AFC North Breakdown + Double Jump, Buy or Sell - Fantasy Football Podcast

two awesome years. His rookie and sophomore year were awesome. But yeah, so I think he's got a rapport when Big Ben had his whole shave the beard video and got back out to practice. Who was he with? He was with Juju. So I think that's the rapport. And you know when Big Ben has a favorite, he just locks on and says, let's do this. And remember, I'm not calling, don't hear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying Juju is DeAndre Hopkins. But DeAndre Hopkins was turning into an elite wide receiver.

And then right around the age 24 had that just monster tank bust of a season because his quarterback play was just not something he could overcome in 2016. And he ended up as the wide receiver 30. I am 100% hearing what you're not saying there, Mike. You made a direct comparison between the two. All right. Now, let's move on. Let's talk about the Cleveland Browns. This is not the juju show. Six and ten last year.

Big old wet fart of a season in every way of shape of course. Nobody was in more commercials than Baker Mayfield and nobody had a worse season, honestly, than Baker Mayfield. When you combine expectation with actual performance on the field, in my opinion, Baker Mayfield was the single biggest bust in the NFL and in fantasy football for what you hoped he could provide for O'Dell Beckham Jr., for what you thought he would be in fantasy drafts.

And so this is a make-it-or-break-it-year for Baker-Mayfield without question. Now, he's got a brand-new head coach and a brand-new offensive coordinator. Alex Van Pelt takes over at Offensive Coordinator. Kevin Stefanski is the new head coach. I don't know if you guys knew this. Alex Van Pelt was an offensive coordinator once upon a time. 2009 in Buffalo for just a brief moment in time. All I can hear is Scott Van Pelt. That's...

That's all I'm picturing. Well, they're unquestionably related. There's no doubt based on the name. They have to be. Bald head, big black frame glasses. That's right. And, you know, an astute high for an offense. Yeah. But Alex Van Pelt's taking over, Kevin Stefansky last year with Minnesota. Big additions for this team. You know, they added Jack Conklin.

Offensive tackle out of, came from Tennessee, was great last year, ninth graded tackle in 2019, just 25 years old. Added Austin Hooper to bring some stability to that tight in position, sure handed high pass volume last year for Atlanta with Austin Hooper. And, you know, you look at the team and everything makes sense on paper. But most of it made sense on paper last year.

Where are we with the Browns? Where are we with the sentiment? Jason, I think two days ago, mentioned liking the Browns. Yeah. Look, I was... As though we haven't been here before. Well, I haven't. I mean, you know, last year they were my bold prediction to be the sucky fantasy team that's going to let everybody down. You know, I didn't believe. And this year I do believe because...

While I still question the second year in a row hiring a head coach with very little experience, I do think that this head coach without experience is not an – I think Freddie Kitchen was a joke of a head coach, just an absolute catastrophe. The fact that you've come in and you've got a style, you've got a –

character to how you want to run a football team. And then what do you do? You go get Jack Conklin on the offensive line. You draft a high tight end. You bring in Austin Hooper. You sign a great fullback, one of the best in the league. They're prepping to be who they, they're going to be able to run the ball like crazy. I think Chubb is going to be awesome. I think Hunt's going to be split out as a slot receiver whenever he's not in the back.

field as well. They're just going to be able to do what they want, positionally speaking, on offense. And I think they have a great defense. So I love the running game. I do think that the passing game will be so much more efficient this season with a healthy Odell Beckham, a better offensive line. But I don't know that they're going to have to, you know, throw the ball as much as fantasy owners will want them to. You know, it's, so I took a deeper dive on Baker Mayfield. His rookie year,

He was very good. He graded out as pro football focus as number 12 quarterback. He was third in adjusted completion percentage on deep throws at over 51%. Third. He was great driving the ball down the field. And that absolutely deteriorated last year down to 24th. And saw his percentage drop to under 40%. And it's, he wasn't necessarily.

getting hit all the time, but there was a very large intake in quarterback pressures, which that's because the offensive line was bad. So I do believe that Baker Mayfield can be better. It's the Stefansky offense is such a question mark to me because how much of that is he actually bringing down?

Because that has huge implications to me for this team, not just on Nick Chub where you're like, yeah, they were a great running team in Minnesota. Nick Chub. I like Nick Chub, but for guys like Jarvis Landry, who 46 of his 83 receptions came from the slot. And in case you're wondering, that was, in fact, about 55% of his receptions. And then I took a look. So 46. So that's just Jarvis, 46 of his receptions.

37 wide receiver receptions from the slot last year for Minnesota for the team. Like what's going to happen to Jarvis Landry now when he is forced to go back on the outside because the Vikings in 74% of their plays had two or few wide receivers on the field. They didn't have a slot. It's one of the reasons why I was, I'm more interested in Austin Hooper now than I was.

a month ago on first glance. I adjusted him in my rankings earlier this morning. I know he's not going to do what he did in Atlanta, but I think they brought him there for a reason. I think part of it is what you're saying, Mike, just with the formations that they run and the opportunity, they want to give Baker Mayfield the chance to not look like another blot on the franchise's draft board. You have to give him a chance to succeed. I look at that stuff as well because Minnesota

Their highest personnel package was 12 personnel. So you have two tight-ins on the field at 34%. But that led to Kyle Rudolph with 48 targets and Irv Smith with 47 targets. There was no standout tied-in. Now, we don't have like, it's hard to put data together with Baker. Does Baker seem to favor his tight end? Because his rookie year, Injoku had the 88 targets, which was number two for the Cleveland Browns.

But when you bring in Odo Beckham, things change. He's going to be a target hog. So I, it's hard to, Austin Hooper is very difficult for me to gauge because it will not be the offense that he is used to playing. And I just don't, I don't see the world where Austin Hooper really is fantasy relevant unless he's, you know, he's coming at tight end 10 at the end of the season, at which point.

you're not super happy if you stuck with him weekend and week out? I think that's the range where I moved him closer to. I don't think he's going to be a dominant player, but I had him pretty heavily bodied from a production standpoint compared to the year before. I just think that Baker's going to be managed. I think they're going to have to, 20 interceptions last year. You know, the offensive line, that's there to help Baker. Karim Hunt in the slot, that's here to help Baker. Austin Hooper.

Let's give them some shorter, sure-handed targets for Baker. You cannot be, Jason brought it up. Freddie Kitchens was a joke last year. And part of that joke, it would go knock, knock, who's their Odell Beckham targets, no matter what. That was the part of the problem is you had a, you know, a riot receiver on the outside that there was not a rapport with, but you had to try to manufacture targets so he didn't get mad at you. Yeah. So it's hard to see. Yeah. Beckham is a tough case as well. This whole team is very interesting.

Yeah, it'll be, and it's a tough division. It's going to be a tough division for them. It always is. But Jason, do you have anything you want to add on the Brown's side of things? You know, the only thing I would say is remember it took, you know, it seemed like Baker when he had Jarvis at first that rookie year when he came in. It took him a while to develop that rapport. So a healthy Odell Beckham with another year of rapport with Baker. Look, I was very anti-Odo.

I want to say very in on Odell this year. Oh my. I know. It's like so off-brand. What's happening? If you look at the reception, which those reports are available in the ultimate draft kit, where Matt Harmon broke down O'Do Beckham, his conclusion was he had to have been hurt because these are just not the scores that Odo Beckham usually puts up in that metric. All right. The final team that we're going to look at today, the Cincinnati.

Bengals, 2 and 14 last season, 25th ranked rushing offense in yards per game, 19th and passing yards per game, which for a team that's 2 and 14, that's a nice number and a testament to Zach Taylor, loving to throw the football. Bad defense. This year they added Joe Burrow, obviously, the number one overall pick in the draft, the new quarterback of the future and the present, and then T. Higgins in the second round, first pick of the second round.

part of the future at the wide receiver position for the Bengals. I'm on record with my adoration for Joe Mixon, his talent and ability on the field. He's the eighth pick right now in fantasy drafts. I think he's going to be great because he's a great running back. You look at the back half of last year when they started actually giving him the football, and he was dominant for a very bad team, which is hard to do when you're running back. And they made a...

They made a change. I went and I looked it up of how were they lining up at the beginning of the year in those first seven or eight weeks, whatever it was, where mixing was just putrid. They were running out of 11 personnel 80% of the time. And then they made a very strong switch. That number dropped all the way to 59%. So they started changing things up, getting more tight ends on the field. So this is another one of those like Rams situation where like,

Are they going to keep going with that because that's what worked? You would think so, but I'm just saying, like, it was a very large change over the second half. Yeah, it was. And the nice thing, though, is that we've seen mixing a couple of systems now have great success with this team. One, two years ago, it was more in the passing game. But a lot to wade through. You know, while we like to conditionalize the output of rookie quarterbacks, things have...

changed in that department over the years where rookies are able to come in and bring some production to an offense and to some of the pieces of that offense. You need only look to Daniel Jones and his ability last year to give you week-winning weeks. I was surprised to see how high Joe Burrow was going in some Scotty Fish leagues. Burrow can come in his Zach Taylor offense and produce with the weapons that he has with Mixing, Green, Boyd, Ross, T. Higgins. Do you feel that way too, Jason?

Yeah, I really do. I don't have them projected for that. But, you know, we were talking this morning about maybe having a new segment at some point before the year of a range of outcomes ranking. And Joe Burrow would need to be someone on there because his range of outcomes, I actually, I mean, look, he's the best. This, I mean, it stinks because it was one season. It was one season. But that single season was the best quarterback college scouting I've ever seen. And it's not even remotely close. He was.

So good. He threw with anticipation. He threw guys open. He checked it down. He can run the ball. Things break down. He's going to get those fantasy points on the ground. I absolutely loved Joe Burroughs. This is kind of a dark horse offense for me. I still don't think their offense of line is good enough.

to, you know, in that range of outcomes, they would need to gel. Their offensive tackle, they lost their first round pick last year. He's back. He's healthy. He'd have to dominate. If those things happen, then I could see this being a really good offense. I don't project them all to happen in year one, though. And then, you know, I do think they want to get T. Higgins involved. They want him on the field. They see him as the future AJ Green. He's part of the reason I'm...

down on AJ Green a little bit. Not that he's going to take AJ Green off the field. You would take Ross off the field. Right. Yeah. You know, I do think, though, that they're going to be looking towards the future. Ross is an unrestricted free agent after this year. Is that correct? They declined his fifth year option? Yes, correct. They did decline his fifth year option. He'll get a ton of money from somewhere because he runs fast. I don't know about that. We'll see. Are you willing to go hang gliding?