Fantasy Football 2017 - Pump the Brakes, #FootClan Questions, Playoff Push

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It's the last day to get the DFS pass at only $10. A lot of people, a lot of people think that that deal was already over, mostly because Andy emailed everybody and said that deal's over. I thought it was over Monday. It's not over. The coupon still works. DFS today, though. DFS 10 is the coupon. Use it at DFSPass.com to get the rest of the season and playoffs for $10. Check it out at DFSpass.com.

to the fantasy footballers podcast. Coming to you from the Playdraft Studios with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome to Wednesday, and it's just Jason and myself. Mike Gris. Mike is still in a distant land. But Andy, yes, Mike is my favorite.

Well, I'm sorry. When does Mike get back? You shut your mouth, J. Gras. He gets back after the week. After the week is done. He'll be here Monday. He keeps uploading these pathetic, joyful pictures of his family, enjoying themselves in Disneyland. Well, then I'll be back Monday. But we've got a good show for you today. We'll get you ready for week 13. And we have Pump the Breaks on the show. We've got some news.

There are some new articles on the website, a snap count observation article. Always great on the fantasy footballers.com. And a big shout out to everybody who joined us on the Facebook live event yesterday as we raised money for the stomp out bullying campaign. It was giving Tuesday. We had a lot of fun jumping on there, talking to many of you. And we just want to say thank you for all of the...

very kind and generous donations that you made to this campaign. Shout out to David Johnson. David Johnson. For sharing news of our live event. So got the exposure out there, raised some more funds. So we are excited to have a great show today. You can follow us on Twitter at the FF Ballers. Brooks, how are you doing this fine morning? I'm terrific. Thanks for asking, Andy. That's good.

That's good. You made an appearance on the live event. Oh, that's right. On the live event. People got to see you right at the end of the live event. Everyone always wants to see the famous Judge Giamatti. Yeah. But he made a very up close and personal appearance. Hmm.

at the end of the live event, which was great. You'll have to follow us over. Andy decided because we had so much fun doing that yesterday that we're going to do more Facebook live events. So make sure to go to Facebook.com slash fantasy footballers. That is correct. If you follow us there, then when we go live, you'll get a notification, you can hang out, and you just might see the judge. That's right. That don't come for the fantasy football advice. You could also get fantasy advice, but the judge. The judge.

Now, we got a two-man this. Are you, uh, is that a cup of coffee? This is a cup of black coffee. Okay. Are you ready for this? Oh, I'm so. It's Wednesday. We got so many listener mailbag questions. This is an important time of year. Well, we start with Pump the brakes. Oh, oh, oh, oh, O'Reilly. Oh, Riley. Oh, wow. Very nice, Jason. I, you know, Mike is the musical guy, and I had to take it up a notch there. And I, uh, and you did. I did, uh.

I'd give myself a solid C plus. That's fine. It's passing. Yeah. All right. Pump the brakes with O'Reilly Auto Parts once again, jumping in, giving you a couple names. Now, I am on a bit of a cold streak. A bit of a streak here.

You might want to pump the brakes on my pump the brakes over the last two weeks. I had a very nice run through the season. And then the last two weeks, I think I pumped the brakes on what? Larry Fitzgerald and Keenan Allen. Yeah, I will say this. Here's what I'll say in defense of... There's no defending. There's absolutely no defending pumping the brakes of Keenan Allen last week. However, what I'm saying is when you pump the brakes on Keenan Allen, Mike and I said, don't listen to this man. And that was foolish. So, you know, we didn't... I don't think anybody led, was let astray because I don't...

I think they would follow. I did specifically say pumping the brakes doesn't mean benching a guy. It means changing your expectations. However, I totally agree and love your pump the brakes this week. Well, we'll see how it goes. I'm going with Big Ben Rathisberger. He has two straight 42-point fantasy games at home. And now he travels to Cincinnati. I think a lot of people are excited. And I'm pumping the brakes on Big Ben. And let me tell you why. Not only is it the home road split, right?

But I looked back at games against Cincinnati over the last three years by Big Ben. He averages half a touchdown less against Cincinnati. He averages more interceptions. He averages about 35, 40 fewer yards per game. And if you take that split and you take it further...

And you go to games in Cincinnati. That's when it really, really changes. He averages half a touchdown total in Cincinnati over the last two games. He's played there over the last two years. His yards go down. I just think that this is a – look, Cincinnati is actually in the race. We think that they are basically a winless franchise the way it feels sometimes for fantasy this year and the way that they started the year, which leaves you –

with that impression throughout the year, but they're actually in the race here. And this is a big game for them. And they're at home, and they have a sensible defense. You're not going to see Big Ben throw four touchdowns again, which is what he's done. People want to stay in the flames, but what you have to remember is when we talk about staying in the flames on a guy that maybe we didn't believe in, that's the three-pack. You've got to do that three weeks in a row. Big Ben has had two home.

games in a row. And Big Ben has done this so many times. Think back a couple years ago. I think he had back-to-back five touchdown games in the middle of just a disappearing act of fantasy irrelevance. So I like pumping the brakes here because I believe there are going to be a lot of fantasy players who start Big Ben this week. They're not going to listen to you, and they should.

I'm going to pump the breaks this week on another guy who's had back-to-back great games, especially this last one, Tevin Coleman. Tevin Coleman's great. He's a talented running back, but even the best running backs have a very, very difficult time against the Minnesota Vikings. The Minnesota Vikings defense, their run defense, you know, what caused me to really pump the breaks here on Tevin Coleman is looking at, last night I was doing the research for

tomorrow's show and Friday's show trying to find out how have defenses fared over the last four weeks and digging in deep on that, not just looking at over the season. And what I noticed was, you know, a ton of change, right? If you look at just the season totals of this team is good against this position or bad against this position and you look at the last four weeks, they're so different. Except not with Minnesota. Minnesota has been good in the beginning, the middle.

Recently against running backs, they are a stifling defense against running backs. You have Tavin Coleman, whose expectations are going to be too high coming off of two touchdowns. And then news came out today. Yeah, that's what I thought this was all related to. No, it was all about the Minnesota Vikings matchup. And then DeVant Freeman has cleared the concussion protocol. So he will be the starter. This is a game where...

I usually say light up both guys. Start Kevin Coleman, start Devon to Freeman. When they're both healthy, put them active. Now I'm saying this week, Kevin Coleman, he's a flex option. So if you've got a really good matchup with a different guy in that flex range, I would be willing to bench Coleman in that situation. I'm not saying you have to, but you've got a tempered expectations. You can't just look at, well, he's...

You know, he's going to retain this goal line role. Well, the essence of pump the brakes is, look, you look at last week, two touchdowns, like you said, temporary expectations. Devante Freeman plus Minnesota means temporary expectations. Yeah. All right, let's talk news. News and notes from around the league. If you did miss the code from the, when we talked about it before the show, the last day for the DFS pass $10 is today. DFSPass.com. The code is DFS10. DFS10. We'll expire after today if you want that deal.

DFS 1-0. If you spell out 10, it won't work. It's true. It's true story. All right. Michael Crabtree and Akeed to leave. Their suspensions were reduced to one game. Okay. I think that's why they got two games. They got two games because they're like, well, they're going to appeal, we'll come back. They just need to be suspended. However, I need to take one brief second. I agree with the suspension. I think that it was worthy. Seeing what happened, replaying that in my mind,

and then realizing that AJ Green did not get a suspension of any kind for his thing that was way, in my opinion, way more egregious. Oh, not at all for me. Not even close. 10 times. Not even remotely close. Now it's 100. Now it's 100 times. Okay. How is that? Now it's 200 times. 200 times more egregious. AJ Greens. You want to keep playing this game? Okay. Whatever. I feel like I'm talking to the kid. Whatever. I mean, this is like the Crabtree to Lieb fight.

was helmets off, sideline knocking people over, a long duration, the benches cleared, other ejections, punches thrown. I mean, AJ Green... That was a fight. AJ Green wasn't. AJ Green went up against the guy who had his back turned, choked him out, and suplexed him from his neck. It took a couple seconds, though. And then continued punching him on the ground. Yeah, we disagree. It's not even close to me. All right. If you're watching on YouTube, I need a comment.

Because you're on YouTube. You can find the videos. And then how egregious? That's fine. I mean, we can disagree. Obviously, the NFL is in line with my opinion. They didn't suspend AJ Green. They suspended Crabtree for two games. So I would say, shame on the NFL for agreeing with Andy Holloway. There you go. Shame on everyone for that. Great offense.

But Crabtree, for fantasy owners, you get them back a game earlier. We don't know the status yet of Amari Cooper, and we'll keep you up to date on that this week. Otherwise, Seth Roberts suddenly looks like a very streamable flex wide receiver option if he's alone. Same with Jared Cook being a much higher upside play at tight-in. Yeah. Dan Quinn, like we said, Devonta Freeman cleared the concussion protocol. He's going to practice on Wednesday. I expect him to play. I think he wanted to play last week. Now he's clear. Now he's going to play. This was big news. We talked about it on the live event.

Gino Smith is starting at quarterback for the Giants this week. Now, if you don't know the way that this went down, basically Eli Manning made this happen in a way because the plan for the Giants for the remainder of the season, they were going to let Eli start this game and then Gino was going to play the second half. That was the plan. And Eli realized and kind of just said, look, they're only doing this to keep my streak intact. I'm going to be a good teammate. Let Gino start. I'll be the backup.