Starts of the Week + Week 3 Breakdown, Late Week Pickups - Fantasy Football Podcast for 9/23

And I don't know. I just got a feeling about this one. On the bare side, starter-wise, you know, David Montgomery is averaging 20.5 opportunities per game. It's funny because Gibson's at 20, so they're both getting a lot of work. And Justin Fields, I mean, what is his debut mean for Alan Robinson, Darnell Mooney, and David Montgomery? When talking about the wide receivers, Alan Robinson's always going to be in your lineup. You start him. He's good.

Darnal Mooney is the exciting question here, the one that you're watching on that side of the ball, to see if his targets are up near Allen Robinson's, if he's actually able to connect on some of these deep shots. Darnal Mooney has outstanding speed, and Fields can throw a good deep ball. So if you wanted to take your shot, that glory play, and throw Mooney in your lineup,

I don't hate it. I mean, it's like, you know, Mike, you mentioned Jalen Rager. There's always these players who can get a bomb touchdown to save a week no matter how they do in the rest of the game. And Darnell Mooney is in that category with Justin Fields, who himself is definitely a, I mean, a very startable quarterback this week with his rushing baseline.

He should be, you know, a low-end quarterback one. Yeah, I agree with that. What will be interesting to watch here is how much does field actually run when he is the starter, at least for half of practice here? Right. Because he wasn't the starter early on. Because last week when he was thrust into game action, that turned into 10 attempts. Now it didn't, wasn't huge yardage on the ground, but those 10 rushing attempts, you know, that's.

That's 10 times that he's not dropping back to throw. So let's see what that does for the volume of the pass catchers. On the other side, you always start Nick Chubb. Yep. He's so good at running the football. Cream Hunt had 38% of snap slicks last week. Is he flexworthy in a tough matchup? I think, yeah, yeah. Do you consider him in every week's start? In every week flex where sometimes if the matchup looks.

right for him. You can toss him into your running back two consideration. I love Austin Hooper this week. I think he's going to have an opportunity just with targets and this team needing him. The tight ends were kind of the leaders in the passing game last week, albeit not an exciting lines. But I think he had five catches. So I think he is a spot start this week. Back on.

That's the big question. You can take your chance. Big plays is where the Bears have been struggling. They're 28th against opposing fantasy wide receivers this year because of big plays, 42 fantasy points a game. It's hard to imagine, you know, if you distribute, let's say you give them 30. I mean, they've been giving up 42. You give 30 fantasy points to opposing fantasy wide receivers in this game. How does Beckham not end up with half of that?

Do you make the call, let's say tonight, you've got to play Brandon Cooks or you are hoping that Odo Beckham plays on Sunday? Is that where's your level of confidence? I probably just play Cooks. Okay. And I do the crying thing from earlier. What about you, Jay? I would go Cooks. If there is a legitimate option, I would rather wait on O'Dell Beckham. So that's my approach. And in most cases, I think you will be able to take a wait and see approach.

If you're not able to take a wait-and-see approach and you just really need to start, there's reason for optimism with Jarvis Landry out that he could just be really, really involved and necessary to the game plan. So I don't hate starting him, but this is a, I mean, you want to talk about a really exciting, kind of unexpectedly exciting game to watch, paying attention to Justin Fields and Odell Beckham. Both sides of the ball, there's something critical for fantasy to get our eyeballs on, a very...

very much looking forward to this game. The Baltimore Ravens travel to take on the Detroit Lions in Detroit. DK Sportsbook has this game at Ravens minus nine over under his 49 and a half, gives the Lions 20 points, the Ravens 29. And I brought this up already. Tyson Williams right now, he's leading the league in, or I guess he's second in the league in yards per carry.

The Lions are 31st so far through two weeks. They're getting run all over. I think Tyson's a great start this week. He's a sensational play this week. And I think he has distinguished himself on a couple of the important differentiators for a play caller, which is speed to the edge, explosiveness. Like Latavius Marie Devante Freeman, they're going to be worked into situational football, goal line football.

But even after the Latavius touchdown last week, they had another goal line opportunity. Now, Lamar ended up scoring and you get reminded why in the offseason, you had doubts about Dobbins or Edwards scoring a lot. But it was Tyson out there. Tyson, Tyson out there. So interesting. Match up. I think that if the Ravens don't make an adjustment to who's on their active roster.

I think you can be confident that this is down to two players. I think it's down to Williams and it's down to Murray. You saw Devante Freeman get a handoff, and he ended up with a 31-yard carry to the outside. But it was not Freeman who made this happen. This was an incredible run design. The blocking assignments were worked to perfection. And as you were watching it, Freeman, he didn't have...

the juice anymore. Tyson Williams on that particular carry would have scored. And in fact, Devante Freeman with a 31-yard carry, he saw one more attempt in the game and he finished with 29 rushing yards. I think Freeman is done. It's now between Latavius and Tyson and we need Tyson to hold on to the ball.

Yeah, that is the issue. That's the only issue with Williams for me. Yeah, Tyson has looked really, really good. Fumbled in both games. I don't think he was credited with one in week one, but there was this play where he was going on. He was a minus one. Yeah, and then obviously fumbled on the goal line. If he fumbles again, I think at that point, the Ravens have to question, okay, can we trust putting the ball in this guy's hands? But he's looked great. I think you could start both of these running backs because this is a game.

I agree. They're favored by a ton. The lion's defense has not been good. And you would expect the second half of the game. They're just going to be just running the ball all over them. However, to get that lead, the lion's secondary, it's gone. It's literally, it was bad to start the year, right? Like, oh, you could throw on the lions. But they've lost their cornerbacks. They were starting, obviously they had Akuta.

The last year's rookie, he's out. And then they had another starter who was a rookie this year who got injured last game. And you saw the second half of how much worse they got. So, you know, you want to fire up Marquise Brown? Mark Andrews. Yep. Yeah. I mean, there's zero targets inside the 10 through two games for Mark Andrews, which is like he's been a touchdown dependent player for a while. Any concerns with Andrews?

The way that people are worried about Kittle? No, I'm not worried about Andrews. I mean, he's not the guy that we saw in Lamar's huge breakout season because Lamar's not going to throw 35 touchdowns. It's just not the reality, the baseline, the median average for Lamar. But he is going to get his. I mean, you look at last year in, you know, weeks two and three.

Mark Andrews just disappeared. He wasn't targeted. He had, you know, 50 yards between those two games combined and everyone was freaking out. And then the next two weeks is the tight-in three both weeks. So it's just a matter of game flow. I'm fine with Mark Andrews. On the other side of the ball, you have the king of pass attempts. Jared Goff, 93 pass attempts. The game scripts you're seeing, they're the game scripts you'll see moving forward, which is deficits in the second half.

Maybe the best. Top three check down running backs in football with DeAndre Swift, which is free yardage for Jared Gough. It's free points for DeAndre Swift. I mean, Swift has been very, very good on a very, very bad team that doesn't have the personnel to compete week to week. 16 targets through two weeks. That's one more than Christian McCaffrey.

Swift is a must start rest of season, in my opinion. And I think he may get more than the 60 plus percent of snaps we're seeing right now. I would agree. He's matchup proof because you want the opportunity to big, you know, a big play. And the receptions, you know, if you're playing a half PPR or full PPR, I think those will make sure that he's not going to completely just destroy you on a bad week. Whereas Jamal Williams.

He is a guy I'm willing to play half of this year. It just depends on the right matchup. This one isn't against the Ravens. Obviously, he could fall in the end zone. He should be involved in the game plan, but it's just tough when you're splitting touches. You've got to have the talent of D'Andre Swift. So he's the only guy on that side of the ball along with obviously T.J. Hawkinson. Those two players are... Do you like him, Hawkinson? I love Hawkinson.

Yeah, I mean, those two guys are very, very talented and unfathomably necessary. And I would say this is deeper league, lower end flex start. But Quintas Cephas, I love Quintas. He's in play for me. You saw seven targets in week one despite just 35% of the snaps. And Tyro Williams is already out. Cephys was the go-to guy that you saw his routes jump up to almost 90%. Another seven targets.

connected on a deep shot right at the beginning of the game, has scored him back-to-back weeks. So he's, like, I'm not saying start him over your known commodity players, but you could certainly do worse when you're looking for that later week flex play. I agree. I think he's a good player, and they look for him in the end zone a lot. All right, the Colts at Owen, too. Woof.

With a quarterback problem, take on the Tennessee Titans in Tennessee. Well, they entered the season with a quarterback problem, Andy. Their started was Carson Wentz. Well, I think expectations were better than Owen, too. Not for me. Draft King Sportsbook has the Titans as five and a half point home favorites. Over under's 48 points. Got the Titans in this one. I mean, Derek Henry is the number one running back right now after a Monster Week 2.

He has more fantasy points than 30 other teams combined running back output. That can't be true. Is that true? That is very possible. So only the Browns and lines running backs have more fantasy output at running back than Derek Henry. Wow. Well, to be fair. He's kind of like a running back room. He is a room running down the field. To be fair, when you say, okay, what is the Titans team?

running back output. It's Derek Henry. That's basically he has all of it. So, yeah, you play him. You play AJ Brown and Julio Jones in this matchup. The Colts are struggling on the back end, 28th against fantasy wide receivers. AJ Brown just needs to catch the ball. Julio Jones, I think it's going to be another big game. I was impressed six for 128 last week. It would have been better if a heel had come down in bounds. He would add six for.

About 140 in a touchdown, or seven for 140 in a touchdown. This is the get right game for Ryan Tannenhill, I think, as well in terms of being a viable streaming quarterback. I think I wouldn't be feeling confident in him as an every week play right now. No, I could agree with that. And I'm a little less confident than you in in.

I think there's a lot of really good streaming options that I might prefer. I mean, you picked up Justin Fields. I would play Justin Fields over Ryan Tanna Hill just because there is an output that happens here where the Colts can't get anything going and you just don't need to throw the ball much or do anything to win this game outside of Derek Henry. I don't expect that to happen, but that is...

You could see the pathway for that to happen. So Ryan Tanhill scares me as someone to rely upon this week. On the other side, the real, real, real question is Jonathan Taylor. Jonathan Taylor, look, this is... He's been getting a free pass. He's been getting a free pass. He has not been good so far this year. The offensive line for the Colts has...