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

to the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. Monday, September 9th, the fantasy footballers, Mike Wright is here. Jason Moore is present and accounted for. I'm Andy Holloway, and we are... With our powers combined. We are Captain Planet. Deep breaths, everybody. Yeah. So we have a lot to react to. Happy to have you with us, of course. We may be your therapist for the morning. We'll find out. But Monday, Punday on today's show, ready to roll, news to talk about, studs and duds on the show, and it's going to be a doozy. So much to discuss. We have, you know, our first.

We got one more game. We got Monday night football. Aaron Rogers is going to give it another go on Monday night. Good for him. And it's against the 49ers, so it should be a pretty entertaining game. How are you feeling emotionally after the first week of football? Personally? Yeah, personally. Outstanding. You're feeling great. Mike, how are you feeling emotionally after the first week of football? Oh, man. Pretty good. Oh, awesome. Oh, really? Yeah, pretty good. That. You see, your face betrayed it for about three days. Because I won everywhere except the most importantly. Yeah. Yeah. It is funny how much that. That is the only thing that matters at the end. So when you lose your most important league and things went really bad and just continue to get worse throughout the entire week for that team. But the rest of your squads are doing really good. So overall, pretty good. I am happy to hear that.

I'm happy to hear you're doing well. There was the normal fantasy football reaction this weekend, which in week one is always about 97% negative. Because somehow week one, like if you saw the NFL season broken up on one of those like line charts of importance to your emotional health. week one fills about half of the season for fantasy football reaction because we are you know one game sample if it's week seven of the season doesn't really matter people don't pay attention to that to define the whole year but in week one right now we're going to walk you through it and talk about things that we think were really really valuable and important and things that you should probably just like don't even think about just let it go

Now, were you laughing at the thought of letting it go, Mike? Oh, yeah. That's not possible. I will hold on to that rage as tight as I can. And nobody turned the injuries toggle off again this year. So we have to talk about injuries as well because they suck. They really suck. So we've got those to talk about. But we always kick things off with the contributions of the Foot Clan. in the most sophisticated way possible. We have our good and bad Monday Punday to kick off the 2024 season. So we'll start with the good. These were hard to find, at least in your reaction to the weekend. No, no, no, no. I found them all. Opposed to me in the League of Record. Well, let's go then, Mike. Go ahead and kick it off. Oh, score, Kwan Barkley. That one's terrible. Who put that one in? Well, how about this one?

Ramanster Stevenson. And of course, guys, I told you about him. Uh, J. Amazing Williams. What about J. Wynn Daniels? My favorite player of the week, Ladmacaquee! And, uh, whoa, J.K. Three Lakes. Oh, no. Brock Powers. Jaden, ridiculous. All right, it's time for the bad. Yeah. It's time for the bad. We've got, there were about 50 of different variants here, but let's go with. Starvin Harrison Jr. Or Trey McDide. Or Amina, St. Brown. Nah, man. And we got bust Edwards. Chris. Uh-oh. Lave. Nausea Harris. D.K. Metcrap. Dalton Kinfade. You got... Fake London. And Pooka. Nakua. Oh. That one I don't like on a deep...

deep deep personal level you were you were going through it last night with the puka injury now is that because you have he's one of your highest like rostered most exposed situation yep that would be why he's uh he's in the majority yeah he's in the majority of uh my important leagues was was in the majority of my important leagues he'll be back he'll be back but not this week yeah probably not yeah Do we have any updates on Puka? No, no definitive. You know what we do have updates are. They are on Jake Ferguson. We have more updates on Jake Ferguson than we can shake a stick at. I mean, it was all day yesterday. Thank you, Sleeper. Questionable. We get it. We get it. I was notified many, many times that Ken Walker had gotten hurt. I hope they pay per notification. I hope their server bill is through the roof.

And then on top of that, not just them, but today it has been very sniff, snap, sniff, snap with Jake Ferguson. But we'll get to that later. Yeah, we have some updates on Jake Ferguson. We're waiting on Pooka. There's going to be more, but by the time we have to talk about him. Let's start with some ready to roll. Welcome to Ready to Roll. Presented by Nissan. Well, it can be incredibly tough in week one to get proper context on what took place. We've got all those emotional investments, those hopes, those dreams, all the research. All the prior opinions. And so we want to zoom out a little bit on Ready to Roll today. Give you that 10,000 foot view so we can gain some perspective so we can understand what took place. And there were a couple major, major kind of league-wide points, stats that kind of were very interesting this week. And it really felt like you never got served the main course when it came to the passing yardage in these games.

It was kind of ridiculous. The week one average, guys, 200 passing yards. That's not great. That's not a lot. I mean, you had the very bottom of the list, Caleb Williams. If you told me. Game winning quarterback. 93 passing yards from Caleb Williams that you get to try to distribute amongst DJ Les and Roma Dunzee and Keenan Fallon. Oh. Oh, come on. Alan was one of the high, I think he was the highest target share player of the week. He was not. No? I think that was Michael Pittman. You're right. It was Pittman, but Alan was up there. Oh, yeah. But 93 passing yards, you're not going to get anything out of 93 and zero. But, I mean, look at some of the other players. 144 for Justin Herbert. Okay. Kyler 162. Trevor Lawrence 162. Joe Burrow 164. Dak, DAC was 179.

Yeah, I mean, that was, that game was out of hand early. Yeah, that's the Cleveland Brown's fault. It felt like Dak Prescott was about to. He looked on fire to start the game. He was about to give us a game. And then the Browns and Watson just, they couldn't do anything. I want you to name the two quarterbacks with three or more touchdowns this week. Oh, one of them is Baker Mayfield. Baker Mayfield. Former Cleveland Brown's quarterback. The other is Derek Carr. Yeah, I mean, they're. Send in the car. Send in the car. Yeah. Derek Carr. Oh, I mean, he only passed for 200 yards. Okay, that's, that's very surprising. They needed nothing from him beyond about two minutes into the game. Derek Carr looked like he was absolutely dominating, which, to be fair, he did, completing 19 of 23. He was, he was perfect. And Carolina is. Oh, my goodness gracious. Jason, you had, you had the privilege slash court assigned punishment of watching.

The Carolina snaps. Yeah, I'm going to be putting out a really helpful tweet later. Be sure to check it out. Is it going to be a lot of proactive? A lot of proactive. Now, do you want people to eat before they go to your Twitter? I want them to eat while watching this video. I'm going to post to Bryce Young. My quarterback's in the league of record because of a hospital draft was Derek Carr, in a Superflex. No, no, no. This is the listener league. Yes, I'm sorry. In the listener league, Derek Carr. on one side of that ball and Bryce Young on the other. So it was a fun watch. Anthony Richardson only completed nine passes in the entire game. You know how many yards? Now the passes he completed were outrageously amazing. They were punts. 212 yards on nine completions. So that's another storyline to talk about. But the headline here, very, very low passing totals. Fewer pass attempts per game in week one.

that Caleb Williams game was the fewest passing yards by a first round quarterback in week one in 24 years. And this is the final headline here. Week one NFL passing touchdowns. You go back to 2022, 51 in week one. 2021, 61. 61. We had 33. We had half the touchdowns we had four years ago. So if you want to know why most of the puns you sent in were bad, Just be comforted by the fact the other side of the team you played probably had some of those underwhelming performances and tight-ins didn't help. That fell to the tight-in position. So whoever, you know, you're out there. Most of you probably drafted one of the top tight-ins. You certainly drafted, I'm sure, one of the top 12 tight-ins according to ADP. And you're saying, I made a mistake. No, you didn't. No, everyone made a mistake. I mean, literally the top 12, there was only one

player who scored double digit fantasy points. And he didn't even have a good game. Yeah. Just caught a touchdown. That would be Kyle Pitts, man. You're welcome, Andy. But yeah, I mean, golden ticket. All the people afraid of Andrews and they're like, oh no, I made a mistake. Disappointed in McBride. Oh, no. Kincaid disappeared. I mean, some of these might come to fruition to be bad, but the nice thing is in week one is your opponent sucked two. I mean, unless they played Isaiah likely. Which they didn't. That seems unlikely. Uh, yeah, you're fine. So hopefully we got a free pass. That was like the bingo middle square on tight ends for week one. I mean, yeah, you get the free pass, but those of us that spent up. Yeah. Paid the price. In tears? Yeah. In fantasy points.

Thanks again to our sponsor, Nissan and the all-new reimagined Nissan Kix, redesigned with a bold new look. The Nissan Kix supports the latest tech like a Bose Personal Plus sound system. Head over to NissanUSA.com to learn more. Bose Personal Plus Sound System is an available feature. Bose is a registered trademark of the Bose Corporation. News and notes from Around the League. Presented by USAA Insurance. Well, I mean, Jerry, Jerry. Quite contrary. Dude, guys, he's so good at it. He's so good at it. He's so good at being the general manager, really getting the most out of his team versus the players, really balancing those things out. All of this is to say, Dak Prescott signed a four-year, $240 million extension. It seemed like, you know, moments before games kicked off, highest paid player in NFL history,

Way to, you know, really. Yeah. You know, Jerry got that contract down to the most ever. You know, that is that is negotiation 101. Try to get it down to the highest ever. My favorite part of both the CD and Dak Prescott deals were that basically it was reported once it was finally signed that what the player came and asked for from day one. So, Dak wanted it to start with a six on an annual basis. They got them down from 61 to 60. So it's like. If you had said yes immediately when the players came and kept things happy and given yourself time to do other maneuvers, you would have ended at the same place you ended. That's what's so silly. But DAC and CD are locked up, so it's good for Dynasty, good to know they're connected. And this game got out of control game script-wise really early, but it was hot and heavy CD early on. They just didn't need to do anything beyond about the second quarter in this game against Cleveland. Yeah, some of the...

Had a special teams touchdown that put it out of reach as well. The questions about, well, how are the Cowboys going to run the ball? C.D. Lamb is apparently one. That's one of the answers. We're just going to keep giving him end to rounds. Pat Fryermew signed a four-year $48 million deal. Good for you, Pat. And I don't think we mentioned it, but Noah Gray also signed an extension. Right, yeah, yeah. A three-year extension with Kansas City, which means in Dynasty, you should pay attention to Noah Gray long term because his extension will take him two years beyond. Kelsey's presumed end of his career. So keep your eyes on that. Jordan Love, the Friday night game, we have not got to talk about this, had the injury. Great game right down to the end. Last play of the game gets his knee wrecked. And this is, it's good news. How's Al doing over there? How are you? How the resident Packers fan was shaking his head with misery? Yeah, I'm unwell.

It's good news that it's, you know, his left knee is just an MCL sprain. You know, when you saw it and you saw the close up replay, you see the knee pop and you go, oh, no, is this going to be something where now he's done for the season? So the good news is he should be back in about three weeks or around then. The bad news is in the meantime, I don't know if you could trust the awesome, like Jaden Reed is one of the most. drafted and unfortunate on your bench players this last week. I know plenty of people, myself included, that had him on a bench. And it was like, oh, no, at least I know I can't play him now. And then it's this next week. It's like, can I? So TBD there. Yeah, he was, he was great. And they are supposedly deciding between Malik Willis and Sean Clifford. Glazer reported it's expected to be Malik Willis.

Yeah, that's not encouraging. I won't be starting any Packer wide receiver. Willis. Jaden Reed is the safest of them because they manufacture touches for Jaden Reed. I would agree. That is true. And we saw Malik Willis try to help run an offense at the end of the season with Derek Henry in Tennessee a couple years ago, and it was bad. And he just barely joined the roster. It doesn't help that he wasn't playing and practicing with the Packers for. for weeks on in. They're going to play defense, run the ball, and then you can pray for the wide receivers for a few weeks. Puka Nakua left Sunday night football with a right knee injury, same knee he injured in camp. This is not good because now you're in a position where Puka is going to need to take more time than he took then to put the team in the position to, you know, for the long haul. I promise you I will be on top of the news with Puka. That is a genuine from the heart promise. As of now,

We don't have more information other than knowing. You know, in that game, he banged his knee a couple times. He came in with the Bursasack issue. This is going to be a wide range of outcomes. He could miss a week. He could miss eight weeks. It was a discouraging thing to see. He came right back into the game and it was like, okay, you might be fine. And then going into the half, he literally didn't walk into the locker room. He just had to take a cart and he looked pretty dejected. But again, you can. That can happen and then you can recover faster, so we're going to be all over it, like Jason said. Let's talk about another knee, Jake Ferguson's knee. MRI confirmed a sprained MCL. He could miss time depending on the severity and grade of the MCL injury. Yeah, it's, again, like I said, the news on him is all over the place because there's another report. We do know it was the MCL. Yeah, well, another report saying it's a.

diagnosed with a bone bruise and a minor sprain of the MCL that he could actually still play this Sunday, I would expect, or at least I'll prepare. If I have Ferguson, you've got to prepare that like he's not going to play. Matthew Betts, our injury expert pointed out that even if he played, he'll be less than 100%. So it's one of those situations. They are, I believe, at home in Dallas this next week. It might be time to pivot. They're playing the Saints. If you were a Ferguson manager, because this will be one of our questions that people ask, how hard in the pain are you going for Isaiah likely right now? And let's throw another injury in there. David Najoku, hi Uncle Sprain. He's going to miss time too. So if it's Najoku, if it's Ferguson, if you've been overwhelmed by your tight end, how hard on the pain are you going to go? Man, Isaiah likely is extremely difficult to gauge. We broke him down last week, but the too long didn't read if you missed that show was Mark Andrews was,

super bracketed. The entire defensive plan was Mark Andrews is not allowed to beat us. Like almost everything from Isaiah likely was short. And then, I mean, he had the one huge play, right, the touchdown run. Isaiah likely is a very athletic guy. But if he is really just capturing those types of targets over the course of the season, like that's not, that won't pay off huge, a huge return of if you're expecting anything like week one. If you, let me put it this way. How do you project Isaiah likely to finish rest of season at the tight end position? Because that is the relevant question for the fab spin. To me, I think Isaiah likely will finish between 7 and 10. I think he's going to be okay. It's like picking up a slot wide receiver for this offense. Like his skill set speed. A lot of people thought I was making excuses for Mark Andrews because I have him like I'm invested in him. I have him nowhere.

I have no leagues. I have nine leagues. I've got no Mark Andrews. I've not, I didn't buy into Mark Andrews coming into the year. I just buy into the fact that this was the Steve Spagnola, let's stop Mark Andrews situation. But I think likely is a relevant fantasy option. And I think that a question about whether you'd flex hammers, A. Flowers becomes interesting on some game. Yeah, he reminds me a lot of, I mean, you think about Dallas Goddard. Dallas Goddard's used in the flats. He is the third target behind two, you know, better targets on his team. If Dallas Gottert were out there, you'd be picking him up if you dealt with one of these injuries. So I would certainly, I agree with you, Andy. I think 7 to 10 at tight end, which isn't great, but is totally relevant and playable. And when you look at the available guys on waivers or whoever, you know, really hit this last week, like we said, none of the big tight ends did. But the other tight ends didn't either. I mean, you're not going to pick up, you're probably not going to pick up Foster Moreau, who was, you know, the Titan 2 or.

John Johnson splitting targets with Foster Moreau. I thought I remember Foster getting banged up at some point. Let me say this. If you're thinking about Isaiah likely and the fab, do not be surprised if somebody really good at Titan hits the waiver wire on waiver wire Wednesday because you are going to see the panic on some of these picks and you could spend big fab on likely. or maybe get one of these panic drops at tight end cheaper. I think the only other, I mean, obviously, we're going to have a waiver show tomorrow. Very, very important. Stay tuned. But Colby Parkinson, now with the, huh, now with the Pooka Nakua injury. Who? And you lost a target. Oh, whatever. He was. No, what did he do yesterday? He was okay. Colby Parkinson had five targets, four for 47. I mean, it's not great, but it, you know. But that's playable. Yeah, it's playable.

No, they have a role for the tight end in Los Angeles. And your point about Nakua's injury, do you want to try, like if you had Ferguson, you could pick up Parkinson and play him in his place for two or three weeks and spend zero fab. Or you can go spend 70, 80 fab, because I'm telling you, likely, they're going to pay up for him. And if you disagreed with all my takes, then go pay. Yeah, like I don't have a problem if you want to call your shot on Isaiah likely. I'm just not doing that. Jordan Addison left with a high ankle sprain. It is the opposite. He missed two and a half weeks of camp with the other high ankle sprain. You would expect him to miss a little bit of time. I mean, a high ankle sprain is usually, honestly, usually with a high ankle sprain, you either don't miss a week or you miss three. Those are the most common outcomes. Keenan Allen left with an undisclosed leg injury. Keenan Allen often does leave with undisclosed injuries. Had a heel injury already. Keep an eye on that.

Roma Dunesick had hit waivers by skittish managers, and that would be a pickup. Kenneth Walker left in the fourth quarter of a game. Kenneth Walker looked so good, it hurt. I was against him in our league of record, and I knew every time he touched the football, my week could be ending. That's how good he looked. Left with the abdominal pain, told reporters he was good after the game, but we will need to monitor practice reports. Yeah, I hope it was just a... Get that man so pepto. He got a tummy ache. Unbelievable. He should have vomited like Pacheco and then go back out there. Yeah, just get the demons out. Puk and Rally again. Puk them demons. All right. That was today's news and notes presented, as always, by USAA Insurance. Learn more at usa.com slash insurance. We will take a break. We will get right into the studs. All right. Let's jump in and talk about some of the best performances of the week. This week's fantasy stud muffins.

Baker, Baker, Candlestick Maker, 24 for 30, 289 and 4, led all quarterbacks and pass the rating. He was cooking. Two touchdowns to Mike Evans, one to Godwin, one to McMillan. Does this mean you can play Daniel Jones next week? Because part of this was Baker who looked great. Yes. But part of this is the commander's defense is hashtag not good. They're going to be. It's just easy. It's an easier defense to attempt to play against. Can I, can I jump in there real quick and say no? Okay. Yeah. Negative four points for Daniel Jones. No one. Yes. Oh, he was so bad. No one Jones. However, Washington is going to be a delight when you see that you're.

Your skill players are up against them this year. Washington is going, and I'll get right into Jaden Daniels. He was 17 for 24, 184, 2 on the ground, 88 rushing yards. Yeah, this was a monster performance for fantasy, mediocre in the passing game. But if your team's going to get scored on like this, are you kidding me? Jaden Daniels is going to have every opportunity to put up these kind of games are better every week because Washington is giving it up on the backside. Yeah, and if you watch the offense, Um, the offense there was, you said it, just a bunch of screens. Just like, it was just like here, drop back and throw the ball to the left, throw the ball to the right, or maybe dump it a few yards ahead of the line of scrimmage and then run. And I'm shocked he didn't get to a hundred rushing yards based on, you know, how the game was going and, and, you know, what you saw in the first half. Jane Daniels obviously was one of our favorite targets, uh, into your, my guy. He's going to pay off in.

in fantasy. Almost 30 fantasy points with no passing touchdowns. He proved. And three fumbles. This week that as a rookie, he's going to be fine for fantasy because of his legs. Yes. I am, however, very concerned about every other player on that team. Terry McLaren. Yeah. Brian Robinson. Terry McLaren played 81% of the snaps. He had four targets, two for 17. You know who I felt the most bad for other than like Pooka? Was it Austin? It was Austin Echler. Twice. The two hardest hits or Two of the three hardest hits I saw this entire week were both on Echler. It was not fair to the man. Echler had two attempts in the game. Yeah, and got crushed on both of them. But he did have four catches for 52 yards. It was in the receiving game when he got crushed. So speaking of the wink-wink rookies, Anthony Richardson, let's talk about it. Oh, my goodness. Because he was on some levels, absolutely league-breakingly incredible. Yeah.

He completed nine passes. Of 19. So terrible accuracy. Which is what we talked about. He missed Adonai Mitchell on a. Two of them. Right. Yes. He missed them on two potential touchdowns. One of them was just so bad because it was just he was running to the end zone. And I mean, it was a guaranteed touchdown. Six or 56 for one on the ground through two touchdowns. Nine completions. You have to. I am extremely encouraged. uh by this not look the accuracy is poor but that's not why i drafted anthony richardson i did not sign up for someone who's going to complete 70% of his passes i want a guy who's going to run and it was fourth down like we have to get in the end zone and he took on the defense and he won yeah the defense was ready and they came and they smashed right into anthony richardson before the goal line and then anthony richardson goes i'm stronger than you but it's not just that it's

the way that the offense ran. Like you had the incredible throw for the huge touchdown to Alec Pierce, which if you haven't seen the highlight, go watch. Second best throw the weekend. It was incredible. And yes, he missed Adonai Mitchell on two of those. But they're going down the field. You're taking those shots. If you're going to be a mobile quarterback that is going to take these 20 plus air yard throws, complete 40% of your passes. If we get to see more of that. I'm happy to take an L on him performing. It's going to be tough. We have not seen a quarterback with this kind of completion percentage ever finish inside the top 12. But if there's one to do it. Now, him crushing guys with his shoulder, that wasn't as encouraging to me as it was to you because that's how he heard himself twice last year. If you do that every week, that is a risk factor for Richardson. Absolutely. You're putting yourself at risk. It was an impressive performance. They almost won the ball game.

I'm not trying to take anything away. I just didn't know how to diagnose nine completions when all the completions were amazing. Yeah. But then the short misses were ugly. I mean, he's my league of record quarterback. And every single time he dropped back to pass, I was just praying he didn't throw that ball. I'm just like, I'm like, no, no, no. It was awesome. No, nobody's open. Just run. The throat appears is amazing. He completed another bomb to him later. It is. His army is. Majestic. It was he I don't think his base was even fully planted. He slipped on the play and then quickly tried to readjust and then shot it out like a punt. I mean, that ball could have hit the Jumbotron. Are you saying if he didn't slip, he would have overthrown him by 20 yards? Maybe. Maybe that's the goal is you got to tell him like stop using your legs.