Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - Early QB Rankings Part 2

holds the ball a little bit longer. It's like kind of Warner-esque, just willing to take that hit. And so I've got to put that risk level. If 10's a high risk and one's a low risk, I'm going to put it at 6-7 for Tony Romo. But it's a 6-7 that I don't mind taking because it's so late in the draft. Yeah, it doesn't cost you anything. For me, it's actually lower. If you look back at his history, I mean, before this year, he only played four games, but in the past...

the previous four seasons, he only had missed two games. And every single one of those seasons, he was a quarterback one, fantasy was. And that's the case for Tony Romo. And he's going to be down the list. Most leagues, if not all, you know, you're going to have the portals flying off the board well ahead of Tony Romo. Tony Romo is being drafted as the 16th quarterback. There's going to be shade. Which is, you know, 10th round and after. Is that just because we don't?

have the training camp buzz of him being maybe back from surgery and feeling healthy? It's because it happens every single year. Ah, that's why. You're right. I don't get it. I don't get it why there's no. Do they draft a quarterback? I think the Dallas going to draft ones? They should. I wouldn't. Personally, I would not. Yeah, you're a big Brandon Whedon guy.

I love Brandon Wheaties. All right. Number 19. Wait, he's not even there anymore, right? No, he's not. Number 19 is Captain. It's killing more. Yeah. You mean Max Hall? Number 19, Kurt Cousins, Captain Kirk. Oh, yeah. The either hero or villain for your playoff for him last year. Hero or zero. Yeah. So he was impressive. He had five touchdowns on the ground, which I think is...

Pretty incredible, but he can move a little bit. He had 29 through the air, over 4,100 yards, and really a lot of people want to know why is he this low. Is there any reason why Kirk Cousins can't be, you know, in that top 12? No, I think he could, but you're talking about, Cousins really took off in the second half of the season. Really for the majority, he was a one touchdown per game type of guy.

I think that, like I was saying, I think the ability is there if you continue to have health with Jordan Reed and if you can find another target. And you know who was unhealthy for a lot of last year? Deshawn Jackson. Deshawn Jackson is being a forgotten man.

in the world of fantasy football, which is ridiculous. He's not my favorite player, but the fact that there's so much shade being thrown on him right now is absolutely outrageous. Yeah, I've been surprised with some of the value I've seen Deshaun Jackson going pretty late. So you bring Deshaun Jackson back.

That raises the ceiling for Kurt Cousins. He can get it done. We're talking about the risk meter. I don't know if he's going to. Led the league in completion percentage, the same type of argument we just made for Ramos. But not YPA. No, not YPA. Has Jordan Reed, obviously, a big weapon. Finished last year on a streak of very few interceptions. This is the type of guy where it can kind of go any way with him, and that's why he's down at 19 and not higher.

Yeah, and the truth is, that's a great risk. He's a great guy to grab at the end of a draft. But do you think you can, though? Where's he going right now? I will effort that. He is going 14th quarterback, 9th round.

So, you know, if you're looking between Kirk Cousins and Eli Manning and Tony Romo, if you wanted to go Kirk Cousins and hope that the second half of the year, what you saw was the real Kirk Cousins, I think that that's a strategic move that you can make and it could pay off huge for you. And I don't believe it is. I don't believe that he's the guy that barely threw interceptions and...

was on fire the second half of the year because I saw a big disparity in home in a way. I saw some mental mistakes that were just absurd. Now, you have a division that unlike Derek Carr going up against some of those prolific defenses, now the Giants, maybe they're better this year, but you're going against the Giants' defense, the Eagles defense, softer secondaries than other divisions. So that could be a point in his favor if those guys aren't, you know, those teams aren't short up in the secondary.

Talking to the interceptions, I just want to actually read them because it's strange. A guy in his first six games, eight interceptions. After that, three the rest of the year. It was impressive. He seems to need that confidence. Did he turn the corner? Yes, he does. He is, he tilts. If you put cousins on tilt, the game is done. But that's also early quarterback experience. Like you said, did it click? Is this the year?

All those questions are why he's where he says. And Washington's asking that as well. Last year, Mike and I talking about, I've never seen a guy that you could look, you could put together a highlight film of a single game of Kirk Cousins. And you could say, this guy is all world. He's incredible. And the same game, you could put together a low light film where you go, get this guy off the field. You know who that reminds me of, though? Who? Tony Roma.

Sure. Tony Romo had these games where you'd watch drive after drive, and then he'd just unravel in the second half or in certain drives. I think that was called playoffs. I think it would, you know, Romo had that reputation until he put together consistency for a while. I just want to remind everyone of the Kurt Cousins kneel out at the end of the half instead of spiking the ball. No need to remind me. Oh, that was. I had that tattooed on my leg afterwards. That moment was great.

And Pierre Garcin, putting his head down, was great. All right, the last guy in our consensus top 20. This is Matthew Stafford. What, are you appalled or excited? I'm excited to talk about it because I don't think there is a single guy who is, he's in your top 10. He is in my top 10. And he is in our 20s.

Absolutely. So we are both very off of Matt Stafford. You are still on. He's lost the Hall of Fame wide receiver. Sell me Matt Stafford. It's going to be a hard sell. Well, the sell is not going to be built around Marvin Jones replacing Calvin Johnson. It's not. What it's going to be built around is Matthew Stafford. Matthew Stafford in the second half of last year was incredible. I think you had three interceptions in the second half of last year, and I'm trying to pull up the numbers right now to give them to you.

He had three interceptions. I think he was on pace for somewhere in the 40s in terms of touchdowns. He really turned his entire season around. And I still just believe that the attempts aren't going to change. And if the attempts don't change from Matthew Stafford, he'll be efficient enough with them to make his marking fantasy football. I believe in the second half of the year, his pace in the second half was 38 for 4,400 yards. And he only threw, I believe, four interceptions in the second half.

A tale of two seasons. I know Matthew Stafford is a polarizing guy like a Jay Cutler in the past and those type of players. But I just, you know, Matthew Stafford can turn it on on any given day. He still's got Golden Tate, Eric Ebert in the red zone, Marvin Jones, a couple of passing, you know, Riddick isn't running the ball. Riddick catches the ball, you know, 70 to 80 catches. Amir Abdullah is a past catcher.

That's five names that I threw out there that can be good enough for this offense. Yes. And they might bring another guy on. If you believe in what Andy is saying, the nice thing about Matthew Stafford, he is actually getting drafted about where we're talking about, the 20th, you know, right now. He's free.

Yeah, he's free. He's essentially going undrafted, and Andy's got him finishing in the top eight for him. So, I mean, when you get in this range of – Yeah, in six point. Yeah, when you get in this range of quarterbacks, you're really talking about a difference of opinion from one person to the next where you go, I like Matthew Stafford. I hate Matthew Stafford. I love Kirk Cousins. Oh, he's the worst. And you got to – sort of, yeah. I mean, it's common with a lot of the players in this range. But the point again and again and again is that this – I mean, we're at the 20th.

If you're in a league that starts 12, there might not even be 20 rostered quarterbacks. I mean, usually you'd probably roster about 20 in a league. That's around the range. But we still haven't talked about Matt Ryan or Tyrod Taylor, Ryan Tanahill, Cutler. I mean, there are so many guys. Flacco? Flacco. Well, Andy's talked about Flacco before. I'm not super high on him, but I know Andy's talked about a big bounceback year for the Ravens. I have.

I've talked about a big bounce back here for the Ravens. I don't remember this. Me neither. Maybe that was a dream, but I swear it's happened. I think we've talked about the fact that the Ravens have high pass attempts. Yes. But that's not the same as me being in their camp. I'm going to agree to disagree on this one. So my argument to your argument is the loss of Calvin Johnson is so huge because I think that

Those other guys you mentioned, Calvin just being on the field makes that entire team better. Calvin makes things easier for everybody, where Marvin Jones will not do that. We've seen in the past Stafford, it's not a huge sample size granted, but in the games where Calvin Johnson is not involved, you've seen Stafford just fall on his face. He's gotten better recently, I will.

I will admit to this point of Stafford has become a decent real-life quarterback, you know, cut down on the interceptions. He's just playing better. But it's very difficult for me to get to the point of seeing him lose Calvin and him still finishing in the top 10. And that's fine.

I think that's fair. I don't think he's going to stay eight. Eight's too high. He'll be at that 12, 13, QB1, QB2 range for me. There's no way I want to go week in and week out with Stafford as my quarterback, even though he ended so well. I'm looking at that saying, okay, I don't really want him in there every single week. So that puts him on the bubble a little bit more. So that does it for today's episode, the last half of our quarterbacks. Is there anybody from the remainder that we didn't talk about that you want to

To say anything about for the last, you know. And you're talking about that Tyrod Taylor, Matt Ryan, Jake Color, Alex Smith. I think Ryan Tanhill. Joe Flacco, who Jason loves. No, no, no. I honestly, Sam Bradford. I could be wrong on the Joe Flacco. It wasn't a Joe Flacco conversation, but a Ravens bounce back candidate team. I could be wrong on that. Yeah, okay. I was the reason I was bringing him up. The guy that I would bring up. I do like the Ravens bouncing back as a team, yeah.

Yeah, the guy that I would bring up is actually Ryan Tannahill because he burned a lot of people last year. The Ryan Tanya Hill hype train last year was pretty good. There was a lot of evidence for him to move forward. And in my opinion, I think he stunk for a lot of last year. He hurt a lot of fantasy players. So his value is going to be.

Poof, gone. He might not go drafted in many leagues. But you've got gays coming in with a new system. Devante Parker, who wasn't healthy and was barely used until the end of the year last year, is now added to that team. You could see, there are some reasons that Tanna Hill could come back to fantasy relevance and be good as an undrafted guy. All right. I agree with you on that. That's an interesting name, and it's just...

Again, a testament to the depth of the position when you have so many guys like Matt Ryan that weren't talked about, Ryan Tannahill. You know, it's incredible to me. The point I was going to make was that just the guys left on this list. Mattie Ice is a guy. Tyrod, Taylor, Tannehill, Cutler, even Alex Smith in the right scenarios. You streamed Smith a couple times last year. Yeah. You know who I streamed in the playoffs? Brock Osweiler. Yeah. And it was the right choice for what I had available. So it's we, these are guys who are not even close to the top of our list.

They have value. And you know who we didn't name? Robert Griffin, the third. No, we didn't. Robert Griffin. Or any of the rookies, because obviously they haven't been drafted and put into a position to maybe start on certain teams. Not that they'll climb into the top 10 by any means, but you never know. So next week, we're going to have a draft preview. We're going to talk about some of the big offensive names where they could land, where we think they'll land. We'll have special guests on the show. And again, if there's some, you know, huge piece of news that we didn't talk about, it's not.