Week 1 Studs & Duds, Rising Stars, Trey Doo-Doo

This is a Deshawn Watson line. He had 15 completions for over 250 yards and four touchdowns. So before you jump on the steed and ride through the town square proclaiming that you have the quarterback steal of the draft,

I'm not there yet. Certainly he's not going to score 40 points. He looked very good. You're right, Mike, but you had a defensive, you had a special team score for the Chiefs that brought the offense off the field. You had a turnover that brought the ball down to the 10-yard line before he even came out on the field. There were limited, obviously 27 attempts, limited opportunities too. But we talked about how disappointing Kareem Hunt is, or it was for fantasy this week. You take those two opportunities that turned into the Tom Brady, pad the stats.

Shuffle pass forward, which is... I hate that's a pass. It's incredible that that is a pass because technically speaking, he lobbed it forward. So it's a forward pass. But you take him down to 256 and 2. You're not talking about it. All of a sudden, we're not freaking out about Pat Mahomes. No, but if he does that weekend, week out the whole season, he's a quarterback one for sure.

If he does this every week, then he's... No, the 256 and 2. Oh. With the rushing artist? Sure. That's my point. Okay. All right. Philip Rivers, Aaron Rogers, Tom Brady, Case Keenum. Joe Flacco. The other stuff muffins at the quarterback position. The standouts there, Mike's start of the week. Philip Rivers got it done. They lost, but you got it done. You saw the involvement of Melvin Gordon in the passing game, patting the Phillip River stats. Love it. You saw Tyrell Williams.

You saw how many dropped touchdowns did we see? Three or four. Three dropped touchdowns. Tyrell himself had two. And I think two other dropped long bombs. And they were all Tyrell and Travis Benjamin. Yeah. Yeah. Case Keenham, nice game. He's a good quarterback. In positive matchups, Case Keenham will be a fantasy quarterback. Well, he gets Oakland next week. So that's a positive matchup. Moving on to running backs, Alvin Camara.

I don't even know what to do about Alvin Camaro. Super Camario doing it again. Eight carries. Here's the first. Nine catches. Three touchdowns. Here's the first guy. The beat goes on. The first guy that, and I realized it was Tampa Bay and Mark Ingraham wasn't there. But this is the first player this year that I've watched and immediately concluded like I was wrong. I mean, I didn't have him buried. He was like my seventh running back.

But he shouldn't have been my seventh running back. I mean, he is what we thought he was. Right. He's just unbelievable. When he touches the ball, people can't tackle him every single time. He's great. The Jamal Charles Jean. He might be better than Jamal Charles. At least, and he's in a better situation too. It reminds me a lot of him. He reminds me a lot of him. He breaks the game. I mean, when you are that much better,

than NFL players. The people who make it to the NFL are the top 0.1%. How are you that much better? That's how I feel about Tyree Kill. Absolutely. Tyree Kill and Alvin Kamara. It doesn't make sense. You cannot look at efficiency stats and say regression is coming because what they can do on the field is not like what other people on the field are doing. It's ridiculous. Yeah. So news alert, start Alvin Kamara. James Connor, Joe Mix, and Melvin Gordon.

Adrian Peterson. AP came out with 166 all-purpose yards, 26 for 96 and a touchdown. The offensive line looked great against an Arizona defensive front. We expected more from on the road. AP over under 1,000 yards this year. Under. Okay. I just had to test you. I expected a good game because he had two weeks off. Is he a cell high? Yes, I would.

Would you sell him, Mike? You took the plunge on him in our league of record. Yeah. Appropriately, you did it against your will knowing the opportunity was there. I'm going to wait one more week. Yes, you might want to wait one more week. Because he gets to take on the Indianapolis Colts who will yet again make him look good and that value could go up even more. My dynasty team will like that. The guy I want to talk about and obviously.

James Connor is huge news, but Joe Mixen is the one where, yes, he played Indianapolis, we expected a good game, and he was just start of the week. Yes. That has nothing to do with what I care about. What I cared about was he was a true, an absolute workhorseback. He had the lion's share of snaps, the lion's share of carries and the lion's share, and this is the most important one, of targets to the running back position. That's a triple lion. Because, wow.

Wow. That was definitely a Puma. But that's all right. That was a kitty cat. Yeah, that's okay. All right. Lions roar, you did more of a... Well, you know, in the passing game, you've got to be much more agile. Right. Than a lion, you've got to be the Puma. Yes. But the point was, Gio Bernard has been a great pass catching back. But he is not as good as Joe Mixon in that role. And the Bengals said, oh, I realized that. And guess what? They won. Yeah. That helps too. He's going to be...

He looks like he has the ability to be a girly David Johnson Levy on Bell level workhorse. And you know who else we need to throw in here? He's not in our stud muffins section because he wasn't fantasy-wise. He didn't finish at the top. But the same exact thing happened for Jordan Howard. He was on the field in a certain way and using the passing game. And tell me.

Did he pass the eye test on how he caught the ball? He looked different than the last few years. He looked fine. I don't think he looked different to me, but he's the best friend of a young quarterback. Every pass is awkward. And he has to, like, bobble it to catch it. He just caught the pass this year. One week, too early. Yeah, look, he's a workhorse. We loved Jordan Howard, and he looks great. But that's the thing that Jason's pointing out is last year he wasn't a workhorse. I mean, he's on the ground game, yes.

But he was getting a lot of third downs. He's getting a lot of the passing work changes everything. Matt Negi realizes that if you're going to put a guy on the field, he has to be a threat to catch the ball. Whether or not he's the best and most talented guy for the defense. The defense has to think about him catching the ball. That's what he realizes. So he gets those targets. And Mr. Zubisky kept it short. They were trying to protect that lead. We got to circle back to James Connor. 31 for 135, two touchdowns. Five for 57.

100% of snaps. I believe he was the single most used running back in football. We have to talk about James Connor for a ton of reasons because the questions are going to come flooding in. And this is a big conclusion, a big decision right here. What do you do with James Connor? Lev Bell tweeted a little emoji with a magnifying. With a monocle. After the game, they tied the Browns.

They did. And James Connor went hamburgers. Yeah, incredible workload, performance that was very, very strong as well. He did have a game costing fumble. Sure. The question for James Connor, I guess what you're asking is, what do you do? Do you trade him or you hold him? I'm holding. If you're not the Lev Bell owner,

and you have James Connor, there's an opportunity there. If you believe Lev Bell is coming back to flip James Connor, right? Either to the Lev Bell owner. Right. Or to somebody else while he has value. Because let's be honest. If Lev Bell walks in the door on Monday, James Connor disappears from your roster. 100%. Yeah. So that's the mitigated- His value disappears. He's just a handcuffed. Yes. I saw someone who was offered Levy on Bell for James Connor. He was offered like, hey,

I have Levi-on-Bel. You have James Connor. I will give you. I'll swap you. You get Lev Bell, and that's like an auto yes. However, you need to think philosophically here. If you knew that Lev Bell was coming back week 10, which is a chance. Then that trade is terrible. Then I would rather have the first 10 weeks than the playoff weeks because you can't. You got to get in. You cannot win in the playoffs without getting there. Let's start here with the question. And we'll continue to discuss this this week, obviously.

Just handicap for me, the odds that Love Bell plays week two. In your mind, what are the odds that love Bell plays week two? And maybe that will help our listeners make their own decision. In my mind right now, it's under 20%. Yeah, 20% was the number that came to my head. I'm at 50-50 for week two. So I would be looking to flip Connor if I could. And here's the way you do it, in my opinion, is you flip Connor for somebody you know has season-long value.

That's what I do. That's fair. That's all you do. And then you don't really risk a lot. What if you could trade James Connor for Devanta Freeman right now? Oh. I mean, that's a target. Yeah. I would do it. Even if the knee's a little banged up, I mean, maybe that's your target right there. I would do it. I think this was an ideal situation for Connor. 100% of snaps. Happened to score. You can't predict touchdowns every single game. And that's my opinion. All right. Chris Thompson, big game.

You know, we- Hyper-efficient Chris Thompson was back again and he looked. He looked to the part. I love him. We need to remember how usable, how valuable he was last season for fantasy. He is a must start every single week. Will he play 16? I doubt it. But when he's played, I mean, look, he's on the right team. He's got Rule 86 there. If those two guys are healthy, put them in your lineups. Say quads.

Sequod, Barclay. It only takes one play. He saved his week. One play. But look, what's nice is you got a monster week from Sequin against the monster defense. Because one play defines your week. That's one of the hardest things for fantasy analysts is you can be right on a player for an entire game. I felt that way about Michael Crabtree. Barely targeted. Barely catching the ball. I moved him down my rankings. One touchdown. Changes the week. Still think he stinks. All right. Wide receivers.

Guys, uh, what do you think about, um, the one touch man? Tyreek the freak. I can, I can be honest. Jason, why don't you talk about him for a little bit? I hate him. I mean, that's just, look, I'm still a human. I'm still a human being. I have feelings. I have feelings and you hurt the heck out of my feelings.

I don't like... Oh, man, I love him so much. I know. Look, he's faster than every single player on the field. When you watch the snap and the quick release, and then he's throwing to the middle of the field and Tyree Kill is there already from the outside. You go, how did he get there? He's going to be efficient. He's going to have huge games. I will say this. We brought this up. We got a two-year sample. And granted, maybe it was Alex Smith, but maybe it was more of an Andy Reid thing.

Tyrie Kill is great on the road. Right. So just pay attention to it going forward because if over the next four weeks that trend continues where he's used significantly more on the road, then maybe that's a game plan thing. Seven for one, seven for one 69 and two had a kick return touchdown made some catches that were unbelievable. Yeah. Had a rush for a touchdown that was called a pass.

He's got top five potential. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. All right, big weeks from all three of the Tampa White House, DeShon Jackson, Mike Evans, Chris Godwin. Evans, 7 for 147 and 1. Have we underestimated Mike Evans in his greatness, or is this just week one magic? I think it's a little bit of week one magic, but it was fantastic to see.

Mike Evans with an actual big play and then yards after the catch. Mike Evans is notorious for making really awesome receptions and then getting knocked down immediately afterwards. But he escaped the tackle and had a huge touchdown. Michael Thomas. Michael Thomas caught all the passes. 16 for 180 and a touchdown. Now, this kind of thing can happen if the New Orleans defense isn't.

what we thought it was. Well, that's the thing about Drew Breeze, right? I was anti-Drew Breeze. He's not going to put up huge numbers on the back of this is going to be a team that has a really successful defense. If the defense is a week one the rest of the year, then Drew Breeze is going to be phenomenal. Either way.

Michael Thomas will be great. He doesn't have to have 16 receptions to have a great week. It almost seems like it's going to be difficult for him to not be near double-digit reception. 17 targets. He caught 16 of them. He's great. That's good for quarterbacks. Randall Cobb, 9 for 142 in a touchdown. Kenny Stills, 4 for 106 and 2 touchdowns are these two big boy waiver wire targets this week.