Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - Breaking News, Training Camp, This-or-That

that barely had Antonio Gates. Lost their offensive line in its entirety. And he let you, he's free right now in drafts for the most part. You can get him very late. Tyrod Taylor for me. Matthew Stafford. And these are all, and we have different values that you'll see in our rankings that you can select. So I think just that acknowledgement that you can wait on a quarterback. We saw our listeners have so much success last year streaming quarterbacks. And that's what we facilitate that on this show. We go at.

We go through the numbers each week and tell you which quarterbacks you can sign and start and end up with a good enough performance to combine with the rest of your team. Since Mike's not here, I want to give a third answer to this question, but also. On behalf of him? On behalf of him, but it's to a different question. Is that okay? It sounds weird, but sure. It sounds very weird. It's basically something that has been learned over the years that I think is extremely important for fantasy football players that is not necessarily what I learned in the draft.

but what I learned about the draft, which I've said it before, but I remember years ago, I always thought that I was going to win the championship at my draft. You know, I go back a decade, and it was like, I'm going to do all this prep for the draft. I'm going to get ready, and then if I draft the right team, I win the championship.

And that is so wrong. And last year, if you were a listener last year, you heard us say over and over, you got to stick through the season. It's more about your waiver moves and your starts and sits, getting those things right through the season, make a good trade or two. If you're not the active team making the good transactions from weeks four through 12 of the season, you're not winning a hashtag foot clan title.

Yeah, and that's really, they weren't complimentary. You're in-season moves in the draft. The draft's that foundation. If you have a poor draft, you're starting to try to build that team off of the waiver wire on sand. Yeah, you won't win at the draft, but you can sure lose it at the point. Right, right. And so that's a really good reminder. And so before we get into the news and notes, and I'm going to tell you right now, we're going to spend a lot of time on breaking news, on injury news, on the pulse of the fantasy football world right now. So you.

When this show's over, you're going to know what's going on in a lot of different areas. But before we do that, I want to thank our sponsor, Pristine Auction. We were talking about the jersey that we're hanging up on the wall. That's where we get our jerseys is from pristineauction.com. One of our very best partners run by incredible people. They are the absolute best place on the Internet to go get sports memorabilia, authentic, affordable, hundreds of daily auctions.

Always improving. One of the things I love about them is there's always something new going on with pristine auction. They've got this Kin Stabler collection that's coming out. It's hot. It's hot. They have amazing new things. Mike is obsessed with going on there and just, you know, it's really fun to just see what's on there, to lay some low bids on there every once in a while, and then you find something you want to compete for. Mike just got a Kurt Warner autographed jersey, us Arizonaans. We think so highly of Kurt Warner bringing us to that Super Bowl.

So definitely check them out. Pristineauction.com. That's P-R-I-S-T-I-N-E Auction. Make sure when you sign up on there, which is completely free. If you want to go browse the auctions, just let a bid, too. You only pay if you win. Yeah, yeah. And so make sure you let them know you found pristine auction from the fantasy footballers. So are you ready to cover some news. Let's do this. News and notes from around the league. Just a reminder, too, we have a show that comes out on Saturday this week. So we are three a week right now. We're not two like we were in June.

On Saturday, we're going to do something a little different. We've been doing a couple mailbag shows. Oh, I like this Saturday show coming up. We're doing a mock draft. A two-man mock draft draft draft draft draft draft. Just you and I. Yeah. And so it's going to be a lot of fun. I think we'll do it in probably a standard format this week. Standard or half point. I guess we can't do. Can we do half? We can't do half. We can't do half. On Fantasydraftwizard.com. Yeah. People ask us all the time. Hey, where do you do your mock drafts? Fantasydraftwizard.com. It's the easiest tool. You can do it in five minutes. Great.

Okay, so let's get into the news. Let's start with, oh, man, this is painful to hit. Mediocre signing of the week. Wow. I feel so bad to hit that button with Anquan Bolden signing, but it's the truth. Anquan Bolden has signed with the Detroit Lions. Ah.

Former Cardinal. To say he's mediocre is kind of sad. But I think that's the context we need to approach Anquam Bolden in for fantasy football. Right. And I see a lot of people, oh, this bumps Tate down. This bumps Martin Jones down. No, no, no.

No, it doesn't. They needed a third wide receiver there to kind of step up, fill that role. They needed a stability wide receiver. Yes, and I think a good slot wide receiver. Anquam Bolden's not going to be, you know, running nine routes over and over and lighting fantasy football on fire. But I think this is a good signing for the Lions, a nice stability. I'm not changing any of my rankings. Is that silly? No, it's not silly. People, I think maybe people want to know is Anquam Bolden a sleeper in a deeper league?

And look, if your league rewards like 10 points for every important first down picked up, I think Bolden will leave the league. Actually, there are leagues that reward for first downs, and that is, I agree with you. He's a go-to player on third down, that type of a player. But I'm not adjusting my rankings. I'm not putting Bolden into the fantasy context at all. I think if there was an injury to Marvin Jones or Golden Tate, Bolden becomes relevant. We know he's capable. He's capable.

But he's past the point of being a fantasy force by any means. Yeah, in a general rule of thumb, when you are signing this late into the season, there's a reason that you were not signed already. Yeah. I mean, either you're coming off a major injury or you're an old vet. Right. So, you know, when someone else signs next week, we'll probably give the same news. Yeah. Yep. So, and you know who it's not going to be?

It's not in our news, but there's so much going on. We don't get to say that about Greg Jennings. Greg Jennings has retired. Say goodbye. He doesn't get to be our mediocre signing this year. All right. Legerrett Blunt, I want to talk about this. He avoided the Patriots active pup list to begin camp. Coming off a hip injury, Jason and I, look, we talked about the ultimate draft kit. We're trying to put all of our sleepers in there. We're trying to look through all these numbers. We're always updating it.

So yesterday we went into the sleepers and we said, okay, any of these guys we want to take out? Does anybody want to put back in there? We're debating Legerat Blunt. And then Jason just, he just smacked me in the face with a frying pan of statistics. And it hurt. I said, pull up his last year. Pull up his last year because here's the narrative on Lagart Blunt. Well, he's, first of all, he's a patriot running back. So he's unreliable. You have no idea whether he's going to get carries, not get carries. You can't make a good start.

sit decision with le garret blunt sure uh second you know uh he gets a bad rap for just not being good which i think is is not not all that true especially since he's been on the patriots um you know then you also have the fact that he's injured right he missed all of uh the o tas

Except now he's not on the pup. And the Patriots have put a lot of their other players on the pup. That means he's healthy. He's ready to go for a full training camp. That means that they were kind of just resting in the OTAs. And so here's some of the statistics we were talking about. So he missed the first two games, essentially, last year for the Patriots. And then with that hip injury, missed the last three games. So five games he was pretty much irrelevant in. And you think, well, you're not getting, you know,

You don't know which games he's going to get a lot of carries, which games he's going to get a few carries, but let me read you his carry count from the middle stretch of last year, which is a gigantic stretch. I mean, you're talking about a, what is that, a 12, 13 week stretch. Yes, there was one game against the Jets where he only had three carries. If you started him, that stunk. But we're talking about a guy who's pretty much going undrafted. Here's his carry count last year. 18, 13, 16, 17.

29, 19, 16, 9, 13, and 10. So there was a 9 that wasn't double digits. Everything else, other than that Jack game, was double digits. He scores touchdowns. He had two games last year with nine red zone carries each in each game. He had a game with seven red zone carries last year. Yeah, Tom Brady's missing the first four games.

What kind of a team do you think they're going to try to start out and be? And I don't bank on that part. That's not really where I'm coming from. I'm coming from the fact that over the last like three years in the games where he has played for the Patriots, I think he averages 0.6 touchdowns a game. That's awesome. That's like what you hope for. This is the...

I think public awareness campaign for the Garrett Blunt. This is not the propping him up on a fantasy pedestal campaign. I'm not saying he's going to be an RB1. But this is saying he, look, we made him a sleeper. Because of where he's being drafted, because of these numbers that we're talking about. The player himself, he reminds me of Michael Bush. I mean, he's just a big plotting chain mover. But you can do that in that offense. Right. You can be efficient in that offense. You're talking about.

You know, the quick question of the day, right? What's one thing we've learned? Well, one thing I've learned is I want players who are on a good team, right? Well, if I want players on a good team, I'm pretty confident that the Patriots always fit that bill. Absolutely. Fit the bill because Bill is there.

Yeah, and if you want to know where he's going right now, and, you know, he's going around Carlos Williams, who we'll talk about in the news. Yes, we will. Rumors he might not make the team. He'll be there, but it's not good. Charkandric West. Uh-huh, back up, straight up. Yep, Kenneth Dixon, Chris Johnson. Uh-huh. I mean, or a guy that last year was double-digit carries in all the games he played almost. You talk about tips and tricks for draft day.

One of the ones that we always bring up is patting the depth of your running backs at the end of the draft. Legerick Blunt fits that bill. Because you can absolutely, on a buy week, on a great matchup where you think that they're going to be probably up early and then killing the clock. On an injury, your running back goes down. Who's your backup? I mean, if you're back up. Dionne Lewis is coming back from injury too. You know, if you drafted Kenneth Dixon.

Which is a worthy draft pick there who's in the same area. Kenneth Dixon, maybe he's a better pick. But if in week four your running back goes down and Kenneth Dixon is still the backup, I'd much rather plug in Ligarrett Blunt and get fantasy points. So I think people need to be aware of him for later in drafts because his value is ridiculous right now. Jordy Nelson. Let's talk about Jordy. This news came out. He suffered a, quote, hiccup on his non-ACL knee. ESPN reported that it was tendonitis.

Not necessarily viewed as serious. What is the context for this injury? Because first when you hear Jordy Nelson has a hiccup, you think, well, that's in the knee that he was injured.

He had the torn ACL. That's not the case. How does something like this happen to the other knee? Well, you overcompensate in rehab. That's what happens. We see it all the time. One injury can lead to other injuries and other parts of the body because now you're not using the knee that was reconstructed. You're not using that as much. Your brain knows like, hey, take it easy on that leg. Don't cut off of that knee. Don't do those things. And so you end up using your body a little different than you're used to. You've also got the age problem here, right? He's older.

Maybe there's- Recovery is a little bit more difficult. Right. Maybe there's a worry of, you know, bodies breaking down. He's going very, very high right now. Yeah. He's a top of the second round pick. Well, this news is the type of news that will push him to the end of the second round, I think, without a doubt. He's over Allen Robinson right now. He's over to Keenan Allen, Al-Shon Jeffrey, Mike Evans, Omari Cooper. He will fall. But I, here's the deal. If I'm on the clock.

And I have to draft those guys. I'm taking Jordy over Keenan Allen personally. I believe. Not over Alan Robinson though, would you? No, I don't think I would do it over Alan Robinson. But Jordy is very high in my rankings. His work ethic is phenomenal.