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

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We'll get a $75-sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com slash podcast. That's indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Hey, Footclam. Before we start today's show, I want to remind you about Ultimate DraftKit.com. This is the culmination of months worth of work from the fantasy footballers, the podcast you know and love.

Our draft preparation guide. You go over there. There are hundreds of profile videos for individual players. You have all of our rankings, our premium statistics, sleepers, breakouts, bus. It doesn't stop there. We keep adding to it. It's a living, breathing, off-season draft preparation docs. So head over to ultimate draft kit.com. To the fantasy footballers podcast. Coming to you from the fantasy jocks.com studios with your host, Andy Holloway.

Jason Moore and Mike Wright. Welcome in, everybody. The smell of pig skin is in the air. Oh, training camps are upon us. And you like the smell of pigs, pig skin, bacon. I was just going to bacon. Had some bacon this morning. It had a skillet. So you've started your morning, right? That is the correct way to begin, and it reminded me of football, which is almost here. We have so much.

Fantasy, football, news, and information to discuss today. Well, that makes sense. This is the week of news, the week of Pup List, and who's healthy, who's not? It's called Training Camp is here. Yes, sir. I am excited about today's show. We are going to be breaking down all of the breaking news, all of the information coming out of camp, reporter, you know, the different reports coming out, the buzz, some new signings, some injury updates.

We have a special guest on the show. I was going to ask if we have a special celebrity guest. We have a celebrity guest on the show that will be stepping in for Mike the Fantasy Hitman Wright, who is not here. He's still on vacation. He's getting one last breather in before we go to five shows a week. Which is next week. This coming week. I had somebody on Twitter say, you know, when is it happening? Last year, I think it happened in September.

This year we said, no, we're doing it in August. Yeah, maybe next year. I mean, it might be crazy and stupid, but we're doing it in August, five shows a week starting on August 1st. Yeah, there's no way you're going to go into your draft unprepared if you're listening to the ballers this year. No, and that's what we're about. We want you to enjoy the league you're in, and we want you to succeed in the league you're in, win a foot clan title. So very excited. So the special guest is going to fill in for Mike on a game of this or that.

We're going to play a game, some tough decisions, some players that are really close in our fantasy rankings for 2016. We need help. Those decisions where if you decide to draft one of those guys, you're not going to get the other. That's the this or that game. It's like when you come and the clock and it says it's your turn to pick and those two guys are on the board, you're not going to have one of them come back to you. That's the decision.

Yeah, and so we're going to play that in a little bit after we get through a bunch of the breaking news and kind of give our commentary on the things that are happening right now in fantasy football as we prepare for the season. Got a good quick question. Before I get into the quick question, I do want to let everybody know about a current vote that is taking place on Twitter. Now, we said, I think, two shows ago, we were going to open up the voting to you.

on what the next jersey we have in the studio is going to be. Right now, Rule 86, Jordan Reed is on the wall. We've got a David Johnson that makes an appearance. We wanted your input. And so we broke it up into four different categories with four entries each. So we had like a youngsters, a superstars. We did the nicknames. That's all on Twitter at the FF Ballers. But listen, the bracket voting ends later today on Thursday.

And then the final poll with the final four people will be up on from Friday through Sunday. So if you want to go vote, cast your vote for what jersey should show up. Just head over to Twitter at the FF Ballers. If you want to connect with us, get an extra show every week. Go over to join thefoot.com. That's our fantasy community. That's also where you get access to the Foot Clan leagues, which are a bunch of leagues started by listeners of this show. So you know they're committed. It's going to be competitive. It's going to be fun, engaging.

because the listeners of this show are amazing i would say over the years that's like the most common question we guess how do i get in a great league like you guys talk about yeah i got this morning an email the last email i got was how do i get involved in leagues like yours right and that's that's where you do it so uh definitely check that out at join the foot dot com here's the quick question i have wait wait wait oh wait i think since we're on this topic okay this is just perfect we got to talk about the listener league

We do have to talk about. Oh, my goodness. First of all, I mean, there's a couple different things we need to say. So the listener league is coming up soon. We're going to make our final selections here in the next week or two so that we can plan a draft ahead and get the schedules right. First, I'm blown away. I mean, the submissions, look, you Foot Clan out there, you guys are amazing. I pre-apologize for everyone that doesn't get in because it's just impossible to take everyone.

They're amazing. Second, if you want to submit your entry, what you do over the next week, we'll give you another week to submit your entry, email us whatever thing you think will woo us, will entertain us. Yeah, get creative and send it over to listener league at fantasyfootballers.com.

Listener League at Fantasyfootballers.com or if you're like, I don't have any creativity or sounds like there's too much competition. We are also giving one away to the official Foot Clan listeners over at Join the Foot.com. So if you are in the giveaway tier, we're pulling that. August 5th. August 5th, coming up real soon. We will do that giveaway and one spot will be given away.

to the listener league guaranteed from that giveaway on august 5th so yeah very good reminders there there are some incredible entries in there there's some not so incredible entries in there a lot a lot of uh entries that look like the same from one person to the next yeah but there are some really really good ones and so yeah jason we're going to do our best to you know you submit us something if even if you don't get in

know that we're seeing them, we're watching them, and we're appreciating them, and we wish that we could let everybody in. But it's fun. This time of year is very, very fun. We got all of, all the leagues are getting started, man. I have Josh Gordon in our Dynasty League, and now I'm fielding trade offers for him. So I think, let me say this. I think if you own Gordon in that situation,

Trade him. If people are all about Josh Gordon in your league, if there are one or two that are remembering his number one year, I think you just ship him out. That would be my recommendation. You're in a dynasty or even a startup or like a keeper league. I would trade Josh Gordon. I think his value, he is always one misstep away from having zero value at all. And normally right after breaking news hits where you get a little crazy on a guy. You go, oh.

Oh, yeah, he was awesome. He's got that potential for a number one. He's 25 years old. I'm going to go try to get him now. Yeah, I just don't have the confidence that he will produce combined with the history of problems. He's already going to miss some games this year. We don't really know what the Browns think of him right now. Sure, the league might let him play. He also has a groin injury now. Yeah. So this isn't helping my case to trade him by saying all those things. I appreciate it.

Quick question of the day. What is one thing that you know to do on draft day, Jason, that you wish you knew when you started playing fantasy football? So what is one experienced draft day tip that you have now that you wish you could tell your older self on draft day? You know, back when you drafted those horrible teams, you know, the Lawrence Moroni's in the first round. Oh, wait, that was me.

Yeah, actually, I've got one that I know I made a change several years back that helped me tremendously. And it was really, really simple. And I don't go overboard. Don't go crazy with this, right? I mean, I still like Todd Gurley. You'll see why in a minute. But for the most part, what I do now, especially the first half of the draft, it's pretty much impossible to do the whole draft long. I care a whole lot about players on a winning team.

on a good offense and a winning team. I give a very large tiebreaker, if you will, to being on a good team. Those teams, they score more points, which adds more fantasy. The game scripts are more reliable. I just find that over the years, I've kind of shifted to where...

You know, I don't want the Lone Ranger on a bad team unless he is, you know, that otherworldly talent. You know, Adrian Peterson for a while, the Vikings weren't good and I would still take him. You know, outside of those outliers, I find I skew my teams towards good teams.

Yeah, and that's something I started doing pretty early in fantasy as well. It turned my early seasons around and learning around. I would say that I'll bring up one that we talk about on the show quite a bit. Just the fact that you can, in most formats, wait on a quarterback. Now, the quarterback is proportionally such an important part of...

The NFL team, it defines an NFL team that in the context of actually playing the game. And so that can translate to an over-importance in fantasy football, but it's a numbers game here. It is a scarcity game here. Early on playing fantasy football as a beginner, when I talk to brand new players, the first thing they say to me is Aaron Rogers is the first guy, right? I mean, and they say it like that sincerely. He's the first guy you draft. He's number one off the board. Well, now it's Cam, but yeah. Or Cam Newton.

It might not be. It might be still. Well, no, I'm saying that that's what's said. Sure. Cam is, I think, my fourth quarterback. And that's generally what you see if you get in a friends and family league with a bunch of new inexperienced players. First round is three or four, five quarterbacks off the board. And so as an early player, knowing that I can wait on the big-named quarterback because the value is different than what it is for a running back or a wide receiver early in a draft. You need to start more wide receivers, more running backs in your league.

And you can get value last year, and we should bring this stat up again. I believe there were 40, maybe more. No, it was 40 on the dot. There were 40 on the dot. There were 40 quarterbacks that put up a top 12 week in 2015. But Andy, there's only 32 teams in the NFL. That's what's so incredible about it. I know. More top 12 performances by quarterbacks than there are teams.

And so it can be intimidating to let those guys go in the draft. But what it does is it lets you stock up on running backs, on wide receivers, on values. And then later on, you can grab a Philip Rivers, who I'm in love with. If you're, you know, Philip Rivers led the league in completions last year. Right. He was on a team that lost Keenan Allen.