Week 4 Studs & Duds + Pitts Mental Breakdown, Monday Punday - Fantasy Football Podcast for 10/3

Hey, fantasy football players. Do you have Kyle Pitts? I do. Watch me have a mental breakdown on the show today as we go over the studs, the duds, the horrible injuries at the running back position, and a whole lot more. Make sure you click the subscribe button. Click the bell. Enjoy the show. The fantasy footballer studio is brought to you by Samsung Galaxy. Visit Samsung.com to learn more. To the fantasy footballers podcast with your host. Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Oh, welcome in. Oh, we're spicy today. Monday, October 3rd, the fantasy footballers back with you. Jason Moore, Mike Wright, Andy Holloway, at the FFF ballers on Twitter. Welcome into the show. Another weekend of fantasy football. A lot of emotions. Oh, yeah. A lot of pain.

A lot of joy. A lot of joy, a lot of confusion. And we're going to get into all of it today. Studs and duds on the show, news to talk about injuries to talk about Monday, Punday in a moment. But first. Yes, sir. Huge news. Jared Goff is here to announce for us. Jared Gert. No, something that the Foot Clan has asked for for a long time is taking place this week. On Thursday. It's football time with the fantasy footballers. What does that mean? That means we're going to be live during Thursday night football on Twitch. You will join us, and we will be calling the game, talking through the game. This will be a watch extravaganza. Yeah, the good word. You will tune in. It's not a party. It's not a party. It's an extravaganza. You tune in. We're going to be covering the Thursday night football game live on Twitch.

with a fantasy focus, right? We're going to be paying attention to what the listeners of this show care about, reacting emotionally at times to what takes place on the field. We watch these games like you watch these games, and so many people have asked us for so many years, oh, man, you guys should call these games. I'd love to hear you guys call a game, and we decided... Sure. Y'all right. Sure. We should. We said, we're going to try it out. We're going to try it out one time coming up this Thursday. We want all of the Foot Clan to be with us there, to join us on our stream, listen to us, call the game. Have us live react with you. It is going to be awesome. We're going to spend commercial breaks answering questions directly from the Twitch chat. So we'll be getting into a lot of fantasy football discussions.

And it's going to be super fun. You can tune in on Thursday on Twitch. And Twitch.tv slash fantasy footballers podcast. There you go. And we'll get ballerslive.com all set up for you. So you can go to Ballers Live and tune in on Twitch on Thursday. We're calling it football time. Because it's football time. Yeah. Right? That seems like a good reason. This Thursday? It's football time. That's right. And you can tune in to listen. You can tune in and listen to us not talk about Javante Williams and Jonathan Taylor. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey. We're going to talk about the awesome Russell Wilson. That's right. That is getting to talk about Russell Wilson live with the audience. Dangerous. It's going to be a danger witch. Yes.

Uh, let's go ahead and, uh, everyone get your most dangerous story ready. That's right. For Thursday. Yeah. And on the other side, it's Matt Maddie Ice. So it's going to be a lot of fun. Uh, and of course, pity city will take part in the Thursday night football event as well. It is Monday. We put the call out on Twitter. Actually, we put it out on it on all platforms. Yeah. For your best Monday, Punday reactions to the weekend. Clyde Edwards. Wee. There. We've got Gronathan Taylor. And Grave Davis. And Mike, go ahead and take this one. Which the best one. BM Metcalf. I was going to go with Naja Harris. Naja Harris. That is the best one. That is the best one. There's also T.J. Hawkinson. Oh, T.D. Hawkinson. Ruined it. Whoa.

Allie Cox. Kyle Pitts of Hell. Uh-oh. You had Mike Heavens. Joshua Face Palmer. And Seedy Bam! He's been good. He has. He just needed to get that deck guy out of there. Yes. No, it's nice to see. It really, really is. I think that his season is looking like we had hoped previous to week one. and it should only get better as the season goes along. Jalen Tolbert, a healthy scratch in that game. Michael Gallup made his return in C.D. Lamb doing work for fantasy players the last two weeks. A couple reminders, the community. Join thefoot.com. You get a bonus weekly episode of this show. You get access to all of the community forums over on Discord, premium perks. We are launching a brand new dashboard for the Foot Clan today later this afternoon. Join thefoot.com to get access.

The fantasy footballers.com is the website. News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance. Well, let's go ahead and start with a running back that is going to be returning as opposed to one leaving. The Washington commanders expected to activate running back Brian Robinson off the non-football injury list early this week. This is going to coincide, Mike, with the lowest snap percentage of the season. For Antonio Gibson, just 41% of the snaps against the Dallas Cowboys. Yeah, on Spotify Live, he was my panic player this past week because, I mean, the week one, you knew it was going to happen week one. It was all there, but everything else has just been trending in such a bad direction for Antonio Gibson. No way, like the culmination was going to be.

Well, Brian Robinson is going to be back. And then it was just like, no, no, we're going to close that door a little bit earlier. We're going to do it this weekend and make sure that Janey McKissick gets a whole bunch of rushing attempts. Also, injury news. This is where it gets. Yeah, buckle up. Disappointing. Jonathan Taylor went 20 for 41 in this game, exited with a right ankle injury. So far this morning, and we will keep you up to date throughout the show because I would imagine we may get another update on the imaging and maybe more of a prognosis for Thursday. But Ian Rappaport reporting, the injury is not believed to be overly serious. I know they got some tests back already. The Colts, unfortunately, play the Broncos on Thursday night this week. Fortunately, unfortunately, it depends on the severity of the ankle because if he doesn't play on Thursday, which seems like...

He might not play on Thursday. He will get another, you know, 10 days after that. It could be one game instead of two. So we'll see. There was some discussion on social media about high ankle sprain, but it seems like it's not going to be long term. Yeah. At the very least, we know it's not a surgery situation and a season ending situation like what we fear could happen for. The running back across the field from him on Thursday, Javante Williams feared to have suffered a serious right knee injury, and he's going through tests today to confirm the severity. This is devastating, and I don't want to put the blame on Andy. I don't want to do that. Oh. But this double Reaper situation here where he just this week made a trade of Javante and Jonathan Taylor one for one. I see.

I'm not saying he did it. I think he did it. We can't confirm that he didn't. That's true. Perspective is pretty valuable for fantasy football. I did in our League of Record make a trade where I included Giovante. It was about four players on each side and some picks. But I exchanged Javante and I got Jonathan Taylor back. And I'm sitting there. This is the worst professional game of Jonathan Taylor's career, fantasy-wise. He's never scored fewer points. At least when I looked back at the game logs for his entire career, because that's what we do. We want to just wallow in the pit of sorrow. Yes. I was like, this is the worst game of his career. I just got him. I've never had him.

and this is my debut with Jonathan Taylor. What a disaster. Oh, he's hurt now. What a disaster. Yeah. And not only that, but you gave up young budding superstar Javante Williams to get him. So it was the worst loser feeling that you've had. And then it could, you know, not doing the trail would have felt worse because Javante looks like he's going to be out for the year. We've got a waiver show tomorrow. Melvin Gordon will be taking reps on this team who's fumbled four times this year. The offense has been. A gross in Denver. Mike Boone will be a pickup who played more than Melvin Gordon once Giovante went out because Gordon is dealing with the fumble. Well, the fumble and Gordon's dealing with his own injury. And it's a short week. Yeah, and for what it's worse, Mike Boone had two egregious game-ending drops as well. So that offense is hurting. Daniel Jones, ankle injury, not believed to be serious day to day.

Jameson Crowder fractured his ankle in Sunday's game against the Ravens. So tomorrow we'll be talking Isaiah McKenzie, who also exited with a concussion, but we'll have, you know, I don't know, Khalil Shakir may have an opportunity as well. He certainly does. And what if they threw the ball to Gabe Davis? I mean, just think about that. What if they did that? What if nine targets in two weeks? We may never know. Treylin Berks, exited with a left foot injury, was seen leaving the locker room on crutches with a boot. That's not good. The Traylen Burke's breakout looks like it's on hold for an extended time. John Dodson exited with a hamstring injury after scoring yet again. Rookie wide receiver talk. There's a lot of it. George Pickens as well. We'll talk about him. Brian Hoyer exited early backup quarterback for the Patriots. Bailey zappy. Zap zap, zap, zap, zap.

Zapping people over the field. Yeah, we had a good time on Sunday because when that game was going towards overtime, every time he'd complete a pass, it was just like, zap, zap, zap, pew, pew, pew, you got zapped. So we, this is what we do. Yeah, just wait for Thursday, people. Join us for the calling of this game. Yeah, we, you know, we fill the dead air with things like that. But they didn't win. They lost in overtime. That was today's news and notes brought to you by USAA Insurance. Learn more at USAA date.USAA.com slash insurance. This week's fantasy stud muffins. Well, well, well, if it isn't one of, you know, my start of the week, despite having no weapons of any kind. Well, he had one. 26 for 39, 378 and 4. Jared Goff. All healing. This game. Introducing.

This game, this was one of those games where everything just gets fully out of control. And on both sides, the defense just, they can't perform. They choose not to. I don't know exactly what happens because we get a few of these every year where it's just pure chaos and there's nonstop points. What was the, did we get over 100 total? 48, 45, 48, 45 was the final score. Just that's not over 100, Mike. It's close. Well, they say don't get defensive, right? And they didn't. So, I mean, the two offenses figured it out. There is nothing better for fantasy football than what is happening with the Detroit Lions. They are currently the number one offense and the number 32nd ranked defense. The number 32nd. That means it will continue. Right. So beautiful.

uh gino smith in the same game bro you want to say something about gino always i i think that jino smith deserves some dap at this point he is he's playing very well he put up 320 and 2 7 for 49 with a rushing touchdown yeah give his resume right now so right now we have gino smith uh replacing russell wilson former first round drop pick uh or was the second round second round yeah he uh Yeah, he had to wait in the green room. That was a tough situation. But Russ is gone. He had to be in a competition with Drew Locke. Nobody. The team just continually talked up Drew Locke, like he was the best things and sliced bread. If you were in the draft, Drew Locke would be the number one quarterback in this class. And then Gino ends up beating him out. And now we have seen, Gino, first and completion rate, fifth and yards per attempt, sixth in QBR, eighth in on target throw rate. And he's sixth.

sixth in the league and designed rushing attempts at the quarterback position. Are you talking about top 10 quarterback on the season, Gino Smith? He has to be. He is. He's the quarterback nine on the season for fantasy. Oh, I thought we were talking about Russ. We're talking about Gino Smith. Oh, no, no. We were talking about the good one. Yeah. Russell Wilson has a bit of a pulse this week, 237 and 2. Ran one in, so he got to the three touchdown mark. which is nice because Mike made him his start of the week with a little bit of hope. Was this enough to make you do it again? Uh, I mean, this offense, man. No. Okay. It was the one timer. Well, it was the matchup was, the Raiders are going to be great, just like the Lions. It's going to be fun to play your quarterbacks against them, against them throughout the season. Now, the Colts on Thursday at home, you could certainly do worse at the streaming if you're having to stream your quarterback. Tom Brady.

39 for 52. What a wacky game. 385 and 3. So big fantasy day for Tom Brady. First one of the year. Kansas City, I think this was the most scoring in the first half of any game this season is what they showed on the broadcast. Either that of the first quarter, I don't honestly. There's a lot of points. But, you know, Kansas City just kept scoring on the Tampa Bay's vaulted defense. They vaulted? I think I meant vaunted. Vaunted. They were murder. It's in a vault. They locked it up. That defense locks it down. So I guess that works. A vault works. Yeah. Smart. I mean, obviously this was this was some Super Bowl payback. This was chip on the shoulder. We have pulled out all the stops. And the Kansas City offense just torched the vaulted buccaneers defense. And the, uh,

Was it Noah Gray who got the, oh, that's so cool. The Houdini rushing touchdown. Where you got the lineup at quarterback? So if you didn't see the play, Patrick Mahomes starts calls for the main emotion. It's Noah Gray, the tight end who, you know, runs back and forth. Patrick Mahomes, like, starts doing a slide of hand trying to get your, get the defense attention, like pointed to Kelsey. Meanwhile, Noah Gray just goes right up to the center and quarter, he's the quarterback, you know, whatever. He, he, sneaks it in one yard for a touchdown. And I just, my thought, I mean, the play was sensational, but immediately it went to Cliff Kingsbury going, what? I do that stuff too. Why doesn't it work when I do it? Yeah. You're talking about the fourth and one where they gave an end around handoff to Bondale Moore. Yeah. I mean, it just, he's just not good. I know. I know. So Patrick Mahomes. So, Cliff, if you're wondering why it doesn't work when you do it and Andy Reid does,

It's because you're not good. Yeah, that is the answer. At your job. Right. But you have job security. Yes. Patrick Mahomes, big game. Kyla Murray got into the end zone. Two touchdown passes, one rushing. Second half was good. First half was a disgrace. Speaking of what we were just speaking of, see, a lot of teams, they script the first, you know, the first 15 plays, all that. And so the Cardinals, I believe, are eight first quarters in a row without scoring. So we don't. When Cliff is scripting it, they're like, man, these plays are really easy to diagnose as a defense. And then once we're off script, you know, Kyler can get it going. I could talk all day long about how bad the Cardinals are at two and two, including the fact that they are number one in the National Football League over the last three years. And timeouts used to stop a delay of game penalty for an offense that says they're up, you know, fast pace. Let's get to the line. Let's challenge the defense.

I think there's like a really big delay on the microphone from Cliff getting all the way to Kyler. It's a tech problem. But let me, let's turn it to fantasy because I have two quarterbacks that I recommend you get right now. Number one is Kyla Murray. He is somehow still the quarterback six on the season. He will get DeAndre Hopkins back. And listen, this week will be tough. He's at home against Philadelphia. But following this week, there is a four-game stretch. I believe it is Seattle. Then the Saints. Saints and then somebody else and then the Saints. Minnesota and then the Seahawks again. Yeah, sorry, then the Seahawks again. So you have a four-game stretch. You watched the Seahawks. They just gave it 45 points to Detroit with one offensive weapon. His name is T.J. Hawkinson. It's going to get a lot better for Kyler. Hopkins is going to come back in that stretch, and they will figure out some things on the offensive side of the football.

And I think you pick up Kyler. And the other one is Justin Herbert. He is playing well despite having no Keenan Allen. And I think that it's going to get very, very good for Herbert as well. So if you're looking at picking up somebody on the cheap, those are my two targets. Sure. My one suggestion for Kyla Murray is don't watch. Yeah. Because by halftime, you will have a full heart attack and the ambulance will come. It will take you away, and you'll miss the second half where he actually puts up points. Yeah, they'll zip you up and everything. Yeah, just don't watch it. It's not fun. All right, we had some running backs that had monster performances this week. It just wasn't all of the ones you thought were going to. Josh Jacobs, with the highest snap rate of his career. Josh Jacobs. 28 for 144, two touchdown, six targets, 34 opportunities. I played against him in League of Record, and...

Congratulations, Joshua. Yeah, the utilization of Josh Jacobs has been great all season. Now, this was his peak, but 60% week one, 72% snaps week two, 64% week three. He has been the dude for this offense. He's playing very well. Last week, remember he was dealing with an illness, had to fly out separately. Right. And he obviously has fully recovered. He was just outstanding this week. And kudos to Brooks, who is not in the house right now, who pre, you know, draft season when most people didn't want Josh Jacobs. He's like, I want him. I think he's going to be great. The nice thing is, is this insane performance is their one win of the year so far. So using him, not getting cute with Brandon Bolden and Amir Abdullah.

led to a victory. So that's something you like to see. Yeah, I think it's going to be sticky, not sticky to the point of 144 and two rushing touchdowns, but sticky to the point of he's going to be good for fantasy all year and going to be hard to wash off like honey. Yeah. Okay. Austin Echler, Jason, 13 for 60, two rushing touchdown, seven targets and other receiving touchdown. He said, I'm going to deceive you. I'm going to put up. a monster game and make myself the RB5 on the year so that later on when we forget what week to week felt like, you will think I was awesome the whole time. Awesome. Excellent. Thank you. For a guy who had 20 touchdowns last year in zero through week three, he is now averaging almost a touchdown a game. So that's great. They just all came in one game. So that was nice. Miles Sanders looked amazing. 27 for 134 and 2. Where was this last week, Miles? When you made him the start of the week? Yeah, I loved you. And?

And now, then he was great this week. Okay. All right. So who was your start of the week at running back this past week? I don't remember. Or, uh, Breece Hall. Okay. So next week is good for Breece? Oh, this week was good for Breeze. Uh, Rashad Penny, 17 for 151 and two leading rusher on the week. Which shout out to the DFS pass and the DFS pod crew. They had a, uh, a call and a write up on him leading. for plus 3,000 over there. So hopefully you got the DFS pass. You're reading those articles and they're helping you out. Rashad Penny, are we back? Does he get to play Detroit again? No. I mean, at least not next week. I mean, you can't be fully back, but I mean, there was a stretch after the second week of the season, you thought he wasn't playable. So he's back into. That's what I mean. Yeah, I mean.

He's a match-up play. I feel like the shoe could drop at any moment, but right now he's a good play. Let me read you his targets, 3011. He is not a receiving back at all that is consistent with his entire NFL career. And this coming week, he's going to play the New Orleans Saints, a very good rushing defense in New Orleans. And so I would not play him this week, but he's certainly someone that you either hold on to for depth. great matchup play, or you can try to trade high if someone really believes that he's the next great thing or they're a big Seahawks fan. Two more running back studs that are currently the RB3 and four on the season. Jamal Williams and Clyde Edwards Aller, 19 carries apiece, two touchdowns apiece. It was a slow start for Jamal. It was a fast finish. He was great in the spot start here without DeAndre Swift. And ladies and gentlemen, your rookie 101, Clyde Edwards-Alaire over Jonathan Taylor. It's finally paying off.

It was like just like it's victory lap time, Mike. And this was, I mean, I'm not victory lapping the injury, but I'm saying that Jonathan Taylor has was bad before the injury. And Clyde has been good all year long. I don't know. That is that's a victory lap. Oh. And it's, uh, it's really this is just. You made the right pick, Mike in your dynasty. Just trying to make myself feel a little bit harder. Try. You're going to win this week in dynasty? Oh, no. My, no. I have bums like Jamar Chase on my squad. Um, I, I, all. Jokes aside, I think that with the injury to Jonathan Taylor and the excellence you're seeing out of Clyde Edwards-Alaire, if you could turn one of them into the other, I would still do it. It's wild because he's been overly efficient. Clyde Edwards-A-Layer has been overly efficient. 10, 12 and 12 opportunities, those first three games. And then 19 carries. They couldn't be stopped yesterday. They just couldn't. They couldn't be stopped.

19 carries for 92 yards. May Pacheco look good. Yeah, it actually came down to taking Jerich McKinnon a little bit out of the way, and they kind of made it more of a two-back rotation. McKinnon was still involved in some goal line situations. It was on the field from time to time, but certainly not like he had been. And Pacheco should be certainly picked up if he's on waivers. Some people upset that we said to trade Clyde on the high, would you still trade him? Yep, I still would. Damien Pierce, six targets, six catches for eight yards. But 14 for 131 and 1 had a monster touchdown run. A 75-yard touchdown run. Which I think is one of the longest in quite a while. 68% of snaps in week four, 20 opportunities to Rex Burkheads five. It's looking really good for Damian Pierce. He's a great player. Still hasn't been used on third down and two-minute drill. To me that, you know, those are still opportunities.

waiting for him, but Burkhead will probably keep them this year. The target percentages has flipped, though, from still having been Burkhead to Pierce this week. That is a huge sign going forward that he'll get more and more involved. After week one, I didn't think it was possible. I mean, you know, I was not wanting to hold on to Pierce because in this backfield, to be fantasy relevant, you need all of it. You can't split it. And after week one, when it was all Rex Burkhead and he was behind and then they're saying they're going to get him more involved, I assumed that he would take over the leading back, but would split. He is not splitting. This is he gets all of it. This is a James Robinson Jaguar's situation. Yeah, and he's at least explosive. So even in a game where he's not efficient on most of his carries, if he gives you one big one, it helps a la DeAndre Swift in Detroit a couple of years ago. Derek Henry, Christian McCaffrey, Nick Chubb, three of the top.

10 picks in fantasy drafts with big weeks. It's mostly ho-hum, just status quo for them, but for Christian McCaffrey, nine targets. There we go, Baker. Throw Christian McCaffrey the ball, please. Oh, the garbage man can. Almost exclusively garbage time, but that's fine. I mean, eight for 27 on the ground was awful. The touchdown was, was a garbage time touchdown, but he was actually, like, we had. I think Christian McCaffrey had not surpassed four receptions on the entire season, and he was at five, like just after halftime. And I believe DJ Moore got like 11 targets. So they did what fantasy managers were wanting a little bit more, hyper-targeting DJ Moore and Christian McCaffrey, and they lost in tragic fashion. The Cardinals looked like one of the worst teams in the league, and they beat them by 10 points. Yeah, they're one of the worst offenses I've ever seen in my life. I don't think Matt Roe will survive the season.

He is terrible. Baker's terrible. And they're very upset. I mean, this was a team that was in competition for Deshawn Watson, who was making trades for, was it Gilmore? Who did they trade for in the middle of last year at cornerback that was like a big win now move? I think they had traded for Gilmore. Yeah, so was that right? Yeah, Stefan Gilmore. Well, when they lost their, didn't they lose their rookie? I mean, they just, they have a. There's frustration. They were booing this offense. They deserve to be booed. Yeah. And so to the garbage man point, there'll be a lot of it this year. So at least you have the checkdown Christian McCaffrey there. Let's take a break back with the wide receivers. Oh, thank heavens for Mike Evans. Ten targets, eight for 80, two touchdowns. This is Mike Evans, vintage Mike Evans. Yeah, I mean, Brady was like, even the commentators on.