Week 1 Studs & Duds + Reactions & Reality Checks - Fantasy Football Podcast for 9/9

Don't put your legons. All arm. Lamar was great in week one. Josh Allen got it done in week one. Two rushing touchdowns, two passing touchdowns against Arizona's defense. Did bang up his left hand. Should be okay. I will say he did not look great. And this offense did not look great. Andy, good call on the almost upset. The Cardinals were right about to tie the game on the last. So close. That's what you called an almost upset. But the. It took a while to get going. I was very disappointed with their offense, and it was against a bad defense. Like the Cardinals defense is bad. So I'm a little bit worried. We'll see how they fare against Miami this next week. Yeah, that'll be an interesting test. Miami's a much better defense.

I mean, obviously, still a great fantasy performance. Do you care about Carr or Baker moving forward in terms of the... Baker, I do. For streaming or for, like, would you sub him in for somebody that underperform this week that you thought was a starter? Best example would be Tua. Tua had a tough week. Would you be pivoting or just moving forward with who you draft? I think I'd be willing to hold on Tua. Just Baker, he's not going to be that good every single week, but it... The fact that the offense didn't... completely crumble after the shift of offensive coordinator, it's encouraging. And also, they improved their weapons. You know, Godwin looked really good. He did. You add McMillan there. He looked good, caught a touchdown in the game, and Bucky Irving adds a little bit to the office. So, yeah, I think Baker's very interesting is a good pickup, I believe. I'm not, you know, I'm hopeful for Derek Carr since I've got a lot of OLAV, who ironically had a terrible week. Yeah.

But no, I'm not playing them. And cars at Dallas. I talked about the schedule for the Saints, how they get to open against the Panthers. Great. And they looked great. But now it's tough sledding for four weeks. We saw Sequin on Thursday or I guess it was Friday night. It was amazing. He got everything. Chunk plays all the time. Eight carries inside the red zone, the most of the NFL. So for Sequin and Joe Mixing. Two players that moved teams as veteran stars. Mixon was 30 for 159 and 1. It tied his career high in attempts. And he looked great on every one of them. We tweeted out every carry today. Four carries inside the 10, 92% of touches. Everything they wanted when we were like, well, Singletary was pretty good for the offense. Well, this was an offense that was 3.5 a carry last year on average. And they come out in week one. And they literally.

put in place a perfect offensive scheme with Joe Mixen. 30 for 159 and 1, he looks like a workhorse. And he's one guy that doesn't generally get hurt. Yeah, the utilization of Saquan and Joe Mixen mixed with how good they looked and they're on great offenses. Genuinely, like if you were redoing the draft right now, those two guys would be right after Bijon and Breece. I mean, they would be. middle of the first round over a lot of those wide receivers. It was a good day for Alvin Camara in a blowout, 15 for 83 and 1, 5 targets. So that was nice to see. Ramandre Stevenson, Workhorse, 25 for 1, 20. He really was. He was at a running back attempt year that, let me just double check it. So he hit it. No, he didn't even get there. He was at 78% of the running back attempts. He never hit that one time last year. And he was number one.

in yards after contact. It was the recipe that this team wanted to put into place when they paid Remandre, when they drafted a rookie quarterback, when they brought in Jacoby Brissette, and it worked flawlessly. Play defense, run the football. If they're in a negative game script, we're not going to see 78% for Ramonre Stevenson. But right now he looks like a great selection. I would say this is a team where, like, where Joe Mixon, I really, like, that feels like a. I'm wrong. I was wrong about Joe Mixing because he looked so good. You were right. I remember you telling me what a great football player he was. That's true. I did change my opinion at the last second. For Ramandre, I want to see him play not the Cincinnati Bengals because that team was an absolute dumpster fire. What about Seattle? You want to see him play Seattle? Seattle. He gets Seattle next week, but then it's the Jets and the San Francisco 49ers. All I'm saying is like, I'm not rushing out to immediately try and trade for Ramandre.

he's going to have some nausey games because of the fact that this offense could get behind and still be relentless with the run. But if he doesn't get into the end zone on a handful of games this year, you'll probably be disappointed. But he looked good. And that was the important thing. Yeah, I think to Mike's point is, and it goes with the yards after contact, like he let all in yards after contact. Part of that's good, part of that's bad. You know, he's getting contacted early, but the Bengals did not have the defense to take him down because he's strong. You play a good defense. You're going to get contacted early and taken down early. A 13% target share is very nice. J.K. Dobbins, 10 for 135 and 1. The best, worst performance of the week. Have you ever seen a better, bad performance? I mean, I don't know. We're talking about the fact that he, it was a great, it was a great day for Jake Dobbins. But he had.

a 46 and 61-yard run. And on both of them, he could have, most players would have scored, but the one leg was all he had going after about 20 yards. It was so funny on the second one when he's running and he's ahead. I mean, he's just, he's beat the defense and so he should be running to the end zone. And he gets, you know, whatever it was, however long that. 61 and 46. So about 58 yards down the field, he just. He wraps up the football with both hands. He's still like, you know, 15 yards from the end zone. And just because he knows he's like out of gas. It's like the end of the Daniel Jones run from years ago. He was three and a half a carry on his other eight carries, but those two big plays are amazing. The team did everything they wanted to do. I do think that the Gus Edwards, J.K. Dobbins, split. You'll still see that. And that means that there's a possibility. Gus has a better game at some point. If this continues for two or three games, I think you'll see.

A little bit more distribution to the J.K. Dobbins side. Dobbins will certainly be one of the biggest waiver wire pickups of the week. Well, Devon A. Chan, 10 for 24 on the ground, but had a rushing touchdown. Seven targets for seven receptions and 76 yards. So split time with Rahe Moster. Moster had kind of a dud of a game. He did. And he looked like he got, he got banked up too. A. Chan. was amazing in the receiving game. So there was a video of him kind of getting banged up at the very end of the game. Hopefully he's okay. Kenneth or Jason won't be okay. I just can't. Not too many injuries to my guys. It's the one scary thing about HN, man. He just, he's a little guy that runs really fast. He gets hit really hard. I hope he's okay. At least what we saw is what we hoped for. He was.

You know, he was their primary dude. I know he's splitting time. He's always going to split time. But being involved in the passing game that much, that much slot work, I mean, 7 for 76 is good for a wide receiver. And then you add the ability to have rushing touchdowns. And that was a goal line rushing touchdown. They didn't take him out and put most or in when they got down to the two and the one. Ken Walker was 24-103 and 1. You know, he didn't get going until the second half. The game script was conducive for him towards the end of the game. We'll pay attention to the abdominal injury, but he looked electric. He looked a lot better than the passing game did. Let's put it that way. The passing game looked troubled on a lot of fronts, and we've got people to talk about there soon. Other good performances on the ground, and I'll go through them quick. You can pick one out and talk about them as you want. Connor, 16 for 50 and 1. Halso had three catches. Aaron Jones, 14 for 94 against the Giants, had a touchdown.

Pollard got into the end zone. To me, my take on him was that he's just so much better than Tajay Spears. That was mine too. In my opinion, 16 for 82 and a touchdown against a good Chicago defense to me was impressive. 5.1 to carry. Brian Robinson got into the end zone. He also caught three passes for 49 yards. I liked what I saw from him in a game where they struggled on offense. Jerome Ford was good on a bad situation. David Montgomery and Jemir Gibbs both scored. A few. And Gibbs caught passes. They were basically, there were two drives in the game where I saw a swap, because I watched this game very closely with Gibbs on my roster, Jason has Montgomery. I saw two drives where they had a swap mid drive. Otherwise, they were pretty much going, this is a Monty drive, this is a Gibbs drive. So, you know, they.

Gibbs got a couple back to back in the fourth quarter, which I thought was interesting. But then in overtime, they decided Beef Boys were going to get up there, hit you in the face, and let Montgomery run through you. I mean, David Montgomery won that game. He was unbelievable in overtime, and maybe that was partly because his legs were fresh from Gibbs having a lot of the fourth quarter. I mean, it's just good football. I obviously... Gibbs is going to be far, far, far, far, far more safe because of his work in the passing game. Only one target for David Montgomery through a full game and overtime. Montgomery should be fine most weeks, should be used and he's successful. They had the highest, Montgomery had the highest rush success rate of any running back in week one, but he doesn't get used in the passing game. And that's just bad for fantasy. Going back to Tony Pollard, because I think that is one of the biggest.

We were talking about what we're watching for going into week one and what matters. Every word all offseason out of the coaching staff's mouth is that this is a 1A, 1B situation, a 50-50 timeshare. It was not. You're talking about Tony Pollard had 16 carries. Tage had four. Tony Pollard's the starter. You know, pay attention to that. Spears wasn't bad on his four touches, but he didn't get a lot of touches. At wide receiver, studs, Jaden Reed, six targets, four for 138 in a touchdown, had a rushing touchdown. He's very good. He had another touchdown as well in that game. Called back, yeah. It was called back, but it was all, it was 12 men on the field. Yeah, for both sides. For both sides. So it was an irrelevant thing. That's equal. Just let him play it out. I know. I mean, both players had no effect on the play. And Reed broke tackles. Reed just looks so good, man.

So did you see that? I didn't realize that. Fantasy MVP. Oh, man. Cooper Cup, 21 targets, 14 for 1, 10 and 1. He was in motion. Oh, I watched this thing, man. He was in motion before every play. And it was like you just couldn't guard him. It was impossible. Also scored. Cooper Cup, we told you he was going to be a steal. He's going to be. an accidentally even better steal with no Pooka Nakua. He's going to perish, though. If you give him 21 targets a game, his body will dissentigree. He's fine. He's fine. They're little bitty baby targets. Even just the motion, man. That guy's got to be on an IV right now. But I'm saying to get tackled that many times in the game. Cup was in motion at the snap on 30 plays, which is six more than any other player in a game over the last seven years.

Shout out to Cooper Cup. He also sent us some coffee. Oh, thank you, Cooper. Yeah. Sent Jason. Stay healthy, man. Tyree Kill, 12 targets, 7 for 130 and 1. Just missed another bomb touchdown. He is impossible to defend and he will probably score a long touchdown every game. That's how it feels. All right, let's talk about this one because this one has implications moving forward. Jameson Williams. Kyle, eat it. Eat it. All right. Jameson Williams, nine targets, five for 121 in a touchdown, had a rush. I'm saying that all very loudly and directed at Kyle because I know there's a chance I won't get to say it next week. But here's what was really, really obvious in the game to me. And you guys watched it in its entirety as well. What was obvious is that they didn't have receiving weapons that were Josh Reynolds wasn't popping in and out of the lineup. There wasn't Kleefe Raymond receptions.

Really, you line up and it's Laporta, it's Ammon Ra and it's Jameson Williams. So moving forward, were you super encouraged? Were you just kind of like, this is an outlier? How did you take the JMO debut? Because he scored a lot of fantasy. Nine targets. So he's a talented player on a per touch once the ball is in his hands type of situation. The question is can he get the ball in his hands enough? Nine targets is great. So I'm very encouraged. However, you had you had him out target Amman Rae St. Brown. I would almost take the bet that that won't happen again this season. So I do think this is a bit of an outlier. I need to see a little bit of games put together in a row where... Would you trade him? I would trade high on Jameson Williams? Yes, I would. I don't think I would. Tampa, Arizona, Seattle are the next three matchups for them. If Jameson Williams was a seventh round pick that had a breakout game, it would be different to me than what...

Jason and I were like in love with this guy coming out of college. And it feels like the lions, if he did what needed to be done this offseason and they commit to him, you just picked up a Harrison, Chase, neighbor's type of talent, Waddle. Like Waddle's, he's the most similar to Waddle to me because crossing routes for James and Williams somehow turned into big, big gains. Because he's just faster than you. I would not. Jason, are you wavering now? I'm wavering because the truth is, man, I remember how much I loved him coming out. And this is a great office. It's just, do you believe? It's just a great office. So do you want a piece? Do you want the wide receiver two of a great offense? Yes. I'm scarred by how little he's done for how much he's been on the field in the past. But yeah, I mean, I guess these are the type of players that when you hit on, they change things for fantasy. So I guess I would hold on to him. Mike Evans, two more touchdowns.

Working on that first ballot. Yeah, he is. Every time he scores, I'm in on the first ballot thing. That's what I'm doing. When he doesn't score, Jason, I'm with you, not on the first ballot. Still a Hall of Famer, second ballot. Obviously. 8 for 83 and a touchdown for Godwin. It was a really nice thing to see. He plays Detroit next week. A.J. Brown looked great. 5 for 119 on Friday night. Alec Pierce, 3 for 1, 25, and a touchdown. I think you're going to see big plays bounce around between Doolin, Pierce, and Mitchell. And so all three of those guys, you could be playing the, you know, put the wrong, play the wrong hand every week. Is that your interpretation of it? 100%. It's going to be, you know, if I'm playing DFS, that's fine. Take a cheap shot. But if you're putting these guys in your lineup, that is so hard to say a guy who completed nine passes, I want to slice that up and have the majority going to Pittman. Worthy had the great debut at two touchdowns. Stefan Diggs, start of the week.

And I'm going to say it right now. Trade the heck out of Stefan Diggs. Okay. I wondered where people were going to land on that. Stefan Diggs scored two times. He will be a red zone factor. His air yards, it was nine on the day. Nine. His air yards on averaged out per throw was like one and a half. He caught two touchdowns compared to the other two guys, which was double digits. Both Nico and Tank Dell had. over 100 air yards each. So to me, it made sense in this offense, this situation to play Diggs. You got the two touchdowns. You got the start. I would try to see if you can find somebody that believes in the name of Stefan Diggs combined with this performance and just says, oh my gosh. Like Diggs is going to, they're going to have good games with Stefan Diggs. But around the end zone, you're going to see Nico. You're going to see Tink Dell. You're going to see Joe Mixin. So you're going to have some, like you want bigger plays from Diggs.

He was six for 33. If you can if you can trade him for someone who believes in him as a one as like a fantasy one, then get that haul. Rashid Shahid three for 73 and a touchdown. And by the way, Nico was amazing. Nico was amazing. Nico is that dude. In the game, the breakdown so you know for week one, 64 snaps for digs or sorry for Nico, 62 for digs, 51 for tank. They ran 33, 35, and 34 routes. The targets were 8, 6, and 8, and tank had two carries. So this was, you know, there wasn't one person that was squeezed out, which was nice to see. They ran 3 wide all the time. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the routes, there's no difference in routes run, which is the only thing that matters for wide receivers. It doesn't matter if you're on the field not running a route. So the routes were even, and there were two in-zone targets to Tank Dell that just didn't connect. You will not get all three of these guys every week. No.

Most weeks you will not. This week, Tank Dell was the one that hurt for fantasy, but it's going to rotate. Shaheed 3 for 73 and a touchdown. It was Carolina. The game was out of hand. It was a big play like Shahid is always good for, but I will tell you this from the beginning of last year when I had Oliva on my roster and I was watching the Saints each and every week, and I wanted Alavi to have big plays. Derek Carr and Rashid Shahid are like, these are like friends. These are like they probably have breakfast. They might go out to movies.

Right? Like they might, they are buddies. And Derek Carr is going to take his shots. And I don't know what to make out of it because it's not like he had a billion targets. But they also didn't need to throw in the second half. So are you in on Shahid, Mike? Oh. Jason, you can, or Jason. I'm fun. Like, if you're looking at who do I put in my flex here that I know can go off? But for regular any type of consistency. I would still be out. I am in on Rashid. And that's from an alibi manager. Yeah. It's probably because I'm an alave manager. Likely had the big game at tight end. Kyle Pitts got into the end zone three for 26 and a touchdown is a horrible line, but it's an amazing line because it was the best of any drafted tight end. He also played every down and he participated on all routes on all passing opportunities, which is awesome. Like him and Bijon.

are actually takeaways from week one that are really relevant because they had so much work. And the snaps, Arthur Smith is not there no more. And you felt it in the snaps. You didn't feel it in the fantasy production. So we'll talk about Drake London later. But those two guys, I think. Yeah, behind the scenes utilization is perfection. It is what you dream of for fantasy. It didn't come through. I mean, Pitt's got the touchdown, which is great. But he also had like a little crosser. that I just don't remember ever seeing Arthur Smith use it. That was Jono Smith's role. It's like some of the layups. You've got to get the ball in the hands of your athletes easily, not just like, you know, gunslinging it downfield. So it was great to see even though it was, it's so funny because it's a bad stat line, but he's in the studs because he was pretty much the best tight end that was played this week. That was drafted. Yeah. The only other takeaway, because it was a great debut for Brock Bowers. It was. It was. Six for 58. You're not going to.

You can't stop him. So if the team has any brain cells at all, you will target Brock Bowers all the time. And it was a great, great debut. This was only two rookies since 2014 have had eight plus targets in the first game. If I was going, here's the hot take. If I'm going out to spin fab and Bowers didn't get drafted. Oh. If you didn't get drafted. I'm spending way more on Bowers than likely, though. That's the take that I'm giving you is that Bowers is the better player. Yeah, I agree. I agree. If Bowers were in our league of record, because I have lost Nojoku, and I'm going to have to find one. If Bowers was on waivers, I would drop 80. You want pits? Sure. All right, we're going to take a break and then come back with us and commiserate on some of these duds. All right, let's jump in.

Poopped in his big boy pants. There was plenty to go around this week because we talked about it. The performances, the passing yardage touchdowns, they weren't there. That meant disappointing, fancy performances. Some were excusable. Some were concerning. So, DAC, excusable. Didn't need to throw, punt return touchdown. He came out, was cooking, looking great, and then they just easily coasted to a victory. Concerning. Joe Burrow, 21 for 29, lost against New England. At home. At home. Had Jamar Chase back on the field. And Chase played essentially the whole game. So, and he was only pressured on six drawbacks. Do you want to know what it looked like? It looked like this team desperately missed Joe Mixon. They did not have a threat in the run game. They did not have a.

balanced looking offense that allowed Burrow to sit there and pick them apart. And I think it's going to be a real problem. I'm concerned. The fact that they go from at home against New England, who was basically one of the two worst teams by Vegas coming in to now they go on the road in Kansas City. They don't seem prepared for this. And the vibes have just been so bad in Cincinnati the last like month. T. Higgins is injured. You're not paying your players. He's playing without a contract. Jamar Chase is. Yeah. Yeah. If you don't have a contract, guess what? That hangnail suddenly keeps you out of a game. Yeah, I'm a little worried. You protect yourself. I'm a little worried. Because you need money. It's stupid. They're stupid, stupid, dumb. And they were dumb to lose mixing and not replace them with somebody that was a threat. For a team that competes for a Super Bowl. I would have to go back and rewatch it because.

Moss was not inefficient. No, Moss was nine for 44 on the ground. He caught two passes for 17 yards. And Moss has a takeaway. He only had 12 rush attempts as a team. Yeah, Moss is a takeaway that he is their main lead guy like, you know, some of us thought he would be. He got the touchdown. He looked fine, but it's still different when you have now an identity of, you know, there's a big difference between Joe Mix and that. That's why they didn't run the ball much. Goff and Lawrence were disappointments because the overunders of these games, the expectations of these games, golf and Lawrence did not perform up to expectation. Amun Ra's disappearance was a big part of why Goff had the game he had. I feel like the golf one was, that was baffling. Like Trevor Lawrence, you're hoping that if he's in a game against Miami, we're going to get a bunch of points around here that he's going to have a better game. That's fine. But Jared Goff.

was, I mean, this was brutal. It was, the first half was the highest T first half of just guys saying like, well, no, we're going to only get to run the ball. No, we're only going to run the ball. We're going to end up running the ball more than you. I dare you to run the ball. And I mean, he ends up by the end throwing the ball 28 times, but it was, that was not the game script. I thought we were going to get. From a film standpoint, obviously very disappointed with the fantasy output in both golf and Lawrence. From a film standpoint, I have no concerns. Lawrence actually had some really impressive plays to me. So golf and Lawrence, I think I still have the expectation I had prior to this week on them. Kirk Cousins. This one is. This was a tough situation for him. Pittsburgh's defense and J. I almost said JJ. T.J. Watt.

were unrelenting, and Cousins was coming back from an injury that made him nearly immobile, and this combo did not work. Hayden Winks tweeted out a play, a single play, that I've never seen something like it. It was like, you know, Kirk Cousins was in the pocket, and he doesn't plant on his throwing leg, which is the Achilles leg, and then throws this ball basically into the dirt because he didn't have power from his throwing leg. They didn't run play action. Right, because there's, because Kirk cannot move. And I, different leg, again, for the, the big science experiment, we get to watch of Kirk Cousins recover, Aaron Rogers recovery. But my first thought after watching Kirk was, uh-oh. Well, and you know he's going to be tentative. And then when you know T.J. Wads bearing down, maybe you're even more tentative. We need to see more. Yes. But if this is what you're going to get, you're going to have a problem in Atlanta. I, I had.

questions on this game because part of me is scared of Kirk Cousins health and ability in this and then part of me is just like oh my gosh that Steelers defense was unbelievable what was unbelievable that was one of the best defensive performances I've ever seen he was he was on Kirk Cousins back all night long so you know I don't think Couss really enjoyed that. No. No, it was a bad night. Yeah, he was not dancing in the street. All right, there were some concerning performances at Running Back, and I think some that are, they're going to have longer effects than just one week. We say don't panic, but you're supposed to react appropriately. Giovante was eight for 23. I'm out. Yeah, that's red alert. This is five red alerts. Oh, you want me to hit it? Yes. Two targets.

Two targets and you have 36 snaps? Three way timeshare too. And this was against a bad defense. Not good. He didn't look like he was the two years ago version. You know, this was the question. Either he's back and he's healthy or if he's not the healthy two years ago version of Giovante Williams, then he's in a committee for a bad offense. I'm out. It's trouble. I don't have any shares of him this year because I was already out. But like it was just it was. confirmation bias or or no what am i looking for it was yeah that works yeah that's that's it thank you i got there they see look if i have giovante and i have anybody else as an option i'm putting giovante on my bench and you have jvante so who's your bench option you're playing ahead of him jk daubbins yeah i'm glad you you should be glad you drafted jk we are very glad but i'm saying because javanti was like just kidding i'm not back