Fantasy Football Podcast 2017 - Early WR Rankings Part 1

It happened to Larry Fitzgerald for a couple years with John Skelton and Max Hall and the laundry list of not Kurt Warner's that came into Arizona. And if Houston doesn't figure it out, now maybe they signed Jay Cutler and everything changes. Because if Jay Cutler went to Houston, that would change everything. He's going to need some underpants first. Or if they were to make a move for Garoppolo, which I don't think happens. But they might need to look because I think they were really hoping here for Tony Romo. When they made the move to get rid of.

Yeah, they probably don't have the pieces, especially giving rid of the draft pick that they did. But they need a better quarterback for DeAndre Hopkins to be relevant. And yes, you can look at 2015 when DeAndre Hopkins had a great season with a bunch of garbage players. But I think that that is, that's just not the norm. And a large portion that was Hoyer during that season, who played very well. Who played very well. And I understand he had some good games with Yates and whoever else it was. But it is not the norm.

Jason hit the nail on the head. The good news for the Texans, so, I mean, they picked 25 in the first round. But to me, there are, you know, there's no clear cut number one quarterback. Of course, draft season from here until the draft, things start escalating. Where did you say they pick? 25th. Yeah. So you're not getting Watson or Tabisky. No, you're not getting Trubisky, but I think there are, you know, there's.

Kaiser. Four guys. You throw Kaiser in there. You throw Mahomes in there. There's, there is at least some hope that someone will drop to them at 25 if that's the direction that they want to go. I think Hopkins would be worse with a, with one of these incoming rookies than with Brandon Whedon, who I, who I think could beat out, uh, savages you're saying. And just listen to this. This is extremely small sample size. And I don't think Brandon Whedon is a great quarterback. But in 2015, there were three games where Brandon Whedon really.

played the majority of those snaps and was allowed to throw the ball. Here are those three games for D'Andre Hopkins in 2015. Eight for 101 and a touchdown. Nine for 157 and 11 for 169. So you tell me there's a chance. Are we rooting for Whedon?

I don't know, man. No, it's a good point. And I agree with you about the rookie. I mean, you saw last year they had to scale the offense back for Brock Osweiler once it was obviously he couldn't do anything. And that's what you might see with a rookie as a scaled back, run first, defensive-oriented, not going to air it out. And that would be the problem. At least if Whedon or somebody was in there, you'd have a chance. But it's not good news. That's the gist of that. And also, you know.

Any hope for Demarius Thomas or Emmanuel Sanders getting Tony Romo on that side? Not going to happen. Sure. Adrian Peterson visited the Patriots on Monday, which was very, very curious. He did leave without a contract. You had yourself a good belly chuckle. Of course. You would have to. I got very scared. Because Mike loves Rex Burkhead, and we're like, what is going on with Adrian Peterson visiting the Patriots? It would kill all you Rex Burkhead love. However.

Look, it doesn't seem like anybody is sniffing around Adrian Peterson right now. You might not see a conclusion to the Peterson saga until he enters broadcasting or camp starts. I say he might be a mid-camp addition. Yeah, he may. Tim Hightower was signed by the 49ers, formerly of the Saints last year. He had some relevance in certain games. Stole some relevance from Mark Ingram at times. Oh, and here's the deal with Hightower, despite how.

Much I like Carlos Hyden, I think he's an excellent football player. He hasn't played a full season, so Tim Hightower could become a valuable handcuff as a guy with a high probability of getting some starts. It looks like it will be Hyde, Hightower, and Harris in San Francisco. It's devastating. Triple H. Ooh!

If you want to follow the show, you can do so on Twitter at the FFBallers. The website is the fantasy footballers.com. A couple new reception articles up this week. We have an article about Carlos Hyde by Kyle Borgiani. And a lot of good stuff on the website. Before we move on. Oh, wait. Hold on. Okay. Is it breaking news? Well, this is not breaking news. For the listener, Jason struck a very Captain Kirk-esque pose with their. I just wanted to make sure, look, we want.

One of the pillars of this show is accuracy. We want to be accurate. Our information we care about, we want it to be good. What I just said about DeAndre Hopkins was 100% inaccurate. I'm doing this on the fly, and I want to call myself out here. Okay. Those three games were with Brian Hoyer. I was looking at the game logs of 2015 for Brandon Whedon. Those three games that Brandon Whedon played.

No, no, no, no, it's not entirely bad. I just, look, we want to get it right. That's our goal here. I like how you're standing on a pedestal. It's still good. It's still good. It's still good. But here's the reality. Those three games for Brandon Whedon were with Dallas. Okay, so I looked at DeAndre Hopkins games that week. But he did play week 14 and 15. Here are the true numbers for DeAndre Hopkins with Brandon Whedon.

8 for 94 and 7 for 117 in a touchdown. All right. So you're telling me there's a chance, but those are the accurate numbers. This is what I do. We withstand victory. That was a long-winded correction there. Very well done. Now we're on part. We're going to talk. The rest of the show has been well researched. It's true. This is the quick question. All right. Wide receiver time. Wide receivers. All right.

A reminder, this is half point per reception, early wide receiver consensus rankings. The three of us have put together some of our early season rankings. When you combine those ranks, this is who ended up in our top 10. I feel like a poop in his big boy pants drop should have happened for Jason right there. Yeah, well, I was flushing the statistics away is what I was doing. I like it. You know, we're not going to talk about DeAndre Hopkins today. He's not in that top 10.

as he should not be. And I see him in certain top 10 lists, even early this offseason. Yeah, I have seen him up there. Maybe just banking on Romo. Well, no, no, no. This was before the Romo rumors were early. Early, early, like end of last season, future rankings. DeAndre Hopkins was so high, and we forget he finished in the 30s this last year. I have him up at 17, and I think people think that might be too low. I think that might be too high. All right, number one, Antonio Brown, our consensus number one wide receiver.

29 years old, unbelievable last four years. Here's his finishes in the last four years. Mind you, he's played 16 or 15 games in all of them. Six, one, one, three. Yeah, one, one, three. And in the year that he finished third, he didn't play in the last week because he was rested. Just signed a contract extension, has already endured Big Ben being hurt at times during those four years, and it hasn't affected him.

When you talk possibility of outcomes for Antonio Brown, I think the possibility is you're going to get a top five wide receiver, and that's it. And injury isn't a highly probable outcome for Antonio Brown. Last year was worth the draft pick where you drafted him, 106 catches, 1,284 yards, 12 touchdowns on 154 targets.

which, mind you, I believe, is about 20-something less than Mike Evans got, but he still ended up beating Mike Evans out and points per game by the end of the season. Not a lot you have to say about Antonio Brown that you don't already know out there. But Andy. Uh-oh, Vopo. Isn't Martavis Bryant coming back from his suspension and going to steal touchdowns and targets and receptions? Well, he played with him during those four years we just talked about at times. Yeah.

In fact, he played with him during the two years he finished number one, back to back in 2014 and 15. So I am not concerned. From 2014 through 2016, we have 21 games with Martavis Bryant, 26 games without. And he scores almost five more fantasy points per game with Martavis Bryant in because he takes the, you know, the defenders have to watch that deep ball. Also, the offense moves better. So Antonio Brown, I mean, what are you going to do? So I have a question for Jason.

This is a strategy question, draft strategy question. Because you are, you are, so risk averse with your first round pick when you're in the, especially when you're in the very top. We know who you are. But you have said you want one of the running backs, one of the three big running backs if you're at the very top. Meanwhile, you have Antonio Brown here, who in the last four years, the worst that you've gotten from Antonio Brown is a top six.

finish. Meanwhile, we know that running backs, they're far more likely to get hurt, which can create the bust situation. So are you, even with Antonio Brown's consistency, are you still easily bypassing him if you're in a top three pick? I think that when I'm looking at this, if I'm in a standard league, it would be difficult at pick three.

Because I think there I worry about the risk with Lev Bell. He has shown me enough injury concern. You also have possible suspension concerns. If I'm in any kind of half point or PPR, you know, I wouldn't blame anyone there. But the truth is the top tip top running backs just outscore the top wide receivers usually by enough of a margin where...

I think David Johnson, Lovebell, and Zeke are safe enough for me where I'm going to take the points. It's always risk versus reward. And I don't think the risk is super high with those three guys. And I think the reward is super high. If you took Antonio Brown, of course, there's no problems there. Brown played one less game last year than the year before, but it was just the rest. Amazing that he had 30 less receptions last year and 550 less yards than the year before and still ended up.

where he ended up. 2015 was insane. Yeah. So, but that shows you what he can do. Number two, O'Dell Beckham Jr. Our consensus number two, wide receiver, all he's done in his three years in existence. Six, five, four. How do he should be three then? This year. Yeah. I mean, he's counting down. Obviously the kind of our consensus obvious number one pick in any dynasty league. He's 24 years old. He's been absolutely dominant.

I don't think it hurts him at all for those wondering about Brandon Marshall. What more can you say about Odell Beckham Jr.? He may be a little bit of a headache at times, but he gets it done on the field. He's so dynamic. He can take the ball to the house from anywhere on the field, 101 for 1367 and 10 on 169 targets. You know, he is a player where his quarterback, I guess you could say that with Big Ben, too, based on this offseason in the weird.

retirement speculation, but, you know, Eli Manning's 36 years old. There's talk of New York drafting a quarterback in the first two rounds this year. He could go through a quarterback change in the next few years, but Oda Beckham Jr. is locked and loaded. Yeah, and I think for the future, you mentioned Dynasty. He's the number one pick for, I believe all three of us. Jason, are you back on the one one? Okay. Yeah. Just confirm me. I think he's, he'll be just fine with whoever the next quarterback is because of how he's used. It's not.

He's not just an outside receiver. They also move him inside the slot and he can tear people up from there. And I think these top three guys are not the most interesting to debate. You know, everyone has their particular order of how they like these three. I think that this is almost a, our top three are a measure of risk here with Antonio Brown being by far the safest just because you have such a, I guess it's not.

that much more than Odell Beckham Jr., but it's at least an entire season. Beckham has three years. The worst he's ever been is top six. So I'm just going to move us along to Julio Jones, who's number three. We've seen what he can do. One of the, that 2015 Antonio Brown insane year, Julio Jones was right there with him, one of the best receiving years of all time, highest yardage. But he is far riskier to me than these other two guys. You have his

his foot problems. I mean, he's, he's always hurts. When you're watching Julio Jones play, he's fantastic. At least once a game, you go, oh, crap. And he's really annoying. He's really annoying to own as well. Andy, you can probably speak to this better than anybody in the sense of every game you watch. Yeah, like Shady, you worry, oh, he's out. He's going to miss the game. As many texts last year as we got from Mike about Shady being out, you, oh, Julio's done. Julio's tweaked.

You've had him on our main leagues for like the last three years. And I believe you said that you got nothing out of him. That was two years ago. There's a famous quote, you know. I wouldn't necessarily qualify. I'm not going to say it's annoying to own Julio Jones. It's spectacular. But there was an end to the season there where he didn't come through in those clutch.