NFL Coaching Changes & Fantasy Impact, Dog vs Pill - Fantasy Football Podcast for 2/27

coaching changes in the NFL effect fantasy football in drastic ways. We're going to talk about the good and the bad and the downright ugly on today's episode. Make sure you subscribe. Stay tuned and enjoy. To the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. The fantasy footballers, Mike Wright, Jason Moore, Andy Holloway.

And the world famous coaching changes episode on the way. Mm-hmm. Much important. I've heard from people. This is one of their favorite episodes. That's great. And I believe that people. I believe you don't, you do not enjoy doing this episode. All the coaching research. All the boring sludge to go through. Sometimes it feels like a lot. I mean, I guess I. I guess the truth is I feel like there are some major storylines in the coaching hiring process. It's not like I undervalue the changes that happen. But then, like, I don't know, there's some teams that did some dumb stuff. Yeah. And it just ruins the season for their players. I think there are some very uninspiring hires. Now, I will caution us all.

that one of the most uninspiring hires, to me personally, this is called a swing and a miss, um, was when I just couldn't really comprehend the hiring of Sean McVeigh. Sure. Back of the day. 30, 32 minute year old Sean McVeigh and, uh, it was okay. It was, I think they, I think they won that one. Calling that one uninspiring was that's not the right word. I think just it felt baffling and. It was a good call. Egregious at the time. And yeah. So, you know, hopefully some of these, hopefully some of today's uninspiring hires for those fan bases, they turn out to be the next McVeigh. I mean, we are coming off a season in which we overt, I mean, multiple seasons actually. When you go back to Nagy and then, you know, Arthur Smith, where we've seen the polarization of impact, right? When you bring somebody in and they make a tremendous difference to the weapons on the team.

translates to fantasy football or vice versa. We're going to talk about a team that made a very splashy head coaching hire and yet leaves the fantasy community in a place of wondering what to do. So we'll be talking through all of the big coaching changes on today's show. And a reminder, three days left, 72 hours. Three days left. Thanks, Mike. That sounded like you were telling everyone to get on the train before it left. It's pretty much the same thing. Ultimate draft kit.com, your last chance for pre-order bonuses. You've got to order it by March 1st to get a chance to win a listener league spot, a chance to come and play with us in the listener league in 2024. It's also the lowest possible price on the UDK, UDK Plus right now. UDK Plus gets you instant access to the dynasty pass. We have been knee-deep in...

rookie rankings and draft prep and so i'm uh i'm belly button level now you were uh what did i say though yeah yeah we're we're almost fully submerged we're past the the the point of no return i'm hoping to drown soon uh be all the way underwater uh you know we're helping that too thanks bud you could just submerge without without drowning i'll try to hold my breath but you can't breathe underwater snort give me a snorkel That's the thing. So that's ultimate draft kit.com. Welcome in. I can't breathe underwater. Also on that note, if you are someone that has already bought the ultimate draft kit, you got the UDK Plus and you've taken a look, you are still entered into that, even if it was before now. Anyone who gets it by March 1st, you'll be entered in that. But maybe you bought it the day it came out, Super Bowl Sunday, and you went and you looked at the...

rookie rankings and the dynasty startup rankings, those have really been evolving. You know, the last week, I know mine have personally changed quite a bit. So if you're doing a startup or you're, you know, you took a look already. Take another look at the rankings. And, you know, we will continue to make sure we polish those as we get closer and closer to the draft. That is true. Let's talk some news. News and notes from around the league. Really the headlines. right now are around the franchise tag. There are a number of running backs that, at least of this recording time, have been, it's been said that they're not going to be franchise tag, Derek Henry, Josh Jacobs, Tony Pollard, Sequam Barkley, Austin Echler. All of those players, at least as of this recording, pretty strong words being put out that they will test free agency.

So that's big. I mean, those are big games. And be allowed to test free agency. And, you know, we have a couple of players, though, that it seems like one that we have confirmed, T. Higgins, wide receiver for the Bengals, the franchise tag has been placed on T. Higgins. That is overhearing. That is official. And so he will not be going anywhere. The other one I think you're alluding to is Michael Pittman Jr. That one is not official. It's not been done. It's just been said that they either will or they'll work out of deal. Right. And they have until March 5th. The deadline to place these tags on players is coming up here next week on the 5th. Yeah, that's always fun to see what happens. I mean, the cap is going up in the NFL in terms of the salary cap significantly, more than people even expected. It's somewhat of a rebound from the COVID-era.

reductions due to the fact that fans weren't attending games and they had to cut things back at that time. But it does mean that, you know, every year we talk about cap space, but the cap changes. And teams have the ability to kick the can down the road to become more flexible with restructures. And it allows teams that seem like they weren't going to be in contention for certain players to be in contention or to extend players that we didn't see them keeping. And at least right now, T. Higgins, Michael Pittman, two of the... What would have been the biggest fish in the wide receiver pool, they don't seem like they're going anywhere. Nope. So that is a, that's a pretty big deal. Yeah, which would make Mike Evans the most? Mike Alvin's, Calvin Ridley. Elvins? I heard Alvin. Yeah, I would put an L in somewhere. Yeah. Not sure where, but I was thinking Calvin Ridley. So it kind of merged. So Higgins, Pittman.

Were you surprised? I mean, for me, the Higgins, it's going to be what, $21 million for a year? I don't recall the number. Kyle, can you confirm that number? I think it's $21 million. He says it's correct. You've got a microphone, right, Kyle? Yeah, but it is correct. 21 million. Oh, gross. Yeah, don't talk. Oh, yeah, don't talk, Kyle. It's, I don't think it's all that's surprising. That's a lot of money. They have money. So they can, I'm saying they have some cap space and maybe you don't want to, this is the perfect thing for the Bengals. If you don't lock yourself in long term with T. Higgins, but give this group a, like last year, last year got deleted with just unfortunate injuries. They felt like they had a chance to make a Super Bowl run with those, with the wide receivers. So what will be very interesting then to watch for the Bengals is do we get a day two?

draft capital of a wide receiver because that would be the action that says that T. Higgins is going to get his money. He'll play one year and then he'll be somewhere else. Tyler Boyd is a free agent not expected back with the team. Which just quick dynasty. Check your waiver wire. See if Charlie Jones is on the waiver wire. He could. Not that Tyler Boyd was super valuable when the big two were on the field. But he's just a name that could be out there on your waiver wire as well. Yeah. I'm just going to peel it. Just peel back the curtain. There is another receiver beyond Charlie Jones that I think. I've got them on my dynasty roster stashed. Is it Yoshi Voss? Andre Yoshi Voss. I think so. But when you.

But none of us wanted to be the first to try it. Yeah. Hey, I brought up Charlie Jones. Yeah, thanks, Mike. A real hero. Do we have a, do we have a pronunciation guy on Charlie Jones? Yeah, I-O-S-I-V-A-S. Which she says obviously Yoshivas. Yeah. Either way, both of those guys see if. Also known as Yoshi from now on. Okay. Oh, much easier. Yeah. What else? DeMarcus Robinson coming back to the Rams. He really made a lot of plays late in the season for them. One year deal for about a quarter of that T. Higgins money. I've seen him as a pretty good draft deal right now in basketball. I could see that for sure. I mean, the odds of Cooper Cup getting hurt at some point during the season seemed to be very high anyways. Yeah, fair. So, yeah. And we got some news that Tyler Higby. It looks to.

Looks like he'll start the season on Pup. I mean, he got hurt so late. Was it the playoff game? I think it was. It was that late? I'm pretty sure it was the playoff game. But, you know, you're talking middle of next season. I don't know if that makes what the Davis Allen chatter. Interesting. Yeah, Davis Allen is another great name to look on your dynasty. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're upset because I picked them up in our main dynasty league. I know he was rostered in that league. I don't know when he became unroastered, but you put him back on your team and then I just. And then you were sad to see that. But yeah, Davis Allen is a worthy dynasty pick up at tight end. This is the season of go find contract situations, especially at the tight end position, because starters for, I'm not saying elite players, but tight ends who.

We'll get a starting job, and then in a pinch you can put them in. This is the time that they're just available in the way. Last year at this time or a little bit earlier than this, it was Ferguson. Yep. You know, we were telling people, go pick up Ferguson of the Cowboys because Schultz is moving on and he could step in. And then he was a very, very relevant fantasy option this last year. All right. Any other news, Brooksie? Do you have anything for us? There's two. pieces of little news. It has been reported that Marvin Harrison Jr. and Malik neighbors will not be doing all the fun stuff at the combine. They'll be there and do like interviews. And I don't blame them, but I'm mad at them. Yeah, you'd like to see the numbers, but like he can gain nothing from it. Yeah. If I were him, no chance I test or catch or anything, but I'm still mad that you're not because I want to see it. Yeah, I mean the, um,

Kyle is saying we got news that Roma Dunzee will run. Okay. So that'd be fine. At least we get one of them. Yeah. I mean he, uh, does that make him feel like a loser? No, it's like, oh, your agent's like I feel like it's the opposite. You got a, you got to, you got a test. Yeah, with neighbors and Harrison not there. Like he's kind of the star, he's, he's the, he's the BMOC. Okay. You know what that means, right? Big man on campus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Top 10 pick, maybe. We've been going through the wide receivers like crazy, but it's like you could see 10 to 12 really good names off the board by the end of the second. But what's crazy is you could see 10 wide receivers off the board before you see a running back off the board. Yeah, it really is true. It's a deep class. It's really ironic because right now you've got four guys that are clearly on most people's big boards at the top, the consensus four. And after that, when it goes to from five to like,

12. Any one of those players could be the next one drafted. And I don't remember it being that wide a range. Our dynasty show, Mike, just had a great episode this last week going through the incoming rookies. And then tomorrow our dynasty show will go through the second half of those rookie wide receiver prospects. What's crazy in the way it's setting up right now is you have maybe 10, 11, 12 wide receivers that could go off the board before a running back. The running back class seems very inferior to previous years. The top running back off the board on a lot of people's list is Jonathan Brooks, who is coming off of an ACL injury. And teams that might be looking at the classic, hey, I'm just going to draft the running back and make them my starter, now have Henry Jacobs, Saquan, Echler, Pollard on the free agent pool to decide which of those options you want to use.

have the confidence in a Braylon Allen or a Jonathan Brooks or whomever, Trey Benson, you guys love. Blake Corum. Blake quorum, yeah. Or do you just like rent a guy for a year? Because I could see out of those five free agent running backs, you see in multi-year deals out of these guys? Yeah, Sequin and Josh Jacobs, I think, will get multi-year deals. Derek Henry will probably get a one year. I think Pollard could get a one year as well. I agree. Like a re-prove it or something. It might be structured as like a two-year, but where they can cut them after one. Because you could go pay Pollard for a year and then come back to next year's draft. That might be stronger at running back. I don't know. All right. That'll do it for news and notes. We're going to jump right into the coaching changes. Coaching Carousel. This year we have eight new head coaches.

15 new offensive coordinators. Last off season was just five head coaching changes. So it's up. Last year's five changes. I mean, it's it's you're not wrong to say last year was only five. But imagine a world where there are 32 jobs. Right. And five became available. There's only 32 in the world. And five opened up. Imagine my luck that I can try and get a job as a coach. This is, you better love football because this is not, this cannot be good for your health. Give me a reaction to, I'm going to read the coaching changes from last year, just react to them for me briefly. Sound, a word, whatever you want to do. Okay, all right. Let's start with the Panthers Frank Reich. Goodbye. Yeah, I mean, he's already gone. Yeah. The Bronco, Sean Payton. Okay. Okay. I think it's okay. Yeah. The Cardinals Jonathan Gannett. TBD.

They tore it down to the nubs. You can't tell. It's just like a lost year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not an e-val year. No eval. You're like, boom. That's fine. Oh, yeah. D'emico Ryan's. Sensational. Yeah. And then Shane Steichen. I think that was a great hire. I like it a lot so far. What's interesting is before we jump into the new hires, this is worth mentioning because the list is kind of insane. But when you're not hiring. an offensive-minded head coach. And you look back historically all the way back to 2018, which I don't know how many coaches this is, it looks like about 20. If you're not hiring an offensive-minded head coach, it has not been good. No. And you're going back to like Patricia and Wilkes and Fangio and Flores and Matt Rule and... Yeah, sorry, Matt Jow Rule, Joe Judge and Ron Rivera and Brandon Staley and Lovie Smith and...

I mean, I almost forgot Levy Smith was the coach for a year. I guess that was, was it the whole year or was he interim? He didn't stick around. I think if you are a defensive head coach, you really need someone like C.J. Strout. You know, then it's easier. Because DiMico Rines is the one name. Yeah, he's doing, he's doing great. Great head coaching that quarterback. So just to throw it out there, the two head coaching hires this past year that we're going to talk about today, Gerard Mayo, Mike McDonnell. Those are the two defensive-minded head coaches with a shot. Yep. And part of it, I mean, just me trying to figure out what's going on because offensive, like if you're not the offense, your OC position, it turns over. Because if you're a good team and your offense was capable, your OC's getting a head coaching job. Bobby Slowick, the.

Except for this year that would they turn them down. The offensive coordinator for the Texans. Next year will probably be a head coach. That's my guess. He could have taken a job this year. And so Ben Johnson could have taken a job. Yeah. And they said no, they wanted to wait for better opportunities. But your point, Mike, is then all of a sudden this defensive head coach now has to go out and find, they've got to replace and find a way to make the offense work. They have to hit again. And it doesn't quite happen the same with defensive coordinators constantly getting hired away.

All right, let's begin with the Atlanta Falcons, new head coach, new offensive coordinator. I think they maybe surprised some of the public with their hire of Rahim Morris only because Bill Belichick's name had been circling in Atlanta, but they certainly didn't surprise anybody that has been around the NFL. Rahim Morris is one of the more respected names in football. And he's been a head coach before. and is going to be the head coach taking over for Arthur Smith. Immediately hires Zach Robinson at offensive coordinator. Reactions to this, obviously we had a lot of narrative discussion on Arthur Smith and the impact to Pitts and Bijon and London and the entire offense. I would react positively of like the hiring of Raheem Morris was fantasy-wise going, okay, here we go. But.

They went into the department store. They got that Cologne Day McVay, Zach Robinson, who was an L.A. Ram's assistant for the past four years or so, a passing game coordinator for them as well. So you have to make the presumption that they're going to bring that offensive philosophy over. And when you have the right players in that offensive philosophy, I think good things happen. So I will be excited to see. this team get away from what the 30 first and passing percentage fourth in rushing like balance that out which led to 25th and points per game by the way yeah it was well yeah because despite the fourth highest rushing rate they ranked 28th an expected points per rush attempt so when you're really bad at that you know you just want to keep doing it um

You have to establish it. Jack Robinson coming in, I think is going to be hopefully long-term good for fantasy. This was a PFF senior analyst a handful of years ago. So he is not one of these anti-metric type of guys go with the gut. And he's really focused on quarterbacks. I love the gut, man. Watched his. press conferences and read what he's written on quarterbacks. And I think that is their focus right now. Their focus is find their quarterback. So they're sitting at what, like pick eight, I think? Yeah, eight overall. They pick. Falcons are locked at eight. So I feel like, I mean, I placed the wager today that they're taking a specific quarterback.

at eight, but I think they're keeping it a secret. I think they'll take JJ McCarthy, but it's so early. I'm not telling my point. But it's very specific. I'm just saying, you can't bet it. I did. Well, I didn't want to make people have to, you know, follow suit. Gotcha. We want. I think they are certainly focused on the quarterback. I think that's a good point to bring up, though, because, you know, there's excitement in the fact that Arthur Smith is out the door. But there's still a lot of question marks with regards to who's behind center? You know, a lot of the efficiency, it was that way, not because the running game just was unsuccessful, but they ran so much in some ways because they couldn't efficiently pass the ball. Like it's a bit of a chicken or egg scenario there. You know, the confidence level in Heineke to Ritter to Hineke to Ritter. I mean, it was obvious that there was no confidence, right?

I mean, Arthur Smith even got up in a press conference and you're my guy. And then, you know, five minutes later, he changes it because they didn't feel confident throwing the football down the field. We got nothing out of pits. London was inconsistent. And then Bejohn, we know how talented he is in the passing game. It's going to come down to the quarterback more than it will, Arthur Smith just leaving town, in my opinion, for the passing game to succeed. I agree completely. And obviously, if they were to. make a push, go out and get Kirk Cousins. Who, baby, I would be so excited. If they draft a quarterback, even if you like the quarterback, they're drafting at eight, you're going to bet against the weapons for fantasy, the receiving weapons with a rookie quarterback. So, but it's some change in an offense that has a lot of exciting, enticing weapons. So we can hope for the best there and see what that.

offseason quarterback ends up being. We'll take a quick break and come back and talk about our next team. Well, 30 second in points per game. 32nd in total yards. 30 second in passing yards. That was where Carolina ranked last year. And, well, since 2000, Carolina's 4.7 yards per pass attempt ranked 763 out of 766. So what you witnessed as you peeled your eyes open and forced yourself to watch was an all-time terrible offense. Not the worst. No, there were three worst teams in the last 23 years. And only 762 better teams. But Carolina, new head coach, new offensive coordinator, Dave Canales comes over from Tampa, from Seattle.

The TLDR, the headline on Dave Canales is that he turned two quarterbacks that had very low expectations for their futures in Gino Smith and Baker Mayfield into like playoff caliber quarterbacks. And so in terms of a strategic hire, you just invested your entire future on Bryce Young. We got to like this hire of Dave Canales. Yeah, I don't blame them for taking the shot at this. I mean, if you say, oh, two years ago he was with Gino, people didn't expect much. He looked like a wasted career. And then he had a fantastic season. And then last year, once Baker seemed like he was done and he was a backup to Kyle Trask, he goes in and resurrects him. And we've got this, all this investment in Bryce Young. We need someone that could come in and hopefully get the most out. I don't mind taking the shot. I do think that it is a much lower.

odds of it working, like we just talked about, 763rd of 766. It wasn't like, hey, it wasn't that good. You know, we saw Baker before Dave Canales be great. He had one of the best rookie quarterback seasons ever when he was a brown. And obviously it got bad, but we have not seen Bryce Young do anything good or show flashes yet of brilliance in the NFL. So I believe this is a tall task and more than likely. It's going to be one of those situations where two years from now we're going to be talking about who the Carolina Panthers are hiring as their head coach. Because you don't believe in Bryce Young. Correct. So that's an important thing to bring up here and now because there will be additions to this Carolina Panthers offense. And they're all going to be dependent on Bryce Young's success. So let me just ask the question to quantify it momentarily here. What is the percentage chance that you think Dave Canales?

turns Bryce Young into a, I guess I'll say franchise quarterback for the team. Somebody that's going to be their quarterback for the next five years. What is your percentage chance? 11%. Okay. I will go, I'll go 35%. That's pretty high. I'd be about 20, 25. So, I mean, that's going to say a lot because if they have to reset both the head coach and the quarterback in two years, I mean, this franchise is what, David Tepper? He's not going to be happy. No. And he will... He will make drinks all over the place. He will make moves immediately. The big glaring difference here for Dave's team compared to the other ones. The CLC Hawks had two Pro Bowl caliber wide receivers. The Buccaneers. Maybe if we... I don't know if we call God on that. But you have Mike. You have Mike Evans who, despite all the jokes on this show, Mike Evans will go into the Hall of Fame. Yes. It's so...

Yeah, and you got Adam Thielen and Jason will be picketing though, right? You know what we said? Well, there's the first ballot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want. Mike Evans is a Hall of Famer. You'll pick at the first ballot. He's just not going to get in the first ballot. So you have, you have Thielen and then. Yeah. And you have no first round pick. So they're going to have to be very creative if they're, or. Find a, find a puka, find a diamond in the rough if they're able to really fix this thing. Yeah, I mean, if you can find a puka, that'd be... Yeah, look. They're not just everywhere. No, no. No, he's got to dig. Brad Idzik is the new offensive coordinator. Okay, Brad. Good luck, buddy. Go get him. This is... This is the big one. Yes. In my opinion. Brad?