Ice & Fire Picks for 2020 + Absolutely No Guff - Fantasy Football Podcast

like drafting both of those guys for what they could become in the system. It's a veteran, it's a veteran team. Right. Right? So like, you know, Tom Brady likes experienced players around him. Tom Brady takes a couple of hits. Ronald Jones is going to be off the field. Having a player like Shady, that would be the, you know, Rob Gronkowski coming back. Exactly. That would be the concern for me. Yeah, the nice thing when I, when I plugged in LaShawn McCoy into this offense and took a look at where I think he fits.

The nice thing as far as him not affecting Ronald Jones that much is Daray Agoon Bawali. That's the player I think he's replacing because he's not good at all. And he was on the field over a quarter of the snaps every single game last. I mean, he was involved. He was their past catching specialist, if you will. And now you have someone in here that's very experienced, can do more in that role. So I think that it will be a three-man race.

And it was last year as well, but Daray is the one that will lose out the most. Yeah. And, you know, for many of these situations, it's a camp watch. I mean, just see who's taking reps once they're on the field and whether LaShaul McCoy stays around. Yep. Whether Kishon Vaughn gets opportunities or not. I mean, Ariens loves veterans. Yes. Kind of doesn't like rookies. So something to watch. Henry Rugg says he's fully recovered from the thigh injury, number one wide receiver off the board in the NFL draft.

Oakland Raider, Henry Ruggs. Las Vegas Raiders. Oh my gosh. Oh, preseason form, Andy. Wow. Goodness gracious. We don't take that guff around here, man. That was so, the amount of guff. I thought this show had zero percent guff. It's got like 20 percent now. Jarvis Landry on the active PUP list. Jason, you've talked quite a bit about whether or not, you know, Jarvis is going to be ready to go to start the season. So far?

Not ready to go. Yeah, I mean, his timeline says he should be okay by the, I mean, nobody expected him to be good now, but the expectation is that he will be good by week one. But that's usually when I'm, you know, over the last couple years, don't buy the injury dip. If someone is struggling to be there by week one, it's not this magical pill that's like the, you know, well, I wasn't okay, but there's a game now. You went from zero to a hundred overnight. I'm totally fine. Yeah, which I think is.

Good news for the O'Dell Beckham owners out there and the health and the hopeful bounce back season. I think O'Dell's going to bounce back this season. I would rather have Jarvis Landry on the field for O'Dell Beckham's bounce back opportunities, personally. Really? Yeah. Because of coverage? Yeah, because Baker Mayfield has shown that when he has to force the ball into a location, it has not produced good results.

historically. They had to do that a lot with Odell last year, and we can blame Odell's injury, but I don't blame Odell's injury for the balls flying eight, nine feet over his head, and they felt like they had to manufacture targets for him. So I guess I just wanted it to come naturally. But Evan Ingram avoided the PUP to start camp, which is impressive. That's something for him. That's good news. Yeah, it's great news. He's healthy now. I believe that is because there has not been...

Football being played, but as soon as football is played, we'll see. Most shows would not report this as news, but we're not most shows. Raiders have signed running back Jeremy Hill. So I'm looking at you, Mike. Look, adjust your rankings. Adjust your rankings appropriately. Josh Jacobs, look out. If you don't remember Jeremy Hill, I'm not surprised. But Jeremy Hill was once tattooed on Mike's back. Chest. Chest. Sorry.

But you got that removed. It turned out okay. Most of it. And then T.Y. Hilton has a hamstring injury, which is just, you know, coming off an injury plague season, you don't like to see it. No, it's bad momentum. And it was, you know, last year. They say it's minor, but. Yeah, but, you know, the soft tissue leg issues last year that hampered him. Now you've got it happening again heading into, you know, a preseasonless season. I don't like this.

at all. It definitely puts up a red flag for me when I'm staring at T.Y. Hilton and other players, he's been one of those 50-50 guys where I'm like, oh, I kind of like the value here, but there's other players right there I like. I'll probably, you know, if he doesn't drop an ADP, I would choose the other players. I'm willing to hold out judgment for a little while here until we see if he's on the field to begin camp, but no, it's not good. He's always got something going on. He's always just getting over something or about to start something new.

So it's concerning. Any other news you guys want to talk about? No? All right. Before we get into our main segment today, I do want to take a second and remind everybody about the Ultimate Draft Kit. It's available right now. You get access to the 100-plus video player profiles. We've got tons of new features this year. You can check them all out at Ultimate DraftKit.com. You get access to the app. So you can use it on your computer. You can use it on your phone. We've got updates all the time.

I mean, Jeremy Hill is really, really high in Mike's rankings, which you can see. RB number one. RB1. Ultimate draft kit.com for that. Very excited about, you know, just helping you prepare for your draft. Set that foundation for your year. And maybe you waited a little while because you didn't know if we'd have a season. And now you've got to get ready because your Zoom draft is coming up. That's what we're doing. We've got the Zoom draft. That's right. And you can get ready at Ultimate draft kit.com.

And make sure you check out fantasychamps.com. People ask, where do you go for your trophies, your rings? Because, look, it's all about celebrating when you are a champ. A champ needs to champ. Yeah. And the only place you should be doing that is fantasychamps.com rings, trophies, belts. Oh, my, a bunch of amazing things. I mean, our trophy shelves here are stocked with gear from fantasy champs. And if you use the code, ballers.

On checkout, you're going to save a little bit of money. Fantasychamps.com. Ice and fire. That's a part of the show where people hit the back 30 seconds button three or four times. Welcome in to Ice and Fire for 2020. We have each selected one ice, one fire pick for the upcoming season, one bust, one breakout. And who wants to kick it off? I guess we're starting with ice. Because the drop tells me we need to do that.

Well, the segment's called Ice and Fire. Yeah. I can start it off. All right. All right. Well, we'll start it up. We were just talking about Jarvis Landry. Let's talk about a teammate of his, a man that got the bag, Austin Hooper. Last year's tight end at number one through the first half of the season. And not just the tight end one. He was dominant. Travis Kelsey was the tight end number two through that first half of the season at 11.7 fantasy points a game.

Austin Hooper was up at 14.6. Yeah, we forget about how nice that run was. He was awesome. Came back. That was exactly when he was injured after week eight and then came back, struggled with a little bit of injury. But, you know, parlayed that into signing the richest tight-end contract at that point in the NFL. He was the highest paid tight-end. He's being drafted as a tight-in one right now in fantasy drafts.

And the foot clan, I'm telling you, stay away. It's fools gold. It's not ice bath for Austin Hooper. Ice bath for Austin Hooper. Here's why I am down on Austin Hooper. First of all, as a player, he is an above average tight end. He's all right. He's pretty good. The Browns think he's pretty good. They do. But I mean, this is a guy who's a third round NFL draft pick, a 59th percentile athlete, a guy who before this last.

season. His highest yardage total in his career was 660. His highest touchdown total, that's where Titans really make their hay, right? Fantasy. His highest touchdown total in a season was four before this last season. And that includes multiple 16 game seasons. So why was he so great to start last year? Well, it's simple fantasy football math. It's, it's opportunity.

He ran the most routes in the league at tight end, 36.7 routes per game. That was number one. So he was running, he was on the field looking for the ball more than Kittle, more than Kelsey, more than everyone. That's what number one means that he had the most. Sure. And if you look at, I don't know, say Kyle Rudolph, the tight end won for the head coach that is now the coach of the Browns. He only ran 22.4 routes per game.

Why did he only run 22.4? Well, because he wasn't the only guy running routes at tight-in. Irv Smith, their rookie last year, ran 19 routes per game. So these are guys that, you know, the tight-in position was important. That's why they went out and paid him. But their system runs multiple tight-ins, you know, at different times, which I think is a good strategy. But my point is, last year as a Falcon,

Austin Hooper was successful for fantasy because he was running routes nonstop. And not only was he running routes nonstop, but he was running routes nonstop for the team that threw the ball the most. The Falcons threw the ball 684 times. Last year the Browns only threw the ball 539 times. 145 fewer targets. And so if you give him the same percentage of routes run and he's the man. But you take away 145 targets from the team, he's not.

going to be that great. But of course, that was the Brown's new head coaching team coming in from the Minnesota Vikings, where they threw the ball 466 times. 218 fewer targets. This team is not going to throw the ball as much, and they are going to split the tight end workload with David and Joku, who requested a trade. And what did the Brown say? They said, no, we're really planning on using you. And he unrequested it this week.

Yeah, I mean. Did you see that? I did not see that. It's probably because he never happened. Yeah, he said he's super excited to be in Cleveland. I mean, I'm guessing it's because he's like, complete lot. You know, it's one of those things where it's like, oh, yeah, I'm going to be on the field running routes a lot on this scheme. So if you take Austin Hooper, who's just an average or above average talent, but he's not a, he's not a dominator. You don't need to poo with a player. Well, I just don't like it for fantasy right now. My point is he's not.

A super, you know. Athletically, David Injoku is far superior than Austin Hooper. Hooper is the more reliable. He's the Jason Witten in today's NFL. He's exceptionally reliable. He became a best friend of Matt Ryan in terms of just you can throw the ball to him 10 yards away and he's going to catch it 75 times a year. But he's not somebody that's going to go take fewer targets. You're making the argument. And then.

still offer you that high-end production because his yards per catch is low. I mean, compared to some of the bigger... Well, he's not one of those guys that breaks a tackle runs for 80 yards. Exactly. So I just don't see any upside with Austin Hooper. I can't fathom him paying off in fantasy and being someone that you really, really like week in and week out. Judge, you should grab some ADPs on these guys.

so that we can reference them because I'm curious where Austin Hooper is. He's one of the players that more frequently gets asked about in terms of us being down on him. And I believe he is in our UDK as a, you know, as a bust pick. And so I'm on board with this argument. I just don't think there's going to be the opportunity outside of Beckham and Landry being hurt and them having to build the passing offense around Austin Hooper of repeating what he did last year. Austin Hooper is currently the tight end 10?

on Yahoo, the Titan 11. So he's being drafted as a starter for fantasy. Right. All right, I'm going to hand the ball off to Mike. Well, speaking of handoffs, I want to bring up a running back that I have cooled on tremendously. I'm not drafting him anywhere. Look, I get it. The name power is mighty.

from Todd Gurley, the new starting running back for the Atlanta Falcons. I get it. I want Todd Gurley to be good. I want him to be great for fantasy. I'm not projecting that, though. Here's what has happened over the course of Todd Gurley's career. In 2016, the sophomore year, Gurley's coming off a great rookie season. The breakout is imminent. Everyone's taken Todd Gurley with the second over or first overall pick in fantasy drafts.

His offensive line that year ranked 29th, and Todd Gurley put up 885 rushing yards. It was an absolute catastrophe, a bust of a season. Now, the people who stuck with it, they choose to ride or die with Todd Gurley, Sean McVeigh came in.

He fixed that offensive lineup. They were ranked third. Their offensive line was ranked third in 2017. Todd Gurley responds with over 1,300 rushing yards. Follows it up the next year with 1,250 rushing yards because he has the number one offensive line in the league. Last year, the offensive line completely crumbles. What else crumbles? Todd Gurley's...