Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - NFC North Breakdown, News, Mailbag

People are, he's a guy that people are kind of forgetting about because, oh, he's gotten worse every year, but he's still really good. And he doesn't catch the ball. I think a lot of times he gets less respect than he deserves. So I agree with that. And right now, when you've got a guy who.

doesn't normally get the respect that he deserves, and then you've got a running back who's getting good publicity behind him scares a lot of people off. But I am with you in the sense that I think he has a good year. I still like Alf. What's his ADP at? Just throwing that open. Yeah, look that up real quick. I mean, he has some of the things about him that people hesitate with Lynch about where you have like, he's just not sexy. He's never going to break a 60-yard run.

I think that's a little bit of why that happens. But if his ADP is anywhere close to the fourth or if he could slip down, I mean, that would be just insane. I'd be all over that. Yeah. And he's as solid as they come week-to-week consistency, which is what you want. Right now he's going top half of the third in a standard. Yeah. And PPR, I bet he drops. That's probably a good value, though. I would take him there. Beginning of fourth in PPR. We wanted to let you guys know. We got such good feedback from the

mock draft show a couple of weeks ago that we are going to go ahead and do another one of those we're going to do a ppr draft next week so make sure you stay tuned to that um we're always talking about fantasy draft wizard dot com it's kind of like our go to offseason tool for trying out strategies for getting a feel for what guys are available and what rounds and in testing things out we've had a lot of people go to fantasy draft wizard dot com and then screenshot their final draft and tweet it over to us i have a new rule yeah

Because I'm exhausted from all these mock drafts. I love it. I'm exhausted. But here's what you got to do. If we reply to your mock draft, you are under oath that you must leave an iTunes review. Is that like the transaction that takes place? There's an agreement between buyer and seller. Just understand that we love those iTunes reviews. And if we're reviewing, then help us out. Help me help you.

Ooh, Jerry Maguire it. That's not too bad. So we'll be using Fantasydraftwizard.com because that's what we used to do the full live draft because we actually go round by round and make the decisions right here live on the air so that you get a picture into our thinking and our process. It's not just reviewing something we did in the past and then, oh, I think in that round I was thinking about this thing. It puts us on the spot where we now have to.

go, oh, we got to make a decision, and we're going to verbalize how we do it. So a lot of you guys play in PPR leagues, full PPR leagues. So we're going to do a full PPR live mock draft. We're also going to have the second half of our interview with Brian Tesh on the show that day as well for Tuesday. Yeah. Sound good. So let's get into the NFC North Divisional Breakdown. Let's do it. Let's start with the Green Bay Packers.

Fantasy gold, man. Yeah. All over that team. Yeah. So let's look at their offense. They were obviously the cream of the crop last year, which is easy to do with guys like Aaron Rogers, Jordy Nelson, and Randall Cobb, Eddie Lacey, headlining that offense. They were number one in scoring. They were the eighth best passing offense, the 11th best rushing offense. They averaged 386 yards per game. They didn't really add too many guys to the offensive side of the ball.

But you see a maturing Devante Adams coming into this season. You also have Ty Montgomery was drafted in the third round. He's not somebody on my fantasy radar. Probably play some special teams, return some kicks, and contribute if a guy gets hurt. They didn't really lose anybody. They kind of stayed status quo. That's the Packers way, man. They draft their whole team. They're not a free agent team. They pay their guys if they need to.

So let's talk. I'm going to let you guys just share some general thoughts on Green Bay, and then I'll ask some questions if they don't get kind of answered. Yeah. Well, so clearly Aaron Rogers and the passing attack there is world class, and I would say it was the cream of the world class. I think it's the number one in the league this coming year. You know, I've got Aaron Rogers ranked decently ahead of Andrew Luck. Which places you in the...

minority, which is mind-blowing to me. I have just a quick stat to add on, to piggyback on to Jason of this, and this I guess is more real life, but it has fantasy implications of, let's hold off, and Andrew Luck is the greatest. Aaron Rogers, since starting, for seven years, has thrown 56 interceptions. In three years, Andrew Luck has already thrown 43. Yeah, that's, Aaron Rogers does not throw interceptions. And on top of that, since starting, except for the one year he got hurt,

He's either been first or second. Yeah. Every year. There's no fluctuation. So let's just hold on with Andrew Lug. Aaron Rogers is the king. Yeah. And in a lot of drafts, you know, like you're alluding to here, I'm in the minority so you can get him second. If you get the guy that finishes first and you draft him second, that is good. I think the thing that I want to talk about here, the wide receiver position, especially with the three main guys, Jordy Nelson, Randall Cobb, and Devante Adams, that's where you've got to decide how's that going to break up.

And over the last part of last year, the targets were actually higher to Randall Cobb than to Jordy Nelson. So essentially, if you take it on the year, Jordy wins the target battle. If you take like the last nine games, it was really close, but Jordy was winning. And if you take the last half of the year, Randall Cob beat him by a decent margin. And so I think that trend, and the fact that they paid him that money, speaks...

pretty well to me that Randall Cobb is going to repeat what he did last year. Some people are saying, you know, he put up, you know, career highs. I will say this, that, well, let me ask you this, Mike. Give me your fantasy hitman opinion of a PPR league, full PPR. Do you draft Cobb over Nelson? No, I still take. Okay. I still take Nelson. So that was question number one. And two, Devante Adams playing on the outside. Is he the one that could more likely take away from Jordi's production than. I actually have some interesting.

things that I found was looking up on Devante Adams. I don't know if you guys know who Matt Harmon is or if the people out in the... Oh! I also had a name I want to run by people. Did you stop your toe? No, no, no, no. I'm running it by the people. For the listeners, instead of football or nation, how about the foot clan? I just want to throw that out before us. So you just came out of left field. The back of your brain just... It reminded me. It pushed it all the way up through...

Devante Adams. I want to call the people who listen to the show The Foot Clan. Well, we'll see how many hashtags we see with that. Okay, but anyway, so Matt Harmon, he runs a site, and his big thing is the reception perception, and he dives super deep into receivers, and he breaks down every single one of their routes. Run, not just if they catch the ball, but just running routes, and he talks about how successful they were versus types of coverage versus man versus zone.

versus double and versus press. And Devante Adams' numbers were actually very disappointing. He was well below the league average of being successful against all types of coverage. So that... But he was... Okay. He can grow. He can grow. But what it says to me on where they said, okay, we got to pay Randall Cobb, that actually, to me, is more shade on Devante Adams not ready.

to be a superstar. Okay, okay. Some of those numbers, though, are skewed. The way that he comes up with those numbers are, you know, based on, I believe some of it is based on kind of the rating of the quarterback throwing to certain wide receivers. And so you're comparing that to two all-star receivers. No, he's comparing it to league average. Is it? Yeah, well, he, and he breaks down. But I'm curious what the first, you know, the first six games versus the next.

Six games. Not only that, but Devante Adams admitted that he was a little lost last year. I mean, you know, you come in as a rookie, and he said he did not have a full grasp. And so that's going to play into how good you are. Other than just debating this, I mean, Devante Adams, camp report was he was the MVP. That's what the coach came out and said. He looked the part in camp. So that's one of those things that we all do, right? We have to kind of process the reports that come through, the stats from last year projecting forward.

Devante Adams, if one of these guys goes down, is a wide receiver two. Two. Yeah, I would say a wide receiver two. Yeah. So Eddie Lacey tried and true at the top of every draft board. Of ours, anyways. There's not too much. Oh, not yours. You know, we've talked about, no, he's not number one on mine, but he's like, I don't remember where I have him right now on the two or three. So not too much to talk about Lacey. He's a workhorse back, a true workhorse back.

Is there anything to talk about at tight end, or should we move on to the Vikings? I would keep an eye on Richard Rogers. I think that he developed a good rapport last year, second half, and whenever you can get part of this passing attack, you want it. Yeah, the shade I got to throw on that as the latest report is the team hopes he can be a 50 catch player. Hopes that he can get 50. Well, it wasn't so much as a five tight-in league. No, but it wasn't his volume so much as his use in the red zone. I think that, you know, he...

I don't remember how many exceptions. He had... He had two touchdowns. Was that Rogers that did that? No. No, because that guy got cut. Yeah. Oh, okay. I looked up the targets of Aaron Rogers throwing a tight end, and they're not very high at all. And the only guy who actually got targets as a tight end was Joe Michael Finley. All right, let's roll on to the Minnesota Vikings, a team that I personally think is on the rise.

which always is aided by Adrian Peterson staying on your roster. They were not good on offense last year. They were at the bottom quarter of the league. They were 27th in total offense. They were 20th in scoring offense. They were at the bottom of the passing game. That doesn't necessarily speak to Bridgewater having issues as much as them not trusting him with a lot of throws.

But you have a lot of fantasy relevant guys, and a lot of guys people have questions about for the fantasy season, including Charles Johnson, Mike Wallace, has arrived into that Norv Turner offense. People want to know what Adrian Peterson's past catching game will be with Norv Turner. And then you have the normal off-season hype about guys like Cordarro Patterson, Kyle Rudolph. What are the roles for those guys? This year, they didn't really add anybody but Mike Wallace to the offensive side. They lost Greg Jennings.

They lost their fullback. That's interesting. Felton was really good for them. But other than that, let's talk about the Minnesota Vikings. If this offense, which I think it will make a huge leap. But what does that mean to Teddy Bridgewater? Does that mean more scoring opportunities in the same amount of yards? Does he come out and surprise people? I think he can surprise people. It would not shock me to have him be a QB1, but not at this point. I'm not counting on it.

What is interesting for Teddy Bridgewater is he had a 64% completion rate that put him at the third highest rookie completion rate in history. So a very important thing clearly for a quarterback is to be accurate, but generally speaking, quarterbacks don't improve dramatically of accuracy through their career. You can either do it or you can't, and clearly he can do it. So now he just needs the opportunity to...

And the weapons. And the weapons. And they played all year without Adrian Peterson. They still managed a solid rushing attack with Aziad and McKinnon. Peterson is just a beast. He's a 5.0 lifetime average. He'll have his best catching year of his career. That's what you're predicting for him? Yes. Best reception grabs of his career. He's a double-digit touchdowns every year. Adrian Peterson is as steady as they come.

Yeah, I can't stand the addition of Mike Wallace. Okay, that's what I was going to ask for because I think he might be pretty productive there. I do too. But you can't stand it for who? Charles Johnson? Yes, I loved Charles Johnson. I was a big believer in him. And so I honestly, right now, it's tough to decide how much I factor in Mike Wallace into this because I don't see this offense.

being a very pass-happy offense. I think they're going to put up more passing yards and more passing attempts than they did last year just because it's not a rookie anymore running the offense. But at the same time, they're not going to be a passing team. If they add 50 yards to their passing offense per game, which is not putting them anywhere near the top of the league, I think the Charles Johnson production will be very similar to last year because the rapport that Ridgewater has with Johnson is not going anywhere. And Mike Wallace doesn't build rapport with anybody. Right, but the problem with Charles... He doesn't.

The problem with Charles Johnson's numbers staying the same as last year is that the hope in Charles Johnson is he's going to be a big breakout guy. And that's what I think Mike Wallace takes away is his potential to really break out and be a star. And where you're drafting him a lot of times is with that hope. And I don't really have that hope anymore. And I think Mike Wallace is decently productive. I think Mike Wallace, you know, every team he plays for.