Week 4 Studs & Duds + Fantasy Funnels - Fantasy Football Podcast for 9/30

to the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome into the podcast. It's that fantasy footballers podcast, if you're nasty. I'm your host today. I'm the captain now. Mike, the fantasy hitman Wright, joined by my best friend, Jason Moore. Hey, best friend, Mike. How you doing? I am 50-50 right now. Okay. You could be worse. Oh, I could be worse. How are you doing, Jay? I'm 1090, my man. 1090. Doing good about 10%. Hey, could be worse. Yeah, exactly. Glass with a little bit of water in it kind of guy. You know, I see the glasses. Look, look at that little bit of water. I don't see it as mostly empty. There's still like the dishwasher left a little. Yeah. A little in there for me. Welcome into the podcast.

Monday, September 30th. It was another wild week of football. The morning games were quite good, had a lot of scoring. Finally. Touchdowns over field goals for once. The afternoon games were. Yeah, the afternoon games had to bring us back down. But we made it through. I hope that your teams had themselves a good time on today's show. We will be getting into the puns ready to roll. We're going to talk about defenses. We're four weeks in. We can start making some better educated decisions about which defenses that we're going to attack because those change every year. And through the first couple weeks, things fluctuate, trying to figure out what's fluky, what is not. And then we'll be talking about the studs and the duds. The deusers are in the house. The Falcon is back from his massive dump. It was the entire weekend. Yeah.

It was ridiculous. Get some preparation. What are you wearing, Matt? Yeah. He's all decked out in his Niners gear because the Niners won and whatever. You look like the 49ers threw up on you. I would love it. Yeah. Well, they had themselves a good week. A couple other guys had themselves a good week. So let's get sophisticated and celebrate. And then we will detonate on those that did not. Hmm, yes, I will start, Jason. Okay. Derek Henwee. You had Taysam King of the Hill. I guess we did. We had Xavier legit. Too legit. Uh, how about Sam Starnold? Yeah, how you like that one? Dude, he's, he's the best quarterback of the NFL. Uh, Nico Ballins. You had the other great quarterback, Laser Mayfield.

I really like that one. Poo-Poo-Poo! Uh, Jaden Manules. Yeah, I mean, those guys are great. Yeah. It's not all good. No. It's not all good. Sometimes you got guys like Skidmark Andrews. That's going to be a fun conversation for no one to have. Kyle Armed Pits or Breece's Feces. Come on, Breeze Hall. Garrett, won't son. Rome a Doomsday. Oh, Kyler Murr. Eh. And Carson Steele my fab. Carson Steele my draft picks. Yeah. The Kansas City Chief's running back situation. It's, uh, yeah. It's not what everyone hoped with the Carson Steele waiver dumps. Obviously, if you are unfamiliar, if you didn't watch or didn't see, it became the Kareem Hunt show.

The first quarter was Carson Steele. He got the start. He also fumbled right away. He did fumble, and then he did not play much. In fact, he wishes that he scored as many fantasy points as Mark Andrews, who scored zero points. Yeah, Kreme Hunt led the running backs and snaps and carries, which going into next week, we'll be talking about the waivers because Clyde Edwards O'Leary is eligible to come off of his. He's not on the IR. I think he's on. The pup, whatever. He's on one of the lists where he has to miss four weeks. Will he be back? Will Kareem keep the job? Stay tuned to find out. Yeah, on tomorrow's episode, obviously, the waiver wire, we're going through all the pickups. But this is a really big week because this is the week that all the players who started on these lists are now eligible to return to practice, to play this next week. Not that they all will, but we will discuss who to pick up and who's coming back. And I got one thing to address here. Kyle.

And Papa Josh made a bet. Oh my goodness gracious. This bet was held in secret. We did not know about it. It was because there are two teams, their home teams. Papa Josh is a big time Saints fan. Kyle the Borgogan is a Falcons fan. And the bet was awesome. You have to wear face paints of the other team's colors. Whoever wins. All day. You have to do it to work. Yeah. And this is your no, it ain't to work. Oh, what? Was 100% of work. Kyle suggested that it was all day at work. And I said, dude, you work from home. That ain't nearly the same. And then he was like, yeah, I figured you'd say that. Hey, shame on you. Yeah, when you take a bet, you got to pay out the bet. That was not the bet. So when are you doing it? I got to just do it at home. I got to take a photo and then I got to post it to socials. That's dumb.

What a dumb bet. You know what? I'm changing the bet. I'm out of here. I'm changing the bet. I'm bailing out. You come to work tomorrow on this show. I want half red, half black. You are a falcon tomorrow. Be a man. Be a man. We'll have two. I'll make it happen. I'll make it happen this week. Okay. Thank you, Josh. Probably, probably tomorrow. Thank you for pointing that out. Yeah. I mean, it's ridiculous. I forgot yesterday. I was excited to see Josh today. And then I saw him wasn't excited. Didn't even think about it. Just embarrassing. All right. Let's talk about these defenses.

Welcome to Ready to Roll, presented by Nissan. All right, we are a month in. And so we, you know, we talk about this all the time in the draft season about how much changeover there is on defensive rosters. It's not like a, you know, a normal player. You have teams that are bad that become good, teams that were good to become bad and, you know, just personnel changes. So now that we're a month in, we wanted to take a look at the defenses. and say like, okay, how are we targeting them? Because so much has changed. And so we're going to focus on three categories here. We use our streamfinder tool for a lot of this. If you're not familiar, it's an amazing tool if you want to look at who to pick up to play at any position. It's almost, I mean, it shares a lot of similarities with a strength of schedule tool, which we have that as well for supporters that join thefoot.com. But the streamfinder is an easy, essentially like a backwards.

way because you're streaming. You're trying to find a player out the waiver wire specifically to target those defenses. So it's it's arranged a little bit differently, but once you figure out how to use it, it's extremely powerful. It is very powerful. And it gets a lot more powerful as the season goes on starting now because a lot of these tools out there, you've got kind of the fantasy points given up. I mean, that's on the platforms, right? You look at whatever platform you are and it says, oh, they're 32nd against running back. Right. But it doesn't take into account who they have played. So we want to look at schedule adjusted points given up. And what that means is like, you know, let's say that you are, you know, a team gives up no points to the tight end position. And it's like, oh, they look like they're great against tight ends, except they've played, you know, the Panthers and Tommy Trimble. Like they don't use the tight end. Right. So it's like they didn't actually shut down the tight end. They just had a matchup that was like that. So after a month.

We're going to focus on here's a couple run funnel teams. Here's a couple pass funnel teams and the teams that you just want to throw everything at. The run funnels right now this year that are changed from last year. One is the Dallas Cowboys. Tell that to Devin. I mean, a little bit of TBD. So Devin, get it together. The Cowboys have not been able to stop anyone until this last week. And now, you know, I do think with them. And they're down to defenders now. Yes, they lost Parsons for a little while. And DeMarcus Lawrence, right? So not just two defenders, two great defenders. Yes. You know, last year they were fantasy's number one defense. They were tied with the Ravens for the 11th best against fantasy running backs. So far this year, three out of the four games, they've been destroyed on the ground with their losses. I would be fine targeting upcoming running backs.

You've got Najee who looks like he might be alone in the backfield coming up next week. And then the Gibbs and Monty after that. The other team is the Buffalo Bills. Dude. I mean, if you saw Derek Henry last night, the Derek Henry run where it go first, the first run. Yeah, the first huge run, like go back and watch it a few times. Pick a new player each time. It's one of those videos for me where secrets just start unlocking of. One cornerback. I don't know if the man made a business decision or if he just took the worst angle possible to stop him because Derek Henry just breezes past him. And then the wall of three Buffalo bills running as fast as they can. And watching them run is like these guys are working. The arms are pumping. I can almost, I can hear the footsteps. I can hear the breath. And Derek Henry looks like he's jogging.

Except he's jogging faster than everybody. Derek Henry always looks like he's jogging. Derek Henry has never looked fast on a run to my eyes ever. Because he's big. It's like a train. Like when you watch a train, it looks like it's going slow. Even if it's going 100 miles an hour, it's just like trugging along. It's like the, when you see airplanes in the sky, like I need clouds. I need something that I can gauge. How fast is that? It's just, it looks like it's barely moving. put some clouds in there, oh, that plane's going really, really fast. I'm going to tell you what, if I ever make a business decision, if I was a defender, it would be against Derek Henry. Yeah, I don't blame him. That would be the one. But yeah, the bills have last year, they were the number three DST this year. They are very, very good against the past, six the best against the pass, and they are just gashed on the ground. You had the Cardinals, the Dolphins, and now yesterday the Baltimore Ravens just destroy them on the ground. So you've got maybe Joe Mixin this coming week.

Hopefully, Brees Hall gets together the following week and Braylin Allen. And on the opposite, you've got those teams that, like, you can't run on at all, but you can throw on. One of them is the Jacksonville Jaguars. You can throw all day on them. So far through four weeks, you've had four awesome performances from opposing quarterbacks and wide receivers. Everybody eats against the Jaguars. Did you catch the Doug Peterson quote? where he basically said it's not my fault. It's the players. Quote, as coaches, we can't go out there and make the plays. It's a two-way street. I think his, yeah, I think his players are going to be super happy about that. They're going to really, really love that. They're going to really love that. Let's bring everyone together. It reminds me of a Dennis Allen. So, way to go, Peterson. Honestly, they're, they're reeling. I don't, I mean, he doesn't have very many weeks left. Probably not. If they keep losing. But if you are.

You know, if you're going to have wide receivers or quarterbacks, the Jaguars are a great matchup to focus on. And then you've got two really good defenses here. The Vikings and the Ravens, they are great defenses. You watch the games, you go, that's a great defense. You cannot run on those teams. You just can't. The Vikings right now, they're number four in yards per carry allowed, number two in rushing yards allowed per game. The Ravens are number one and number one. You can't run on them. However, you can actually pass on them. For the Vikings, opponents are attempting 44 passes per game. That's number one in the NFL. With the Ravens, I mean, the opponents are throwing 68% of the time, second highest in the NFL, third most passing yards per game. So, you know, these offenses are running. They're rolling. The Vikings and the Raven. So you're going to have to pass. You might be down.

You're trying to play catch up, and you can't run on them. It's similar to the lions. We're not bringing up the lions because they're the same as they were last year. Can't run on them, can pass on them. So I think these are things that going forward we can have a little bit more confidence because there's been enough of a trend with enough teams and matchups where we go, okay, this is legit. Start your wide receivers and quarterbacks against Vikings, Ravens, Lions. And then you have this start everybody teams, which is the commanders, the Colts, and the Rams. Just have fun. Just have a good time. Just put your players in and say, let's go. Yeah, that's basically it. Thanks again to our sponsor, Nissan and the all-new reimagined Nissan Kix. Redesigned with a bold new look, the Nissan kicks sports the latest tech like a Bose Personal Plus sound system. Head over to Nissan.com to learn more. Bose Personal Plus sound system is an available feature. Bose is a registered trademark of the Bose Corporation.

News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance. For tonight's games, because we got multiple ones, again, if you didn't, remember that. Rahim Moster is not expected to play. Things were trending in a better situation for him. Seems like we'll probably see him back next week. Kenneth Walker, the Bone Zone returns tonight, Jason. Do we have any confidence with him to? Not really. I mean, there's a matchup is terrible matchup. We just talked about it. The lions, you just can't run on the lions. You can throw on them. So, you know, I like the Seahawks receivers. I would start all of them. But Kenneth Walker, first game back from injury. I'm not excited for him or Sharbs. I think they're going to split. I don't think they'll give Kenneth Walker like the 80% load. He, you know, he usually gets when he's active right off of an injury.

And it's a tough matchup. So hopefully you have other options. So let's see. Next week against the Giants. Oh, yeah. I mean, I mean, you just, I think if you're a Walker fan or if you've got Walker, your biggest hope. What you're watching for is that he leaves this game healthy. That's, that's what matters. Because I do feel like they're rushing him back a little bit. And he's done this before where he's like tried to hustle back from injuries and then you get re-injured. Speaking of injuries. Buckle up, everybody. That's what the news is all about. Let's start with the positive side. The Browns are expected to open the 21-day practice window for Nick Chubb. Remember, it is the ACL Plus, and this is the practice window. That does not mean that he's back next week. It doesn't mean he's back the following week.

However, this is great news that they're opening the window because it's, look, it's 21 days. Yeah, it's a guarantee that he will be back within the next three weeks or else he's not allowed to come back. Yeah, he shut down for the season. So the Browns felt confident enough that they'll get him back in the next couple weeks. Jake Glazer reported that Pook and Nakua is expected to miss at least another month. And Cooper Cup expected to miss at least the next two games. Christian McCaffrey, the saga rolls forever. this one look this was Ian Rappaport said he's expected back by early November this one I don't know that that's the way I'm operating that if he is back at all this season which I do think he's back I'm not on the side of they're going to shut him down for the year November is what I am looking for but be careful out there the reports are

Fast and furious and loose with Christian McCaffrey online. And they're all over the place. I do think that the most trustworthy analysis I have seen is not based on reporting. It's simply based upon the procedure he went to go get. Right. And when he went to go get it, that from the Germans. From the Germans, that procedure, he should not be ready usually earlier than six weeks. So six weeks is that timetable. which would put you, obviously you miss all of October. They're saying early November. Early November, I think could easily be mid-November. You think Christian McCaffrey flies coach? No. Come on, man. Adam Schaefter reporting, Raiders wide receiver Devante Adams is considered week to week. That was a big time bummer because that was days before the game that he got downgraded at practice.

And now we'll stand by and figure out when he's actually going to play. When is their by week? Is this going to find that out? Looks like they don't have their by week till week 10, which is great news in the sense that a lot of times when you're close and you're, you know, maybe you could come back. They're going to shut you down if you're by week's the next week. So he'll be back when he is ready. I mean, this is kind of like what you saw with AJ Brown. AJ Brown had the hamstring pop up late and. He seems like he should be back. It does seem like he should be back. But that's the thing is their by week is this week. So I wonder if he might have played this current week if they didn't have the by week next week where he'll be back next game. But that is, that's been a month of missing games. They need that man back. Clyde Edwards, the Lear of the Chiefs is expected return to practice. Another Chiefs injury. Rishi Rice. Oh, come on, man. We still don't have the confirmation of what happened.

He's feared to have torn his ACL in Sunday's win over the Chargers. It was just an absolute brutal, random situation of Patrick Mahomes throws an interception. The whole team goes scrambling towards him to tackle him, and then Rushie Rice knocks the ball out. Yeah, and Mahomes went low for the tackle, I think is what was going on, and he ends up hitting Rice right in the leg. His leg was planted. The thing did a real nasty hyper extension. watching it, it was to cross your fingers and be hopeful that. You see you guys do that. Uh-huh. And you're like, that looks like the most painful thing I can imagine. But then they only end up missing a couple weeks because it's just a hyper extension. I think George Kittle had that last year. Yeah, he looked like a flamingo almost when it happened to him. That's a nice visual. I totally know what you mean. Yeah, I mean, we don't have the confirmation, but it is. It's a torn ACL. Everyone out of the chiefs camp has been.

not positive. There are tests that you can give that are, you know, just you need the MRI to confirm what you already know. And I can only remember like one time ever in the decade of doing this where a team has thought that they did tear an ACL and then it turns out they didn't. Right. The Rishi Rice in conversation gets very difficult when you start talking about dynasty of if he tore his ACL, he's done. He'll be done for the year. He'll be rehabbing all year. Then he'll be facing a suspension. I don't know how it works with the suspension and IR. It seems like that you can you double dip? Like can you be like, I'm on IR? This counts as my suspension. No, I don't. I don't think so. I think if it's got to be games that you are able to be active for. So don't put him on IR and start that suspension now. Come on. I mean, so, well, I'm sure we'll talk about him on the Dynasty podcast, but that is.

Goodness gracious, what a swing of value. Yeah, he went yesterday morning. He was probably top five-ish in Dynasty wide receiver, top 10 for sure. And now you might not have him for a year from now, even longer than that. So a lot to dive into later. Packers wide receiver, Christian Watson is expected to miss multiple weeks. It's a high ankle sprain. There is no fracture, but the reports are that they're considering IR. It was one of those brutal things that leg got trapped under him. We will talk about, uh, oh, yeah, Dantavian Wicks tomorrow. Who's probably my number one pickup if he's out there. The big pickups, Dantavian Wicks. And then this situation, Colts running back, Jonathan Taylor. He left the game. Watching him on the sideline, his body language was bad. This is just, this is narrative and being a human and trying to figure out what's going on. A lot of times you see these guys on the side. You can see that they're just, they're frustrated, but they're trying to figure out how to get back in the game.

He didn't look like a man who was coming back in this game. It was diagnosed of a high ankle sprain. But it's mild. But it's mild, which is, I don't know. Trey Serman will be the next man up. So that's what I'm saying of he will be probably a priority ad. Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson. He left with a hip pointer injury. It was on a scramble. Kind of got spun around by one defender, left that hip and rib area open for just a shot. He was down for a while. He did come back in the game. Didn't look good. And then scrambles again and attempts to slide, but not a slide where you go end up on your back. He kind of slid into the sitting position and then took a helmet right in the face. And then he was gone for the rest of the time. It is, yeah. It's a rough situation right now. The hip pointer is basically a pain tolerance issue. So he's not expected to miss much, if any time.

I guess we'll just see if he tufts it out this week. You know, it's like, it's kind of sad in the sense that you, I think most fantasy managers out there right now are hoping he doesn't play. Because if Joe Flacco plays, Josh Downs, Michael Pittman, all these other options are great plays. Yeah, Michael Pittman had himself a very good game. So did Josh Downs. And it was not. a coincidence that it was Joe Flacko, who was a much better thrower of the ball at this point than Anthony Richardson is. Taysome Hill, he had the good game, but he left with another abdominal injury. Cordero Patterson of the Steelers left with an ankle injury. Oh, man, he was dominating. If you watched Sunday Live, I announced my big galaxy brain play of the week. I played him, I played Patterson over Giovante Williams because I didn't want Javante to hurt me again, even though Javante

actually had himself an okay game. But Patterson looked fantastic while Najee was not getting anything done. And then Patterson has to leave with an ankle injury because of course Travis ETN missed most of the first quarter with a shoulder issue. He did return. But I mean, what did he? Let's look what he actually finished up with because Tank Bigsby had some more electric runs. Looks like ETN was 11 for 50 on the ground. He caught one pass. He has been. He's not being great. He's not being talked about. Like, is it because it's not, it's not so bad while there's just, while the, the demolition derby of the fantasy football season is going on around us, we're kind of missing that Travis Eatsy N has been, I mean, I guess 10 plus points in the first three weeks. Yeah, that's the thing is he, he has not, okay. He has not been a star by any means, but he hasn't, like he hasn't been on the poopy pants club yet this, right, this year. So.

That's why we haven't talked about him. And even this last week, obviously he missed a lot of the first quarter, and so it was a much worse game. He's still their guy, though. Yeah, I can agree with that. But I don't know how much, like, does that continue for the whole season? While Tank Bigsby keeps ripping off huge chunk plays, that's TBD. George Kittle got a little bit banged up, and he returned. And then a very scary situation with Tyler Biday, where... he got he got absolutely laid out fumbled and then had a situation happen on the sideline where they put him on a board he is he's had full movement of his arms and legs so it's at least and i believe he flew home yeah he flew home with the team so that was a scary situation but seems like he will will be okayish that was today's news and notes presented by usaaa insurance learn more at usaaa.com slash insurance we'll take a quick break and we'll be right back

Let's talk about some guys who were studly. This week's fantasy stud muffins from the pits of despair. Jordan Love. You played Jordan Love over Sam Darnold. And in the same game, in the beginning of this game was Jordan Love throwing the ball to the Vikings. Yeah. A lot. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. And then Sam Donald. To be fair, some of those ones hit. Well, a single pass hit two Packers in the hands before the Minnesota Vikings got it. That's true. Not all of them were his fault, although he did look. Oh, yeah. He looked like he was on a first game back with a very little practice to start that game. And while he was throwing it to Vikings, so was Sam Darnold in the end zone. So you felt really, really bad. But then because the Vikings essentially went to Lambo and blew the Packers out.

I mean, they blew him away. It was 28 to 7. All of a sudden, Jordan Love had to go, he-haw! Throw it down the field over and over and over with great success. Ended up 389 yards. Four passing touchdowns. Everyone other than the early injured Christian Watson, obviously, which stinks. If you had them in your lineup, you got a goose. Which I did. Yeah, you did. Congratulations. I had them in one of my lineups. Everyone else, though, just ate. Dantavian Wicks was awesome. Jaden Reed is amazing. Dobbs is out there running enough routes. You can pretty much play all of them. Justin Fields, my stream of the week, ended up having himself a mighty good game, 300 yards through the air with a touchdown. Two scores on the ground. I mean, this, they lost, right? Yeah, they did. Yeah, so they ended up losing to the Colts. It looked like halfway through. Oh, man, this is the end here for Justin Fields. It did. But then Fields brought the team back.

They only ended up losing by three points. So we'll see if he ends up keeping the job. And Russell Wilson continues to be the emergency quarterback in his full brigalia on the side. Laser Mayfield, the QB3 through the first month. He has been great. I mean, like when you just watch. Laser. Blazer. When you watch the games, he looks so good. His pocket movement, his connection with Godwin. Like he has all of these plays where. He throws the ball on a slant where the defender is almost, I mean, the defender is between Godwin and Baker. And it just throws it right past him where it's like Godwin can't see the ball. It's like he threw a laser? Yeah, it's like he threw a laser. But he always comes down with it. So far you have week one, he was the quarterback two. Week two, he was the quarterback six. And now this week, he was the quarterback three. He's been awesome. Had one bad week against Denver?