Fantasy Football 2017 - This or That Decisions + AFC East Breakdown

which boated very well for Ebron, and I believe Durham Fells is there as well. But he's on the sidelines. Crockett Gilmore, Raven's tight end. He's gone. He's out. They signed Larry Donnell. Not a lot of fantasy relevant discussion there to be had, so I'll move on. Here's a... This is more and more Ben Watson watch. Yes. Gio Bernard, full participant in the first day of Bengals camp. Shocking. Very surprising news because he was rumored to miss a couple of games.

I didn't really know what to do with Joe Mixon based on this news. I know that Geo Bernard has a very important role in that offense. I think that he's an integral part of that team, so I know he'll be on the field. How do you view this news, the surprisingly good health of Geo Bernard, in the context of Joe Mixon and Jeremy Hill? That's bad news for Mixing. Absolutely. We've talked about all offseason that.

it would not be shocking if they slowly work mixing in. But if Gio was out and you have this pass catching role just available, maybe mixing can get going. But if Gio was there to be the pass catcher, and Gio Bernard is an excellent pass catching back, he's a good talent. He just is not built to be an every down back. But if you just give him the workload, I mean, that's just, that's more and more touches away from Joe Mixing. And you have Jeremy Hill still there. Could be a goal line problem for him.

throw out there was a i can't recall his name but there's a beat reporter for the bangles was on the sideline it does does the footage and he's recording some practice so again here's a handoff for jeremy hill dude just falls like falls down immediately just an arm tackle he's like and now it's joe mixon's turn and a 60 yard touchdown wow and you're like why why you got to do that to jeremy hill we're doing him dirty all right there are um

I mean, that's a running back situation to watch this preseason. A couple other teams have some interesting newsbreaking. Brooks, you took my quote verbatim and put it into the notes here. Oh, yeah. I wanted to talk about the Tampa Bay backfield. My quote was Tampa Bay Bullcrap because the news breaking about Tampa Bay's backfield was just a bunch of bullcrap. I'm going to say that.

Nothing that's broken has been news to this guy. Well, what is the news? There is no news. Yeah, that's the point. That's the news. Here's what came out. First, first all of a sudden, it says that Jaquiz Rogers could unseat Doug Martin. Yeah. Doug Martin could not be assured the starting role in week three. Yep. Week four. Then the next day, RBBC to be used for the first three weeks. Charles Sims, Jequiz, Rogers, Jeremy McNichols.

Basically biting their time until Doug Martin returns. So ignore it all. That's my news. Just ignore all of it. They're just trying to keep their starter to quiz healthy, right? Hot tip. Yeah, they are. Tampa will have a running back. There'll be someone out there playing running back. I'm trying to remember the other backfield I wanted to talk about here. First, I'll tell you, Jamal Charles, according to Peter King, they want them to see eight to ten touches per game.

That's not going to get it done for fantasy. I mean, if you get 10 touches a game, the higher end of what they're hoping, that's 160 carries and an older Jamal Charles. Well, that's not, that means Charles is going to catch some passes, so you're not talking 160 carries. You're talking 150 and then probably 30 receptions. J. Ajai exited practice being evaluated for a concussion, nothing major there. Here's the other backfield I wanted to bring up. San Francisco.

Tim Hightower took the first rep at running back on Monday's training camp practice. The news for Carlos Hyde had been pretty positive of late. Some reinforcement from the coaching staff from the GM. I heard he then went out and fumbled first pitch yesterday after Hightower. Haven't heard a lot about Joe Williams. It's a tough running back situation in San Francisco, and it really might be an avoid-all at this point because

You have a team that, I mean, how many touchdowns are the running backs going to really score in San Francisco, tough division, not a great team? I'm worried about it. I tried. I looked into my numbers to see if I wanted to move Carlos Hyde up, and I didn't. I didn't. I tweaked him a little bit, but I didn't move them up in the rankings. But, I mean, to be fair, you hate Carlos Hyde. Yeah. Yeah. You see, here's the thing. You love the infinite unlimited.

invisible scores that these injured players have. It's not invisible. The potential. The potential. But Eric Ebron, Carlos Hyde, Rashad Perryman. Don't put those names on me. Hold on. No, no, no. I'm going to put another one on you. Lance Dunbar. How many? I mean, you've blown the horn for Lance Dunbar for 10 years. Guess who's out indefinitely with a knee injury now? Guess who's not even in consideration for the number two back in St. Louis anymore? No one.

I love Michael King. Because they don't have a football team. It's Lance Dunbar. He's out in Los Angeles. It's just another one of those things. And by the way, if you are in the market for the handcuff for Todd Gurley, you might need to look at Malcolm Brown. Because Malcolm Brown, head coaches come out, Sean McVease come out and said, hey, he's solidified himself as the number two. If they don't bring it in, now they might bring in another body. But right now your handcuff is Malcolm Brown. They're bringing someone else in. All right. James Connor, left arm in his sling.

The bad news there is he was actually sent back to Pittsburgh to have it looked at, which insinuates that it's not just like, oh, you've got a little owie come back on the field in a couple hours. They want to get it checked out. It could be something more serious. So definitely worth monitoring because the backup to Leveon Bell is a valuable position. As of now, if he's out of the way, it would have to be Fitzgerald Toussaint. All right. Last bit I want to talk about before we get into the AFC East. Brandon Albert has chosen to retire.

After nine seasons, he was going to be the blind side of protection for Blake Bortles. Surprising news, he had been angling for a contract adjustment. So you wonder what the implications are there. He owes the team $3.4 million. Breaking news, Brandon Albert has returned to the NFL. I'm not paying no one $3.4 million. Yeah, I wonder what's going to happen there. But right now, Cam Robinson's show up and phone it in. Yep. Cam Robinson is going to end up the blind side.

protection for Bortals. So that wasn't a great offensive line last year. It's not progressing towards one this year. They have a good center, but all right. You guys have anything else you want to talk about? I don't think we need to get into any other news. I don't want to tell you right now how thankful we are to Pristine Auction for supporting this podcast. So we move to five days a week. We've got to tell you about pristine auction.com. The absolute.

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price for made-to-measure premium suit and shipping is free. Indochino.com promo code footballers. You'll never have to worry about badly fitting suits or expensive trips to the Taylor again. Let's get divisional. I've been looking forward to this episode because I'm looking forward to talking about the New England Patriots and the fantasy football relevant players on this roster. It's always exciting when you talk about a team with an offense. You already know is going to finish in the...

the top of the league. This is a foregone conclusion. You know that barring an injury to Tom Brady, maybe even with one, they'll probably finish in the top five in terms of how their offense performs, 14 and 2 last year, won the AFC East, of course. And this is a team that just basically added to the arsenal. You lost Ligarrett Blum, but you bring in Mike Gillisly, Rex Burkhead, bring in Dwayne Allen, bring in Brandon Cooks.

And let's start out talking about the wide receiver core, because I have some interesting information that I want to break down here. And the question for this team is the narrative all-off season has been too many malice to feed. And that will nullify fantasy value. And I want to know from you guys, one, is that an actual problem? And if it is or isn't, who comes out on top in that equation?

I looked at this last year. It's very interesting. Brandon Cooks, everybody loves him, right? High Flyer, big play guy. He averaged the most fantasy points per target in the league. So he had 1.4 fantasy points per target. He was efficient with his targets. Julian Edelman was dead last. So he was 0.8 points per target. Completely different type of players. How does this break down for you guys? Well, and I would dare say that...

touchdowns are heavily weighing into that where Julian Edelman in his historically not he's not a huge touchdown scoring threat but last year was lower than normal for Julian Edelman and here's what I want to say about the targets it's breaking down numbers you know just really simple math and but then also projecting what do you see for this team because the last two years running backs have accounted for around 24%

of the targets. Gronk is about 20%. Julian Edelman, the last couple of years, right around 25%, right? So now you're talking, I have 31% of Tom Brady's targets left to go to Brandon Cooks, Chris Hogan, Malcolm Mitchell, Dwayne Allen. Assuming that those other things stay the same and then Cooks didn't eat into this. You didn't count any of the running backs yet. I said the running backs are about 24% of the targets. So, and just,

going off of, you know, like averages essentially that you have about 180 targets. Last year, Chris Hogan, 58 targets. Martelis Bennett had 73. Now Martel's Bennett obviously saw an uptick in targets because Gronk missed a lot of the season. But it's Brandon Cooks, how do you get him to that 125 targets that he's used to seeing? And even if he is incredibly efficient, the problem is you're paying a second round pick for,

for a guy that you have, you're not sure he's going to see those targets and will disappear. Is he really, is he really a second round pick? I bet he's in the second round. Because right, I have him down as the 13th wide receiver off the board. And I don't think that's the end of the world.

Like, I have them ranked as my 17th ranked wide receiver. Okay. I don't know where 13th wide receiver off the board is, according to ADP. I'll pull it up. And PPR is going at the 212 right now. In PPR. Okay. 3.04 and standard. I went back and looked at 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, the wide receiver in New England. And the leading wide receiver was Edelman all four years. Yes. Okay.

He finished. In 2013, he was the 22nd ranked. And these ranks, by the way, they're points per game. So I'm pulling out those injured games just to give you context for how good the number one wide receiver can be in New England. 22nd in 2013. He was 16th in points per game in 2014. In his limited time in 2015, that was when he had that great start. He was 7th. And then last year, he was 16th. So I think that's why I'm comfortable with Cooks in that 17.