Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - AFC East Breakdown, News, Mailbag

Dionne Lewis. Now, Lewis, if you don't remember him, he flashed two years ago. He's probably the low man on the total ball here, but these kind of break down into big backs and smallbacks in terms of this offense. So you have blunt and gray. We saw what they did as a big backs last year, and Tyler Gaffney fits in that spot as well. And then Brandon Bolden's kind of on his own because he is such a special team's ace. He's making the team probably. And he can do enough if they needed him, you know.

The question I have is who is taking a significant fantasy role in replacing Shane Vereen because you have James White, who probably gets a shot. You got Travarez Cadet who is in New Orleans and has good hands and can catch the ball. And you got Dionne Lewis, who I said, they're taking a chance on it, but if he has something left, he could be the guy. So makes sense of this. Well, the Garrett Blunt is penciled in to me as kind of the two-down guy. The majority two-down guy, I would say, because there's going to be games where...

You're just shocked and... He fumbles. He's not really a fumbler. No, I'm just saying. It's hard to know. And he's been great for the Patriots. In 2013, when he was there, the full year, he had a 5.0 yards per carry. Last year in five games, 4.7. So he gets it done there. And there are games where they will give him a humongous workload, but there's games where they'll give him three carries. And then you just get hosed. And...

My instinct tells me that James White will get the first shot to be the pass catcher. And he didn't play very much at all, but he's a fourth-round pick last year. And he was only in three games, so it's hard to really know. Jason, I had a question for you. When he brought up Lagart Blunt's possible inconsistency where he has these big games and low games, I mean, how do you approach starting a guy like that?

From week to week. Normally on teams like that, like last year, the Patriots were a team come draft season that I avoided. I just don't prefer to have guys on my roster taking up that spot where I could start him thinking he's the starter and he could not even get a carry. However...

Specific to the Patriots right now, I actually think, I think this year it's going to be pretty clear cut. I think that they're going to use LaGarrett Blunt the majority of time on that work. I think with Tom Brady being out the first four games, they're going to rely on them. Obviously, Blunt's out the first game. So we've got to keep that in mind. After that, I think that they're going to use them a lot. I think their rushing wasn't that great last year. And so I think LaGarrett Blunt is one of the better players to target right now. 18th in the league.

Like Jason said, in rushing last year in terms of yards per game. But they did come on at the end of the season because of Legeribund. And they obviously rode their offensive schemes to a Super Bowl title. I just had an interesting thought because we've been trying to figure out what do the Levi-on-Bell people do. Oh. Breaking news. I just thank you. No, I appreciate that. Interesting thoughts come few and far between. So the man bun. So Levy and Bell misses three games. Legerat-Blund will miss one.

What if you take Jonas Gray with, like, your last pick? And just roll them out week one? When week one, because I'll tell you exactly what will happen to you. He will get no carry somehow. Maybe. No, I know. That's not bad. Tom Brady's gone. Legerick Blunt's gone. No. What are they going to do? Even if you are the, you're saying if you're the Lev Bell owner? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Just take that, take the very, very last pick, last positional pick. Yeah, Tray Mason and Lev Bell might be, I mean, uh...

Jonas Gray might be a couple of sneaky first week starts. I'd rather play Jonas Gray, barring major changes. I'd rather play Jonas Gray week one than I would DeAngelo Williams week one. Yeah, exactly. Which I don't think that's probably what people are thinking, but I think that's a better play. All right, let's move over to a very difficult part of their team as well, the wide receiver position.

Number one's kind of far and away Julian Edelman. Edelman's the guy. He's evolved into the guy. Brandon LaFelle is there. He just got out of a walking boot, but he'll be back and ready for camp. Danny Mandola's there. He played about 40% of snaps last year. That's not obviously what you want in a fantasy situation. And then you have a mix of guys, Brandon Gibson, Aaron Dobson, Matthew Slater, Brian Tim's Times. I don't even know how to pronounce it. But he's on the roster competing for a spot and Josh Boyce. So...

Let me, Julian Edelman is a PPR machine. There you go. We're thinking identical. I love them in PPR. In a non-PPR, I'm probably just going to let him go by. Because in a non-PPR and a standard, I realize he's still going to get, you know, a good chunk of yards, but I don't see him getting in the end zone and the yards aren't going to make up for it. Yeah, he only played 14 games, but in those 14 games had 135 targets.

92 catches, almost 1,000 yards. So he was on pace. How many touchdowns did he get? Four. Yeah. But he was on pace for 154 targets, which puts him in the top five. He had one game of less than seven targets. One game and seven games of double-digit targets. So this is a PPR guy who, he gets overlooked a lot and gets little respect, but he.

is fantastic in the PPR format. Yeah, he's been overlooked in my rankings. I have him way, way too low. Really? Yeah, I have him like in wide receiver three range. In for PPR? In PPR? Which is not, that's not appropriate. No. I issue a public apology to Julian gentleman right now. And I really like Brandon Lafell this year. That's what I was going to ask. See, he had two, the three? I got him as a two. Wow. I think that's where he is. In a standard? Yeah. It.

Lafell had 119 targets. He had eight and a half targets a game. Yeah. He finished with almost 1,000 yards, seven touchdowns, and he'd got zeros on the first game. And he's also the best blocking wide receiver on the team. So he's going to be on the field in one wide receiver sets. And he's had the opportunity to build some trust and rapport the way that you need to do that with guys like Brady, Manning, Breeze. A guy that has, you know.

can go out there and perform week after week. One of the questions for me is Aaron Dobson. Aaron Dobson had a really good rookie year. It was basically gone last year, and when he was there, he was basically gone. And so when he comes back this year healthy, I see the person that affects the most is like Brandon LaFelle. If he comes in and steals anything away, so do you see Aaron Dobson coming back strong or irrelevant or in between? Aaron Dobson, to me,

Here's my sense on him because I followed him since he came into the league. They like him. That's the sense I get from New England. They like him and believe he offers value when he's healthy. And do I think it'll take away from Lafell? Probably not because Lafell's not a deep threat. Okay. The deep threat there is it's either going to be Dobson or it's going to be Boyce, really. So those are the guys I think that are going to compete for the deep threat. So I think he'll probably be on the roster. I think Lafell is a bit of a deep threat.

I don't think they like him. And the healthy scratches last year would... So you just said everything they complete opposite of me. I'm just giving my opinion. Cool, bro. But how do you healthy scratch a guy multiple times in a season? Why? But why would you do that? You already got your rotation going. You're already playing. So what does the Tom Brady suspension do? I mean, we've talked about the fact that we, I know we're unanimous on this. We're kind of off the Tom Brady drafting him.

because you're going to have to take two roster spots to draft the guy who, in all honesty, was middle of the pack last year. He had a stretch where he was fantastic, but overall he was a middling quarterback. Why would you take...

two picks to grab a middling quarterback when there's so many of them. But what does it do to the receivers and or the running backs? Those first four games, do we expect a dip in the Julian Edelman's and the Brandon Fells and the Gronks? Or do we expect Garapolo to come in and just be the same? And if so, is he worth drafting? I think it's business as usual. That's kind of the Patriot way is they...

throw up the obscene gestures and say this is how we're going to do it anyways. So I wouldn't knock the positional players too much. Some interesting numbers on Tom Brady, which I've given these before, but I think they're worth resharing. Weeks 1 through 4, 9 points. Weeks 5 through 9, 27 points. Great stretch. Massive. But then weeks 10 through 16 down to 17 points. And you're talking about almost identical attempts throughout those three

phases of his season. It's weird. So it's hard to really know who exactly he is, but in 2013, he was 17th. He was the 17th rated fantasy quarterback. 2014, 11th. So he's a guy who you were going to have to spend a high pick because his name is Tom Brady, and he's the Golden Boy, and he wins Super Bowls, but he doesn't win fantasy championships, not anymore.

Good take. Let's move on to another team in the AFC East. If you are a Miami Dolphins fan, you have waited a while to be excited. Maybe you've pretended to be excited. But I think there's a lot of reasons to be excited this year. If you're Miami Dolphins fan, you've seen the year after year development. Mike's talked about it a lot of Ryan Tannahill, both as a real quarterback and a fantasy quarterback. You bring in talent on the offensive side of the ball.

where you've already established some with youngsters like Jarvis Landry. You bring in Kenny Stills, you draft Devante Parker, you bring in Greg Jennings, you bring in Jordan Cameron. You basically rework that offensive side of the ball. So let's talk fantasy here. This is a middle-of-the-road team offensively last year, completely. 17th in passing, 12th and rushing, 11th and scoring. So let's talk about Ryan Tannahill first.

You want to do that, Jerry? You love it. You know, we are more similar on Ryan Tannahill than... That's true. It's true. I mean, it's crazy that we had a debate where I was talking... I still think Cam finishes the year total fantasy points ahead, but I really love Cam Newton this year. I just said that. I really love Ryan Tannahill this year. His numbers are great, and I was saying before the show, I'm almost sad that they got in Dominic Su, because I do think that that's going to cap...

what the offense is going to do. I think their defense is going to be good enough to where they're not going to have to really have shootouts and really have to, you know, be scoring 30 points a game to win. And so, you know, I think he's going to have his best year, Ryan Tanna Hill this year. I think he's one of the best targets. I don't like drafting, you know, middle of the pack quarterbacks, but the two guys in those, you know, kind of not super late and definitely not.

Super early guys that I like are Ryan Tannahill and Matt Ryan because I think their value is going to be really good this year. Ryan Tannenhill has improved in almost every category throughout his quarterback career. Last year, 590 attempts, almost 400 completion and just over 4,000 yards, 27 touchdown. So that's a little bit lower than you want from your fantasy guy. But...

The added bonus of Ryan Tinna Hill that most people don't pay attention to is he actually runs the ball. He had over 300 yards on the ground and a touchdown. And for a guy who ran the ball 56 times, it's very possible that he can get maybe two more touchdowns on the ground this year as long as he continues to run. And that's super valuable. You see that with some other guys. Alex Smith runs a little bit more than other.

other players and you don't expect it from them, but on the fantasy side of the ball, it really is a leveler of scoring. Because if you run the ball as a quarterback, whether it's Kaepernick, Newton, RG3, any of these guys, you really...

prevents the base game, the really low game a lot of the time. So if you're running in the ball, it helps balance that out. So we all like Tannahill, Mike. You have him at 7, I believe. You have him at 7. I have him at 9 right now. So both, Jason, I assume you're as a QB1 as well. Yep. Right in the same category. So let's talk the running backs. I'm really willing to be wrong on this, but I just don't like Lamar Miller. That's understandable.

I don't like Lamar Miller as an NFL running back. And you don't like him as a person? Right. I don't, his family. No, not at all. No, I got nothing against, I got nothing against Lamar Miller other than when he, you know, went and worked out with Frank Gore and said he was going to be, you know, a superstar. And then he came out and didn't do it. But two years ago. Oh, okay. So last year he was very good. This year, they didn't really bring in a lot of competition. But I do like...