Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - Early 2016 Mock Draft Episode

Yeah, well, that's what it reminded me. All right. So moving on, free agent Lamar Miller says he wants to be a featured back and he threw out the name or the number 20. He wants 20 touches a game wherever he lands, whether it's Miami or somewhere else. Feed him. I like it. I like where his head is at, especially for fantasy purposes that if he is saying this, then wherever he's signed, we have to have the assumption.

that the team has told him, okay, we'll give you 20 touches a week. And Heath Miller has retired. Heath. He was a consummate professional, a great tight end. It's a little shocking. Yeah, could have stayed around a couple more years maybe. Time to go. More players are making that decision. They're making that decision, you know, and saying, all right, it's time. And the fantasy implications. Jesse James, at least right now is the next man up. Is he the next?

New Orleans, Josh Hill? Josh Hill hype in the off season. No, because he hasn't done anything where he's at least in line, but Pittsburgh, I expect them to add somebody like a Dwayne Allen, for instance. Well, are you guys ready to mock draft? You want to get into this? Oh, yeah. All right, here we go. The Fantasy Footballers Mock Draft.

Well, if you listen to the show before, we had several mock draft episodes last offseason, and we always use fantasy draft wizard.com. That's what we're doing today. We are going to be mock drafting 12 teams, standard scoring, and we randomly chose a position to draft from, and that random number landed on 10. So we're drafting from the 10th spot, and we will be walking through here. And basically what we try to do is give you a look into our thinking.

and how we think about drafting and how we think about this specific mock draft. This will be very, very interesting to me because this is about as early as you can do this. We're pre-free agency and pre the NFL draft. So this is going to be, this is the time where I would actually recommend for people to start getting in and mocking. Go to fantasydraftwizard.com because one of the best things you can do to prepare for the draft is just doing mock drafts. You get to try it out.

And then what happens is after the NFL draft and free agency opens up, you get to see how the movement, how players shift. And watching that happen before your eyes, if you're already prepared beforehand, it kind of gives you more of a pulse of like who's being overvalued or undervalued. And just so you understand, the players that are picked outside of our selections are chosen based off of essentially ADP lists.

Right? Where people have consensus expert rankings. And so we just clicked, I just clicked Go, we just started the draft, we're the 10th pick in the draft, and I'm going to run it back to you. You guys start looking at who you want to take. The first pick in this draft, which we may see a lot of, is Antonio Brown. Yeah, I have no problem with it. And the, a question that we probably don't have an answer on here. It's just an interesting talking point, I think, is there's going to be a lot of drafts. Antonio Brown, number one,

Levy on Bell, number two, or even flip those guys. And have we, I can't think of the last time or if ever this has happened where it's a two players from one team and they're one and two. I mean, that's, I'm not arguing against it. I just think it's gnarly. We did a mock and we put our roster, we each individually did one. Oh, yeah. We put our rosters up. Do we have the results from that? We do. On Twitter and you guys both selected Antonio Brown won.

We all drafted from the one spot. I took Lev Bell one. And so I think Jason ended up winning that in the end. Really? Jason came back. I think he came back and beat me. Our listeners are wise. He also, yeah, he tweeted it off his own account like 45 more times after that. Do you want to give the results or we move on here at the mock?

Um, yeah, I'm looking for them. So here's what happened in the first round, up to our pick in number 10. Antonio Brown went one, Lev Bell 2, AP went three. Surprise, Eddie Lacey went number four? Yeah, that's, there's, uh, that won't be right. Um, Jamal Charles went five. I love that. Everything I'm reading about Jamal Charles recovery is stellar, by the way. Julio Jones went six. David Johnson went seven. That's high. That is very high. I'm ahead of guys like Todd Gurley.

Marchon Lynch went, oh wow. So he's still beat. That one's still sitting in there. So we got to take Marchon. Let's just flip him out for Rawls here. And Odell Beckham Jr. went nine. And so you see a little bit of what's happened here because see these lists, some of the consensus list still had Marchon in there before he announced that he's likely to retire. He hasn't formally retired, right? Yeah. I mean, he hung up his cleats on Twitter, but he hasn't formally retired. I imagine that Calvin will probably still be in here as well.

But we will continue on. We'll proceed. So right now, I know who your pick is. Yeah, I mean, right now Todd Gurley's on the board. You also have other people that would be considered right here would be Rob Grankowski because of his dominating tight-end position. DeAndre Hopkins. That's probably one of the best at the wide receiver. Yeah, you have a bunch of the wide receivers that did well. You have Doug Martin still on the board who, you know, if he resigned could be a top five running back.

And then other running backs, Devante Freeman, is not gone. You have Alan Robinson. And that's pretty much our consideration here. To me, the pick in a standard league right here, it's Todd Gurley. I don't really question that at all. I think he won't be here when push comes to shove in the actual drafts as we move down to summer. Yeah, I agree. Normally...

This year, I am much more inclined to take wide receivers early, and the reason is because there aren't very many guys that I really believe in at running back to put that first round draft stock in. Todd Gurley is one of those guys. To get him into 10th is not something you should pass up. So I would clearly vote for Todd Gurley here. Yeah, and my vote would be Gurley, and I'm not, I still don't, I'm not on board with Taken Gronk.

in the first round. I understand the position. Scarcity. I understand he is dominant at the tight-end position, but to me, I'm just, I'm not paying that price for my tight-end spot. I totally understand that. Yeah, the team right after us did. I totally understand that. Yeah, the team right after us took Rob Granikowski, and then DeAndre Hopkins went, Des Bryant, and Alan Robinson. So taking a quick time out, debate.

the merits of the Hopkins versus Bryant versus Robinson decision making here. Because I feel like you could make very compelling arguments for each wide receiver situation. Robinson is 22 years old. Incredible youth. You know, Des Bryant has been a touchdown machine when he's healthy. He's got Romo. That connection has been pretty much unstoppable in fantasy. And obviously Hopkins is just the targets were off. Incredible. I would rank these guys, Des first.

Hopkins, second, Alan Robinson, third. And here's why. When you have a guy playing at a Hall of Fame caliber level for many years in DES, you already know what you have and you have a guy that can finish as the number one wide receiver. Last year got derailed because of injury to him and the quarterback. Both guys will be back. So he's going to be first for me on my board. Then you've got two high upside guys. And the tiebreaker for me between those guys is just targets.

DeAndre Hopkins is going to get so many more targets than Alan Robinson does. Alan Robinson only caught 80 total balls last year, which is great, but by comparison... Yeah, his yards per catch was up at this, almost 18. Yeah, and he had 16 touchdowns with only 80 catches, which shows the chance for regression. And for me, it would be... I would actually take Hopkins first of this group, and I know that... 14.

14 touchdowns over. It sounded a little high. And the reason I'm going to go with Hopkins is I don't think we've seen the best that Hopkins has to bring. We know that he's dominant. A stat that was highlighted for him was yards after catch. And he has said that he's going to spend his offseason improving in this area of his game because he was not even in the top 100.

for wide receivers for yards after catch, which is shocking. So his bad yards after catch is why you're taking him first? I'm taking him because of where he finished, and if he can improve that, then he could easily, easily be the number one wide receiver. And he's a, he's 23. I mean, he's a monster. Yeah. So, all right. And he dresses awesome. He does dress. He does dress. Other than his silly hats. Todd.

Todd Gurley was our pick in the first round, so we get a quick pick here because we drafted at number 10. Let's take a quarterback. So after these guys, Mike, if we could ask you to please leave, that would be fine. All right. So right now, Devante Freeman is still on the board for us, coming back around in the second round. Those three wide receivers are gone that we just talked about as well as Grunk. Right. And so Doug Martin's on the board, Devante Freeman, AJ Green. Marking. Marking. Marking is on the board.

And basically, you know, that seems like probably the crop. Alshon Jeffrey, Jordy Nelson. Now, one thing to point out in this draft, this is a, this draft is for three starting wide receivers and two running back. So it does give a little bit more value to having. I'm taking a wide out here. I'm not necessarily taking it there, but I think we should point that out for consideration. That's good.

So to me, if you're leaning wide out, Mike, who stands out to you? Are you willing to take a chance on somebody like Jordy Nelson above, you know, a guy like Brandon Marshall or A.J. Green that were much more, or even Al-Shon Jeffrey, that were more proven last year? Jordy's kind of old. Yeah, Jordy's kind of old. Coming off an injury. So I think I would prefer to take a guy like Green or Marshall or even Al-Shan.

We don't know necessarily Alshan's landing spot at this point. But that's where I would be picking out of. Any temptation, Jason, to take another running back here, even if it's not Freeman, to go with somebody like Martin or Ingram? There is a little bit of temptation, but I think when you're in a three wide receiver two running back situation, and we picked here close to the turn, so we're not going to get a pick for a long time to get that elite wide receiver. And I think we're going to need him. So I would go wide receiver here.

And between the wide receivers, there's plenty that I like. I think my two favorites would be Alshan Jeffrey and A.J. Green out of this bunch with Marvin Jones leaving. It makes me lean a little bit towards A.J. Green. I'm very high on A.J. Green this year. When we did our episode of Players with Overreactions, he was one of the players that I considered putting in there because he hasn't.

He had some really boom games last year where he scored a ton of points and then people felt like he wasn't the consistent dominant force. But if you look at his stat line at the end of the year, he was. I, all of you have, or both of you have mentioned AJ Green in your conversation of players to pick here. So I think I'll take AJ Green because he's in my consideration too. Let's do it. All right. So we'll take our first two picks, Gurley and AJ Green. And then like Jason said, we drafted there at the turn. And so we have a long way to go.

Yeah. A long way to go. Now, one player that's on the board that has dropped tremendously down the board that we're going to have to debate is LaShaul McCoy. So let me highlight some picks here. I'll do it quickly. I'm not going to read everyone off. And what we're going to do is we're going to post the entirety of this mock draft on our website. And you'll be able to reference exactly what guys went. And so Devante Freeman went right after AJ Green, our pick. We saw our first quarterback. Andrew Luck went in the second round.

You have Marshall, Jeffrey, you had C.J. Anderson. You had Hyde going the second round. And then some of the third round picks here, Jordy Nelson, Mike Evans, Aaron Rogers, Demarius, Thomas, Mark, Ingram, Doug Martin, Jeremy Hill. And now Cam Newton went, interestingly enough. Newton went after Rogers and after luck. Is that what you expect to see from the draft?

I don't expect that to be the norm every time, but it wouldn't surprise me at all. You go off of history as well. Aaron Rogers, to me, when I'm ranking these, Aaron Rogers will be my number one quarterback that I'm going after, not letting last year scare me when he loses his number one wide receiver. So that doesn't shock me. Here now, you said we need to debate LaShawn McCoy? No, we have other guys to debate about him. But I want to debate McCoy simply on his value.

uh maybe it's not worth doing because we see how everything shakes out so it's just going to take place later yeah well it's at least worth talking about let's say um let's give him our own suspension because to me a suspension will come no matter what you think so no matter what happens with the outcome of so give him a game the law i was going to give him two but we want to go with one yeah give him one game okay so we got a one game suspension right here uh looking at the board the