Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - Week 16 Christmas Episode Part 2, Fantasy Forecast, Playoff Mailbag

You're picky about your fantasy draft. You got rankings, sleepers, mock drafts, and too many tabs open. You know what else you should be picky about? Buffalo sauce. Introduce a primal kitchen, the official buffalo sauce of the NFL. Primal Kitchen buffalo sauce. It's made how it should be with real ingredients like avocado oil and big time flavor. Build your game day spread like your championship roster and include a sauce worth drafting.

Find Primal Kitchen Buffalo sauce at grocery stores nationwide or on primalcitchen.com. Look, no one wants to be just another guy, not in fantasy, and definitely not in your career. The good news? There's ways to stand out from the competition. Southern New Hampshire University has over 200 degree programs you can do online.

You'll learn from instructors with actual experience in the field, not just drawing on whiteboards. And you'll gain practical career-ready skills along the way. Ready for your breakout season? Visit snhu.edu slash footballers. Patriots go to New York to take on the Jets. This game means everything to New York, and they still might miss the playoffs. And they've had a great season, Fitzpatrick's best season as a pro.

Really, I think it's the first time he's got eight wins or something like that too. I mean, they're playing very well. You've got the Ivory Powell situation. Now, we broke down the stats earlier in the week. Powell has been the fantasy producing running back on this team since he returned. I don't think that's going to change, and I like him a lot in half point and full point PPR leagues. Ivory is still a baseline type of guy. He's a guy that if you've seen him play over the course of the season.

Sometimes, you know, he's a volume type guy. Once he gets the eighth or ninth carry, maybe he busts off a 25-yard run. And he'll get the goal line. It's not going to be a pal on the one-yard line. It's going to be ivory. So that's the game that you're playing. If they can get to the goal line. But you're taking a chance there. You need a lot of things can happen. We saw that with David Johnson. You know, Michael Floyd goes down on the inch line and you get a free touchdown. That's the game you play. That being said, pal.

This week, a better play than Ivory. I completely agree. You've got to project game flow in these situations. You have to assume the Patriots will have a lead. Now, it was a closer game last week, but the Patriots were in control of the game. So I like Powell more than Ivory this week. Yeah, I agree. I'm not very high on ivory. I would rather have a Frank Gore or a Tim Hightower over Ivory. You have the locked and loaded guys in this game, Brandon Marshall, Eric Decker.

Tom Brady, Rob Grancowski. The ones that we need to discuss then are James White and Ryan Fitzpatrick. So Fitzpatrick at the quarterback position for the Jets and then James White, what do you see from these guys? White has become more dependable. What I like to see is the way they're using him and the way the offense talks about him because he's, when he first came in for Dionne Lewis, he didn't really look like he was comfortable and the performance wasn't there. Now he kind of looks like he's more of a cog in the offense. If it wasn't for...

Sharkandrick West and what I see him being able to do against the Browns, James White was going to be my start of the week. I am very confident. Now, this is one of the reasons I didn't do that is because it's much more heavily in half point or full point PPR. In standard, he doesn't really get carries. I think he gets like one or two carries a game and might be able to punch in a touchdown.

But he, you know, he's had 10 catches, seven catches, and he's looking better and better with Brady in that offense. You've got Amandola, who's going to be out. You've got Edelman, who's probably going to be out. They've been talking about bringing him back week 17. Huge bump. I mean, that to me says James White is going to be in that role, and you're playing the Jets, a team that has been a good run D. And if you look at how New England played them early in the year,

They didn't run the ball. They literally, it was crazy. They just said, I'm not running the ball. I'm passing every down, and you're going to have to deal with it, and they didn't deal with it too well. They ran, Jason. That's right. They ran through the air. Thank you. And that's what I'm going to do. It's a good argument for White. With James White. So if you're in a half point or full point PPR, man, I don't want him on my bench because I feel like he has the potential to have one of those gigantic games.

And you guys talked about it, Edelman and Almondola, both likely to miss. If one was going to play in this game, it would be Edelman, which I doubt. So somebody on the outside is a Brandon Lafell, Kishan and Martin, will have targets in this game. Gronk. I'm not confident about any of those guys. You're right. I mean, either one could have a big game, but there's so many options at wide receiver. I'm not going to be probably playing Lafell.

All right, that's fair enough. I mean, Lafell had an okay game last week, four or five for 88 yards. But, yeah, it's a risk. The problem with Lafell is you keep waiting for it. I know. He keeps you like, okay. It's like Austin's Farron Jenkins. I'm not going to do it. We finally, we finally got that okay game. Let's take the next step. And then he says, I'm going to have a bad game. Then you go, okay. And then you go, oh, I didn't win my title because I played you. So another okay game. So if you need.

An okay game, and you want to be an okay team, you play Brandon LaFelle. Brandon LaFelle is made for the third place games. He's all about the third. You're in that consolation bracket. Yeah. You put LaFelle in. That's nice. All right, the Cowboys and the Buffalo Bills. The Bills are big favorites at home somehow. So 42.

It's hard to make anybody a favor right now the way those two teams are performing. I believe the answer is they're playing the Dallas Cowboys. There it is. Yeah, 42.5 point over under, though, low-scoring game. I would believe it. Mike pointed out earlier with Tyrod Taylor. The odds of this game being low-scoring are high because of the Kellyn Moore, Tyrod Taylor. The way the defense for, you know, the past defense for the Cowboys is six in the league. The bills, their defense isn't great.

but they're at home and you've got a rookie and you've seen Dallas play football lately. So what do we really think about Des Bryant? Because I'm more okay with him this week than I've been in the last few weeks. We saw Kellyn Moore come out where, to his credit of he makes the horrific rookie mistakes, you saw some just egregious interceptions. But he has come out and he has said he watched what Matt Castle has done and come out and basically try not to lose.

I don't want to lose. I don't want to get embarrassed. Kelmore says, screw that crap. I'm going to try and win this game, and I'm going to sling the ball downfield, and I'm going to throw it to Des Bryant because that's the smart thing to do. It's the right thing to do. On the touchdown, I mean, he saw Des Bryant in a one-on-one situation on the outside, and it was basically a sideways throw, but we've seen Tony Romo do that and have great success because Des Bryant is a monster of a man.

So I think Des Bryant, you have to feel more comfortable with Des right now than you have felt in a very long time. I think that says it all. I agree completely. The ability to force feed him a little bit because you know...

the equation for scoring points is getting the ball into your best player's hands. It's so weird. Mathematics. I don't know why they haven't figured it out for weeks. So are you fading Sammy Watkins, Mike, because of Tyra-R-Taylor or is he still a very startable guy that's been on fire? He's still very startable for me. And the reason you get one touchdown bomb to Sammy Watkins? Makes your week. It makes the week. For Tyler-R-R-Taylorer, he would need a couple of them to have an upper echelon quarterback performance. That's the only reason I fade.

Taylor a bit in this game, but Watkins, there's no way you can sit him down right now. Yeah, he's, he's too hot, too hot right now. Let me ask you about a guy who was looking like he was fading and has come on strong in the last two weeks. Very good week last year. And Darren McFadden. Darren McFadden has two weeks in a row. Old man strength. Old man strength. Two weeks in a row over a hundred yards on the ground.

And now he's facing the Buffalo Bills that for four weeks in a row have given up more than 100 yards on the ground. I like Darren McFadden. Yeah, I mean, you've got to feel good with the baseline there of productivity. He's still got touchdown, you know, chances. But if he doesn't have a touchdown, he should be okay in that running game. I think he's... Darren McFadden, I figured it out, by the way. I know why he's playing so all at the end of the year.

When you get season-ending injuries early in your career, you can store up the back half of the season and use it later on. We have them as number eight in our rankings right now. As high as six on mics. Jason and I have them at 11. Look, you get what you need with him. You get a few passes. You get workload. You're going up against an okay matchup. You're going to want to mitigate the risk for Kellanmore a little bit.

I don't see a reason why Darren McFadden, I'd start him over the DeNard Robinson Yeldon dance. I'd start him over Carlos Williams, start him over Todd Gurley in Seattle. For sure. Darren McFadden, he found one of those Mega Man energy tanks. He replenished, and now he's good to go. And we saw... That is not accurate. Nope. He didn't. What are you talking about? He didn't. He's running great. I mostly just don't know what you're talking about.

One of the guys you said... Play a Nintendo. All right. He didn't have a Nintendo. We've covered this. He wasn't... I had a Super Nintendo. Okay. All right. So you're right. I didn't have a friend that I could go to his house and play a Nintendo on. I have breaking news. There was Mega Man games on Super Nintendo. You clearly did everything wrong in your childhood. All right. Let's get back here. I just forgotten most of my childhood. You mentioned somebody that you would play Darren McFadden over, and it's in this game, which is Carlos Williams.

Carlos Williams, is he the guy to have here in this game at the running back position with LaShawn McCoy out? Yes. Yeah, I would start Carlos Williams. I'm okay starting him. There's been a lot of questions as to who should be the number one waiver claim and Carlos Williams has been in that mix. People are fearful about the comments that Rex Ryan made about him kind of being beat up and sore. They need him.

They need him to be out there. He's been a guy that has gotten into the end zone. We all agree because our rankings have him just outside the RB1 category. So yes, he's the name that needs to get brought up because people need to be pushed towards starting him. I would start him over the artist pains and the Christine Michaels. Yeah? I would. Yeah, I believe I would too. Because they're an offense predicated on the run and Carlos Williams has been a guy that's a big play type of guy. At least you have that opportunity there. I don't know what my big play opportunity is going to be with.

with Michael or with artist pain right now. Yeah, I don't believe Carlos Williams has had a bad fantasy game ever as a starter. When he starts, he's had good games. Do you realize how many football games are every week? Well, we are one hour and 20 minutes in. I got the jacket off. We're rolling. You got any of those Mega Man crap you mentioned? The Mega Man Energy tanks? You slide one over to me. No, you get none. I know, I know. Panthers. We can do it.

We can do it. I was just trying to start thinking about super NES games that were my jam. Oh, my goodness. Oh, be careful. So I was jumping into like Donkey Kong country. Wow, I just started scrolling. There are a lot of NFL games this week. Okay. Slide one over to Jason. All right. Panthers at the Falcons. Woe is all Falcons. Yeah. I cannot tell you how frustrated I am as a Julio Jones owner.

Yes, he was productive last week. But it's so annoying. He's productive in ways that his sheer talent allows him to be. But he scores on little screens in front of the line of scrimmage that he runs in. He doesn't get targeted on jump balls or how about wide receiver one type of plays that you run for big time receivers. He doesn't get targeted on deep balls and deep shots, which, by the way, despite that.

They're statistically one of the most accurate teams going down field. They won't do it. I just am so tired of it. I have this theory. I have this theory. You guys are familiar with the parent trap. Sure. With the twins and they switch places because they think it's so funny. Matt Ryan and Matt Stafford have switched places. Over the last few weeks? Yeah. All season. Especially over the last few weeks. They dabbled in it a little bit at the beginning. But Matt Stafford has, he's playing.

for Atlanta right now. All right, so let's talk Julio then fantasy-wise this week. Owners have him in championship games. Josh Norman. Josh Norman. You, Andy, have him outside a wide receiver one. You've got him at 13, so not far behind. And that is calculated, that is not rage. That is, that is, that is, Mike asked me the, here's the perfect summary. Mike asked me this question in the studio yesterday after we were done with the show. He said, will Atlanta be dumb again?