Fantasy Football 2017 - Week 15 Studs & Duds, Rising Stars, Christmas Wish List

We'll see. We'll find out. Other good performances this week, Big Ben, you know, he was okay. I was expecting more against New England. Well, if Jesse James comes down with that catch, then Big Ben had himself a great game. All right, let's look at the running backs. Todd Gurley. Hoo! Holy moly. He did this in about three quarters? Yeah. Really, in about two. He got one more touchdown in the third just for fun, 21 for 153 and 3, 3 for 28 in a touchdown.

So four total touchdowns. What the Rams are doing right now, I don't know if you saw this stat. They are the third highest point per game increase in NFL history from one year to the next. The two higher are teams that don't exist anymore that I've never heard of. They're like the, you know, Illinois bobcats and the Baton Rouge skateboards. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't think that's where your brain goes. I don't know. I'm sick. If Bad Rouge is known for anything. It's their skateboards. But Gurley next week against Tennessee, this offense is traveling. You talk about defense traveling. The dominating performance against Seattle was amazing. Kareem Hunt, welcome back. Well, here's what happened. Kareem Hunt, there was a lot of whispers.

No, I'm not doing it yet. I'm not doing it yet. I'm going to wait one more week. Corrine. Karim Hunt was hearing the whispers from the bushes. Coring. All right, Andy's finishing it. He's hearing that people are saying, Kreme Hunt, you're only a second round pick for fantasy football. He said, wait, what? I'm a top five pick. And so he's going out there and he's doing work. What was the question we got the other day, Fornette or Kareem next year? I think so. Something like that. Like who would you, if you had to keep one. Right.

Going into next year, where do you lean? I would lean for net. And I would lean Cream Hunt right now. There you go. I don't know. Opportunity and health. Leonard Fernett. Health for sure. Leonard Fernette is. I would say passing game involvement in health would be what it is for me. So, yeah, I lean cream hunt. That can change. That can change quickly. Mark Ingram and Alvin Kamara doing his thing.

Oh, there he goes. The Saints know how to run the ball. So both of those players absolutely dominated once again. Mark Ingram also little garbage man can because the Jets as they're trying to frantically hold on maybe scrape together something. They just let Mark Ingram through on a monster. Yeah, 50-yard touchdown run and he was only 12 for 74 on the game.

Yeah, a little padded, but his passing work was still. He already had a touchdown. Yes. Yeah, he had a great game. Melvin Gordon had a very good game, almost 100 yards receiving, had a touchdown. And, and Austin Eckler's season is over. Yes. We should have mentioned that. Broken hand, yeah. Melvin Gordon's going to do work. Latavius Murray and Jerrick McKinnon.

Both put up 18 fantasy points. They certainly did. So even if you picked wrong, you picked right. CJ Anderson. I believe that's mean there's no wrong answer. Yeah, that's what I should have gone with. And then Dionne Lewis. Is Dionne Lewis in a better position for success without Burkhead? Oh, absolutely. I think Dionne Lewis gets the biggest bump. Did you mention Kenyon Drake? Kay Drake? Yeah. I'm just saying because we need his name. He gets the, um. Oh, the garbage land game. Now he had a.

fine game and he got the late touchdown but then he just got he got the dinkin dump yes i mean throughout the rest of the game and that was my worry about damien williams because he is oftentimes they're passing down back so if if he were in on those two minute type of drills you're losing like you know four or five receptions there in that kind of uh utilization so uh heal up damian but you

Slowly. Okay, all right. Take, take your rest. All right. All right. Wide receivers, guys. Jacksonville Jaguars, this is where they dominate. Keel and Cole, seven for 186 and one on nine targets. Now, the nine targets is what you need to pay attention to. I pumped the brakes on Keel and Cole last week because three targets in the previous two weeks and.

happened to score. To be fair, Marquis Lee went out of this game rather quickly. Yes, but I still feel bad. Look, I paid the price. I put Devante Park here in over Keel and Cole in my Dynasty League. Luckily, Brooks didn't show up, so I was fine. But next week, Keel and Cole against San Francisco, I love him. I think he's going to be great. He's performing, and they're giving him a larger target share. They're giving him more work. He was already on the field 60 plus percent of the time, and now with Marquis Lee unlikely to play.

Keel and Cole is going up against you, Mike, and Dynasty. That's fair. I would do it, too. Sterling Shepard, big week. He was balling out. 11 for 139. Can you trust Shepard? I think you can. Yes, you can absolutely trust Shepard. The only problem with Shepard was his hamstring. And now it looks like he's clearly healthy. So I would trust him. It's a tough matchup. Even against Peterson. I was going to say it's a tough matchup next week against Arizona. I don't know that he'll be.

Peterson to the whole game, but I still think he is too involved. He is their clear number one receiver and they use him on such short routes sometimes that he'll be fine. Okay. Michael Thomas, nice game from three touchdowns, Michael Thomas. Yeah. Except two of them were called back. When you were, if you were playing against Michael Thomas as. Or if you were playing him, either way. A buddy of ours was here watching the games with us playing against Michael Thomas and just he was punched in the heart.

twice, and then they just got called back by an inch. Of course, then he capped it off with a real touchdown that you could not take away. We talked about the other... What about Jaden Mickens? Well, Jaden Mickens stepped into that Markey's League gap, I guess, and got on the field and scored two touchdowns. I don't think he's going to be fantasy relevant. You don't? I don't. You had a sub-part game from D.D. Westbrook, which was unexpected.

Who are you going to start him over? You're going to start them over Westbrook or Keel and Cole? No. I'm just saying I'm on a running team. In the championship. I'm not, Dayton Mickens is irrelevant to me. It was an outlier type of game? I mean, are you starting Tavares King? No. Two for 70 and two touchdowns? No. Also, was Tavaris King the one that looks like he's about like a modern day Gary Payton? Tavaris King was two for 70 with two touchdowns. Looked extremely sprightly for a 49 year old. I mean, he's got.

He's got the looks of an aged man. Yes. Not quite the Greg Oden levels, but it was a bit shocking. He took the helmet off and I was like, Bradshaw? Grandpa? Oh, no. Not Brishard, but Richard. Richard. Oh, Matthews. All right. He, I mean, the thing is, I never want to bank on a Tennessee wide receiver right now, but he is the one if you, if you have to, bad match up this next week against Los Angeles Rams.

Michael Crabtree, seven for 39 on seven, and only two. So seven for 39 on 17 targets. 39 yards on 17 targets is insanely poor. And if you watch the game, awful. It's Derek Carr's fault. Derek Carr sucks. He stinks right now. He's so bad. I mean, I don't know who was worse last night between Derek Carr and Dak Prescott, but both guys look like they do not belong.

on teams even sniffing the playoffs as a quarterback. And now you lost Donald Pinn. So nobody has a larger disparity of passerating in the NFL than Derek Carr with pressure versus a safe pocket. Right, a clean pocket. A clean pocket. Also, I'm going to throw it out there. I think the office of coordinator in Oakland doesn't know what he's doing. No. Because there is no.

rhythm to this offense whatsoever. They go five wide and every five wide set includes zero Michael Crabtree. They put out five wide receivers and they're having Derek Carr throw the ball within one second all the time. There's no downfield presence. They don't know what they're doing going from one to the other. It's just really strange. It feels rigid. It feels like we're doing this play in this set. We have no flexibility. There's no changing the play at the line and the offense has felt like a problem all year long.

I want to bring up DeAndre Hopkins. Can anybody stop DeAndre Hopkins? No. No, it's impossible. Four for 80 and a touchdown on 13 targets. Next week they play Pittsburgh. Robert Woods. I think we're going to talk about him in a bit. No, we're not going to talk about it. He was almost going to be my Razzie K's Rising Star, but he's back. It was, you know, in theory, a tough matchup against Seattle. But six for 45 and a touchdown. He appeared right off the bat that he's the number one target.

And he went right back to that role with Jared Gough next week. San Francisco? Yes. Yeah, I was going to bring up the opposite of that with, uh, or wait, or with, uh, Robert Woods, sorry. No, Robert Woods gets San Francisco or 17. Yes, I'm sorry, Tennessee. Yeah. Still, you confuse me there because Marquis great win has been balling out. That's actually Markey's good one, wide receiver for the 49ers with Jimmy Garoppolo, who looks like.

The truth. Jimmy Garoppolo is going to be a great quarterback. Not this week. Yeah. That's the problem. Goodwin. You've been playing him. The target volume has been unbelievable. And the catch rate has been equally unbelievable for Goodwin. But he gets Jacksonville in championship week. Raining on your parade. And he, I don't know if I would trust him in that match. That's what I wanted to bring up real quick. Yeah, it'd be tough.

Yeah, it is at home, I assume. Is that game at home? Yes. All right. Rob Grankowski did his thing. He was bigger, stronger, better than the players around him. Nine for 168. Single-handedly. That whole drive. Yes. To win the game. And not just the drive. The two-point conversion where the Pittsburgh. Mike and I looked at each other and we said. The Pittsburgh Steelers line up just one defensive back on Gronk, who they split out wide.

And we're watching this going, what are they doing? What are they doing? What are they doing? The play is going to go to Gronk. How do you not see? It's like a bomb's about to go off and nobody is running away from it. How do you, how do you not see what they're doing? Everyone knew what was going. The commentator said that. You guys said that. Everyone in the stands was saying that. What was great is that Grunk didn't even use his size to win. He actually juke.

Yes. He juked the 5-8 guy. All right. Greg Olson, welcome back. Nine for 116 and one. Yeah, we'll talk about him. Those of you that started him last week are mad. Yeah. He couldn't giving you this. I had no faith. I will own up to this. I did not want to start Greg Olson. I did not recommend playing him. But he was back with an absolute vengeance. Nine for 116 with a touchdown. And he destroyed the value.

of Devin Funches. Yeah, he did. He did. If you're wondering what happened, you have Devin Funches, who I loved this weekend. What happened? Greg Olson happened. And so did Chris, and the targets went back to Christian McCaffrey as well. So there's just wasn't enough to go around for poor Funches. Zachert, Eric Ebron, Delaney Walker, all scored touchdowns. Evan Ingram had a nice game, eight for 87 on 13 targets, having one of the best rookie seasons as a tight end in NFL history. Yeah.

Evan Ingram with a monster year, really validating that pick for the Giants, which we questioned him over Injoku. He certainly served a role. There's been a lot of injury there, but he's made the most of it. Let's talk rising stars. Raising Cain's Rising Stars of the Week. I'm going to step right into the fire, Keelan Cole, who I pumped the brakes on. Now has three straight games with a touchdown. He's firmly on fire, staying in the flames with him. Marquis Lee's hurt.

It all makes sense. Bortles was playing well. Keel and Coles are rising star. He's a waiver wire pickup in your league. And depending on your situation, he's going to be a start for me next week. Mike, why don't you take his buddy? It's a combo here, a two-fer, as we call it, it's in the business. Yeah, I don't know. Someone out there has to. Van Roos Skateboards. Somebody's going to give us a logo for that team. Three games.

Three games and you are on fire. And here's Blake Bortle's past three games. 302, 268 and 2. 3.26 and 3. Not to mention, ladies and gentlemen, zero interceptions. Impossible. In that time. In all three games? Yes. Blake Bortles is picking the right time to catch fire. Now he gets to play San Francisco, which the San Francisco defense.

this past week made Marcus Mariotta look like he was an actual usable fantasy quarterback, which he has not been the entire year. So Blake Bortles is my rising star because I'm sticking with him. Yeah, my rising star this week is Greg Olson because I thought he was done. Yes. Coming week and championship week where.