Week 3 Waivers + Full Stream Ahead, Jason Survives! - Fantasy Football Podcast for 9/17

to the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. Indeed. You know, every year you think, hey, maybe I'll just ease into fantasy football, and every year it's like someone grabs you and chucks you out of a plane. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. It's just, it hits you right, square in the face, like full steam ahead. Yeah, yeah. Injuries. I'm taking on. Heartbreak. Look, I'm in the finals. I'm in the tournament. Cross from me is Daniel's son. He's got a bum leg. Yeah. He's standing on one leg. This is the easiest thing of my life. I think he cring kicked in the face. Because no one does that. Wait, so I'm Daniel's son in this story, right? Yeah, you are. Heck yeah, man.

I mean, we had what I thought was a boring, boring, boring first half of football last night. Maybe the first three quarters. The big story here in the studio was that Mike Wright and Jason Moore were facing off against one another in the league of record. And Jason needed a mere four points from Dallas got her. In fact, after the Sunday games, he needed six total points from Tank Dell and Dallas got her. Yeah, it was a done deal. To get an easy win over Mike. We get to last night's game. And, you know, it's week two of the fantasy season. So I'm thinking to myself, Jason will be okay either way. It's week two. Like he's not, he's definitely not having a complete and utter mental breakdown to the jeopardy of his family and friends in the middle of the fourth quarter of the Monday night football game week two. That wouldn't be happening. Oh, man. Oh, man. I feel bad for my wife. Yeah, no, I was tilted off the planet.

So we get to the point of this game where Dallas Goddard is not going to get the job done. In fact, he caught a 16-yard pass, Mike. Now, this is great because I get to recite this to Mike. Mike was at a concert last night with some friends. So he knew he knew he wasn't going to win because you don't win in that situation. Because Dallas Goddard with A.J. Brown out of the game against the Falcons needed four points. So essentially what? Three catches for? 25 yards or so? Like the absolute nothing. No, AJ Brown should be an easy win. Jason is losing his mind five minutes left in the game. He's down by two points. Dallas Goddard catches a 16-yard pass. We think it's the last pass of the game. This brings Jason to within half a point. Jason at this point, I think probably it was over. The neighbors called the police, all of the things you do for fantasy football. The Philadelphia Eagles.

go down the field. They soak up all of the Atlanta Falcons timeouts. They're up by three points. The Eagles bring it down inside the 20. The Eagles proceed to decline a penalty that would have given them a first down in order to push their way to a first down. They accomplished the goal. Nick Siriani's shooting the fingers in the air. He's being Nick Sirion in the sideline. I'm smarter than you, Nick Siriani. Yes, I am. Yeah, at this point, Dallas Goddard, he can't score again because all they're doing is running out the clock. So this game looks all but over. Atlanta, there's a minute and 30 seconds on the clock. Atlanta has no timeouts. Yeah, I'm seeing the Philadelphia. The win probability chart. Apparently the Eagles were at 97.6%. Game was over. The game was over. It's third down and three. Okay. Third down and three, Nick Siriani pulls out another special magic card from his pocket. How much time was on the clock? Minute and 30. Okay. So your options here are I can run the football.

On third down, 40 seconds is going to be gone. Now keep in mind, they've been running very successful. For a chunk, plus they have the touch push, so it's like they have an extra down. Is that because they gave a superstar running back a huge contract to pair with that offensive lines for situations like this? Yeah. All right. Same offensive line that made DeAndre Swift look like he's not a guy off the street last year. I'm caught up. So you're caught up. And it's just let's run the ball with. Run it with Sequin, 40 more seconds goes off. If you want to run it on fourth down, which I'm sure Nick Siriano would have done, boom, there you go. You lose more time off the clock. Atlanta would have to go down the length of the field with maybe 30 seconds left, maybe less, no timeouts. But no, we've got our magic deck of cards, Mike, and we're going to throw a trick screen pass to Sequin Barclay. The play call, it's perfect.

Sequin out of the backfield, nobody's covering him. He's going to waltz into the end zone or he's going to just probably slide down and they'll need it out. Drops the football. So that superstar running back, I was just talking about he dropped an easy catch. Dropped an easy catch. Now, but listen, Mike. Thank you. Thank you. Take one. You're going to be fine because there's no way that the Eagles, like this point differential, six points. So you'd have to score a touchdown, miss the extra point, go to overtime for Goddard to even get a chance. The Eagles proceed to play against what seems to be nobody for 85 yards. It's like there's nobody on the field. Philadelphia, it's like they put their helmets on backwards. That's what the DBs played like. Not only does Atlanta march down the field and score after they looked like they couldn't do anything on offense. They do it with 35 seconds left on the clock, which means Philadelphia gets the ball back. The table is now set for Jason Moore.

Two. One more chance to throw. To maybe win this game. He just needs one catch from Goddard. Play number one, directly to Goddard. Game set match. Jason defeats Mike. Play number two. My voice being hard right now? Yeah. That's from that game. Yeah, that's what your voice is. And next pass, interception down the sideline. Games over. So one pass on the final drive to defeat Mike. Yeah. So that's what happened, Mike. I will tell you what, ladies and gentlemen. It is in the best interest of everyone. I was at the midnight show. That's the band. One of my favorite bands of all time. Living my life to the fullest. Had I watched that, had I actually sat down and like got a part of that story? Got to like the last catch where he was just short and be like, that's it. That's it. I would not be here.

I mean, Jason... I would not be here. Jason posted in our company communications channel, two-man show tomorrow because he had lost this game. And then... Jason text me. No, he did not. He sent me a text. What did that text say? I was tilting. Was it readable for air? Let me peruse it real quick. Sorry for the hard loss. My wife says I should text you and be a gracious winner. I'm a loser. I was a millisecond for being a loser. Good slash bad game. Sorry, I hope it somehow helps your roster. Oh my gosh. That means your wife experienced so much fantasy football madness last night. I was. You were wife. A text, guys. This was not through the works like this was a, this was a man-demand one-by-one text. A personal text. What I did to you was unfair. At one point, Jason's wife texted me asking why he's saying that she should change the combination to the gun safe. Oh my. Fantasy football. Fantasy is fun.

Welcome into the fantasy footballers, Andy Mike and Jason. We got a waiver show today. I am. I'm thrilled I didn't watch it. We really do. You wouldn't have survived. Care about fantasy football. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I love that this story is teasing out secret parts of texts and man. Great news though. Start sit decision that. My team took two kickoff on Sunday did in fact cost me the game. Oh no. Was that your quarterback? No, it was Wondale. It was Wondale or Michael Pittman. Nobody in their right. Nobody in their right mind would have gone Wondale Robinson. It was very, very close for all the, in all the reasons I thought I'm not going to play Pittman. They happened. So you just didn't have the courage? Correct. Okay.

The name. It was the name. It was the name versus the player who I thought was in a better script. I would have better production. Yeah. Well, because one, here's the thing. If you lose with Wondale and you would have won with Pittman, you can't live with yourself? If you lose with Pittman and you would have won with Wondale, can you live with yourself? Only because I didn't watch the game. Okay. Okay. How are we doing Induces Allie over there? Al Borland. He was along for the ride last night. Doing great. Yeah. We're living our best life back here. You get a W in League of Record? I did. Okay. Congratulations. You and Jason both. We have a waiver wire episode today, very excited to get into these names. A lot of decisions to be made because there's been a lot of injuries. I counted my leagues this morning. And I have five leagues where I was very Cooper Cup dependent. That was a big bet. I believed in Cooper Cup. Put my money where my mouth was.

I mean, you were right. And I'm broke. Yeah, you were right. 21 targets. Yeah, now he's hurt on the IR. So there are some pickups that you're going to need to make. A reminder, if you use the ultimate dashboard, our new in-season tool, it will customize your waiver rankings for you based on your league. This is a brand new feature. I love it so much. All of our waiver wire rankings, you can see them on the fantasy footballers.com for free. If you go to join thefoot.com and join as a. Footclan supporter and get access to the ultimate dashboard. We'll customize your waiver rankings. We'll give you custom spot starts. We will give you an optimization of your lineup every week, which is a simple way to see who we have projected for the highest points scored. And that's at join the foot.com. I think we've recapped Monday night, but I'll get into the players real quick. Big game for Jalen Hertz on the ground, 85 rushing yards in a touchdown. The tush push worked well last night.

Bijan and Sequin were incredible. Neither of them had a rushing touchdown. So their games were efficiency on the ground but didn't score. Darnell Mooney, you know, once again had a nice game. That was all the end, right? It was not all the end. I mean, he had the big, I thought he had the big touchdown. Correct. But then on that final drive, wasn't he the other? Two of those, two of his three receptions were that final drive. That's what I mean. Yes, yes. He did have the touchdown earlier and then those two catches. All of Drake London's fantasy value came in the final drive as well, including the touchdown. And so, you know, to me, Drake London, this is a sell high for me on Drake London. You could also make the opposite argument and say Kirk Cousins figured things out, looked a lot better in game two, and maybe Drake London will be fine. He did look a little bit better. We saw play action.

and actually had him, you know, move around in the pocket a little bit. So having, you know, one week in the books from, you know, playing on that, you know, back from the Achilles injury, I do expect Kirk Cousins will continue to get better each week as we go along with the season. Kyle Pitts had two of his catches on the final drive, I believe, three for 20. The final drive was very important for fantasy football for Goddard, for Jason Moore, London, for Jason. Yeah, most of this game was a fart fest. It got really exciting, though. Yeah, I did. You also had Devante Smith, seven for 76 in a touchdown. And there you go. It was a fun game. And the end of it was unbelievable, and now the Eagles are one-on-one. And the problem with the Eagles, maybe it's not a problem for fantasy. This defense on the back end is a real issue. Yeah, yeah, it really is.

You know, that's going to be the storyline as we go forward. Is there going to be a good matchup for opposing defense? A Philly Edge Rusher has not recorded a sack in six games going back to last year. Can they just undo the Reddick trade and pay him? Because that would help, right? Someone needs to pay him. Yeah, yeah. Anything else you guys want to talk about from the game or can we jump into the news? Let's go. News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance. We found out right before the game during an interview that AJ Brown says he is expecting to miss a couple of weeks. Does he include last night's game in his description of a couple of weeks? That's a great question. I would assume so. But that means that this is not over. It's not done. We got news this morning that Joe Mixen's injury is not considered long-term or serious.

Damien Pierce could be back. Cam Acres and Damien Pierce would be the tandem in the backfield for Houston in the game that Mixon misses if he misses a game, which we don't know yet. Yeah, so we don't know if Mixon is going to be back. And then if he misses, we don't know if Damian Pierce is going to be back. So Cam Acres could be a great pickup. Yeah. Or he could be a backup to the backup. Yeah. So there you go. Bryce Young is being benched. Let that sit there. Incredible. Oh, man. I mean. Go ahead. Hit the busted. That's what that fits here. Busted. Yeah, he is. Things. He is. He's broken. I posted. I posted a video after week one of all of his worst plays. And it was a very long video. And so many people responded to that talking about how it wasn't his fault because the offensive line was terrible. And, and.

To their credit, in that video I posted from week one, the offensive line, he was under pressure a ton. He was under so little pressure this last week. The offensive line held up great. They were graded awesome by Pro Football Focus. This was solely 100% on Bryce Young. And Canal said, look, my job's to win games. And I do not have my best quarterback on the field right now. The best quarterback on the roster is Andy Dalton. the red rifle, and they're putting him in. I approve the move. I think that it is the right call for the team, the franchise, the players, the future. You can make the argument, oh, you play Bryce Young, and you can just salt away the year and just lose and get the first pick. Is that going to work? Does the first pick always work, Zach Wilson, Bryce Young? I mean, you can mess up the pick, and then you've got to acclimate. I think you have to win ball games for your fan base.

And it gives you the best chance to do that. They are not this bad of a team. It's a quarterback issue. Andy Dalton can rebirth the offense. He can bring Deonte Johnson to a place of fantasy relevance along with Adam Thielen or Xavier Leggett. And this is so good for fantasy football. This is incredible for fantasy football. Not only is it good for the hope of Deontay Johnson or the hope of Xavier. Liget or it's also. What about me, Jason? And you, Thielen. Thank you. It's so good for opposing offenses to me. We talked about last week, like I, you know, I said I'm benching Ladd-McConkie everywhere I have them because you're not going to need to throw the ball much against the Panthers. That's usually what happens. But if the Panthers offense can actually score points now, because their defense isn't good, you know, like the Raiders this week.

I mean, that's so exciting for Bowers and Devante Adams to be able to be like, oh, here's now an easy defense with an offense that might be able to keep up and you can't just run the ball out. So big, big move. It's huge. I mean, we, we tend to get really zoomed in on, well, the quarterback, you got to let him play through the thing. But there's a ton of other players on that team. There's a tons of coaches that will be. Should you ride this out? Now they have that scarlet letter on their chest. No, you were part of this team that you couldn't get anything done. And for a lot of guys, you get one opportunity to be a coach of any kind. And that's it. If you fail that bad, you have to go. And I believe for Bryce Young, it's a devastating blow to be benched.

But Bryce Young was not going to figure this out on the field. If there is any way to save the pick of Bryce Young and let him be and turn him into a franchise quarterback, this to me is the only way it's possible. I don't know if it is, but this to me is the only path that it could actually happen. I agree. He needs to sit down, take some time. But I don't think it's going to. I think this is a Zach Wilson situation where you're just going to. It didn't work. He's not good enough on the NFL field. He'll get more opportunities in the future for this team or another team just because of his history, but I don't think it's going to work. And Andy Dalton last year in his one start, 361 yards and two touchdown. He threw the ball 58 times. Bryce Young is not throwing the ball 58 times. Debo Samuel, surprise injury, going to miss a few weeks with a calf strain. So, kiddle.

who already had a good game last week, going to be involved. Joanne Jennings, who will come up on the waiver show today. And Brandon Ayukes return to glory? Mm-hmm. I think so. You don't, you didn't give them that schmoney for nothing. John McVeigh confirms that Cooper Cup will miss an extended period of time and is a candidate for injured reserve. An ankle injury for Cooper Cup. They're running out, man. They also have their guard, their guards going. They lost another offensive lineman. I feel like, they deserve to be allowed to like wave the white flag. Like they should be able to just be like, nah, dude. We need two more by weeks. We're taking losses. They should be able to just say, we lose the next two games. We're not playing football. We don't want to lose more players in that time. I mean, because you will, you might lose Matthew Stanford with no offensive line and no receiving weapons. But we'll talk about the whiteouts on the waivers today as well.

We've got more news to talk about. I want to take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about a big, big injury that's going to have big, big implications. Perhaps one of the reasons why Jason reacted so extremely last night was that he was right off the heels of losing Isaiah Pacheco, who is expected to miss six to eight weeks, a fractured fibula. The chiefs are expected to bring in Kreme Hunt for a visit. Carson Steele is there, Somaget Pirine. Clyde is still on IR for at least two more weeks. So the backfield in Kansas City is another big talking point on today's show. Yeah, when we get to the waivers, we will talk about Carson Steele and Somaget Pirine in both situations because we hopefully should know later tonight after we're recording this, but before waivers run, whether it looks like the chiefs are going to sign cream hunt. So we, you know, we'll talk about it. You know, what do you do?

If they do and what do you do if they don't? Which obviously we can only share the news that we have. The Fantasy Footballers.com. We have free waiver rankings up there. Should you want to go check those out? And if you want to support the show, Andy, I think you mentioned the ultimate dashboard at the top of the show. That is a customized to your league look at the waivers based on our waiver rankings. Yep, exactly. So big week. Lots of decisions to make on your team and how much Fab you're going to drop or waiver priority. Jack Ferguson is, uh, Jack Ferguson. Why is I say Jack Ferguson? Jack Ferguson. Jack Ferguson. You run, indeed that one. I really did. To be fair, it says Jack Ferguson in the dock. Colby Jack Ferguson. No one is frantically trying to change it either. Jake Ferguson. Yeah, Jake Ferguson is expected to be back. His brother Jack will not be playing.

in the game, but Jake Ferguson, I'm blaming Kyle. I think that's fair, right? Is that Kyle? Is that Kyle? Who's falling on the sword today? Brooks? We need. I'm falling the sword. All right. Was it you, Kyle? Okay. This is what he's like, no. Yeah, yeah, I know. Kyle, don't be a good guy. All right. Well, Jake Ferguson expected back. That's good news for the cowboy. It's good news for their offense, although they sure, they made use of the schoon man. Kevin Ingram week to week with the hamstring injury. That sucks, man. That sucks, but... Did you see the numbers that Cole Strange put up? Do you tell us while you look those up? Do you know who Cole Strangers? No, I know. Brenton Strange. Brenton Strange. I said nothing because I did not know who Cole Strange was. Brenton Strange stepped in and put up three receptions for 65 yards on six targets. There was a Cole Strange, right? Yeah, apparently a Patriots O. Lineman. Thank you. Okay.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Oh, my gosh, I acted like you didn't. Doug. Doug Peterson, though, did say Tank Bigsby should be good to go, which is great news, nothing serious with the shoulder injury that might have been a head injury. That's good. Tayson Hill also checked out just fine. I think he'll be back. But that tight end room we're starting to see is like Foster Moreau is the starter. And then Joanne Johnson's also part of it. And then Tayson Hill is also part of it. So like when, you know, with this news of Tayson Hill's injury, I was thinking if he misses time, John Johnson looks interesting. But Foster's been the starter. And right now the way this offense is like playing, like they're not throwing the ball close to the line of scrimmage. Right now, Derek Carr has the like, he's going downfield more than anybody in football. And part of the issue is we.

We still don't know what is the actual, like what is a neutral offense for the New Orleans Saints? They've blown two teams out. Yep. They won't blow a team out every single week. I guess they're neutral at the beginning. Yeah, but then they hit a big play right away. It seems like to Rashid Shaheed. So I don't think we know what this team in a regular game actually looks like. What's the latest? Mike on your boy, T. Higgins. Oh, guys, great news. Head coach Zach Taylor says things are moving in a quote positive direction for week three. So very actionable. Yeah, it's a positive direction. Even more excellent news. They play a Monday night. Oh, perfect. So you who knows? So we won't know. Don't play T. Higgins. Yeah. Don't play T. Higgins even if he's active. What if it's three full practices? Because you won't know until then.

Oh, three full practices? Yeah, if he's practicing in full the whole week. What's the flow chart here? Like limited, limited full? We play? Um, we did, do we need at least one fulls? Two fulls? I think that's right. I think you've got to have two full practices. Uh, and I don't think you're going to have that this week. And the, the saddest part is that it's against commanders. This is a wonderful matchup away. I mean, T. Higgins will. I think T. Higgins is going to score a lot of points on a lot of people's bench. Yeah, I mean, the idea that you should play. The idea that you can't wait for the- Well, no, if you play him, he won't score a lot of points. This is T. Higgins. You know, you'd be easy to say start somebody else and don't wait on him, but the matchup's so good. And there's so many wide receiver injuries right now that you're going to, like Joanne Jennings. Are you playing, Juan? Are you waiting for T if you could have Yoshivas or Trent Nervynne waiting in the wings behind T?

Yeah, if you've- That would be the strategy. A hundred percent. If I've got T. Higgins, I'm picking, you know, if, if Yoshivas is out there, absolutely. I'm going to pick him up and he will be my pivot in a great matchup should T not play, and then I can play T if he's in. Yeah, yeah, or if you had Zach Moss, who seems like a good play? Or you had Chase Brown. I would play, I would play Zach Moss over T if T is active, though. Yeah. So what about Chase Brown? Yeah, I mean, you could use him as a pivot, but I would go T over Brown.

Tomlin's preparing for Justin Fields to start again. We'll see. They said if they go 2 and O, it's probably going to be Fields for the foreseeable future. That was today's news and notes presented by USAA Insurance. Learn more at USAA.com slash insurance. To the waiver wire presented by NFL Sunday ticket on YouTube TV. Let's talk about the running back position. Let's start with the injury impacted. options. So we're talking P. Rine and Carson Steele with the potential addition of Kareem Hunt. And then we'll talk about Cam Acres and Damian Pierce. What approach are you taking, Jason? I know you went. I was looking over at you. This is before you melted down into a puddle later in the evening. I was watching you watch every Carson Steele snap and opportunity, looking over his collegiate profile, watching Somaget Pirine, who profiles more prototypically as a running back.

I mean, Carson Steele still is flagged as a fullback. What was your takeaways from your review? Yeah, the way that they've used him so far on the season, he is primarily, him being Carson Steele, he's primarily a special team's player. It was like almost every snap that I'm watching was just a kickoff or a punt. And so they gave him some short yardage stuff. I think he is a quality short yardage back in that fullback role. In college, he did have a lot of production as a running back. but that was when he was playing in the Mac. He wasn't, you know, it wasn't great competition. His final year, he goes to UCLA. He was okay. Over five of carry, but was not like a, you know, a workhorse type of running back. It's my belief, and this is what I'm going to do on my waivers. I think most people are going to run after Carson Steele. He's going to be the number one fab dump player this week for people needing a running back. I prefer P-Rine.

I really do. I think this offense that wants to dump the ball down and Patrick Mahomes is not throwing it far, the veteran presence, he is such a good veteran pass catching option. He's frustrating for fantasy managers because P. Ryan's never been special. He's never done a ton that you just have a great fantasy stat line. But for NFL teams, he's been really solid. He knows where to go. He knows how to get his head around quick. He knows how to pick up in protections. He has a route tree for a running back. I think P. Ryan is the play here, and I expect them to get four receptions a game going forward. Now, this is all without Kareem Hunt there. This is both of those. I'm P. Ryan ahead of steel. That is under the imagination that Kareem Hunt is not signed. If Kareem Hunt is signed, I like Kareem Hunt better than both of them, although I would doubt he starts this week. So if you need a start immediately, um,