Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - Willie Snead, NFC South, Foster News

I mean, I just think he's been working on speed a lot more, and he wants to be more of that elusive back and, you know, that can catch the ball so that he can do some stuff, you know, after the catch. But I never limited Mark. You know, he was labeled as a big bruiser, but I think he's trained to be more of an agile back and be able to be more versatile. Oh, that's, it was spectacular. So is there anyone, is there anyone on the Saints that?

Like I talked about, the public, we didn't see that coming from Ingram. Is there somebody on your offense that we just, we don't see it coming, but you know about it and you're thinking, you know, look out for this guy? I think CJ Spill is really going to make a bounce back. He's been training really hard. He was out there in Cali with us, and he's been getting more healthy each and every time I see him. So, you know, I've been working out with him. I've been talking with him. So, you know, I'm excited to see what CJ does and, you know, see what he can do this year.

Oh, that's extremely interesting. So you had mentioned the degree. You finished up the college from Ball State. Congratulations again. Have you given, I don't know, it's a long ways away. You're focused on the football. But what is the future? What does your future look like using that degree? Do you have any kind of like grand scheme plans? You know, I might want to be, you know, a coach someday. You know, I really want to be involved with, you know, developing kids and, you know, just being the

coach and developing myself. You know, I want to spend to all my family. And, you know, there's no plan right now. I think I just want to, you know, keep growing as a person. But I know the ultimate goal is, you know, to have a beautiful family and just, you know, try to raise my kids to be the best that they can be. And those are great goals, my friend. We're all dads over here. So we, those are spectacular things to think about. Where can our listeners find you on Twitter?

My Twitter account is Willie underscore Sneed 4G. What's the 4G for? It's like, you know, it's always fast, you know. So, you know, trying to get that speed up, you know what I'm talking about. Oh, I love it. Hey, Willie Sneed, thank you so much for joining us, my friend.

Thanks for having me on, guys. I really appreciate it. All right, a big shout out, Willie Sneed. That was a tremendous moment to get him on the show. If you followed us last year, you knew that we loved him. I personally had the need for Sneed all year. I like any guy who has to fight and tooth and claw to put himself in the position to succeed. And he had to do that. I mean, coming out of college, putting himself in the position to not only get the call-up, so to speak.

but also earned the trust of Drew Breeze over the course of this season. You know, there's still risk with those type of players. Sure. You see them burn bright. But, I mean, you had guys like Victor Cruz who did the same thing, undrafted. Yeah, scouts miss from time to time. They also miss on the guys at the time. Ari and Foster. Sure. Kumar Aiken. Cricket. So let's start at the top. Let's start at Drew Breeze. I think Drew Breeze is our consensus.

fantasy football quarterback man crush this year if there was a consensus my guy and we haven't done our my guy episode yet i think he would be one of our consensus my guys yeah all three of us are are believing in basically the saints offense this year last year coming into the year right they lost jimmy graham colston was a year older breeze was a year older you know things were going bad well now

Colston has been replaced by Michael Thomas, who, you know, Willie Sneed is saying he's looking good. You've also got Brandon Coleman, who Willie Sneed says is looking good. So those two guys are thrust into that role. You got Kobe Fleener coming to the Saints, which is hopefully going to make up for, you know, what Ben Watson was able to do. He's younger, he's faster. He's...

I think just as good a pass catcher as Ben Watson. So the offense itself should be able to really chug. And if you look at last year, the Saints' offense the second half of the year was pretty darn good. Yeah. The Saints' offense, the first half of the year, especially passing the ball, was not. So they were trying to figure out who are we with the loss of Jimmy Graham? And they figured it out, and they brought in pieces this year.

that match what we saw the second half of last year. So that's why we liked Drew Breed. They were trying to figure it out. Drew Brees also was dealing with that shoulder injury. And these two guys... All the way to the first in the league in total passing. So these two guys get brought up a lot of, for me on Twitter, you know, Ben Rothlisberger versus Drew Breeze. And right now in current fantasy football calculator, average draft position, Ben Rathlisberger is being a... He's taken the head.

of Drew Breeze. And we bring this number up all the time. Big Ben has thrown 32, over 30 touchdowns twice in his career, and that's the number was 32. How many times has Drew Breez been 32 or more? Oh, just every year the last eight years. Right. That's reach it. Well, that's just ridiculous. He's been over 4,000 and 32 plus touchdowns, including several years of over 5,000 yards. If Drew Breeze had been healthy all year, he would have been over 5,000.

again this year, and yet he still slips past guys like Ben Rothersberger. People think Drew Breeze is too old. That's, yeah, that's, I'm just saying. That's the perspective. Sean Payton said it best a couple weeks ago when he said, you know, when he was going back and watching, he didn't see one single snap on the season where he felt like Drew Breeze had actually lost anything, lost a step at all. Is Brandon Cook's an elite fantasy wide receiver?

Oh, that's, I think, to me, this is easy question. I think Cooks and then the running back situation that Sneed brought up, I think those are the biggest questions to me for the Saints. And Brandon Cooks, I don't know if Brandon Cooks, the player is an elite wide receiver. Maybe he can get there. But 5,000 yards and over 30 touchdowns has to go somewhere. All right. Last Saints question. Is there a sleeper on this team?

Apparently it's C.J. Spiller. According to Willie Sneed. Because Willie Sneed, look, Mark Ingram, why he exploded, why I love him this year is because I was buying in to Mark Ingram being the pass catcher. Personally, I still do. However, if you see a healthy dynamic C.J. Spiller in the preseason, that's going to have an earthquake shake-up effect of average draft position. Because if Mark Ingram is not getting 50 receptions,

then he's not a top five running back. All right, let's talk about the Atlanta Falcons, the offense that, you know, loses Roddy White and whatever remained of him last year. Did they lose him this year or did they lose him last year? Yeah, the fantasy headliners, obviously Julio Jones, 135 receptions last year, didn't get into the end zone as much as he can and should, yet still dominated the fantasy landscape.

He's joined by Mohamed Sunu this season, and one of my kind of deeper sleepers is Justin Hardy. I think Hardy coming into year number two in that offense, Sunu is just a guy to me. It doesn't mean he won't be productive. I just don't think Sunu is exceptional, and I think that the ball is going to get spread around there.

And I don't really believe that the tight-in position is going to see high volume in Atlanta. So I think you should pay attention to Justin Hardy. I think he's going to be flex-worthy on certain weeks. So who do you want to talk about here? This is an offense that kind of was up and down last season. I think we've brought to light the fact that Ryan wasn't really that bad. Yeah, I would say Matt Ryan and Devante Freeman are the two places where I would like to focus. So I'll start I'll start with Devante Freeman.

My stance on Devante Freeman has been well known that he is not necessarily my favorite player. But look, and what do I see moving forward into next year? There's a lot of talk of Tevin Coleman getting a bunch more work. And I think that's going to be true. I still think that Freeman is the running back to own in Atlanta. But do not forget, Tevin Coleman.

outplayed Freeman and opened the season as the starter. I think he had 20 carries or so in the first or second game. The rib injury plus Devante Freeman explosion led to Freeman being the starter. Now after that three or four games stretch for Freeman where he was a monster, he was just, he was bat as far as running the ball. It was a dynamic pass catcher, but as a between the tackles runner, Freeman was not getting it done. That's why I think that where Coleman will be brought in.

I tend to not overreact to Freeman's second half as much as I think, well, I don't want to say that you're overreacting. I tend not to react as heavily as you do with how we finish the season. I think, you know, you have a natural regression. Some of those numbers, we all said it at week 10. They're unsustainable. Nobody's ever done this in the history of the league. But now you have a guy who can do it sometimes. What I mean is not there aren't very many players in fantasy that can dominate to the level that Devante Freeman did.

the potential to do it, right? You're not going to have that from Jonathan Stewart, ever. You're not going to have a week where he catches that many passes, puts that many touchdowns together in a string. And so the potential for him to do that, I think Matt Ryan leaned on him a lot in the passing game. You didn't have Roddy White. You didn't have success at the two position. They leaned on Freeman. I think they can lean on Freeman. I think Kevin Coleman will get work. I still like Devante Freeman. I just don't like him for the...

And it's all about the current draft position right now in, I'm looking at standard at least. So in standard leagues, Devante Freeman is going right in the middle of the second. Guys going behind him, Eddie Lacey, Doug Martin, Mark Ingram, Thomas Rawls, and LaShawn McCoy. That'd be really hard for me to take Freeman over really any of those guys. I think I would take him ahead of Doug Martin.

And maybe Rawls will see how that shakes out. But, you know, Lacey, Ingram, and McCoy, I'm taking those guys instead of Freeman. I don't know about you guys. Right now, he's our consensus 11. Jason has him to the lowest at number 12 overall. Mike has him at 11. I have him in 8, which kind of backs up, I guess, my thoughts on him there. Did you have any thoughts he wanted to add about Freeman, Jason? About Freeman? You know, the reality is... Morgan Freeman, though. Oh, in a world.

What? That's not Morgan Freeman? That was terrible. That wasn't Morgan Freeman. That was the movie announcer. I'll remember Andy Duframi. There you go. All right. So you're the Morgan Freeman. Oh, Andy. Andy Dufrane. Devanta Freeman. In a world. Where Jason can't do a reference. It's great to see. Personally. With DeVanta Freeman, I just see a lot of risk.

You named guys like Eddie Lacey. You could say, I mean, it's weird, right? Because DeVantza Freeman finishes the number one running back. When's the last time that a number one finisher at running back the following year was like, you know, middle second round pick? That's crazy. Never, because never before has there been a Mike Wright to impact the draft position of a player. Yeah. So severely. Yeah. You're welcome. But there is, there is risk there.

I think where I have him as 12, he's still an RB1. I expect him to finish there. When I was looking and really diving into like the Atlanta writers, they believe in him. I don't think there's any reason to not believe in him. He was good for your team. But who I want to talk about for the Falcons is Matt Ryan personally. Well, before you do that, I want to make sure, Mike, will you do me a favor? Will you make a promise to the listeners that if Devante Freeman ends up the number one running back for a second consecutive year, you will wear his jersey.

for the entire year on the show? Not an entire year, but I'll, I'll sport it. A month, a month of Devanta Freeman jersey. I'll give you a month. All right. I'll give you a month. I don't think Mike's very afraid of that, though. Apparently he was. He hesitated a little bit. Well, because a year is, that's just ludicrous. He's got a style and a fashion to uphold. Yeah, it's called being wrong about Devonta Freeman. You just have to get like 20 different pristine auctions signed jerseys of Devonza Freeman wear different ones every day.

All right, talk about Matt Ryan. Talk about Alex Matt coming in to protect him. What do you think about Matt Ryan? Is he... Matt Ryan is very, very, very undervalued right now. One of the things that we see in the NFL over the last decade is offensive coordinators come in and a lot of times the offense takes a step back in year one.

And then in year two, the quarterback and the wide receivers, especially when it's, you know, really a better one. Look at McAdoo, right? When McAdoo went to New York. Oh, man, it was terrible. Eli's throwing no touchdowns, tons of interceptions. But as soon as it started clicking for them, you've seen that with a lot of different offensive coordinators. Last year, we were so high on Kyle Shanahan talking about how he's going to really help Julio, which he did, and help the passing game, the whole offense.