Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - Sleepers, Breakouts, News, Mailbag

Ex-Oregon duck and Chip Kelly's system. What do you like about Josh Huff? The things that I like about Josh Huff are the upside is through the roof. The draft pick is in the cellar, and that's what you look for late in your draft. You look for guys where, you know, look, week three, he might be on the waiver wire. But he also has the actual opportunity and...

talent. He's a very talented player who didn't get on the field last year. Now, Jeremy Macklin leaves. He's on a high power offense. He's a duck, which is obviously very important for Chip Kelly. And so what we've heard from the Eagles is that they love him. The Eagles have been saying that they think that he is more talented than Jordan Matthews, which I say hold the phone because I love Jordan Matthews so much. But when they love him that much and

then they lose, oh, you know, their main wide receiver. They need a guy to go out on the outside. I doubt they move Jordan Matthews to the outside. They'll move them around a little bit. But you might have the starting outside receiver for a high power offense who is talented and has the trust of the staff that you can pick up at the very end of a draft. I mean, that's what you look for in fantasy football. Yeah, there's going to be, unless your league is.

very well educated. I bet half of them won't even know who Josh Huff is when you draft him. You'll get a lot of who in the little chat box or whatever. So the benefits, Josh Huff, all he has to do now that Macklin's gone, he's got to beat out Riley Cooper. I think Josh Huff is going to be able to handle that. My concern, my only concern about Huff is he's only 5-11 and 206 pounds. That's not a very big...

outside wide receiver. But I think the offense is enough to compensate for that. I mean, if you saw the, when Macklin would have his big plays, he, Macklin wasn't going up and stealing a ball from a defender. He was wide open in the middle of the field. Mm-hmm.

All right, so those are our five sleepers. We've got Devante Adams, Theo Riddick, Danny Woodhead, Carson Palmer, and Josh Huff. You can definitely check the website. We'll be publishing some articles regarding our sleeper picks as the offseason goes on. Let's turn now to breakout candidates. These are guys that had a okay year, but we're looking for them to take the leap.

Right. So a second tier guy moving up into that first tier, a guy that you hadn't heard too much about or maybe was a wide receiver three jumps up into that two or one range. So we've identified here basically we got three wide receivers we like as potential breakouts as well as a running back and a tight end. So let's touch on Travis Kelsey first because we talked a little bit about him last week. If you haven't heard last week's show.

We talked our top 10 tight ends and two thirds of this group here at the fantasy footballers thought Travis Kelsey was our number two guy. Zeus. Huge leap for him. What do we like about Travis Kelsey? Because I can tell you exactly what I like about Travis Kelsey, and that is draft day value for where he's going right now. Yeah, I'm a huge believer in Travis Kelsey. He...

A lot of people liked in the beginning of last year. It turned out the chiefs were strategically, strategery, entering him slowly back into the offense because he had to nurse an injury. Anthony Fasano is gone. He's a tremendous run blocker. He's not going to come off the field for that. In 81 targets, he had 67 catches, 850 yards, 5 touchdowns, 500 yards after the catch, 417 missed tackles. The guy is a...

Beast, the guy can get it done in all assets of the game, and you're going to be able to, you should be able to get this guy in the fourth round. Yeah, you need two things from every single fantasy superstar. You need incredible talent, and that has to be met with great opportunity. You have to have both of those. You can have a talented guy who's not getting on the field because, you know, he's a rookie or he's behind somebody, and you've got...

We know for sure, and if you don't know this, then now you know. You don't know, now you know. I was going with the more you know. Do you do, do, do, do. Thank you. That Travis Kelsey is a physically gifted human being. And his talent level from a football, every aspect of the tight-in position, he is fantastic at. So you have the talent. And last year,

They didn't give him very much opportunity, and he still finished high this year. My favorite thing is Fasano leaving. It just shows that they trust that they're not worried about him as far as utilizing him, and he has so much opportunity to grow. And we have him finishing exactly where, statistically, where Jimmy Graham's going to finish, and he's going to be going two or three rounds later in the draft. Yeah, he's the definition of a breakout at the tight-in position. So let's talk a little bit about...

Another guy we like. I know Mike and I do. I don't know what your thoughts are, Jason. Martavis Bryant. Oh, love Bryant. Love Martavis Bryant. Now I know your thoughts. Did you hear I renamed him? Oh, no. Yes. We have a new nickname for Martavis McBride or Bryant because we are big back to the future fans. I'm now calling him Marty McBride. Wow. Yeah. Martavis Bryant. Marty McBride. Burst onto the scene.

Marty, Marty Bryant, nice. He split, he basically split snaps with Wheaton last year. So we're betting on him to take more snaps away from him, be more involved in the offense, be consistent in the red zone, move into that. I mean, what's his ceiling in terms of finishing in fantasy? His ceiling to me is high-level wide receiver 2. That's likely his ceiling.

The snap count was a difficulty. Bryant didn't, sorry, McBry, he didn't play the first six games of the year. They were really taking their time with the rookie. And as throughout the year, the snap count went up. I don't think Marcus Wheaton is a big threat. The most indicative thing to me is when you look at the snap count of the playoff game. Marty McBry was in on 83% of snaps in the playoffs.

Which to me says that the Steelers are ready to hand the range to Bryant to be their second receiver. How many receptions do you think he had last year without looking? I'm looking right at it, so I'm not going to play this game. I'm covering the answer for the cheater, Jason. Without looking, I'm guessing he got 50. 26. 26. How many touchdowns? Oh, I think I know that. Eight? Yeah, he had eight.

Touchdowns. So he is a guy who you see Ben look to in the red zone. We love Antonio Brown. Antonio Brown is going to get his. He always does. But Martavis Bryant, 6-4, 2-11. He's big, and he has separation and speed. And so eight touchdowns on limited snaps puts him into that huge breakout candidate where maybe he puts up, I don't think anybody's expecting him to go out there and put up 70-80 receptions. We're thinking, you know, Vincent Jackson category, high touchdowns.

50, 60, 70 receptions. And a guy who can be a game changer. He's 23 years old. Not only is he 6-4, but he also had the fastest 40 time at the combine. When you've got a 6-4 guy blazing. Yeah, you know what reminds me on? Who?

Randy Moss. Randy Moss. Oh. No. And then you pair him with Big Ben, who has a rocket launcher. You know, I watched some of his just, you know, his go routes. His go routes, it's like, okay, he blows by the guys. And when, you know, Big Ben leads him by a mile and he catches up to it and the defenders stop running.

Like, that was some of their touchdowns. It was like, okay, I'm not catching this guy. Over 21 yards of catch. He had a 94-yard touchdown. He had an 80-yard touchdown. He had super long touchdowns in three or four or five games, and obviously that's what his role is on that team. So consistency and snap count will make him consistent in the fantasy world and put you in that top.

I mean, that'd be huge to be a top-tier wide receiver, too, for where you're going to draft him. Yeah, and he's a level-headed guy, very intelligent, a pleasure to talk to. He is definitely a guy that I think will be on the field 75% more than he was this last year. So opportunity goes up to him over 100%. That's some effort. 75% increase. Okay.

Alan Robinson. Talk to me about Alan Robinson. Another guy on our breakout list. Mike, you can't stop talking about Alan Robinson. I can't stop, but I won't stop. You know why? Targets, my man. Target. Sing it. Sing the song. Sing Alan Robinson's song. Jacksonville Jagging Wires. Wide receiver. Second year guy. So Alan Robinson had five or more catches in six of his ten games. Sixty or more yards in six of his ten games. Seven or more targets in eight.

of his 10 games. He was on pace for what would you guess was his target pace for his 10 games, including a week one where he did nothing. Probably about 110 targets, I don't know. 130. Yeah, that's a lot of targets. That's wide receiver won targets. That's Blake Bordles loves Alan Robinson. Mike Wright loves Alan Robinson. People are going to want nothing to do with him because he's on the Jacksonville Jaguars. I understand that completely.

Well, touchdowns is going to be his issue, right? Yeah, he only had two touchdowns. Julius Thomas comes to town. Yeah, but so the touchdowns has to go up at least a little bit, but he's still going to beat Bortle's number one target. We've seen production from that spot in Jacksonville. I understand it's Jacksonville, but every team has garbage, and garbage time counts just as much as regular time. So that's why I'm all over Alan Robinson late in the draft.

Yeah, I think he's okay. I see him almost more as a sleeper. I mean, he's going as the, what is it, the 44th wide receiver off the board right now, going in the hundreds, you know, after the ninth round. So I like his upside in a PPR.

or his consistency, really. I don't see an upside here. I see a consistent, you know, if you want to plug him in as your wide receiver three. That's what I was going to say. Exactly. You're going to be fine with that in a PPR. I don't think his touchdowns are really going to, I mean, maybe they increase over two, but I don't think he's going to have that. And I also think that there's a legitimately good chance of Justin Blackman is back this year. And if that's the case, I don't think.

Those two games, Robinson. Blackmun actually doesn't concern me with what the rapport that Bortles and Allen Robinson have created together. In one year. That's all it takes. When you come in at the exact same time, you become BFFs, man, for life. It's time to strip off your shirt, show off your Jeremy Hill tattoo, Mike. Jeremy Hill is a breakout candidate here, a guy who bursts under the scene. We've talked about him at length.

Go back and listen to our running back shows, but we're going to keep talking about him all the way through to the draft because he has everything you want. He has big playability between the tackles. He's tough. He's on an offense that loves to run the ball with a coach that knows how to run the ball. And he produced big numbers and small sample size last year. Yeah, exactly. The offensive coordinator, his name is Hugh Jackson. Hugh Jackson was the coach when Darren McFadden had a fantastic fantasy year.

So Jeremy Hill, games with over 15 carries, he averaged 5.6 yards per carry. He had over 20 carries five times, every single time that happened, over 100 yards, 622 yards after contact. I mean, the Gio Bernard between the tackles experiment was a failure from the beginning. I don't know.

why they were insisting on doing that. I guess it was just, he was the... Can't you just love Jeremy Hill without hating Geo Bernard? No, because Geo Bernard... This is because you traded for Geo Bernard last year. This... And you just can't live with it. Well, I... You traded some bad... I did not like Geo Bernard. Well, if we're talking about, I was backed into a hole where I needed to make a trade. Uh-huh, uh-huh. But, so Jeremy Hill is the guy I...