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

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dot com slash footballers head to rothys.com slash footballers to find your new favorites today. To the fantasy footballers podcast with your host Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. It's football time. Oh, yeah. Now, was that strategic or was that a last minute remembering? That was, I didn't know how the timing was going to work with you doing the intro.

From home. Yes. And so I didn't want to step on your shoes. So I gave it a, I felt like Frank Sinatra. It's casual. It's like a, it's supposed to be singing, but you're just talking. You're like, it's football time. Like a baby it's cold outside thing. Yeah, exactly. That was what I like that. I like that. You got to change it up. It was the coolest it's football time you've ever done. Like that is definitely what the cool kids do when they say it's football time.

uh welcome into the fantasy footballers annie mike and jason back with you never not working news to talk about and week nine week nine it's here fantasy forecast part one we got starts of the week we got the boom boom kicker oh it's going to be a show it's going to be a show can't wait for the boom boom oh yeah i mean it's it's important you know i'm barely clothed on top of a freighter we'll see where the story takes us

You have a staff of writers this year, I understand. So we have, yeah. How dare you? 22 writers for the 17 week season. And I think they're doing a great job. Trying to get it renewed for next year. I mean, I imagine that'll happen. Oh, we've already been picked up. Three more seasons. Oh, no. That's a massive hit. Instagram.com slash fantasy footballers, Twitter at the FF Ballers. I want to remind everybody, if you want to be a part of supporting the show.

and get a bonus weekly episode, a bunch of premium perks, access to things like the streamfinder tool. You can go to join thefoot.com. It's that easy. Just head over there, join thefoot.com, become a part of the Foot clan. And we'll love you for all of time. I mean, that's the exchange that we make with you. We want to say, congrats to Chris Maloney, who won the sign Darren Waller jersey. Congratulations. Congrats. Congrats.

We'll do another giveaway here soon. Let's jump into the show. Never Not Working. Presented by Head and Shoulders, Scamp Shield Technology, available at Walmart. Oh, I love this segment. It has been, I think, really advantageous for our listenership and for fantasy players to.

Get a leg up every week. And if you compile and put all of these things together into your overall strategy, I think it's going to benefit you for years to come. Yeah. And part of never not working is when you get a thread coming off that sweater, you got to keep pulling it, find out, you know, where it leads. But then you come undone.

That's how you end up naked on a freighter, buddy. Exactly. And you get picked up for multiple seasons. Last week, Andy, you brought up the Ben Rothlessberger and completed 25.8% of his pass attempts over 20 yards, which is really what's going on with Chase Claypool's breakout ability. He's hindering that ability. And so it's indicative of, I think, more failure in the future this year with Big Ben. So we wanted to see, dive deep. You know.

Never stop working over here and look at other quarterbacks who might be affecting their teams or certain players because of one of the places. We're looking at deep passes, intermediate passes, short passes to see if there are outliers. And this matters, right? Like Kyler, his deep passes.

He's connecting 61% of his deep passes, even though he's not throwing a ton. That's the best mark ever. And you see some fantasy relevance, you know, from week to week with all the wide receivers there. So we want to say, okay, are there quarterbacks that are maybe causing us to have more stayaway information? Let's start with Sam Darnold. Oh, let's not. He is the only quarterback below the league average in all four areas of the field. Deep, intermediate, short, behind the line of scrimmage.

How are you, how can you be below average throwing behind the line of scrimmage? I mean, to be fair, average, I mean, is just all, someone has to be below average, otherwise there isn't an average. But I feel like if in the world of professional quarterbacking, everyone should be, like, there should be great and then just.

And average. Well, look, he's up you below. He's above average if you include all the way down to the high school level, I am sure. But in the NFL, he is below average. Maybe on intermediate throws. He has a 47% completion rate.

The league average is 60%. DJ Moore has the second most intermediate targets in the NFL, but a 48% catch rate, which is 83rd. So this is the problem for DJ Moore. We talked about this with kind of Robbie Anderson, and when all of the wide receivers can't catch your passes. Right. It's not the wide receivers. It's not. No. It's the same Darnold.

It's same Donald. And so he is one concern where going forward, if you're still waiting for the DJ more breakout, I think it's going to be difficult to do with Sam Donald. And I think it's already been proven. Like Teddy Bridgewater was better. Like last year he supported 3,000 yard receivers. He's better than Sam Donald. They traded a lot to upgrade and they downgraded. So sorry, Carolina. At least your defense is good. Let's look at Justin Herbert. He's had a huge difference.

from last year to this year because this year he is throwing way shorter passes. Last year he was the master of the deep bomb, 12 deep passing touchdowns. And this year, he's throwing it short or behind the line of scrimmage on 61% of his attempts, which was nothing like what you saw in that rookie breakout. He is below league average, incompletion rate, in intermediate and short areas. And you've seen this with Mike Williams, who's gone from the deep ball specialist.

You know, his career average is 16.3 depth of target, average depth of target, 16.3 yards. This year it's 11.9. And so when we look, I know he had the primetime game where he just completely balled out and was like, oh, yeah, I remember how great this guy is, but he's only had three top 12 weeks so far on the season. And so I think with how they are changing his utilization and throwing it short instead of deep,

That might be good for the Chargers. But for Fantasy, I think it is really taking his big production away. It feels like a young Stafford where you have monster games, but consistency isn't fully there. And that's kind of what I would expect the rest of the way. He's going to have a couple more monster games, but he's not someone that I think you can rely on for a top 10 quarterback finish on a weekly basis. That will have an effect on Keenan. That will have an effect on Mike Williams, which we've seen.

drop off. And then the last one I want to bring up, the last one that really seemed kind of like an outlier among the entire group of quarterbacks at the NFL level is a new addition to the NFL, Trevor Lawrence. He's been very aggressive, which we like for fantasy. Yes, we do. I don't care about those interceptions. Get down and points. Have to throw the ball more. Neither does he. No, no. But moving the chains.

Just completing, you know, I don't know, regular old easy passes. Well, first downs are also good. Well, that's what I'm saying. Moving the chains, those first downs, it really, really matters. Here's the top quarterbacks in first down rate. Stafford, Dak Prescott, Mahomes, Kyler, and Brady. You get more fantasy production from the team when you actually move the chains. Trevor Lawrence, only 30% of Trevor Lawrence's pass attempts has ended in first down.

That seems... Yeah. If it seems bad, it is ahead of Jacoby Brissette, Davis Mills, and Zach Wilson. That's it. End of list. So every single week, it's like, why isn't Marvin Jones doing better? He's got the opportunity. He is a talented wide receiver. I feel like I should start Marvin Jones. I feel like he should get in there. Or Levisca Chinaltes talented. Here's the reality is...

Lawrence hasn't been good. There was a red flag in his college production. He had the highest percentage of screen yards among quarterbacks. Oh. His yards was kind of manufactured for him. So he is failing to hit intermediate and short throws, which is why his wide receivers are failing. So I would be looking deeper, looking holistically at all this. I am far more hesitant to buy into DJ Moore, far more hesitant to buy into Marvin Jones.

because of what we're seeing with the quarterback play, which has already been correlating to those wide receivers and maddening. But it's good to hear, like, this is a deeper reason why. Exactly. Because there's a lot of times in fantasy football, you look at the connection of like, you're like, this doesn't make sense. This player is good. I know factually without a doubt, DJ Moore is a great wide receiver.

Yes. He is. He's good. I watch him on the field. I've seen what he's able to do. So the fact that you're just like, what is happening here and knowing that there is a reason why, and it's not just, oh, it's easy to say, oh, this quarterback, he stinks. He's playing bad. But like, let's get deeper into that. Where is he bad? Why is he failing? When you get to the specifics of how and why he's failing and how that compares to the league average, you can see.