Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - Final Mock Draft, John Paulsen Interview, Fantasy News

I like Ty Montgomery as a late flyer here. No chance I would ever draft Time Montgomery on a team with Devante Adams. Really? Nope. That makes it even more strong for me. How does that make it more strong? You want to roll two guys out there? He's completely unknown to me. Yeah, he's complete unknown, but I'm just saying if something were to happen. Okay. Let me just give you a choice then. Time Montgomery. Philip Dorset. I'd rather have Philip Dorset. Okay. Marcus Wheaton is still on the board. I think he's the pick. Without question. That's fair.

Okay. That's fair. I would take Ruben. Okay. Ruben is, uh, I'm dropping on Ruben Randall. So.

You go ahead. All right. That's it for our mock draft. One of you guys want to read this back to the listeners. Sure. So our starting quarterback, Carson Palmer, and we'll stream that position. Our running backs and a PPR, Justin Forset, and Frank Gore are our starters. On the bench, we have a plethora of guys for the flex, Arian Foster, Danny Woodhead, Devante Freeman, and David Johnson. And then for our starting wide receivers, Julio Jones.

Devante Adams and Brandon Marshall. And then on the bench, we've got Marcus Weiston, Marcus Colston. Did you say Weiston? He sure did. Marcus Wheaton. He just kept going to. Marquise Colston. And then our starting tight end is Travis Kelsey. Our kicker in our defense don't matter. I guess if you have Marcus Colston and Marcus Wheaton, it's a little bit of a excuse. If you're wondering on defense, some people wonder.

The Jets are available. They have a great week one matchup. The Panthers are available. They have a great week one match. And the dolphins are available who also have a great week one. You got plenty options. I bet we'll take one of them. Let's do it. All right. I took the Panthers. You would. Because it was closest to where my mouse was. And then we'll go ahead and draft Justin Tucker and finish this out. That way I can save these draft results and put them on the website. How do you feel? Give us a grade, two second grade on this team. I give us an A.

Sorry, I think it's a really good... If this roster came in, I would give them... I'm not happy with what I have at the quarterback position and how many quarterbacks are currently rostered in the league. So I'm worried that, because Palmer is still a risk. You'd agree. No, I wouldn't. Even though we haven't seen more than five games from him that's been consistent. I mean, I love his upside. We've seen more than five. Last year, it was five games. The year before that, he was also consistent. All right, let's shift gears for a second. I was thinking, we talked about...

top top subtle the top subtle app and trading cards and collecting trading cards and i was remembering back to being a kid and

How many times I, much like in fantasy football, took advantage of one of my friends, traded for their, you know, their insert Michael Jordan card and got home and bragged to everybody. And then my mom would come in the room and say, we're going back over to their house. You have to trade back. You took their favorite card. Their mom called. They're crying at their house. I was that kid. You were the kid crying. Yeah. So, Topps has taken that card experience and they've made it.

easy, clean, and new in the digital age. The huddle app features officially licensed NFLPA digital cards. You get to open the packs. You get that experience again of acquiring a new pack with the excitement of opening it up and seeing all the guys come out. And you can make trades. It's not just cards for you. And nobody's mom is going to make you trade back.

Right? Maybe. In addition to that... Not responsible for moms. Yeah. Not responsible for moms. The Topps Huddle app is not just for collecting and trading cards. You can actually play them as well. So it's basically you can play your cards and earn points in like a real-time, daily fantasy-style games based on how the players perform in the game. So essentially, you're getting the best of card opening and you're getting the best of fantasy football experience too. And honestly, people are enjoying this. Over 300 million...

Topps digital packs have been open since 2012. There's like more than one pack a second being open. So it's super fun. And you can download it for free right now on the app store, on Google Play, and you get 10 free packs for getting it. Yeah. I got Ty Hilton yesterday. Pretty happy with that? Yeah. I'm looking to acquire a T.Y. Hilton. So we should talk a trade a little bit later. Trade partners. All right. Let's go ahead and talk to a friend of the show, John Paulson, right now. You talking to me?

The fantasy footballers are now joined by John Paulson of 444.com. What's going on, John? Not much. How are you guys doing? Hey, we're doing great today. You know, football's back. We're all very excited. Yeah, it's August is a crazy time with all the drafts going on and then just gets crazier once week one starts. But that's a good problem to have. Yeah, it sure is. So we got some questions here for John.

The first thing we're going to do, it's preseason. So let's talk a little bit about preseason. Is there a wide receiver and or running back who you have rising from what you've seen during the preseason? Well, I think the name that jumps to mind there is Amir Abdullah for the Lions. Obviously looked really good in that first preseason game. His stock is rising. It helps that Joe Eichbel is still sidelined.

I think it's getting to the point where Bell's becoming a pretty good value. I just picked him up in the seventh round of a PPR league as my RB3. So I think that's probably the name that jumps to mind. Receiver, I think Devin Funches, due to the injury to Kelvin Benjamin, obviously Devante Adams, due to the injury to Jordan Nelson. Those are two receivers that are really jumping up my rankings in the last week or so.

Well, the Lions is a perfect segue to the next question, and you touched on it a little bit, but how are you approaching the Lions backfield? Do you want both of them, or do you want just Bell because he's the value or Abdullah because of the upside? Well, it depends on Abdullah's price, because in some leagues, it's getting a little crazy. He might be going at the end of the third round. I have...

Quite a few shares of him in those MFL tens, those best ball leagues that I do. I was drafting him a lot in the fifth round, and his price has spiked, and he's now going in the early fourth, I believe. And that's a little steep. I think...

no matter what, the lions are going to split the work there. They're not going to give him 250, 300 touches if they can help it. The O.C. there, Joe Lombardi, came from New Orleans, where they had the committee all those years. And I think they want Joe Eke Bell to lead the team in carries. And that's why they're letting him sit out and get completely healthy prior to the season. Now,

I think Bell is becoming a better value. I wouldn't mind having both, but you may not get two starting caliber running backs every week if you're starting both of them. Certainly if one goes down, the other's value is going to spike. Right now I have 213 touches for Abdullah, 201 for Bell, and 52 for Riddick. What do you guys think of that kind of split? Yeah, those numbers, that's kind of how we're seeing it right now. And I agree with you that it can be rough to invest that many.

Early picks. I mean, it's only two, but a fourth and a seventh to, for guys who are going to split, could be a little bit heavy for me. But so besides Abdullah, and you mentioned you're rising on funches. We saw the rookie wide receivers go bananas last year. Are there any rookies where you are targeting this year? I think the interesting player to me right now is Brashad Perriman because he's been injured. He's got that strained tendon, I believe they're calling it now. It was a bruise knee.

But if he comes back and can get healthy, the door is wide open to be number one or number two receiver there in Baltimore, depending how much faith you have in Steve Smith and him staying healthy at his age. I think Smith would probably lead the team in targets, even if Perryman's healthy. But Perryman's got that 4-2-something speed. They brought him in to replace Tori Smith. And he's going like in the 11th round now, I think. I picked him up with the 12th round in a draft. Wow.

You know, people are really, you know, when a guy misses multiple weeks in the preseason, especially if they're a rookie, you get down on him. But if you're drafting him as your fourth, fifth receiver, you've got, you have the ability to wait and wait for him to get healthy and maybe help your team, you know, in October and beyond just like Odell Beckham did last year.

Yeah. So, John, you're known, obviously, for being a very accurate predictor. And I see there's a lot of questions on fourth round running backs, guys that are close together. And so those are those picks that help win or lose leagues, depending on if you picked them right. So I'm going to put a couple guys together, and I'd like to see where you would rank them in what order. Between Gordon.

Melvin Gordon and Carlos Hyde. And then I'm going to throw another name in there because I believe he's higher on your rankings that we could talk about is Joseph Randall, those three guys, Joseph Randall, Melvin Gordon, and Carlos Hyde. How would you, you know, if you're coming up on a draft, who do you draft it in what order? Are you talking PPR or standard? Let's go half point PPR then. Oh, man, okay. I don't know. I don't have those ranks that. All right. We'll go PPR then. Okay, PPR.

I currently have Hyde at – I'm pretty much down on Hyde. I have him at 30. I think he's going to have to over 200 carries, but with Reggie Bush there, whenever Reggie Bush is healthy, he tends to produce. I think that's a big question there with him is if he's going to stay healthy. But if he is, he's going to be a headache for Hyde owners. Kendall Hunter is also in the mix there. So I just don't see a huge workload for Hyde, which I think is what he needs to be an RB2. Gordon, I have at 20.

I generally like him, but he's not going to play on third down. He's already having some issues of pass protection. He didn't do a lot of work in the passing game in Wisconsin, and they have Danny Woodhead there, and that's the big reason why I don't think he's going to do a lot in the passing game, because Woody is so good in that, and also the two-minute drill at the end of half. Yeah, we're big fans of Woodhead here. Yeah, yeah, he's great. So he's really cheap, too, and you can get him in PPR formats in the eighth, ninth, tenth round. So I think Gordon will be a two-down back.

But I think his workload is pretty safe there because they drafted him early and want to use him. Joseph Randall, I think, of the three maybe has the biggest upside in terms of workload and what he could do. But he also has probably the lowest downside just because that is just a weird situation with Darren McFadden there. Chris Johnson being off the free agent wire is actually probably good. But, you know, I...

That's a good offensive line. It's a good running game. He looked really good last year, Randall. So I'll put you on the spot then. You're in a PPR draft, and Melvin Gordon and Joseph Randall are the only two running backs left in the entire draft. Which guy do you take? Well, right now I have to go up my rank because I have Gordon at 20 and I have Randall at 21, but it might depend on who I have more shares of if I want to try to diversify a little bit because when I have guys that close.

I really don't have a strong feeling one way or the other bottom. Awesome. Okay. Well, last guy I want to talk about real quick, just because I'm high on him in my own rankings, and I see that you're very high on him, and I am scared to death of my own ranking. But because you're accurate, I want to know, give me some confidence right now in C.J. Anderson. Is he really going to be, I think I've got him four right now. Where do you have him ranked? And can we buy into C.J. Anderson with confidence?

I have him at 6 in PPR. I have him at 6 also in standard. I think we can be reasonably certain. He looked really good last year down the stretch. I mean, you really can't argue with his play from week 10 on. It was outstanding. I think he was the RB1 down the stretch. He's got a coach that likes to run the ball. I think the concern now is not so much whether or not he's any good, but whether or not they want to work Ronnie Hillman in more because he's having a really good preseason.

He's passed Monty Ball on the depth chart, and he adds that kind of scat-back, smaller back, change-of-pace thing. And if Kubiak decides to start splitting up the role a little bit, he's usually more about having a bell cow. But if he decides to try to work Hillman in more, that might downgrade Anderson a little bit. But if you look at the guys below him, Matt Forte, I have him tied with in PPR, Justin Forsett.