Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - Week 13 Fantasy Forecast, Starts of the Week, News

Yeah, I talked about it last time. I liked the Jaguars offense, you know, even if you don't want me to. All right, Tyler Eiffert is not practicing on Wednesday. What's the latest on Eifer? Well, he had that stinger that took him out of the game. Not practicing on Wednesday is certainly not a great sign, but he still has plenty of time to get some limited work in. He could even not practice today. Hopefully you see limited on Friday. And then if he's limited Friday, he's good to go. But.

If he misses the next two days, that's some trouble. All right. Trouble in River City. Chalkandric West is practicing in full on Wednesday. That's big news. And he'll be back. But what does it mean? Because Spencer Ware was extremely efficient in two games. West will be the primary ball carrier. Ware will absolutely be worked in. But West is the past catching.

Back. Spencer Ware was not, he did not excel in that part of the game. So that'll be West's role. So I still think if you, let's say you have both of them, who are you going to start? It's West, for sure. All right. We talked about the Chief's Defense and the impact of Justin Houston's injury. Good news came out about that. It wasn't a strained or sprained PCL, whatever that report was. He's dealing with a hyper-extended knee.

which is the second kind of, like, hyper-extended knees are very good news in the NFL. For him and Grunk. Yeah, so basically Justin, he could be back. He hasn't even been ruled out this week. I doubt he plays this week. But that's good news for the Chiefs Defense going forward as they play at home against San Diego next week. What else do we got going on? I think we should talk. Austin Davis is officially going to start. We kind of mentioned it a little bit, but Davis will be starting for the Browns. However, it's week to week.

Up there says a report that Mike Petten is now open to Johnny Mansell making some more starts because it is a clown show. We have... It is a clown. We need a clown music button. We certainly do. Oh, we got to get that. There's too many opportunities on the course of the John Fox related year. We talk about the Browns every week. And I think Jason and I actually disagree on this. My opinion...

You put Mansell in, you start him the rest of the year, no matter what, unless he gets hurt and he can't play. Of course. You can't play him. No matter what. Hey, he's on the stretcher. Put him back out there. You put him out. It's kind of like in Denver with Tim Tebow, you know, where the crowd just demanded Tebow. And there's nothing you can do. It kind of backfired for Denver because he started winning.

But there's nothing, the mob wants to see Johnny Mansell. Let them see what he can do. Either he, you're like, oh, we don't need a quarterback because Manzell magically can do it, or he falls on his face like the majority of people are expecting, and then you can move on. It's not going to happen again next year. I think John Gruden is at the very front of that mob with his pitchfarks saying, put Johnny Mansell in. Gruden was great.

on Monday night. This is not something we usually talk about the announcing, but he was just killing people, and rightfully so. He was actually calling people out. It was fantastic. So let me ask you something that crossed my mind yesterday. Now, Tim Tebow was in the news. I'm not going to get into it. It was ridiculous Facebook Rumorville type of. But what happened is one of the thumbnail pictures was him in the Eagles jersey, and I started thinking about the Eagles season and quarterback play, and I started to wonder, like,

Would they have been a better offense? Okay. Not a better fantasy, but they might have won more games. No way. I still want to believe. All right. The Tebow magic. Hey, you know what? There are immeasurable statistics that exist in the out there where he can motivate his team a little bit. He's not the best quarterback.

But he won. What did you just say about Denver? Yeah. He beat the Steelers in the playoffs. I give credit where credit is due. And speaking of credit, let's thank Audible for sponsoring today's podcast. You heard me talk about it at the very beginning of the show. Audible is offering our listeners, the Foot Clan, a free 30-day trial membership.

You go to audible.com slash ballers. You can browse over 180,000 audio programs. You can download a title free and start listening. It's that easy. You go to audible.com slash ballers. That's audible.com slash ballers to get started today. Like I said, they've got over 180,000 programs from audiobooks.

to magazines, newspaper publications, things like that. And, you know, mixed different people have different thoughts about Matthew Berry. We certainly respect Matthew Berry. His book is great, a fantasy life. If you just want to hear some great tales about leagues and formations of leagues and the history of fantasy football, that's available on Audible. I've listened to it. We've all been Audible subscribers. And it really, you know, as much as you...

you know, might hope we can't record this show 24 hours a day. You've got a lot of commute, time, work, time. Audible's great. So head over there. Go to audible.com slash ballers. Get your free 30-day trial membership. And we'd also like to thank the Topps Huddle app.

They're a great sponsor of the show. That, you know, a lot of times we talk about apps that are useful for fantasy. This is just a fun, incredible app. It brings me back to the days when I did card collecting, card trading. 1959. Opening packs, getting that rookie card. But this is better than that.

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All right, let's get into the matchups. Fantasy forecast. I have, I'll just tell the audience that we have our, we print the weekly matchups out as a separate piece of paper so we can just reference which games and people are playing. Jason was missing his paper today. And apparently I took his matchup paper. How do you know that you took my paper? Well, I only know that because at the bottom, you wrote a little note to us during the show.

We recorded our Wednesday show after lunch on Tuesday, later on Tuesday. And he wrote Chipotle killing brain. There you go. Because he had just eaten. And so he was... A lot of metabolizing. Yeah, you were... You don't do good with food. I do great with food. I guess that's a matter of perspective. All right. Packers, they head to Detroit to take on the Red Hot Lions. That's crazy, man. Revenge game.

Hey, do we have a water bet with that guy out there? Oh, with Foot Clan Mike? You know, betting on the Packers has proved not good for this podcast. I want some matchup to come that seems perfectly impossible and let us bet on the Packers and see what happens. Like Packers Browns? Or like Packers, you know, at home against the Lions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this game is, this game's in Detroit. Stafford's coming off a five touchdown game.

What do we think of Stafford rest of season? Because someone wrote in, they were asking for some great playoff matchup. Stafford was in that streamer list for me because he's got San Francisco in week 16. He's got a really good matchup in week 15. I think it's New Orleans. Yeah. So Stafford looks like maybe somebody to ride a little bit. Yeah, it's not bad. When was, let's refresh memories, especially mine over here. When did Jim Bob Cooter take over? Was that after the bye week?

So the last three weeks... I believe it was during the buy. So in the last three weeks, they played Green Bay, Oakland, and Philadelphia. He's only thrown one pick in that time, Matt Stafford. So he's playing a lot better. He had the game against Oakland where it was... That was a really strange game where both Stafford and Carr were not bad, but they just struggled and they couldn't get anything really done for fantasy.

But aside from that, I mean, two touchdowns against Green Bay last, or in week 10, and five against Philadelphia on that Thanksgiving massacre of the Eagles. So I think things are trending in the right direction for Matt Stafford. Maybe we got some better play calling happening. You can see the ground game has improved tremendously because there was literally no ground game at all to start the year. That probably helps.

Absolutely, it helps. I mean, when you have... Nobody's, like, cracking up when they try to play action pass. And yeah, that's the technique. That's what you used to happen. You see if you can make them laugh long enough for a receiver to break open. And, like, Abdullah actually had a decent game on the ground last week. So did Joick? Yeah, and, well, Joick's game was really through the air is when he got it done on those two huge passes.

So I think all those things combined equal to Matt Stafford being a solid play moving forward, and I would even play him tonight. Well, that's what I was going to ask you. And the Packers defense has started, it started quickly, it started well, and now it's not been great. The run defense 23rd, the past defense 18th.

One thing that's interesting, though, is on the other side of the ball, the lions give up the most multi-touchdown games to running backs. Lacey's trending up. Yes. This is a must-start situation for him, right? Absolutely. I think you do start Lacey, but I don't buy into the defense of the lions being that sieve that they were early in the year. Since that by week, we have seen a different lions. And I think three games in a row is enough to say they've at least stepped up. They haven't phoned it in. In the last three games,

They've given up one total touchdown to the running backs on the ground. So I do think Eddie Lacey is a fine start. He is back. He is a late-game, a late-season bloomer. I mean, he took over late last year, and I expect that he's going to do it again this year. I think he's fine to start, but I don't see the lions as what they were giving up, you know, two touchdowns, three touchdowns, two touchdowns. Who was the touchdown, too? That was to Oakland, so I believe that was Latavius Murray.

One of the things that has helped them, obviously, has been an improving past defense. And that concerns Rogers owners. You know, you've had the lions playing well. They're at home. They're on a roll. Darius Slay has shutting people down. He is. He's looking good. So who's he going to be on? Probably. Whoever's. That's a great question. I don't know if he shadows into the slot. So is the upside of Rogers gone? No. No. He can still go out and throw a five touchdown game. I would have no. Absolutely.

100% he could go out this week against Darius Slate and throw five touchdowns. I believe, I don't hesitate for a second. A lot of people asking whether Cobb is worthy of starting this week. And I've been telling people most often, no, compared to what they've shown me on their team. I mean, we can look at the rankings a little bit about what we have him at this week. We have him at 20 as a consensus ranking that puts him in the two category right around the, you know, Cobb or Amari Cooper. Uh, man. Cooper's got a...

Tougher matchup, but I would probably go with Cooper. Yeah, LaFelle, Watkins, that range? Yeah, that's fine. I would start Cobb over those guys. Huh. Yeah, I think Cobb is an okay start. I mean, you're not getting a wide receiver one, but as a wide receiver two, he has been getting enough receptions and targets. He's been getting five or six receptions a game. He just hasn't been in the end zone lately, and he hasn't broken one long. But is it 10 straight games? You got one double-digit game and 10 games? Something like that?

That's what the problem. I want him to show me something before I put him in the lineup anymore. That's kind of my mentality. But I think his name, his name is getting him starts more than his performance. Yeah, that's understandable. All right, we need to move on. Texans at the Bills. Let's talk about this game here. The Bills are favored. They're at home. You got Tyrod Taylor, the ever banged up Tyrod Taylor and Brian Hoyer and the Red Hot Texans. So.