Starts of the Week + Week 9 Breakdown, Time for Launch! - Fantasy Football Podcast for 11/4

the kind of the red flags to avoid. And so there they are. One thing that I would add that I think is interesting is I hadn't thought about Trevor Lawrence and Justin Herbert in the same conversation or Marvin Jones and Mike Williams in the same conversation. But, you know, Herbert's a much better quarterback in totality than Trevor Lawrence is at this stage in his career, which means that Mike Williams.

Boom weeks are much better than Marvin Jones's boom weeks. But both of those guys have had, you know, Marvin Jones has made plays in, you know, three weeks where he kind of, I don't know, probably overcomes the Trevor Lawrence factor. And Mike Williams has done that as well and had these big weeks. But both of them are very similar in terms of a consistency that is beyond normal wide receiver consistency, at least thus far. So it is pretty interesting to see it broken down like that.

Um, okay, well, any other things to add there? Nope. All right. I think that's it. You want to, you want to make sure that you can get a quarterback that, uh, completes well to all four levels of the field if possible. Sure. All right. Get up to 100% dandruff protection. That's never not working with head and shoulders scalp shield technology available at walmart.com. News and notes from around the league presented by sleeper.

Well, it's been a surprisingly crazy time recently with news. So let's keep that going. O'Dowell Beckham Jr. The saga, the soap opera, the drama. I mean, it was kind of like he reached the point where he's ready to drive himself out of town again. That friendship with Jarvis Landerie so strong that he wants to abandon the team midseason. I mean, he claims he's ready to practice and play.

The team has excused him from practice again today. The tweets going around yesterday said that Kevin Stefanski spoke to the team. They don't expect him to be with them for the rest of the year. So for fantasy purposes, you're talking about accomplishing a lot for O'Dell Beckham to be valuable. He needs to either return to the team and be valuable, which we've seen not be the case. That's not going to happen. Or he needs to join another team and become valuable. And the truth is,

you know, let's pretend he's released and the Saints decide to sign him. Maybe he's interesting, but you're also dealing with, you know, James is not there. Beckham would be joining a new team. It seems hard to go from where he is now to helping your fantasy roster, at least in my mind. And to be clear, like, we don't have fully verified reports that Beckham is out for the season for.

the Cleveland Browns. We just, we know that like there is disagreements clearly between Beckham and the coaching staff. We have, you know, some reports now saying they, of like the players speaking up saying they, they're good. If Beckham comes back, they can clear the air. We don't know where the coaching staff is with him. They cannot, you can't keep doing this essentially of like setting, as far as the way I understand the situation for the NFL.

You cannot keep a permanent paid suspension going without full agreement from like what's going on in Houston, where Watson and the team have agreed that this is what they're doing. So if the player, something about it, the players saying they're going to play, not completely clear on what's going on, but something has to happen where either he will be back or he will be cut is the way that I'm interpreting the situation.

And then after that, I mean, I'm with Andy of, I don't really care where Beckham goes right now. I'm not, I'm not seeing this as a fantasy football situation that I'm going to pounce on. Like, oh, go get Jarvis Landry because his value's about to skyrocket. No, it might stabilize. And Jarvis Landry will be a fine addition to your squad as your wide receiver three or something like that. But maybe Austin Hooper sees uptick in targets. But there's just.

There's nothing about this situation that there's an exciting outcome for at least one of these fantasy football players to me. Yeah, I agree. I think if I had O'Dell Beckham on my team, I would trade him for anything on the promise that he might get cut and go to a different team and have it be better. You know, if he's cut, he should be going through the waiver wire process. Someone would have to pick up his contract and maybe that...

Maybe nobody is willing to pick up the contract. But if they are, it's going to obviously start with the worst teams. You know, we talk about the Saints grabbing him. That would probably be one of the better situations for him with the news of Michael Thomas being out. But they might not get to the Saints. You know, he.

I would love it so much and find it so hilarious if the two and six giants would scoop him up. Come on, baby, bring him back home. But yeah, I would try to get anything for him, and I don't expect anything good from Beckham ever again. If you imagine before the season that I told you, Alan Robinson, Brandon Ayuk, O'Dell Beckham Jr. and Robbie Anderson would be, all four would be.

completely irrelevant and none of them would suffer a season ending injuries. That story no one would have believed. Yeah, if you said they were irrelevant, I would have said, okay, so they got injured. Yeah, and it's not the case. Say Kwan, negative on a COVID retest on Wednesday, but he's still been placed on the COVID reserve list. I don't know if you guys have more information than I do on this. It's something to monitor. He would be returning from injury as it is.

Yeah, I believe this is just basically protocol. He did test positive, even if it was a false positive, which is kind of the inclination that it seems like. But you still have to go on the COVID IR. But just like you said, Andy, I wasn't sure he was playing this week. He's been gone for three weeks with the ankle injury, and maybe he's back. But missing practice coming, you know, so this is just news to monitor. And unfortunately, it gets in the way of clarity on whether he was going to play this week.

Anyways, because we don't get to see him at practice, see if he's practicing in full yet. The team might be wise to hold him out this week, and then they get the buy. And so we'll figure it out. And it obviously means a lot for whether Devante Booker can be started, which is a possibility. I'm going to blitz some injury news. A reminder that we do an injury blitz podcast on Friday. Matthew Betts, our injury expert, we'll catch you up on everything because there's practice reports for Thursday and Friday that matter.

CD Lamb popped up with an ankle injury, sprained ankle at practice yesterday, going to be limited today. Don't know yet whether or not he's going to be back. Michael Gallup may be back this week. Blake Jarwin's not going to play. AJ Green's been placed on the COVID list. So a lot up in the air, you know, and what I think about with Arizona facing San Francisco this week is you have AJ Green on the COVID list. You have DeAndre Hopkins with the hamstring that we don't know if he'll play.

So what that says to me is look in Zach Ertz's direction potentially. He could see more volume this week. Same goes for Christian Kirk or even Rondale Moore if you need a dart throw. Kyler has just stayed off the ankle. He says it's feeling better. I think we all expect him to play, but it could limit his ground game, right? Yeah, it definitely can. I don't expect him to ball out this week.

I also think that the Cardinals are going to try, whether they can succeed or not. I think they're going to try to establish it a little bit more. Oh, yeah. Get the run game going. So I would think that Chase Edmonds will get more work and potentially James Connor as well. Tassum Hill returned to a limited practice. There is no starter that has been named whether it's Taysm Hill or Trevor Simeon. So you're going to need to monitor that. If Tassum starts.

He's starting. It's not, you know, this is a concussion. This is not an ankle that could re-injure. Obviously, he could get another concussion, but they're not going to clear him after this many weeks unless they're confident he'll be safe out there. And he would immediately become, as Jason said, a great streaming option with upside because he will run the football. Elijah Mitchell, Debo Samuel didn't practice on Wednesday. Elijah. Not worried about Debo, but I am.

monitoring Mitchell to see if he's going to be able to play. We had thought he'd be back from a previous shoulder injury sooner than he was. This is a rib injury, I believe, and if he's not out there, it's going to be some combination of Trey Serman and Jemichael Hasty. Yep, I agree. Matthew, I'll go ahead. I just say, yeah, I agree with that. That some, I, if Elijah is out, Jemichael Hasty becomes interesting to me as a dart throw. Yeah.

Matthew Stafford didn't practice, sore back. Robert Woods didn't practice foot injury, both expected to play. Latavius Murray still sidelined. Julio limited in practice and the rest of his career. Dawson Knox remained sidelined at Wednesday's practice. I don't know if we'll see him back this week or not. This one matters because if you look at the numbers, Cole Beasley didn't practice on Wednesday. I don't know if you guys illustrated this on the Monday show because I was obviously out.

But Beasley had like 13 targets and Emmanuel Sanders had no catches. Yes. And Beasley, even the week before, I think had seven receptions. So you go from seven to ten receptions. If he misses and Dawson Knox is still out, I think you can expect a bounce back from Emmanuel Sanders. I think if Cole Beasley plays and Dawson Knox plays, you can expect a bounce back from Emmanuel Sanders. But you're right that if they are out, he should be.

a very, very good play. That was just a down game. He had four targets, didn't really any of them in, and you just, you got a, you got a goose and move on. It felt really bad. Yes, it did. Because I think I had him in DFS. I have them in Dynasty, and it was like goose is for days. Christian McCaffrey, practicing in a limited fashion. Do you guys have a vibe here as to whether or not we expect him back out on the field?

We've seen too much over the last couple of years of him practicing off of injury, not getting on to the field that week yet. So it's really just one of those things I don't think we can predict. We don't know the nature of the injury. And really what they're going to do is they're going to test him and see how the following day is. So it will be Sunday or late in the week at least before I think we have clarity here. We also might not have.

Sam Darnold back out there. He's in concussion protocol, extremely limited. We're still waiting for him to clear. PJ Walker would start. And honestly, I don't know if that's like they're playing the Patriots. I don't know if it's a difference in your outlook for anybody on that roster. I mean, other than you're happy playing the Patriots regardless. Yes. And I don't know if you missed this one, Andy, but the Texans have reported Tyrod.

Taylor will start in week nine. I did miss that. And I mean, that's a better ceiling for these players. And I know Brandon Cooks is a good matchup. The dolphins have been vulnerable across the board. So that may have some implications later on as we break down that show. Corey Davis, doubtful, Kevin Coleman out. And that is the exhausting, exhaustive list of injuries.

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