Week 14 Matchups + It’s Playoff Time, Bette Midler - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/11

All right, the Jets at 0 and 12, miraculously 0.12. I mean, not because of last week. Yeah, no, I know what you meant. It's not like it's a miracle that they're 012 altogether. That's the Adam Gaze experience. Oh, and 12. The Seahawks are 8 and 4. Seahawks are 13.5 point favorites in this one. It's a 47 point over under. On the Seahawks side of the ball,

Obviously, this is a smash play matchup situation where the Jets have been awful. They're giving up tons of fantasy points across the board other than the running back position over the last six weeks. But that's just more product of you can beat them. You're not going to beat them at every spot, every single play. You can't have a runner break off a 20-yard run and have a 20-yard pass on one play. Yes, when you are dead last against quarterbacks and tight ends and the second.

to last against fantasy wide receivers in the last six weeks. It's not a shock that running backs aren't doing anything. They'd have to be giving up like 65 points a game in order to go all four. And they've got, they drew the line in the sand. They said, we'll be bad everywhere but one. But.

Oh, sorry, Jason. I mean, the reality is that this is a team that is giving up on the season. If you're a player for this team, you're playing for a future contract, you're playing for your next team and your next opportunity, but you know you're not playing for anything good, the playoffs. You're a laughing stock in the league. You're playing not to be embarrassed and be winless. You know, they competed a little bit last week, but that doesn't really affect how you start Seattle Seahawks players. That being said, Wilson has struggled, leads the league in turnovers over the last month. They lost the Giants last week.

You're playing Russ Carson, Metcalf, Lockett, and you're moving forward. And the defense. Most definitely the defense. I mean, we were talking earlier, you said Jameson Crowder with the calf problem. Denzel Mims has the family problem. This could be an offense that really. Yeah, but they have Chris Herndon.

All right, Frank Gore. Look, if... You can roll him back out there if he's in your... Yeah, the upside that existed last week, whereas, like, we just kept talking about Frank Gore. And unfortunately, he went out right away because of a concussion. The process clearly played out that that...

Frank Gore would have been an okay play at the worst. Yes. But it goes down. If you don't have Denzo Mims and you have a hobble, James and Crowder, you have to lower the expectations. And while the Seahawks aren't a great defense, you know, even against the run, they are slightly better than the Raiders of last week. Yeah. Yeah. The nice thing about the Jets that I've come to rely on with Frank Gore prognostication is that in the event that the Jets are miraculously down 30 points, they will just hand the ball to Frank Gore.

That's part of the offense. It's the comeback plan. Yeah. In his mind, it's zero, zero at all times. The Green Bay Packers at 9 and 3, taking on the Detroit Lions, who are 5 and 7, Packer 7 and a half point road favorites. Oh, look at that over and under. That's nice. That's delightful. It's been nice for the Lions in terms of Matthew Stafford and last week airing it out. It's not like they're going to be in a position to...

lean on the run game in this one against Aaron Rogers and the Packers. So it could be some opportunity here. Aaron Jones. Oh, yes. This is someone that I would want on my team. I would not want to be playing against Aaron Jones. The Detroit Lions have allowed 23 rushing touchdowns, or at least touchdowns, two running backs. 23. And this is not week 23 of the season. You might have thought, oh, is this week 23 yet?

No, they don't play 23 weeks. We're going into week 14. So they've given up more than one a week. That is. They've given up a lot more than one a week. Yeah. So like asking for a friend. I'm not excited to play against Jamal Williams. That's the question you're about to ask. I was. Jason, please give me hope that I, my desperation flex of Jamal Williams is not insanity. No, it's not insanity in this matchup. This is a game that.

You could end up with a blowout, similar to what you saw in week two of the season when these teams played each other. The matchup, you look at the last several weeks, the way they've been using Jamal Williams, much to the chagrin of everybody. He's getting a decent utilization. And the matchup says he could very easily end up with a touchdown or two. I hope he doesn't. Is it an A.J. Dillon drop?

Is he even activated? Yeah, he got reactivated this week. He's back from the COVID list. That was just me basically saying, hey, I hope Jamal Williams doesn't do what I think he'll do, which is be very involved against a really, really, really bad run defense. So we'll see. Maybe Aaron Rogers can just, you know, one play drives to Devante Adams and company. Alan Lazarda wide receiver flex this week? Yes. Okay.

You thought I was going to say wide receiver 2, and that's why you were shaking your head? Yes, I wouldn't go that far, but a wide receiver 3, you know, the almost hit the 70% snap percentage. We haven't seen the targets to a place where you would hope, but it's hard to get targets when Devante Adams is on the other side of the field. I know Jason mentioned a little bit of hesitation with Marvin Jones this week. I'm going to play Marvin Jones as a target play. The last four games, 10, 6, 12, 12.

Target-wise, last week, 12 targets, eight catches, 116 and 1. Alexander won't be on them on every play. I've seen Marvin Jones been moving around a little bit. Yeah, I'm in on Marvin. Not excited, but there's still going to be targets there. So I'd play him over any jet wide receiver, any fangle wide receiver, and probably any of those backup cowboy options. What about Marvin Jones or Juju?

I'll play Marvin Jones. Juju is the running back for the Steelers. Fair. Marvin Jones or Devante Parker. What do you think, Jay? Against Kansas City. I have a really hard time trusting Devante Parker now with Tua. So I think I lean Marvin Jones here, even with the Jair Alexander matchup. Tanyan and Hawkinson are must-plays. Probably stay away from Stafford. But if you're desperate, I think he will throw the ball quite a bit in this game, whether he wants to or not.

Yeah, the real question in this game to me is, what do you do with Swift? What do you do with Adrian Peterson? I play Swift. The Green Bay Packers on the course of the season, they've been terrible against running backs. The last five weeks, if you look at their fantasy points allowed above opponent's replacement, they've actually turned it around. So I don't, you know, looking a little deeper. You want to explain that stat? Because you've been throwing it out over the last couple weeks, and I don't think we've really broke it down. So I've, yeah, we've.

Behind the scenes kind of officially made the system to track fantasy points allowed above the opponent's average. And what that means is it's factoring in the schedule and who you played, right? Perfect example. Let's say you're looking at tight end rankings. Well, did your team happen to play against Darren Waller and Kittle when he was healthy and Travis Kelsey? And so, oh, you're so bad at tight ends. You give up a lot of points.

because you didn't face teams that just don't use tight ends. This is looking at who you played and what their normal averages. And how did you do? Did you do worse than what they usually get? Did you do better than what they usually get? And we're tracking those over the season and over the last five weeks. More nuanced than fantasy points against as a global number. Right. Yeah. And so since over the last five weeks, Green Bay has performed better than average.

against running backs. Did you guys realize that DeAndre Swift throughout the season has seen fewer than four targets once? That's interesting. That was how they were only using him to start the year. Yeah, it was. I didn't realize that it was, but it's so consistent. And now that the opportunities on the ground are going up, combined with four to five targets essentially every single week.

I don't have a hesitation to play Swift. If he's active. He's active. It's funny because all the rookie running backs right now. Jonathan Taylor, great matchup. Dobbins, Acres had 50 carries on the year before the last two weeks in which he has 56 in two weeks. And this is, usually this is how it happens for a player that's not drafted in the first round, a running back that's not drafted in the first round. So if you're new to fantasy, this is a blessing for,

It's a good reminder for all of us when we get the rookie fever will hit. It will start in May and it will reach an apex where we will all have fevered dreams of what rookies can do in about August. I would say the first week of September. Sure. So just a reminder for all of us, like that's why we, when we talked about our strategy of drafting rookie wide receivers.

We generally don't, and we try to trade for those guys or get them off the waiver wire about the halfway point in the season. Now, this year, that kind of. Still would have worked for you with Jefferson, Higgins, some of those guys halfway through? Yeah, they didn't. It was more like a third of the way through this year. That's what I say. It backfired a little bit this year, but generally speaking, rookies, it takes them time. Well, and there's still a number of them, rugs, Rager that didn't turn into.

Jefferson, right? That's a Jefferson season is more than outlier. It's almost unparalleled. That's a special season, yes. The 10 and 2, New Orleans Saints against the Philadelphia Eagles, 3, 8 and 1. This game will be very interesting and fun to watch. Saints are 7-point favorites. Just a 43 point over under, okay? So as exciting as it is to have rushing quarterback potential with Taysam Hill and Jalen Hertz.

bumps in the road for both of these quarterbacks potentially in this game. Yeah, I mean, you expect usually when a Russian quarterback comes in, you're going to have fewer passing yards, fewer opportunities for wide receivers and tight ends and all of that. I mean, that's what we've seen so far with Taysam Hill.

Now, on the other side with Jalen Hertz, there's a little bit of optimism of maybe those receiving options come to, you know, it's better for them because their offense is able to stay on the field like what we've seen with Chicago or, I don't know, you can just hit a guy that's open because Carson Wentz has been bad or he can scramble and roll out of the pocket and not take a sack. That's where I'm excited. It's more for the rollout. The offensive line for Philadelphia has not been doing Carson Wentz.

Very many favors. And Wentz, with all the injuries he has sustained, he is not the same mobile player where we saw Jalen Hertz do that immediately when he came in relief for Carson Wentz, rolling out, buying time, and actually, then your wide receivers have time to find some separation. So there's optimism. I'm not playing Jalen Hertz this week, but if you are in a locked quarterback situation heading in your playoffs,

Hertz is pretty close to a must pick up for me to see if he can perform at least adequately against the Saints, then Hertz will be in play next week. I think that over-under is indicative of what's going to happen in this game, which is slope pace of play. New Orleans has been slowing it down with Tassum Hill, run-centric, and it's going to be run-centric on the hurt side of the ball. We're going to talk about them at the end of the show with our prop segment. Sure. And... Oh, my...

The pressure rate that New Orleans is putting on opposing quarterbacks, they're going to try to mitigate Hertz's ability to make mistakes with read options, with runs. You talk about getting outside the pocket. I think that's going to come if this team is down and they have to try to recover in the second half. Now, there was a little note that it just kind of confirmed everything we were projecting of. The note was saying Miles Sanders is excited to run read options with Jalen Hertz.

The read option does work, especially if a team is kind of seeing it for the first time on the season. That is the only bit of optimism that you can grasp onto if you are backed into playing Miles Sanders. You can't grasp onto the fact that the Saints have been the number one rushing defense over the last six weeks. No. Nine points per game to all running backs and they have three that they use. So I wanted to look and see.

the aforementioned stat we just talked about, how are they doing above their opponent's average? At running back over the last five weeks, they have allowed nine fewer fantasy points per game than their average. That's number one in the league. Wait, wait, wait. Against wide receivers, nine fewer than their average. That's number one in the league. Wait, wait, wait, tight in. The number one in the, over the last five weeks, they are literally not allowing fantasy points to any position. This is one of those games where it's like, let's just