Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - Week 12 Review, Studs and Duds, MNF Preview, Fantasy News

It was just tough as a Julio owner. But yeah, terrible play by Matt Ryan. I don't feel any confidence starting him moving forward. I'd start almost any matchup streaming play over him. All right, running backs that just laid an egg. We have to start with the big boy. The one player in all of fantasy football that had never had a game that he started with less than 100 yards or a touchdown. The no bus games as a starter, Todd Gurley.

terrible game. Nine for 19, one for 11 through the air. How much of this can be traced directly to Nick Foles? A large amount of it. And as much as Todd Gurley was my favorite running back coming out of the draft, I didn't like where he, the team he went to because I am, I am firmly on the record of how much I dislike Nick Foles as a quarterback. And I just thought the situation was going to be really hard for Gurley.

Clearly, Gurley was proving me wrong that he could rise above the horrificness that Nick Foles expels for the St. Louis Rams. But here it finally came back to haunt him. And Nick Foles, the freshly extended quarterback for the Rams in one of the most Jeff Fisher moves of all time to extend your sub-mediocre quarterback before he even plays a game. It's...

It's got to be a concern. But this shows that Gurley is not, in fact, matchup proof. And the reason people are asking me, oh, Chiefs D or Bengals D, I love the matchup for the Bengals at home.

Gurley is the reason why I didn't say Bengals' defense. It's because you figured Gurley's had success against everybody. I thought that might continue. It did not. Well, we have to keep in mind. So his first four games that he started, right, 146 yards, 159, 128, 133 was just dominant gaining yardage, which, of course, eventually touchdowns come there. But his last four games have not, you know, 89, 45, 66, and 19.

You heard it here first, the death of Todd Gurley. No, no, no, no. I'm posing the question to you. Early this week, he plays the Arizona Cardinals this week. Where do you see him on a one week this coming week? What rank would you put him RB? Top 10. You think he'll be tough? He'll still be a top 10 guy to me. We saw that Sean Drone had success against Arizona. Cool.

Yeah, I mean, the rest of the way, I think the only guy right now that you would want over Todd Gurley is Andrew Peterson. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. So, all right, DeMarco Murray, not a good game on Thanksgiving. What about the Lions D? Is it just the implosion of Philadelphia? But the Lions D has looked really good for three weeks in a row. They're okay.

Garbage time touchdown to Jordan Matthews or else he was shut down. This is a big week for me for the Lions defense if you're thinking about playing them in the playoffs. Because they did, they put up a strong fight against Rogers, right? Yeah, they beat him in Green Bay. And so you shut down Aaron Rogers, you take advantage of the Eagles, which you've got to play the opponent that you're given. It's not their fault that the Eagles stink. But they showed up. They had a huge game.

This week, who do they play this week? Green Bay. Back again? Revenge game. This one's in Detroit, though. Man. So, okay, let's put that out there. If the Lions can, defense can have a good game this week against Aaron Rogers again, then absolutely, then I'm going to.

I'll start firing them up. If that's the case, you got a playoff schedule of the Rams. Oh. New Orleans Saints, probably not so good. And then San Francisco. Where is the Saint game? Is it at home? It's in New Orleans. Oh, okay. But two or three, St. Louis and San Francisco. New Orleans, the way they played this week, they, I mean, they might be packing it in by then.

I feel pretty okay. That's an okay streaming defense. That's a good point to bring up. Frank Gore had a very bad game, 19 for 24, bunch of carries, no yards. Matt Forte.

15 for 44. It's hard to put him in the section of pooping his pants because he just, I mean, he was just slipping his big boy pants back on this week with one leg in. Yeah, he only had one leg in. So I'm going to hold judgment back because that's not the worst game in the world for splitting carries with Langford, but we'll see. Are they going to continue to split like that? They're going to split. They're going to split like that. Yeah. I mean, maybe 6040. That's about where I see it. So is Langford an okay flex play for you moving forward? Well, uh,

Yeah, in a running back matchup. Okay. If they're going up against a running back or a running defense, probably not. Legerrett Blunt, nine for 27. Blunt be Bluntin. This is what he does. Yep. He'll give you four, five touchdowns in one game every six weeks. Yep. All right, wide receivers. James Jones and Devante Adams combined for two receptions for 14 yards. And Jason? Yeah.

Why don't you remind everybody? Remind everybody about Devante Adams. Oh, Devante Adams stinks. I said this weeks ago. He still stinks and he's going to continue to stink. He stunk so bad that Mike McCarthy had to come out and say, not a good game.

Not a good game. He's a big reason for dropping the ball. Yeah, he is. Because he's the guy that's supposed to come into that role that was left by your number one wide receiver. Let's remind people. Jordy. Jordy Nelson. Jordy, you burned bright. Jordy LaForge Nelson. You didn't burn it all. Yeah, and that preseason was great.

And so, you know, you see the need for a true wide receiver one there, and they don't have it. Devante Adams is not going to be the future there. So why has the absence of great receivers in Green Bay not translated to Randall Cobbs as a top five, top 10 guy? That's what I want to know, because even if they're not the best offense in the world, I think it's, I mean, if you look at it, is he regressing? It's targets.

I mean... It's not just targets, though. He can't be targeted. What I'm saying is that when Aaron Rogers targets Randall Cobb, his pass rating is still pretty good. But he's still targeting Devante Adams or even James Jones ahead of Randall. I don't get it. I mean, he, Randall Cobb, when I watch the game and I watch film, he looks good to me. He's still getting separation. He's getting a little bit more coverage because you can. I mean, so it's tougher, but it's... Okay, let me show you this, though. Week 11.

for Randolph. Nine targets. Two catches. Okay, single-digit fantasy numbers in seven of eight weeks. It's Jordy Nelson. They don't have someone who can open up the field. They're all bottled up. The defense knows that they can play up, and that's where Randall Cobb does his damage is close up. That's the type of receiver needs. So we need to have no expectations for Cobb to give you anything then. No. He's still a guy I'm going to play. But I agree that there's, well,

I don't know. I mean, Doug Baldwin and Randall Cobb, I'll take Baldwin. That's gross. After eight weeks of single-digit numbers? That's, I mean, that's hard to argue against. I mean, it's just not happening for that offense right now. Those are the hardest decisions in all of fantasy football is name. You see Randall Cobb's name and you know his potential on the field. You can go back and look at week three, seven for 91 and three touchdown. Do you drop him? No. Randall Cobb? No.

Okay. Is it the play? Is that the sign of a good player, though? Whether he's dropped? No, no, no. I'm trying to say sometimes we hold on to guys because of the name. Oh, right. No, you're right. When they should be dropped. So then straight up would you drop? Let's say you're in a pickle. You've got your wide receiver three this week. You have no roster space. The only roster move you can make is releasing Randall Cobb and signing Doug Baldwin. No. No, no. I would not do it. Neither of you would do that. I wouldn't do it.

But there is a situation out there where there might be a wide receiver. I would. Do you believe Cobb will be better in Baldwin, rest of the season? I do. I think so. I do, but I don't, I'm not like, of course he will be. I just barely think. No, no way. Get your finger away from that water, but not happening. It's just one of those very difficult things. I thought Devante Adams, with the target numbers a few weeks ago.

A few weeks ago? No, no. Still got some problems going on here. I thought he was going to ascend. He has been terrible. James Jones doesn't have enough in the tank to give you consistent week-to-week play. And if you were one of the smarter ones, the guy in our league got a huge week from James Jones, then benched him this week. And that was the right move because he was a complete gooser. We don't have an update on Thai Montgomery.

for the Green Bay Packers, but he is a name... I think he'll be back this week. He is a name to watch that if he comes back combined with how bad Devante Adams is. I know the Jeff Janice crowd out there desperately wants... Is there a crowd? Oh, on Twitter, there is a crowd of people who... Just to extend the field? Yes. Well, they just think that Janice is a better receiver, especially than Devante Adams, which...

From everything I've read of the team's reporting, it's just Janice's route running is a big problem for Aaron Rogers. Janice is clearly a great athlete and can make things happen, but he just can't run the routes. When they're in the red zone, what I'm noticing is Aaron Rogers looks at one guy a lot. And his name's Richard Rogers. Right. Somehow that's the reliable red zone target right now, or James Jones. So that's hurting.

Obviously, Devante Adams and Randall Cobb. Des Bryant, two for 26. His season is in trouble with Justin Norman shutting him down in this game. And then the quarterback situation kills Des Bryant. He can still perform. Certainly kills his ceiling. You can't, you can't every week to say, oh, Des Bryant's in my top five.

Yeah, he's not going to get a touchdown every week the way he does with Tony Romo, generally speaking. He averages almost a touchdown a week with Romo over the last little while, but not happen in this wave. All right, Pop quiz. This receiver received 13 targets and had one catch. That would be Demarius Thomas. Yeah.

What do you make of that? Watching him, he was affected by the cold or just didn't care, was lazy. He wasn't running good routes. He wasn't getting much separation. Not all, I mean, there were a couple balls that might have been a target to him that weren't catchable, but there were plenty of those where the defender was all over him, and it was just, it wasn't just because the defender was great. It was because Demarius wasn't making good breaks, wasn't coming back to the ball, just wasn't playing that great.

All right. And the last guy I mentioned. Oh, no. Yes. DeAndre Hopkins? I've been waiting. Five for 36. He had a mediocre, not a good game. But, no, that's a bad game. But Jason, he's always the number one. How dare you rank him 15? You don't even need the public. You can just do my voice. Yeah, that's fine. Didn't you have him the number one this week, Jason? Yeah. So you didn't see that coming. No, I didn't. I mean, the game flow. The game flow in Houston.

The game flow in Houston was amazing because, you know, right off the back, you know, Hoyer throw two touchdowns. But then they got ahead. An interesting thing for, because I was trying to figure out what happened with Hoyer, the Texans had five players rushed for 20 or more yards. That's crazy. Would that be Hoyer, Blue, Grimes, Polk?

Who else? Shorts had a couple runs. Oh, he played some, they did some wildcat with shorts. It was just a, that's a crazy number to me. That five guys have that many yards. They're getting it done. Hopkins was the 48th wide receiver in a PPR, giving him those five extra points in a PPR. I'm sure him and Julio were right next to him. And he was 14th, two weeks ago, and two weeks before that, he was.