's going to be out of the rankings.

and yet there's like opportunity that comes out of injury in the fantasy world. Like a Phoenix. Players can step up and it's inevitable. It's just a part of, you know, it's a part of what football is. Yep. Injuries. So let's start out with the 13 and 3 Dallas Cowboys. We're talking to NFC East. This team last year surprised everybody. Dak Prescott, now the face of the franchise. They've added, uh,

Ronnie Hillman this offseason, which brought a lot of question marks with the Ezekiel Elliott potential suspension. Still no news. Still no news. Here's something that I wanted to bring up about the Ezekiel Elliott suspension because some people brought it up on Twitter. Now, if Zika suspended, as far as I know, Mike, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but he has every right if he and the NFLPA want to.

appeal a suspension he would then be permitted to play indefinitely until that suspension that was where i had talked about like kind of the first time we brought this up it's like what do you do because how long with suspension be he can push the suspension back and sometimes it ends up getting pushed back an entire season sometimes in the case of like lane johnson he pushes but then in halfway through the season then he has to serve it

I think it would be very confusing. Honestly, I would prefer if it's, you know, a three-game suspension for him to just take it and to have me draft him because what you had with Brady with him, you know, appealing his suspension. Brady pushed his. There were court cases that kind of helped push that far into the future and into the off-season. Whereas I think if he appeals his case, the verdict will come down mid-season. And that's a scary proposition because what happens if...

You know, his appeal comes, and now it comes in the middle of the season for four games, and he's out the fantasy playoffs. I would much rather hate that than we would, but he wants to try and remove it all together. No, I don't think he would. And this is what my point was. For fantasy owners, the only case that I see an appeal happening is if it's a very long-term suspension, eight to ten games. If it's a two, three, four-game suspension,

Ezekiela will take responsibility for his actions. He'll take the suspension. They'll knock it out at the beginning of the year. Obviously, the team is making some contingency plans. They haven't moved to Alfred Morris. They still have run DMC, and they brought in Ronnie Hillman. The only situation that I see him really appealing is if it's long term because it's not going to work to his benefit and future disciplinary concerns with the NFL. If he doesn't take responsibility and take a two-game suspension on the chin. I think if it's short, he'll take it. If it's long, I don't think he, I think that's...

The only situation. And we've talked about, you know, what do you do for these suspensions? But since we're on, you know, the Dallas Cowboys, we have to say it again. I have, I have been moving more in the direction of if it is a three or, you know, if it's a three game suspension, I don't think I'm going to move him. I think I'm going to keep him at the third spot and draft him. You know, when we look at last year, you know, the top five running backs, only two of them played 16 games. You had Melvin Gordon.

You know, he finished as depending on what scoring format, the seven or eight running back. You know, he only played 13 games. If you combine Zeke with the replacement you're going to play, you're probably going to end up with a great running back. I was going to point out that between games three and 15 for Ezekieliot, because it started a little slow for Elliott, if you recall. It's hard to remember that. That first week. The first week and second week was.

It was slower, especially compared to what else he did, and he didn't play the final week of the season. So games 3 through 15, 1,500 rushing yards. That's pretty good. I mean, so that's, in 13 games, you put a 1,500 rushing yards. And no duds the whole year. Other than the game he missed, top 24 every single week. The interesting thing about Ezekieliot is there's upside, and there's room for him to be utilized in the passing game. He caught 32 of 40 targets last year for only 363 yards.

That doesn't put him anywhere in the stratosphere of David Johnson and Lev Bell in terms of passing game usage, yet he was still such a dominant fantasy force. I don't think anybody can argue with the talent, the ability. Now, pro football focus has their offensive line ranked ninth as of right now last year. They lost some pieces. They lost some pieces. Do we need to worry about that at all? Did, you know, does Zeke mask some of that? Yeah, he does. And I mean, like, their stalwarts are still there. So I'm not.

At least I'm talking like in the middle of their offensive line. So I'm not, I'm not worried about that. I asked this question to Jason when you were out of town, Mike. When week six rolls around in the NFL season, who do you think the leading rush around the Cowboys will be at that point? Who will have the most total rushing yards? In week six? In week six? I think it, well, I think it'll be Darren McFadden. Okay. That's what Jason said as well. No, I did change to Zeke at the end, during that. I said.

McFadden it first, and then I thought even if it's three games, suspension, it'll clearly be Zeeke. All right, this is an interesting team fantasy-wise because, you know, the core narratives haven't really changed a lot on this team. I do want to talk about Dak Prescott because he was crazy solid. He had some of these mind-blowing impressive games, 32 for 366 against Tampa for 279 yards. Mind you, he didn't throw any touchdowns in that game. Right. But he was a QB1 62% of the time last year, which, by the way, that's the same as Drew Breeze.

So he was a QB1, the exact same percentage is Jew Brees. I would call him steady but not prolific. Right. Yeah, that's perfect. And, you know, he was only a wide receiver or a quarterback one through six. He only did that 18% of the time. So Carson Palmer had more weeks in the top six than Dak Prescott did. But he had a 10-week span with eight top 12 weeks, which is incredible. And the question is, you know,

Another year in the system, everything you hear is so positive about him as the face of the franchise, working hard. Have we yet to see the ceiling with him? We have yet to see the ceiling. Another thing you have to factor with the Cowboys, their secondary was hit with a lawnmower this off season. It was just shredded to pieces. I mean, they were already a little rough in that department, and things just got worse. So can they, can the new pieces they plug in?