Week 5 Studs & Duds + Red Alert Offenses - Fantasy Football Podcast for 10/7

Hey, this is Patrick Mahomes, quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs, and you're listening to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast. To the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Oh, welcome in. Monday, October 7th, the Fantasy Footballers podcast. Jason Moore, Andy Holloway with you today. And another week to react.

We've got studs and duds on the show today. We've got NFL news. We got injuries to talk about. This feels like a really big studs and duds week. Like you had some monstrous performances, like extreme production. And then you have some of the most started players failing miserably. Yeah, we got one more game left in week five. And I'm thinking tomorrow. on the show after we conclude week five in its entirety. I want to go through the top five at every position tomorrow. I want to look at who's there five weeks into the season. And then I want to ask you whether you think they stick around or they finish within about five spots of where they are today. Because, you know, we've got some data at this point in time. And we had expectations for certain players this week that did and didn't deliver.

We're getting into all of it today. I want to invite everybody check out JoinThefoot.com if you want to join an incredible community of fantasy football players, the foot clan. You can find out details that join the foot.com. You get an extra episode of the show every week, premium tools, the ultimate dashboard, which is coming very soon to a mobile device near you as well. And the website's the fantasyfootballers.com for all of our rankings and everything. The great articles by the great writing staff. that we have assembled by sheer luck slash Kyle. Yeah, I was going to say, Kyle's done great work. Brooks would like us to know that we're doing a fantasy draft redo on Wednesday. Those are super fun, and that kind of in part does what you're talking about, where you're going to do it over. If we were to do the draft today, who's the first pick, who's second, et cetera. Yeah, maybe I'll save those numbers for Wednesday, but that should be fun.

We do react to the weekend and the only way we know how, which is to put the word out to the foot plan, get sophisticated with some Monday Punday. And we'll kick it off with Brock Powers. Oh, baby. First touched it. She's good. Darnel Money. Yeah, Rico, Mike's not here. It's such a shame. I know. This was his. Rico Woutel. Oh, thanks, Bigsby. Oh, great. So I get TD Higgins. You got Kraft Mac and TDs. Yeah, he double TDs. Flying Thomas Jr. Oh, check in at the Better Business Borough. That's so dumb. DJ more of that, please. Whoa, Flacko. But it wasn't all good, Amy. No, it wasn't. And that's why we have Dontavian. Oh, he was the worst this week. Dontavian whiffs.

And then, of course, Devon ache pain. Mark Blanrews. Hey, he had catches this week. He did have catches. Such a high bar for him. Xavier regrets. I like that. Breece Small. Debo Shamule. George picking someone else for my team. And Cortland, nothing. Starvin Harrison Jr. And right after the sacrificial baby. Yeah, of course. He's now Benedict Darnold. Hungry for more. And finally. David Najoku's on you. Oh. That's really not fair. Clearly the jokes on you. Okay. You do it. He, uh, if, if you're not familiar, uh, with his work this week, he, uh, caught the first pass on the first play of the game and then, uh, played more snaps, but got injured. Yeah, it was a knee injury, though. It wasn't a re-injury, which is really a shame. He's going to get an MRI today. And like he had just talked about how.

upset he was that he had been missing time so it's always hard when that happens that does feel like like it's it's unfortunate it's not his fault i don't ever want to shame an injury but it does feel like a jokes on you situation where it's like i'm back ha ha got you yeah i was i was uh i was benching this week to see because we knew the snap counts would be limited but you never know if a player's like compensating for an injury too and that's how they get hurt again Yeah, I didn't see the play where he got injured, but obviously we'll find out more this week. I don't recommend watching that game. I don't think you want to watch Cleveland's offense. Holy moly. I mean, every time we would look over to the Browns TV, it was like just put a sheet on it. Oh, yeah, pull the sheet over? Just it's done. I can't watch Voldemort play football anymore. And they came out. Football? That's football? What he's doing? He's trying.

The head coach came out and said he is the quarterback. He who shall not be named will continue being our starting quarterback, which means the Brown's offense will continue to suck. Yeah, and then Marty Cooper will continue to get 10 to 12 targets and catch four of them. Because he got five catchable. He'll drop one. He'll drop one. He'll catch four and he'll be targeted 10 to 15 times. It's very difficult to watch. They could use Joe Flacco. I mean, the teams that could use Joe Flacco right now, there are more than one. Oh, yeah. And it was reported that those are the exact teams that turned Joe Flacco down this offseason before he went to the Colts like the Miami Dolphins. I mean, the Miami Dolphins have Devon A. Chan, Tyreek Hill, Jalen Wattle. You put Joe Flacco there, and this team is just marching towards the playoffs. Yeah, and Jalen Waddle would be fine and Tyreek would be great.

A. Chan will be great. And yeah, Joe Flacco's a leader. Insane. Insane when you have a quarterback with the known. Yeah. I mean, he's, he's great. I love him. I hope. So what do you do? I mean, let's just talk about it for two seconds because we know I think Indianapolis can win. Their chances to win are better with Joe Flacco right now, but their future is not Joe Flacco at all. And it's not like Richardson's not going right back into the lineup, but. What a weird place to be as a team where you know your chances to win go down and you continue to make that decision. Yeah, I mean, the whole world knows it. The whole world knows that the team operates better. The offense operates better. The wide receivers have more success with Joe Flacco than with Anthony Richardson. Obviously, they are not a team in a championship window yet. They are building to the future, and that's not what old man Joe Flacco is going to provide you. So they do need to build the team around.

Anthony Richardson. I think that's what I would do as a general manager. What you'd hope to do at this point now is put Anthony Richardson behind someone like Joe Flacco, but they can't do that anymore. No, you can't go backwards. No, you can't. Jacoby Brissac got the start so he can keep starting. Exactly. But, yeah, just a flashback. Joe Flacco last year. His final four regular season games, 31 points, 20 points, 36 points, 37 points with Cleveland. They won all four games. Yeah. They won all four of those games, and he was a top 10 quarterback in all four of those games, including number one overall in week 16. Let him go. Let him cook, man. Goodness. All right, let's kick it off. Welcome to Ready to Roll, presented by Nissan. All right, ready to roll today. We're looking for those.

We're always looking for the little edges in fantasy football, but five weeks in, it's fun to take a look at where teams are at this juncture of the season. And so today we want to look a little bit at pace of play and what teams are very fast pace so far this year, what teams are slow, and how that impacts fantasy football. Now, there are about, there are three or four different ways to look at pace of play. You can look at the totality of plays per game. just raw total plays that can get distorted by overtime games or maybe weird game scripts or the defense scores and the offense doesn't have the ball a lot. You can look at seconds per play. So teams that are leaving a bunch of time on the play clock that are running no huddle, which is another way to look at it because you're going to get more plays in a game when you are running no huddle. More opportunities for fantasy obviously come along with running more plays. So it's very, very important.

And then probably the most ideal in the way that we like to look at it. What is the neutral pace of a team? What are their seconds per play when they are within one score of the other team? And they're not, yeah, we look at that for pace of play. We also look at that for pass rate. That's, you know, obviously if you're down two scores and it's the fourth quarter and clock's running out, you can't run the ball anymore. You've got to throw the ball. So at the end of the game, you look back and you're like, oh, they threw the ball a lot.

It's like that's not what the team wants to do. If the team is up, if the team is just in a battle, those type of things. Neutral game script is probably the most indicative of future happenings. Yeah, the most predictive. Yeah, I agree. There is an article coming out on the site today if you want to dig in deeper than what we talk about here. And the article is called defining pace of play and why it matters. We also do a weekly pace of play article on the DFS pass. But I want to highlight. three fast-paced teams through five weeks and a couple, two, three slower-paced teams so that you have an idea of maybe where we're headed. Because at a minimum, this gives us a little bit of a predictive analysis on is what you're seeing going to keep happening on some of these teams? Or inversely, when you're waiting for somebody to perform, do they really have a chance to perform moving forward? I think that one is maybe even more.

important for fantasy. Like, it's pretty easy to stay in the flames of someone on fire. So, like, we're the first team we're going to talk about here as the commanders. Yeah. They're just unstoppable. I mean, their offense through the first month of the season is almost unstoppable. No one's been able to slow them down. Extreme fast pace of play. If you've got Jaden Daniels in your lineup, you've been starting them. But prescriptive wise, guess what? Keep, keep starting Jaden Daniels. Like, that's, You don't need to be told. No, no, but you can be excited about the fact that they're number one and no huddle rate. They are no huddle more than 50% of the time this year. It's what Cliff did in Arizona, but he's doing it to even greater extent now in Washington. With the amount of scrambles by Jaden Daniels on top of the fast pace of play, it's exciting for Terry McLaurin's potential to be valuable on a week-to-week basis.

and maybe somebody else emerging on a week-to-week basis, whether that ends up being, you know, Zach Hertz one week and Diamie Brown another week or whatever the case may be. Yeah, the no huddle has been certainly working well, keeping the defenses from adjusting. And they, I mean, Cliff Kingsbury has four of the six fastest no huddle or highest rate of no huddle teams since 2016. And this version is faster than any of his Arizona Cardinal versions. Another team. Playing very fast, at least the last two weeks, the Indianapolis Colts number two this year in seconds per play, nine and no huddle rank. But it has been a very big contrast going from Richardson to Flacco. Last year, they were very uptempo with Gardner. First three weeks of the year, not the case in the plays per game tally because they weren't having as much success either with Anthony Richardson. But the last two weeks, plays per game have gone way up.

64 and 69 under Flacco. They were in the 40s and 50s under Richardson. So I guess we know with Indianapolis what they want to do, but they're just having more success doing it with Joe Flacco in terms of sustained drives, completed passes, third downs picked up, and more plays per game. I would love to see. I also think it's not necessarily just what they want to do, but what matches their personnel. Like they're slowing it down with Anthony Richardson. Because, you know, he isn't going to be the stand in the pocket and make all the quick throws and, you know, short screen plays and get to the line. Like that's, I, you know, I think Stuyken is doing a good job matching his personnel. But he matches better, I feel like, with these quick, quick passing quarterbacks. And then three other teams that are playing very fast. The Cowboys, number one in seconds per play. So they're playing very.

fast, ninth overall in total plays. Seattle, third and seconds per play. And these are two teams, both of them in the top five and pass percentage, pass rate. So very good signs for, you know, we just saw Jalen Tolbert have a big game. And Brandon Cook's is missing time. Yeah. And they pass the ball almost more than anybody in football and have more plays. And their defense isn't very good. So like Jalen Talbert is a streaming option moving forward. could be interesting or Jake Ferguson as we continue to endorse him. Yeah, I mean, we saw last year the involvement and the touchdown, the touchdown frequency for Brandon Cooks. So if he's gone, obviously that role is important to DAC and to the Cowboys. The Seahawks offense has just been a delight with the changeover leaving Shane Waldron. But ironically, Shane Waldron's led bears, hey, they came to life a little bit this week.

And that's an interesting discussion because they're number two and no huddle rate this year. They're number seven in seconds per play. And their number five in total plays run. And then they had this big breakout game where the passer rating for Caleb Williams has increased every week of the season. Or I think the first two weeks were very similar. But then the past two have been very good. Going into week five, great performance, DJ Moore was great. He looked so good. And his ability with his legs, it was great. You got to, you got to pump, pump the brakes, you know, a little bit and say, okay, those are the Carolina Panthers, like so far. Carolina Pump. Yeah, the Carolina Pumpthers. So just, you know, don't get, don't get too crazy excited. That being said, Jacksonville Jaguars are the next matchup, then the commanders, then the Arizona Cardinals. So yeah, and those are seasonal ranks in terms of the no huddle rank and the plays per game. So maybe they were underwhelming a little bit and there's a medium, median between the two.

Slow-paced teams. This is where it gets more interesting for me because there are two teams that I want to highlight here that have been fantasy football juggernauts for years that may need to be reclassified. We began the process of reclassification when we said trade away Patrick Mahomes. With Mahomes, we said, look, this is not an every week starter the way they're running their offense. There's a streaming candidate and is not even a good streaming candidate usually. in Mahomes. But we see that with when you look at the pace of play, that kind of highlights. 20th and total plays per game. 30th and no huddle rank for the Chiefs. 20th and seconds per play. They are methodical. Their throw, their pass rate above expectation was always 6, 7, 8, 9, 10% higher than the league average. This year it is the league average. Yeah, gross. Which means you're not throwing it as much.

And you're not running as many plays. And losing Rushie Rice and even losing Isaiah Pacheco, I think that is just going to continue to slow the offense down and win more grueling battles. But the other team here, who ranks 31st in plays 25th in seconds per play, 23rd and no huddle, 26th in past percentage rank, and has been... future in the last two weeks. What do we make of the Buffalo Bills? It's a problem. It's a problem. They don't have reliable pass catchers, it seems, outside of Shakir who missed this game. They're methodical. They're running the football. Fewer total opportunities. Seventh in rush rank this season. And this is just a continuation of what we saw under Joe Brady last year where they were 31st in pass rate.

So this year they're 26th. But last year at least they were number one in plays per game. Now they're, what are they, 31st? Yeah. So this is when you, when I look at the game and I'm like, I want opportunities for Dalton Kincaid, right? Every time I look at the screen, where are they? They're on the bench and their defense is on the field. They're not playing. Part of that is the Bill's rush defense has been very, very poor. And so when other teams are able to stay on the field a long time and control the, I mean, if I'm playing against the bills, I want to keep Josh Allen on the sideline. I guess unless it was this last week, I would have wanted him out there. You realize how bad he was? Nine for 30. That's a 30. Nine for 30? He threw the ball 30 times. He completed nine of those. 30% completion rate. We did just talk about like the lows for Josh Allen.

are lower than they've ever been in terms of the fact that he's got two sub 10 point weeks. What was his fantasy output this week? 14 fantasy points. Yeah, I mean, that's not. He did have a... That means there's three weeks where he's been disappointed. Yeah, I mean, right now he's the quarterback 19 on the week with still a game to go. So he's, you know, this was obviously a bust week. Last week was a bust week. Two was a bust week. So two good games, three bad games. And the pace of play... and the way they want to continue to run the ball. It's scary, especially when you factor in the fact that they don't have a wide receiver. No, nine for 30 is insane. They could really use to find eggs. Jets next week, Tennessee, Seattle. So next three matches, not cakewalks at all on the defensive side of the football. One touchdown pass over the last two weeks for Josh Allen. You got.

When he came out in week one, because I'm going to point this out, your prediction on Josh Allen at the live show was hero to zero on the basis that he would start hot and slow down. His first week in the season, despite the fact you said that, the way that you said it, you got a lot of grief from him being number one overall quarterback as though your projection was every week. I said he was going to get off to a hot start. And he did. But then. It's been slow, and the low is lower, and it's not working to have, you know, Keon Coleman got hit in the back of the helmet. Oh my gosh, if you haven't seen this play, it is the funniest play. I mean, you want to talk about a good pass. I've never seen someone hit in the back of the helmet by their quarterback. He got targeted and thrown exactly to him, and it's not like he didn't get his head around in time.

He never thought about maybe he was going to get the ball past to him. It's hard to be on the same page with Matt Hollins, Curtis Samuel, and Keon Coleman, who made a great play in the game, scored a touchdown, outran the coverage. Credit due. He's the best of what they got right now. But like, this is not an office that is going to be predictive in terms of like these numbers, these background numbers are telling you what you are seeing on the field. So Buffalo and Kansas City are kind of red alerts right now in terms of the offensive side. And then three other teams, I mean, not surprising, dead last in the NFL and plays per game, the Chargers. They want to put you to sleep. The Saints, you know, the hot start, but they're almost dead last and pass rank. They are dead last and pass rank. So, you know, Olave, Shaheed, I'm sorry, it's a little bit concerning. And maybe that's why they're mentioned with Devante Adams right now.

is because they don't like what they got. All right, that was ready to roll presented by Nissan and the all-new reimagined Nissan kicks. Take on the city and rain or shine with a bold new Nissan Kix, intelligent all-wheel drive. Head over to NissanUSA.com to learn more. Intelligent all-wheel drive cannot prevent collisions or provide enhanced traction in all conditions. Always monitor traffic and weather conditions. We'll take a break and we'll hit the news. News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance. We do get a football game between the Chiefs and the Saints tonight, both that fit in that slow pace of play category. Probably not going to get the Ravens Bengals game or the Tampa Bay Atlanta game we got on Thursday. Yeah, the over under right now is set at 43 for tonight's matchup. I think that feels probably about right. Feels right. But the real question is, will we be putting another sticker on the bald-headed thermometer behind you? Nope.

No. The Chiefs are seven and a half point favorite. They won't win by that, I don't think, but they will win. All right. The refs will make sure of that. All right. The news for the day, Rashi Rice. We got news this morning from Adam Schefter that the Chiefs remain hopeful that he can return this season and maybe miss six to eight weeks. He still needs to undergo a knee scope to confirm any optimism. Yeah, that's such a weird thing to me. Like they don't know and no new information has come out. Aren't all teams hopeful? That's what I'm saying. They're reporting that they're hopeful. Me too. Yeah, me, me too. I'm hopeful that the Puka comes back and dominates when he's bad. I mean, like, David, the joke is getting an MRI. Imagine the Browns come out and go, we're really pessimistic and we hope it doesn't turn out good. Right, yeah, that makes no sense. So, okay, I hope he's back too. The Rams are targeting a week seven return for Cooper Cup. That's great. Post-bye. Yep, that means four weeks, but only three games missed because they have that by.

That'd be great. That'd be big time. Aaron Jones left early with a hip injury, did not come back into the Vikings game. I will say this. I mean, I don't know how much of it was just early game script, like what you've seen with Kyler where he's great and scripted. And then as the game goes on, not as good. Donald looked amazing to start the game and then kind of collapsed. Losing Aaron Jones was a big part. But that is the point. I think Aaron Jones is more important to this offense than we realize because his efficiency has really opened things up.

They were up 17 points and driving when Ty Chandler fumbled the football and turned the game around. And then the Jets almost came back to win. Devon A. Chan, Jason, your season of. Oh, my goodness gracious. I mean, this was a, you know, this was a subplot for Devon A. Chan going into the year was the injury prone situation. But this was a concussion. They have a week six by coming up next week. We would hope H.M. will be back after, but Moster is back. I think Jalen Wright's looked very impressive. Yeah, Jalen Wright's been good. Moster is back. I think you can play them. It's actually really helpful that he's on by week right now. Because usually with a concussion, you see these players miss one week. That's certainly not always. So that'll be nice that maybe you don't miss a game with him other than the one he missed yesterday. Right. Yeah, yesterday he hurt you bad.

He planned, but he planned his concussion. Well, is what you're saying? Yeah. Yeah. He was like, oh, I got a buy week next week. Let me run recklessly this week. Speaking of reckless, Nico Collins ran too fast on his 70-something yard touchdown yesterday. He left with a hamstring injury, did not come back day to day. It was a really great route. The route was. go long it really it was just run as fast as you can there was no hitch no giddy up no shake my head this way it was just like just run like your force gump and and then at the end of that play where he caught the 70 or a touchdown he's like I overdid it I mean it reminded me of Mike Evans he did they used to run long

score and then hurt his hamstring. Hopefully he is back this week because man alive is he good. I was wondering when I watched the Panthers game why I saw so much Jonathan Mingo and now I know I did not see the injury when it happened, but Xavier Legat hurt his shoulder and will be available. They say in week six got banged up. People were taking a chance on him this week and the injury hurt them. We talked about Nijoku. He'll get an MRI on the knee injury. Dude, what happened? I'll just say that gross negligence is what happened with Josh Allen. Josh Allen, if you didn't, if you didn't see, he got hit, slammed his head on the ground. I mean, it was probably got knocked out. Yeah, he probably got knocked out because, I mean, his hand like folded in under his self. He didn't even like move. His body wasn't moving. I mean, it was he, he was clearly out. And then when he got checked.

He came right back into the game. And because they said it was a chest injury or something. Yeah. And then they gave him a smelling salt. Yeah. For the chest. Yeah. Which I've never done. You know, oh, my knee. Give me a smelling salt. I mean, that was that was. We still have some of those, Al? We got smelling salts? Yeah, we got some right here. Because I've got a sword. Yeah, I'm going to need one of those. Can you throw one in here? My stomach, my belly's hurting. Yeah. Jason ate some bad food. Yeah. Let me crack one of those. My understanding is that these work for everything. Oh, Andy went hard after it. Oh, that's a good one for the YouTube. We're way too close. Goodness gracious. Oh, man, I can see the future. Oh. Oh.