Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - Week 16 Christmas Episode Part 1, Starts, Sits, Matchups

Yeah, yeah. Well, Ted Ginn, Jr., who was my start of the week last week and came on strong, is my start of the week again this week. You got to stay in the flames with him. He is the number one target for Cam. It's official. You know, sometimes he spread it around. Last week, he had 14 targets. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I feel like that can't be right. I'm verifying this. He had two red zone touchdown. This is accurate.

Wow. 14 targets last week. That's the number that blew my mind. For the high power Carolina offense, he is top five wide receiver lately. He scores, he's in the red zone. He even dropped like a 48-yard wide open bomb touchdown and still got it. And not all of his touchdowns are coming from bombs anymore. Six catches on 14 targets. Yes, but it's not the best. Better good.

But the target number changes his equation. He's got two touchdowns in each of the last three weeks, but now you know he's going to get the targets. And two weeks ago, when they played Atlanta, he went completely nuts. And he's playing Atlanta again. So I think if you've got Ted Ginn, you've got a guy that you know is going to score. I mean, over and under, you know, what are the odds that he gets a touchdown this game? I think they're pretty darn good.

Yeah, I'd agree they are. They're near Doug Baldwin-esque. Yeah, so, whoa, whoa. The NFL actually will stop the game now if Doug Baldwin doesn't have a touchdown by the end of the first half. And they will just give them. We're going to overtime. They'll just give them one. Seattle's up by 20. Nope, we're going to overtime. Dougie. Dougie doesn't have one. My wide receiver started the week. I'm going with Deshaun Jackson. He has scored in four of the last five games. The Philly defense is in shambles. And as I was talking about at the top of the show, Kurt Cousins,

playing at a very high level right now with the highest completion percentage in the league. And that's just, it's something I want a part of that offense who's playing against Philly in the passing game. They're competing for something. They're playing for something. It's not a meaningless game. Washington wins this game. They're in the playoffs. So I just, I love him. All right. As a person, right, you love him as a person. Yeah, we'll let Jason go because then we got to, uh, we'll let you two go. And then we'll do our tight end talking.

All right. So for my tight end, start of the week, I love this guy. He's not going to be able to be on waivers, but if you've got him, you probably have him and someone else start Julius Thomas. He has been the number three tight in. He's the third best tight in since week 11. He is playing great football. He's getting receptions. He's getting targets. He's getting touchdowns. Everything you want.

he is producing on, and I love that they're calling plays for him. You watch the game and what used to go to Hearns or even some of Robbins. I was about to say. He's his numbers are tied in. He's shifting over to Julius Thomas, and he's playing the worst team against tight ends this week. It is a glorious matchup. He could be the number one tied in this week. I wouldn't put him ahead of gronk ever, just because Olson Reed. But yeah, he's great. So start with confidence, Julius.

Thomas. I'm going to go with Zach Miller as my start of the week. You know, if Alshan sits or is limited, here's the guy with five and six catches the past two weeks. We saw a little bit of upside in terms of touchdowns earlier. I forgot Jason's playing against him, too. This is the worst. So, look, you've got to hope Alshund's out there, obviously, but if he's not Zach Miller, I like him even more. I think his baseline is pretty good right now with a few catches. I'd start him over a lot of guys. I'd start him over, I don't know, let's say Richard Rogers, for example.

That's fair. Fantasy Face Off. All right, so we disagree. You and I disagree fundamentally. Your start of the week and my sit of the week at the tight-in position. That is correct. Is Richard Rogers. Now, we have different reasons for each. So I will acquiesce, I will let you explain why you like him, and I will explain why I don't. All right, so for Richard Rogers, why I think he has some nice upside this week.

Three of the last four weeks, here are the tight end numbers against the Arizona defense. Nine catches 138 yards and a touchdown. Nine catches 144 yards. Ten catches 10 catches 109 yards and a touchdown. And the Arizona defense has lost possibly their best defender.

I'm saying that over Patrick Peterson and Tyrone Matthew, who is, if you watch the Arizona defense play, he's a part of nearly every single play. He's a huge part of what they do, so that's a massive hit to their defense. And just over the last few weeks, I think teams have figured out they can't exploit Arizona using their tied end, where perhaps the beginning of the year was more of a mirage, where for years, Arizona has been horrific against the tide end, and they were actually doing pretty well.

But then you saw Minnesota, a team that had zero passing game coming into the week. And they, tight-end screens were going all over the place, going for huge plays, chunk yardage. So I think that Richard Rogers absolutely has a chance here. Okay. So you're going with the trend of the Arizona defense and counting on.

the Green Bay offense to exploit that trend. Correct. Is that accurate? And for me, I'm going more the trend of the offense in Green Bay and the change in play calling by Mike McCarthy. Since he's took over, Richard Rogers has one catch. One catch each week. Even you used to be able to say, okay, well, if it gets you a touchdown, you're fine. One for three in a touchdown, that's still a pretty bad game. If you remove the outlier, and it is an outlier, his eight for 146 game with the Hail Mary,

256.8, 1.2 in the league format. I don't want a guy that's caught the ball one time each of the last two weeks. I'm not going to let that talk me into it just because of a trend on the other side of the ball. And the targets have been down. Without McCarthy, 95578 with McCarthy call and plays, two targets, four targets. So it's just a matter of I feel like a better options out there. I'm not going to bank on Tyran Matthew and the Cardinals not being able to make a different adjustment there. All right. Let me judge it.

Okay. When Mike came on with his hot takes about Tyron Matthew and the waning tight-end defense for Arizona, he won it. Oh, until Andy came in and said, Richard Rogers stinks. He doesn't get targets or receptions anymore. So I won until he had a turn to go. Yes.

And then Andy got up off of the mat and he struck you across the face and you fell down and you both fell down. And so for me, I'm going to steer clear. I think Andy won. But you decide. There you go. So we don't like to just blindly agree with one another because we know some things can look at Alex Smith. You know what I mean? You could just, oh, he's got a great matchup. He's going to be great. Well, you can't just do that. We don't like to let that happen. And you guys can decide for yourselves. And the best part of this is...

That we have Richard Rogers ranked very, very similarly. Yep. I just think that he has, if you're scrambling, I think he has upside potential. Yeah. And Andy does not. Right. And I, he could score a touchdown or something, but I just don't, I doubt it. So we'll, we'll move on. That was fun. We'll get into, what do we got next? The forecast. The forecast. What do you mean? Fantasy forecast.

You guys do some stretching? You've got to stretch it out real quick. Now, good news is there's only one NFL game this week. Woohoo! Short Megalodon. It's the Pro Bowl. Oh, you know what? Speaking of the Pro Bowl, I'm just going to throw this out there. You know who didn't make the Pro Bowl? Who's been a fantastic, unbelievably good wide receiver this year? Oh. Alan Robinson.

Alan Robinson didn't make the Pro Bowl? He did not make the Pro Bowl. And so I'm just saying, if you are the Jags out of the playoffs, he got this young up-and-comer. He doesn't make the Pro Bowl. What do you go and what do you do? Feed the Beast, man. You go, you go, oh, NFL, you made a mistake. He's coming in. He's coming in. 69 catches, 1,100 yards, 13 touchdowns with three weeks, two weeks left. Yeah, and so I'm thinking he's going to be fed.

like the target monster he is. Pro Bowl. Schmoble. Start of the week, Alan Robinson. Andy Dalton and Doug Baldwin, also missed the Pro Bowl. The Doug Baldwin is fair because the voting is done a little bit earlier. And shamefully, David Johnson. Well, same reason with Baldwin. Because these guys, well, Al Robinson is the big snub there.

That's ridiculous to me. He's been so good. All right, let's start with the Thursday night game, the Chargers. Take on the Raiders. Hoof. All right. The Raiders are favored by five and a half points. The over under on the game's 47. The weather should be good. We've got Rivers. We've got Ka. What do you think of car in this game? I can dig it because Carr lit them up when coming into that game.

San Diego was considered one of the better passing defenses in the league. And Derek Carr came in and just shredded them immediately. And it wasn't many cuts over the game. It was a huge pouring of touchdowns. So I can like Derek Carr. I do have a little bit of concern for Amari Cooper. As do I. Jason Verrett.

is now, if you look at pro football, pro football focus is now the highest graded DB. And he has been an emerging, tremendous shutdown talent. I'm not going to let that one guy stop me from playing Derek Carr or completely stop me from playing Cooper. I just know that I have adjusted my expectations for what the rookie can do this week.

I have ranked Crabtree ahead of Cooper in my rankings this week. I believe I have it that way as well. Yeah, I think I just looked at my rankings a couple minutes ago and noticed that I had Cooper ahead of Crabtree during the show and thought, oh, I need to change that. So I think we're all in agreement here that Crabtree is probably the safer play between the two. The one thing that I do see from this game.

last time. And you made the point last time when they played. They utilized him in the right way to keep him out of those matchups. So he had a huge game. Crabtree was 6 for 63 in a touchdown. Cooper was 5 for 133 in a touchdown. And the Chargers have only gotten less healthy. I mean, they've only lost more players. And so I don't see them putting up a better fight this time around than last time. Last time this game had 66 points scored 37 to 29.

So this has the potential to be one of those back and forth offense versus offense battles, because while the Raiders run defense has been really stellar, I don't think the Chargers are going to run the ball more than five times. I mean, who do they have to run? Donald Brown. Yeah, I mean, obviously hyperbole, but that's why I like Philip Rivers. I actually do like Derek Carr, another player I'm going up against this week. I hate my matchups this week and my champions. So Danny Woodhead, the running back situation in San Diego,

What do people do with him? Who do they start Danny Woodhead above? Do you start him over Bilal Powell? Yes. Consensus-wise, we have Bilal-Pow one spot ahead of Woodhead, mostly because Mike has Woodhead rated lower than we do. Are we talking standard? Are we talking PPR? That is standard. That's a good point. But in PPR, Bilal-Pau, you have, he's even higher. I mean, Powell goes up to nine, Woodhead at 12 in PPR. Okay.

So those are, I'm just, that's the category of decision making that needs to take place right now is people, Woodhead, Powell, White, all the same type of player. You know, Christine Michaels in the mix there. You know, Lacey, Ivory, Matthews. How much do we think Woodheads, you know, we don't want to chase four touchdowns when a guy's been pitiful? No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. You can't chase four touchdowns. But the workload has to increase. They, they're not going to have a choice.

Donald Brown will see some snaps, but we've seen over the course of the year, look at the beginning of the year when it was Melvin Gordon and Danny Woodhead. Danny Woodhead was the guy getting the bulk of the work because they were getting Melvin Gordon ready as the rookie. It wasn't Donald Brown. Donald Brown was not a factor at all, so I believe that Woodhead has tremendous upside this week. Yeah, he could be a guy that if things go the right way.

win you a title. Yep. Because of the kind of numbers you saw last week. Now, the thing about Woodhead Thursday night game, you're going to get an indication of his performance early. If you start him, it's going to help you make adjustments to your roster later in the week. If he puts up a big game, maybe you play safer guys. If he puts up a worst game, you know, those are some of the decisions that take place. Now, what about Donald Brown? I can't trust Donald Brown not knowing how he's going to be used, how much he's going to be used at going against an Oakland Raiders.