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

and Austin Safarian Jenkins. Those are just, I mean, you got, I've been thinking of this team as the Twin Towers. It's like the triple. Yeah. It really is. It's crazy. And they have a new, his first name is escaping me, Bell, Kenny Bell, their slot receiver. They drafted him in the fifth round. He's another weapon. They're adding to the mix there. We talked a little bit about Doug Martin last week. I don't know.

They're turning over a new leaf. The important thing for Safarian Jenkins is dirt cutters there. Yep. And dirt cutter has some history of success using a tied-in with a one Tony Gonzalez. He did okay. So on that note, James Winston thrown to those guys, I remind you.

I've got him in our water bat. And I've had a lot of questions this week. Like a ton of questions from people saying, what is a water bet? Like everyone's been going... We need to talk about it. What is that? Because we haven't actually explained it mostly because it's off-season. We don't get to pay them out. But basically what a water bet is, we have created the wheel of water. And there are a bunch of different punishments on this, whether it's taken a cup of water, say, in the...

crotch or Matrix style, we get to dodge it, or it's a gigantic up, all sorts of things. And when we lose a bet, we spin the wheel of water and we get to pay the price. You get humiliated. Yes, we get humiliated. We'll film these and put them up. I already have one. I have one that I need to pay out. So we need to put that up this week. That's right. You bet Larry Fitzgerald would not resign with the Cardinals. That's right. I didn't think it was going to happen. It was way early. So, yeah, those will be fun. You'll see the payouts of those. It all kind of started before we were doing fantasy football stuff.

Yep. Back in the day. Back in the day. So, speaking of ballers, ho! Hey! Hey! I like what you did. Fantasy football season is coming quickly, and with it, daily fantasy sports are almost here. If you have not played on Fanduil.com, you are missing out. Yeah, you are missing out on a ton of fun. The weekend is crazy when you are in some of these daily fantasy sports leagues. And you got...

a big chance to win money on there because some of these 50-50 tournaments, they're super fun. If you are going to play daily fantasy sports, make sure you sign up on Fanduil.com and use the promo code, ballers. Now, we had that before the HBO show. Yes, we did. Can we sue? No. Yes, we can. Give me a fun. Like they care. They use the Miami Dolphins logos without permission. Yeah. They can be like, yeah.

Use the code ballers. You'll get a match on your deposits up to $200. And you'll be set up. Your account will be set up for the fantasy season coming up. And if you want to get your toe in the water, you can play some fantasy baseball, do that. But make sure you hop in there now. Use the promo code ballers. You'll get the maximum amount of match that you can do. And we always remind you about fantasydraftwizard.com. That's where we do all of our mock drafting. We've done all our live mock draft shows.

using fantasy draft wizard.com. And you can actually get to that link on our website, too. On the side panel, there's a start of mock draft. You can do it. It's free. Go on there, run through a mock. Best way to get better at fantasy football in the off season, mock drafts. That's true. Here we go. Let's get divisional. It's the last time we get to do that draw. I might draft the rock this year. He was available. My last pick. Yeah. He'd come in. He'd catch some touchdowns off the line. Come on now.

All right, let's talk New York Giants. We are in the NFC East, and that is the first team we're going to go over today in our divisional section. The Giants are an interesting squad to talk about fantasy-wise, because you have a lot of guys that could be relevant. You have a lot of guys that will be relevant, and we need to kind of figure out who and how. So the Giants were the 10th best offense, believe it or not last year, in terms of yards per game. They were the 7th best.

passing offense. I think I read earlier today, I don't have it in the dock here, that they were, I think, 12th or 15th in fantasy points. So kind of middle of the road in terms of fantasy production. They were the 13th best scoring offense, and they added Shane Vereen at Running Back, and they added Eric Flowers, who... Luckily they did. Yeah, yeah. Offensive tackle because they lost Will Betty, their offensive tackle.

Who's very good. He was the top 12 guy last year, but they brought in Eric Flowers and everything I've read about flowers. Everything I've seen on Flowers indicates he's going to translate well to the professional game. Okay. And so let's talk a little bit about this offense. Eli Manning at the helm, yet again, believe it or not, had a better season than, you know, some people thought his career might be trending to the bench. High interception totals. Had a really good year last year.

Odell Beckham Jr. burst onto the scene. He's at the top of a lot of draft boards, Jay. Yeah, I mean, I just forget, like, he was awesome. I mean, he missed the first four games last year and finished just the number three. And preparing for this, I was looking up his stats. And just when you go game by game, you're like, this is ridiculous. How did he do that? Just catching 15, 15, 13, 13, 21 catches, not targets. 21 targets would be ridiculous. 21 catches. 21 catches.

That's ridiculous. 21, wait. Didn't he get 20? No, that had to be targets. That's like a Brandon Marshall old record. Look that up. But yeah, he burst on. And when you watch the games, he was on a different level than the other receivers. He's really, he's a really amazing athlete. And not just athlete, but football player. We all know the catch, the three finger snickerdoodle out of the air. Whatever it was, was just, I like that name. It was insane.

My concerns with ODB are, of course, the hamstrings, and I'm not sure that the target pace that he was on is fully sustainable, especially if Victor Cruz comes back. Which, yeah. And so when Beckham really went on his tear was the final four games, and he was getting just insane amounts of targets. Yeah, those were the targets I was naming. The 21? Yeah. But he was also playing.

against bottom half defenses. So it was kind of a perfect storm of opportunity and matchup. And he took full advantage of it, so you have to give credit for there. But I have concerned with people ready to crown him as the best receiver in fantasy football. I'm not ready to do that with a 12-game sample. Jason, you pointed out an interesting stat. Hopefully I'm not stealing your thunder here.

But that Eli actually threw more touchdowns in the first half of the season than the second half. And he actually threw more interceptions in the second half of the season than the first half. Yeah, I was not expecting that before looking. And, you know, there are a lot of variables in that equation, the defenses they play, the fact that their defense was so bad that Eli hurling the ball around, maybe forcing the ball to O'Dell Beckham Jr. a little too much because of Cruz's injury. But if you've been watching any of the video from Giants Camp, Victor Cruz looks pretty good to me. Now, what that translates to. With the pads off.

Right. But I mean, when a guy that's coming off of that injury is running full speed and planting and cutting, it does lend, it makes me believe that he's not going to be on the Pupp list. And if he's not on the Pup list, maybe he's not a fantasy contributor the way we would have expected from Cruz, which I don't think he will. Does any of us think he's... Not at all. Cruz? Yeah, he's not going to be anything like he was. Partly because of his injury, partly because of Beckham, and partly because Randall has really elevated his game, Rubin Randall.

But Cruz could be back. And that's just another guy. I mean, Eli likes Cruz. Cruz has a game underneath in that offense. I mean, what are your thoughts on would you draft Cruz right now? I'm not drafting him right now. I'm going to let it play out. Or you've got to pick your guys on whatever. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Sure. I've just, we saw firsthand Ryan Williams go down with the exact same injury. And his...

entire career was derailed and that's what victor cruz is he's a shifty small guy so i have great concerns about it i think it'll be very interesting if cruise does come back what do the giants do who's on the outside when they're in too wide is it is it beckham and cruz because then you have a guy who's six feet tall and i go is five eleven yeah like can you really be that successful with two small guys like that on your outside receivers

I think you can be, but I don't think you can be when one of them is coming off of, the injury is coming off of. I think Cruz is, he's going to be in the slot. Yeah, probably. The question that I have when Cruz comes back, because I like Randall a lot. There's a lot of reason to think Randall has, he's got room to improve. His catch percentage was only 55%. And I think, you know, coming into his fourth year, more familiar with the new system and the routes he's running, I think that catch percentage can easily go up to 59, 60%. And his targets could increase.

But if Victor Cruz comes back and plays, you know, the majority of the season, even if he's not fantasy relevant himself, do you guys think that that will take away from any target growth that Ruben Randall could have had? It's very possible. But I like Ruben a lot as one of the late guys you can get. 127 targets. I guess that's the question. Are you drafting Randall of Cruz? Yes.

I am. Oh, nobody, nobody should draft Victor Cruz over Ruben Randall. That's probably happening, though. That would be my advice. I would say if you're out there and you're in a draft and you want one of those two guys, go with Ruben Randall, because I think he's got a much better chance of producing. People have been very disappointed with Ruben Randall's progression as a professional. I think I've mentioned how young he is before, but a crazy point about Ruben Randall. Ruben Randall just turned 24, okay? That is. Odo Beckham's going to turn 23 this year.

Yeah, that's super young. And you have Randall as your 27th wide receiver right now. Yeah, I like him. That's just outside of wide receiver two range. I like him a lot for the targets. He had nine games of nine plus targets. What you're going to have to deal with with Ruben Randall is some absolute crappers. Stinkers. He's going to poop the bed at least a couple times this year and you're going to have to deal with it. But then he's going to have amazing games. It's very messy. Yeah.

But the final two games, I mean, he was over 120 yards. He closed the season with a bang. So, Mike, you obviously believe a lot in the Giants' offense. You have Eli number five. You've got Randall very high. Talk about the running backs. Oh, man. So the running backs, that is a messy situation. You have Rashad Jennings coming back, Andre Williams, and Shane Verino. So there's the three-headed monster.

Whose role is what? Where Rashad Jennings, through the first three weeks or so, he was great for fantasy. He wasn't a great rushing running back, but he was getting enough passes and putting enough yards to be very fantasy relevant. So if he loses third down work to Shane Vareen, Rashad Jennings is going to be in trouble. And that's on top of him.

getting hurt this year because that's going to happen to it's hard it's hard to know because jason i think we're talking about this jennings has i mean if jennings comes in and plays like jennings can play he could be a solid fantasy contributor and a steal in the later rounds of your draft but there's just so many question marks you know the fact that he averaged 3.8 yards of carry and and andre williams averaged 3.3 yards of carry and their left tackle went down you know

Them moving the ball on the ground, I am not really very confident in. So the only back that I'm really looking at here would be Shane. I think Shane Marine has the chance in the McAdoo system to be high. I think the problem is he's not going to have enough volume. But if I'm wrong on that, if the volume comes, he's got the talent to do it. So is that a value player? Would you actually draft Verene above Jennings?

Because I would not. No, that would be a value play. Okay, so you're saying the value on Marines better than the value on. Where is going in a draft, yeah. Just real quick on Eli, because we kind of brushed over him, he had the highest pass attempts of his career. Very important for fantasy, volume. Along with the highest pass attempts, he had the highest completion percentage of his career. Eli had a very good year. Like Andy said, people had completely written him off, but he came back in the bit in the...

Ben McAdoo's system changed everything. It did not look good in. No, at the beginning, it took them while to settle in. So that's why I have him so high. I'm very confident in the second season that this particular offensive scheme fits what Eli needs to do with his career right now. Final question on it, Eli, where would you draft him? What's the highest you would take him in a draft? Because I had this question on the video, and I said, did you say eighth? That's what I said to.

Yeah, his average apposition right now is the middle of the ninth. That's where I would want him. I prefer the ninth. Okay. Yeah, I think it's going to keep creeping up, though. I think that's happening right now. I've seen it in some MFL tins. He's flying off earlier than guys I would expect him to go behind. We've got to talk Eagles now, Philadelphia, the team that has a nice stable of running backs in place. Yeah. Bringing in to Marco Murray.