REAL Preseason Takeaways + RB Rankings, Jason’s Mixon Love

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With your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Ah, the NFL season is here. Sort of. None of that Hall of Fame game stuff. We got real preseason football. Real preseason football. If you're on the YouTube, you can see we have a special guest today. I'm sitting here with Saquan Barkley. No?

The pink moose. I've got a pink moose in hand. Just me and Sequin hanging out. If you're new to the show, you're not going to understand that. Sorry. You missed. Here's what you missed. We'll fill you in. You missed the worst analogy of all time on this show where Andy compared a player to the pink moose. That means he's the best. My daughter's favorite stuffed animal is a pink moose. So you stole your daughter's favorite stuff to him? No. No. Amazon.com.

slash pink moose. Welcome to the fantasy footballers podcast. Brooks, you're going to need to hold on to Sequin for me. We are back once again. We've got our second running back show, the running back rankings part two. We're going to get into the real takeaways from the first night of preseason football. Is it just me or were you kind of like wanting to take in every possible play?

Oh, but you can't take them all in at the same time. So there's like a little bit of panic and you're just breathing football last night. Preseason is very difficult because you can't sit down with the master command of just if you have multiple screens. Get every game on and they're replaying things. Things are moving slowly. So you watch what you can and you also monitor Twitter and you know that you've missed something. You're like, ah!

And you've got to spin your head this way, and it's a very, it's a very turnaround head-shaking time of year. It's very difficult. People sending around screen caps with Josh Allen trying to tell me things about him. Yeah, we'll get into that. I actually, I love the pre-season. I realize it's a little bit harder to take in.

But no advertisement here, even though there was just one, game pass is unbelievable for preseason. I mean, you're just really the only way you could do. But, you know, I was up last night watching just click a game to game, game to game. And, you know, it's just so easy to watch all the games. And then you can go back and skip forward 10 seconds, skip forward 10 seconds. You can get through a lot pretty quick. The NFL needs to time the games up to where each game starts right after the first quarter of the previous game.

Because that's all I really – I mean, that's what I wanted to take in the most was the first quarter of these games. Now, there were situations, Baker Mayfield, Lamar Jackson, quarterback specifically where they rotate in later that I wanted to keep my eyes on. But we're going to kick it off right away. We've got such a jam-pack show. I want to get into the preseason takeaways. Follow us on Twitter at the FF Ballers. If you do not have the ultimate draft kit and you have a draft coming up,

You need to get the ultimate draft kit at ultimate draft kit.com. This is our baby on this show. I mean, we, if you don't realize this, if you're joining us for the first time, the fantasy footballers podcast, we are a year-round fantasy football podcast. This is all we do. We spend every hour of every day working on this podcast and working on getting you ready to win your league. And the ultimate draft kit is the tool, the foundation of your draft. You've got 100-plus player profile videos. You have up-to-date.

Always changing rankings. We're going to have major changes go through today just based off of injury reports that we're going to get into from the preseason. And so I just encourage you check it out. Learn more about it. Ultimate draft kid.com. What are your biggest real? I'm underlining the word real takeaways from the first big night of preseason football because Twitter is famous for another thing.

And that's overreactions, Mike. Sure. Oh, yeah. And the, I will preface the discussion, the beginning of the discussion with this. Having a real concrete takeaway from preseason week one is difficult because starters are in for maybe one set of downs, two set of downs. They're playing against a defense that is showing you nothing. I thought about, like, not doing this question.

Like not answering myself as a point of saying, I'm not going to give you any takeaways outside of injuries in week one just so that our listeners don't overreact to anything. Sure. But there are some. Yeah. And that's, I think you have to react at least a little bit. And these are what I found are my real takeaways. And I'm stealing some of Jason Stundered here. But it's to Toot to Jason who talked.

frequently at length of Christian McCaffrey and Norv Turner's usage of running backs. He's been very prone to the workhorse running back, and I've been defending C.J. Anderson believing that he will get in, but it was all Christian McCaffrey. Including the goal line. It was all McCaffrey. Granted, like I said, this is week one.

This does not mean that McCaffrey's getting every running back snap, but I thought that was very, very telling. It eases a lot of the concerns that I had for Christian McCaffrey of will they actually go with that. In week one, one eyebrow goes up. In week two, both eyebrows go up. And then I start to make some more adjustments based on confirmation. And then in week three.

the jaw drops. And when the draw drops, and both eyebrows are up. Oh, you know that it's a done deal. And here's one thing I will say on the CMC, the Christian McCaffrey thing. People were saying on Twitter, oh, look at the, you know, look at what C.J. Anderson did. He's four yards. Carrie, Christian McCaffrey was, you know, not that great on the ground again. But you cannot in preseason, this is just kind of a public service announcement to the entire Foot Clan.

You can't look at box scores. Preseason box scores are meaningless. The beginning of the game is, especially from the offensive side of the ball. They're trying to get their new offense out, trying to run the plays that they've schemed up. And then when the starters come out and all the backups come in, it's a completely different game. And so what you're saying is, you know, there were two drives that the starters were on the field. And of those drives, Chris McCaffrey had 100% snaps. Yes.

CJ Anderson has 0% snaps. It won't be that drastic, obviously, but it was showing that they were using him up the middle. They were using him in the goal line, in the red zone. They were using him in screens. It appears that Norv Turner is just going to do what he's done for 26 years. Go figure. Yeah, fair. My second big takeaway is if there was any by-low window left from Antonio Calloway getting in trouble with the law.

I would float some offers out there in your dynasty leagues because Baker Mayfield already has Mojo going with Antonio Calloway. I know he only came down with three. Catch the ball. Yes. It was a rough start. And it's almost like you could see the nerves for Callow. As the game progressed, he really settled down. I'm not just talking about the big highlight. I'm talking about Baker just going to Antonio Calloway.

And then the last one I'll throw out here is Jeremy Hill looks like he's going to be that at least the fourth running back for the New England Patriots. He will beat out Mike Gillisly. That would be third running back, really, right? Well, oh, you're saying James White. Yeah, on the roster. Yes. And whether that translates into he is actually the short yardage guy, I still believe it will be Rex Burkhead. But Jeremy Hill could end up just being a pain in the butt.

for those situations yeah i did have that moment yesterday where i was going man the patriots are very patriot yes they're just they certainly are mike could i i kept thinking in my drive home i'm looking at uh box scores i'm going you know are you showcasing jeremy hill to to trade him are you showcasing him because you like him are you like mike could be upset is all i kept thinking is might could end up upset um

There were quite a few players that had the one eyebrow moments, right? Like Michael Gallup had a nice touchdown pass from reception. Debt? Yeah, reception. You know, Marquez Veldez Scantling from Green Bay had five catches, 101 yards in touchdown. You know, you're kind of looking to see. Equanimius looked good, too. Yeah, you're kind of looking to see where the wide receivers in Green Bay, by the way. Those are Green Bay rookie wide receivers. My two takeaways.

I won't overemphasize either of them. Carlos Hyde and Nick Chubb looked pretty rotten. Nick Chubb especially couldn't get anything going. I think he was like 15 for 11 or 11 for 15, something like that. Whenever you can inverse those numbers and not know the difference, you didn't have a great game on the ground, didn't show anything impressive to me. Jason, you can talk more about Mayfield, but I mean, ultimately...

I told Jason this this morning. Tyrae Taylor was literally perfect. He was five for five. Yeah, he was great. With a touchdown, and he's still from a perception standpoint lost last night because Baker Mayfield looks so good as a rookie on his first game. And I said it on the show yesterday. The power of gravity is the thing I fear about projecting Tyrod Taylor. The gravity of the number one overall pick looking good.

If things start to go south, if Tyrod has a bad game, if they lose too many games in a row, that's the fear. I still believe in Tyrod. He's the guy that shows up first thing in the morning. Right. He's the last guy to leave. They have a lot of confidence in him. They believe that Baker will mean that, like, what's their ultimate goal in Cleveland? Is it to be great for, you know, do they believe Baker can win them a championship this year? No, they believe Baker's the future.

Maybe they believe letting him learn from Tyrod for a longer period of time is important. We'll see. But the other one I want to bring up is just Josh Allen because I'm a little bit frustrated by Twitter. I'm frustrated by the narrative around Josh Allen. And I'm frustrated even like somebody who I respect immensely Warren Sharp.

who went out and put amazing content on Twitter last night. Every play from Tyrod, every play from Pat Mahomes, every play for Lamar Jackson, video profile. And then the post about Josh Allen is a screencap of him falling backwards on his seventh play from scrimmage. He had 19... It was funny. It was funny. But it fulfilled the narrative because the quote was something like Josh Allen B and Josh Allen. I watched every play from Josh Allen. I felt like it was a nice debut. He made...