Fantasy Football Podcast 2017 - The TRUTH About Fantasy WR's in 2016, Part 1

Let me see. It is, oh, it's currently still a 16. Note to sell. Do not pivot to Brock Osweiler on Sunday, Andy. What was, Jay, you talked about, you were reading a, it was an article of what has changed. Yeah, all the, all the things that have changed. And the tweet went out as in like, oh, this might not be like it was, you know, in whatever that was. Week three or week four. By Jacoby Brissette. Right. Yeah, that was one of the things that's changed. Oh, they lost Jacoby Brissette and they gained. Tom.

Thomas Brady. Possibly the best quarterback at all time. Also, Jay, J.J. Watt played in that last game. So over under. Let's call it right now. Of the Patriot victory? You're saying the spread? Oh, sorry. Yeah, the spread. Who would you take Houston plus 16? Oh, I'm taking. Or do you take the Patriots? Do you think? Okay. Over under giving up seven points in that game to Houston. I'm going to take the under. Can the Texans score over seven points? I don't think so.

I mean, the offense, the Texans offense. I don't think so. The thing is, is, I mean, you say the Texas's offense. I don't think Tom Brady's throwing a pick six. That's something can happen, special teams. I just mean, I'm just saying, like, I don't see New England giving up more than seven points to New England. Can Miller Houston? Can Miller take the Texans down to score more than seven? No, he can't. Yeah, I'm going to take the under. Oh, I'll go over. All right.

Head coaching news that might affect fantasy owners next year. The Jaguars have hired Doug Marone to be their new head coach and Tom Coughlin to be the executive VP of Football Operations. Coughlin will have the final say on everything. And then Doug Maron will be the field general. You know, I've been on record, of course, because it's the Jaguars. So, of course, I'm going to have like a rosy outlook. Doug Maron, he wasn't bad. I mean, he wasn't bad day in the year and he wasn't bad in Buffalo. No, he was not. Here's the thing.

anything compared to what Gus Bradley was putting on the field is okay. It was so strange because yesterday you're like, well, I don't like to hire because I like to see new guys get an opportunity. And then I'm like, like Gus Bradley? Which, and I said, it was worth the shot to me to bring in Gus Bradley. And here's the thing. Maybe they're not ready to take two shots back to back. Yeah. And I totally get that. They're going to bring in a guy who is.

Has done it. By, well, just brought in time by all accounts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, I mean, Gus Bradley was a defensive-minded coach. The Jacksonville defense has been improving and was pretty solid last year. It was the offense fault. And it was a lot of that was Blake Bortles. And Doug Maron, part of his hiring was him saying, I believe in Blake Bortles, I can, I can work with him. So are we to believe that Doug Maron is your new favorite coach in the National Football League?

It's under advisement. I mean, Hugh Jackson's still going to have the opportunity to earn that spot. Yeah, for sure. But he's there.

And he's up there. And he has a requirement of like five wins or under. Once you go over five wins, you're no longer his favorite. I will say this. When you're as bad as the Jags have been for the last three years, I don't like promoting from within. I would want to shake up a change and I'd want to get someone that has a little bit of clout and respect. That's why bringing in Coughlin as a head coach, I think would be good for them. However, you do see last year with Malarkey, I thought was the worst.

higher imaginable keeping that terrible Titans team promoting from within and taking that interim head coach making him the real head coach. He did a great job. I made a quick note. I need to grab a Hugh Jackson autographed photo from pristine action. Oh, for sure. Need to add that to the new set to just kind of give it a good feel. Oh, man. Just put it on top of your Gus Bradley. Just tape it over it.

And then as the years go on, you can have a stack that just grows deeper with fired. It's like the tabs for your license plate. Eventually it's just sticking out. I need a new one every year because they're always fired. Yep. All right. The Jets have hired, well, they're going to need a new offensive coordinator. Chang Gehle is retiring. Something to monitor when the OCs change. Ravens are going to keep Marty Morningwig for the 2017 season at the offensive coordinator position.

Did come out that Harbaugh said we need another running back. It was very interesting. A game-breaking running back. You know, they've struggled to run the ball consistently since, you know, Forset had a pretty good year. Ray Rice before that. So just something to keep in mind if you are a Dixon dynasty owner, if you are Terrence West dynasty owner, that type of thing. Well, Terrence West is also a restricted free agents. I just cannot the upside. There's no upside bringing him back. I mean, if you can get him cheap. Yeah, I agree. He'll come back. But.

But yeah, the Ravens, you know, the story about the Ravens, we've been saying it for two off seasons. They lead the league in passing attempts every year. Yeah. So, you know. What's crazy is their running game looked fine to me. Yeah, it did at times. But there were a lot of times when it did look like they couldn't lean on it. Like it was ancillary. So franchise low in rushing attempts each of the past two years, they want to change that. For that. Possibly. You never know. Impending free agent, Terrell Pryor.

Says he wants to remain in Cleveland. So he must have been talking to Joe Thomas. I still think it's the best place for him. I know you guys disagree. I think the best place for Trell Prior to have fantasy relevances in Cleveland. No, I don't disagree with that. Okay. I don't necessarily. I think the one maybe... It's the Percy Harvin's story. Brandon Marshall, to me, is the one that returning to his current team. Oh, that's right. I disagree. Yeah. And then the lion signed Jared Aberderas.

Why is this news? I think the reason it's news is because of what happened yesterday. I did not put this in. All right. So my guy, Mike thinks that Jared Aberdehras is my guy because I was. But then we're sitting on the couch in our new studio and he goes, oh, did you see the lion signed your boy? And he tells me it's Jared Aberde. And I go, it wasn't my boy. I just thought he had the trust of Aaron Rogers. If you got the trust of Aaron Rogers, you know, I go, oh, you know who you? And then I stop. I'm like, oh, you know who we should. Oh. And then.

Mike and I lock eyes and immediately I grab my phone out of my pocket. He's on his phone and we are racing in our dynasty league to see who can sign Geronimo Allison. And I could not remember his last name in that moment. And I finally get there. I'm like, oh, he's already signed. And Mike goes, who's that? He's like, because I just picked him up. So.

For you dynasty owners, Geronimo. That was great. I added Paul Richardson yesterday. Paul Richardson, a great dynasty ad. Former second round pick. You never know what lock it's going to have coming back from another major injury. Hopefully he'll be fine. All right, we're getting into it. You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers. I want the truth. You can't handle the truth. That's a great movie. This is just a great movie. One of my favorites. That's for sure.

Those actors are super overrated. Who? Oh. Kid kidding. Okay. Well, why don't you, why don't you jump into what you got to talk about, Jason? Yeah. So before we get into the very specific wide receivers go through Jordy and Mike Evans, Antonio Brown. Consistency ratings. We should talk and get a little bit of a lay of a line and the truth of how wide receivers were in 2016. Wide receivers this year.

are, we're very down, especially your stud, your elite wide receivers. The pendulum swung to be a wide receiver year. Never, I don't remember the last year where, you know, the first three picks were wide receivers. It's usually running backs. And because of what happened in 2015, the pendulum swung. And the big top wide receivers let you down. If you look at the lead leader in,

Targets, which was Mike Evans. I think over the last five years or so, he would rank 15th. Same with T.Y. Hilton in yards. Same with the total fantasy points. Your top guys, your top producers this year at wide receiver were very, very down. But when you dig deeper into the numbers, you see that basically it was just most of it was that the touchdowns and things were spread to second tier.

wide receivers on teams. The passing attempts were not down, running backs, rushing attempts were not up. So what I would say, if we're looking at the truth of this year as it pertains to going forward, is don't swing the pendulum too far back to the other side. Now for me, my top three picks next year are running backs.

But I am not off of elite wide receivers or thinking they're going to be down the way they were this year. I think this year will be an outlier. And so we need to stay on that middle road where you realize that those top wide receivers are worth more than what we saw this last year. All wide receivers, something to keep in mind here. I was looking at quarterbacks. And this year we had five passers over 30 touchdowns.

Last year there was 11. So you cut that in half. There's less touchdowns to go around to all the wide receivers in the league. Did you say, did I hear you correctly? You said last year there were how many? In 2016. So this season we just had, only five quarterbacks have more than 30 touchdowns. The year before that, 11. Gotcha. The year before that, nine. So passing touchdowns just as an overall volume were down.

Yeah, and that's obviously not where the NFL is trending. So we are going to get into the specific best wide receivers and look at their consistency. But before we do that, I want to take a second here and thank today's sponsor Blue Apron. We've talked about them for a long time because all three of us have used them. They are the best way to cook at home with fresh.

ingredients that are made for your meal you don't have to go it was so nice when you get your blue apron box and you don't have to go to sprouts or go to your your places and and grab your recipe and get all the different ingredients and then have a bunch of leftover ingredients that was just for that meal everything comes

perfectly packaged with a recipe card and fresh local ingredients for you when you order with Blue Apron. They're a great company. Everything that they produce is, you know, humanely raised chickens free range, pork is raised naturally. It's quality ingredients.

And it's a good time for the family. So we recommend it. It's affordable. And we highly recommend it. Check out some of the meals available in January. You got seared pork chops with faro and canberry chutney. Spaghetti squash and marinero with mushroom and garlic knots. Ooh. Love garlic nuts. Spicy shrimp and Korean rice cakes with cabbage and friarch. I don't, nobody knows how to say that.

But I do know those are delicious. Those are my favorite kind of mushrooms. So here's what you do. You check out this week's menu. Get your first three meals for free with free shipping. Just go to blue apron.com slash ballers. And you're going to love how good it feels, how good it tastes, to create incredible home-cooked meals with Blue Apron. So don't wait. Blue Apron.com slash ballers. I was really curious. I hadn't tried the canberries. Are the can berries pretty?

Canberry. The canberries taste like canberries. Are they good? I mean, they're good. They're very good. Well, there's a truth bomb. I hate to drop on you, but the canned jelly cranberries are by far superior to regular cranberries. Oh, yeah. Well, that's the Thanksgiving poll that we were taking. All right, the truth about fantasy.

Wide receivers. Mike, what is the scoring format we're talking through here? We are talking. So these are the way the guys finished and a half point PPR. And we are going to kind of split that difference by talking consistency in standard and PPR. So we're giving you everything today, giving you it all. Giving you at all. As only Jason would say. Jordy Nelson. Jordan Nelson tops our list. 16 games, 97 receptions, 1,257 yards.

And 14 touchdowns on 152 targets. Look, Jordy Nelson was outstanding this season. Outstanding. He only had two games the entire season where he was not in the top 48. That is our qualifier for a, basically a dud game, a bust game. And so there were only two games for Jordy outside of that realm. He was in the top 25, 11 times. It was in the top five, six different times.