Fantasy Football 2017 - Starts of the Week, Week 9 Matchups, Waterbets

You're picky about your fantasy draft. You got rankings, sleepers, mock drafts, and too many tabs open. You know what else you should be picky about? Buffalo sauce. Introduce a primal kitchen, the official buffalo sauce of the NFL. Primal Kitchen Buffalo sauce. It's made how it should be with real ingredients like avocado oil and big time flavor. Build your game day spread like your championship roster and include a sauce worth drafting.

Find Primal Kitchen Buffalo sauce at grocery stores nationwide or on primalcitchen.com. Ready to make a play for your future? Southern New Hampshire University has over 200 online degree programs and...

No set class times means you never have to miss a game. Plus low online tuition rates means you can still dominate a few leagues on the side. No wonder more than 200,000 people have made Southern New Hampshire University their first pick. Visit snhu.edu slash footballers to get started. That's snhu.edu.edu slash footballers.

Today's episode is brought to you by our good friends at fantasychamps.com. If you need a fantasy football championship trophy, a championship ring, or anything else to celebrate your fantasy football season, you've got to go to fantasychamps.com. Now, when you go over there and you buy a trophy or you buy a ring, don't forget to use the promo code ballers. That's fantasychamps.com. To the fantasy footballers podcast. Coming to you from the Playdraft Studios.

With your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Uh, welcome to the podcast. That's a lot up and down. Welcome to the show. I'm, I'm almost bearded again. I think by Monday I can trim the neck gristle. Yeah, right now you're just, you just look a little dirty. Yeah.

Well, it's a process. You have to grow it everywhere until you can trim it, and then it looks like a beard again. I'm trying my hardest to grow up a little bit. Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers podcast. I am Andy Holloway, joined by Jason Moore and Mike the Fantasy Hitman Wright. We have a great show for you today. It is Thursday, November 2nd, and we have all of the week nine matchups on the show today. Well, half of them, actually. We have the other half tomorrow. We also have our starts of the week.

Jason's... Darts of the wig. Boom, boom kicker. Yeah, that worked out last week. Thanks. A butt kicker. Yeah. The butt was boomed. And we have a quick question on the show. A great one. I think it was formulated in the mind of the great Judge Giamati. Is this a Giamati original? It's off of Twitter. Oh. It's from Mike. Work smarter, not harder. Ah, from Mike on Twitter. It was between you and him. I didn't know who did it.

It was Mike, though. So today's a great show. If you want to follow us, you can do so on YouTube. YouTube.com slash fantasy footballers. The views were up there. Make sure you subscribe over there. Yeah, for the YouTube episode. The Halloween episode. The Halloween episode. Our first YouTube ever. I was still accurate in my statement, however stupid as it was. Yes, for the Halloween episode. And we're on Twitter at the FF Ballers.

There is a time change this weekend. Is that right? The clocks, they do something? Is that for everyone or just for Arizona? No, that's, no, everyone. It's everyone. I don't know how time works. It's everyone but Arizona. You've been here your whole life. I still have. Hold on, hold on. Jason, have you ever touched your clock at all to change the time? Yes. Oftentimes I look and I say, oh, this clock is wrong. Yeah, like the power goes out. Thank you, Mike. Have you ever rolled your clock forward or back an hour in your 35 years in Arizona?

No. Not yet. So we're not doing anything. All right. We're the only ones that don't. But that means the football's a little later now. Well, you'll have to remind me again next year. I promise you that. I know. What was this morning? This morning we're trying to, Jason doesn't understand time zones. I mean, that's the gist of the story. I don't think anybody truly understands. The good news is for everyone else, the fantasy footballers podcast will be out an hour earlier. Yeah. That's true. I didn't even think about that. That's the crux of everything.

All right, quick question from Mike over on Twitter. Not me. Who is someone that is underachieved and is going to surprise us the rest of the season, maybe winning some people of Foot Clan title? That's a great question. Every year there are guys that, you know, you thought, oh, they're going to end up as a bust, and then lo and behold, they win your championship. I'm going to go with a guy who, look, he's not been a complete bust yet, but he's the 22nd range wide receiver disappointing.

Every owner that has him so far, that's Julio Jones. Julio Jones, I believe, has been terrific this year. He has just not had the touchdowns. I mean, he's got one touchdown right now, and we're over half the season in. And this is indicative of the entire Atlanta Falcons team. If you look at how they've been performing,

versus the points that they've been scoring, and more so in the passing game, because Devante Freeman's been very efficient. They've been running the ball in the red zone a lot. I expect that by the end of the season, you're going to be madly in love with Julio Jones, like you are every single year. If you can trade for him, if you can get him, if you have him, hold on to him. You're going to be pleasantly surprised. You also have the double New Orleans. I realize their past defense is better,

You hire scoring games, double New Orleans in the playoffs, and in between that is Tampa Bay, who's been the worst team against wide receivers. Julio, all the way. I'm going with DeMarco Murray. He was my by-low candidate about a month ago. He had his season high in carries the last week he played, despite the fact he had been a little banged up. He's got the buy week. Comes out against Baltimore and Cincinnati at home. Still has Indianapolis, Arizona, San Francisco on the playoff schedule. I'm very.

I'm very optimistic about DeMarco Murray. I know people look at him and they say he's a bust. He's still a top 24 running back so far this season. And I put my money where my mouth is. He's my dynasty running back. He's my League of Record running back. Went out and acquired him before our trade deadline. So I think DeMarco Murray is going to win some people their leagues. I think if you had DeMarcom Murray, you might have made some adjustments. And now all of a sudden he's been filling that flex roll. But I think I'll perform up to that RB2, RB1 role. So that's my pick.

The name I'm going to throw out is the recently traded. Jay Ajai. Very interesting. And I know it's been very disappointing for Jay Ajai down there in Miami. But here's the thing. He grades out as the sixth best running back over at pro football focus, where they're looking at how was the running back actually performing? Fantasy points have not been there for Jay Jai. The offensive line is a mess. He's getting hit.

Nearly every single rushing attempt behind the line. Meanwhile, Laguerre Blunt is down here at 29, and he was racking up the fantasy points for the Philadelphia Eagles because they are a much better team. They're a much better offense. They score more points. There will be more fantasy points, and J. Jai will, in my opinion, he will take over the main role for the Philadelphia Eagles, at least the two down back, the goal line back. That might take a few weeks here.

I think that that will be J.Jaii. Let's say you were one of the players that went out and spent money on Kenyon Drake or Damian Williams. Based on what you just said and how good J. Ajai has been metrics or, you know, through the lens of pro football focus versus his fantasy performance. Right. Do you go and trade a player like Drake or Williams on their...

apparently invisible potential. On the hope. If they're splitting a backfield, do you go trade them for like, would you trade Drake for Isaiah Crowell, who has an established role? It's coming off a better week versus, you know, if a Jai can do it by himself, why would these two players be able to do it? I completely agree. And I think that this could be the peak value for either Miami running back. Maybe not Damien Williams. People don't seem to.

to want him on the team with the news like, oh, well, Drake will be the guy. Most people are listening to Jason. Or they're watching the games and seeing that Damian Williams is just not a very good running back. I think the hope in King and Drake is the speed. Being able to run, rush to the outside and get the edge. That's never been Jayadjai's thing. And when you've got a bad office of line, you know, just getting to the outside, sealing one side, I think that's a little bit easier. So there is some hope there. But I do completely seed the point.

that, you know, Jay Ajay is a good running back and was failing with that offensive line. Kenyon Drake will have to do something special. And there is also the option here that Miami kind of figures their offensive line troubles out a little bit. I mean, we saw this last year where they were terrible in the beginning and they figured things out as the year went on. But Jason. Yes. Yes, voice of public appointments who has not gone through puberty or is in the middle of it.

But Jason, the dolphins don't have Kelvin Benjamin to trade away to make their offense. Oh, that's true. Yeah, I didn't think about that. Yeah, you didn't. News and notes from around the league. People on Twitter were wondering why we did not speak of the great fumbling of the A.J. McCarran trade by the Cleveland Browns. Well, honestly, because there's all sorts of conflicting stories that I have heard from.

the Browns camp. So if you haven't heard. Was Kevin Costner involved at all in this process? That is one of the stories. Yes. Probably. So if you haven't heard before the trade deadline, the Browns, it looked like there was going to be a last second acquisition of AJ McCarran quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals backup quarterback. Trade agreed upon. Yes. Allegedly. Allegedly completely agreed upon by both teams and submitted to the league office. Well.

Allegedly. Yeah. And then I've heard both sides. I've heard, you know, the, the, the tail that they were so inept that they were celebrating and being happy about it and didn't get it into the league office in time. Also heard that perhaps they didn't really want to go through with that trade. Then there's also tales that the front office from the, from the Cleveland Browns, they leave at five o'clock no matter what. And this essentially.

massively botched the acquisition that could have been for Jimmy Garoppolo. And so then when they screwed up, that they kind of had this AJ McCarrant thing as the, well, that's,

Let's kind of wash our hands so we don't look as bad. Oh, that didn't go through. Yeah, the fantasy takeaways here. Who knows what's going on here? Because there was a botched situation where it was supposed to be reported to be a two and a three traded for A.J. McCarran, the backup quarterback of the Cincinnati Bengals, going to the Cleveland Browns. What that says is that if you're in a dynasty league and you've got Kaiser and you hope for the future, that's bad news. I mean, that says that maybe the Browns are not.

going to stick that way, you know, and really give the time and effort. If they're willing to trade multiple picks to go get a different quarterback, next year, if they've got a great pick, you don't think they're going to take it, you know, take another shot at a different quarterback if they don't believe it's Kaiser. Are there any other fantasy implications in that box? Dynasty-wise, if you have, if you've been holding on to A.J. McCarron, you dodged a bullet. That's fair.

Better a backup in Cincinnati than a starter in Cleveland? Yes. The way Andy Dalton's playing, he could end up being a starter in Cincinnati soon. Roger Goodell has reinstated Josh Gordon on a conditional basis. He can practice November 20th. He can play on November 27th. Look, it's November 2nd right now. So the real question to me is, okay, Josh Gordon in his quite rose-colored past on the fantasy football field.

That was December 21st, 2014. Correct. So in a redraft league, do you pick up Josh Gordon and hold him for a month? No. No. No way. Because what you're doing is you're taking up a roster spot with someone that even if you've got an IR, you can't put there. You're literally taking one of your bench spots up for a guy that you know won't play for a month at least because he can't. And then when he comes back, we'll play for the Browns.

and hopefully be good immediately. I mean, he'll have to be good week one because now at this point you're getting into December. You're coming up to the fantasy playoffs. And if you look at the last year that he played, he wasn't that good. I mean, I realized that in 2013, he was the number one wide receiver and he was doing that on a bad Brown's team. But to pick him up now, so.