Fantasy Football - Regress or Impress? 2nd Half Studs + Age Cliffs - Podcast for 3/27

to the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. Andy Mike and Jason, the fantasy footballers. Jason wearing the lightest blue he's worn. It matches my eyes. In a long time. Looking like an Easter luncheon happening. I'm not going to lie to you. It's laundry day. At my house, I didn't. It looks good. Yeah, I'm not, I don't. You look fresh as a spring breeze. There was a time in which on laundry day you would have worn. A dirty black shirt. A dirty black shirt. And basketball shorts. Well, yeah. I'm not wearing any shorts today. Right. Yeah. But that's the desk's problem. And job. It's to block that. Welcome in one and all. No, it looks good. It's still your, your patented polo. I mean, you wouldn't be caught dead without.

If I don't have a collar, I'm not a professional. No collars, no buttons on her shirt. Which is trying to hide. I don't know what I'm talking about. All right. It's Thursday, March 27th. And we are back. We've got a regress or impress episode. This one's going to be a lot of fun. We're actually looking at five players that had amazing second halves to their season. fantasy-wise and whether we believe they're going to continue succeeding or maybe maybe it was just a you know kind of a half a season wonder yeah i mean it's these situations are one of those where you always need to do your best to try to investigate and get it right you've got the almond ross st browns where you see the breakout you see something special happen and and

There was so much debate. You know, it was like, oh, there was, there were injuries around him. It was the situation. But also he did what he did. And it turns out with, you know, hindsight being 2020, he good. And so this is, yeah, I mean, there's a handful of players on today's episode as well where we're specifically talking about people that I didn't know they were that good. What I saw was like, I believe it's real. And so we just hope we get that right. Also have some news to catch up on. I have a quick question that we'll get to momentarily. A reminder you can watch the show on YouTube. YouTube.com slash the fantasy footballer. Subscribe. Click the bell. You'll be notified when we have new episodes. In season, we do live streams. Mike does a Sunday live every week. And you'll want to watch it over there. Make sure you drop us a review. Follow on your podcast players, Spotify, Apple, wherever you're listening. And the draft kit, the UDK.

available at a discounted pre-order price releases June 1st in full. UltimateDraftKit.com to learn more about that, that'll be all of our, you know, all of our rankings, including stat projections for every single player, our sleepers breakouts, busts, and values, and player profile videos and all the tiers. Yeah, and the draft analyzer, a lot of things. It's our kind of pinnacle product. You know, it's what we work. The team here works very hard on every year, and you can learn about that at Ultimate draftkit.com. The quick question we have is from Matt in Tacoma asks, in Dynasty leagues, what are the typical ages to get maximum value trading away a wide receiver or a running back? Yeah, I mean, if you're playing in a Dynasty League, getting those things right is critical. Timing the market. Time in the market. Timing the lifespan of the player is especially critical. And obviously, this is an individual thing.

This is different for each player. So when we talk here in generalities, you've got to then apply kind of the logic to the individual players. This guy, an outlier, you know, like Derek Henry is not like any other player that has been in the league for quite some time. Derek Henry is going to personally skew and like ruin our average. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We need to remove him from the sample. Take the outliers out just so we have a true media. Fred Jackson, Derek Henry, Emmett Smith. We just don't worry about them. Yeah, exactly. For me, when I'm looking at running back and wide receiver, wide receiver, I'm pretty confident in when I like to trade them on an age basis. That one's 28 years old. 28 is where, because what I'm wanting to do when I trade a player is I want to get a haul. I want to trade them while they're still valuable. 28 is not the age cliff. So this is, for this year, I was looking at all the wide receivers that kind of fit this bill who can get a haul. There's only one this year that's going to be basically that age range.

who can get a haul. And that's A.J. Brown's awesome. I'm not saying trade A.J. Brown because he's going to fall off. What I am saying is A.J. Brown will net you a haul. People will pay up. You will get a young stud wide receiver and a first round pick. And if that young wide receiver ends up hitting and being very good and you get something with your first, You're retooled. You're still competitive. And then you fast forward two years from now. You're not going to get anything from AJ Brown once he turns 30. You might just hold on to them and get plenty of years of value. Yes. You get to the point. The Mike Evans of the fantasy world. It's not worth trading those guys anymore because the value to your weekly roster is greater than someone is going to trade for. Yeah. So that's kind of. It's just the degrees of might. Okay. It's what am I getting and how confident?

am I in what I am getting? Yeah. That's the biggest challenge because you don't want to, like this is not a, that's the age you like to trade them, but that's not a prescription to trade them at all costs. No, no. Because it's like you can make, you can go trade AJ Brown and get a haul, but make sure that you're very strongly convicted about the players you're receiving. Absolutely. I mean, we've, we've personally done this in our main dynasty league several times. Like my best trade was I traded away Julio Jones. at the peak, like he was as hot as possible. I think he was about 28, somewhere around there, maybe 29. I got C.D. Lamb, a young rookie and a first round pick that turned into a great pick. And obviously, and then Julio Jones poof and evaporated and disappeared. Andy, you did this many times. I did? Yeah, you did this with, you've done this with quarterbacks. You traded away, I believe, was it Mahomes? And for Josh Allen plus, or you had one of those. You also did it with,

Todd Gurley, you traded away him after his hot start. You got Dalvin Cook plus picks. And so I do think that there is a place in Dynasty leagues where that is the right methodology. With a running back, it's less to me about age as more about like contract situation. It's worth noting some data that, you know, early breakouts, you know, 21 to 24. Peak performance for running backs are 24 to 26. That's the age where they really. are monstrously hot. Which for wide receivers is 25 to 29. Right. Yeah, they go a little older. So maybe a 26-year-old running back, you make that trade. You trade away Jonathan Taylor. And it's not to say he's not going to have a great season coming up. It's just if you can get a ton and retool in dynasty, fill the coffers, and still have talent, you usually should. Mike, how do you feel about looking at running backs in more of a one-year basis?

in dynasty like in one year windows like is there a world where it's advisable to kind of because the shelf life for their peak is so small because the age cliff is some young that maybe the prescription for dynasty at running back position is just looking in one year windows because planning ahead there can be difficult on it can you know we have draft picks every year that yeah situations I mean Travis ETN was a top tier dynasty running back right that wasn't above an age cliff, that also now has a different maybe outlook. And so I just wonder if you should, I'm thinking about this for myself, it's like at running back outside of a true outlier special talent. And there's only a handful of those in the league at a particular time. Is there a world where we're less trading to plan for multi-year runs of a player and more trading to plan for one year?

or maybe two-year windows where, look, last year you could have gone and got Joe Mixon and used them for a year and been happy and you move on and you go set yourself up for a one-year window somewhere. It's just a thought I'm having. I'm in, that would align with how I think about the position where, you know, people, what's, I need startup dynasty draft advice. And the quick go-to one is always start your draft with wide receivers because they will be on your team. for multiple years. And where running backs, it just, it can vanish so quickly that the actual dynasty peak age is smaller. The age where they decline, it's younger. So it's just, it's not a true foundational, it, to me, is not a good way to build the foundation of your team because you will have to rebuild sooner. Uh-huh. And as opposed to stock up on blue chip wide receivers and then just fill in the cracks with,

with older running back. So you're like, no, I still see value for this player. Like Alvin Camara, Alvin Camara is going to have value this year. He will, will the cliff hit him this year? I don't know. Like, you, if you're in a startup draft and you're going really, really late and you started early with wide receivers, you can grab someone that's going to matter for your team, like an Aaron Jones. Right. Is going to be. Like, people don't even want him. He'll be playable. He'll be playable asset, you know, or if you're not in your startup and you're wanting to trade like Andy saying for a one-year rental, there will be someone who this coming year, if they're not a championship contender, Derek Henry again is like, I want to get something for him. I know it's not going to last forever. Those are the type of players that you can just kind of get on the cheap to fill in those gaps. Yeah. So they are, they're not the foundation because I've just, I've seen too many, too many teams.

They build their team that way. And for two years, you're like, holy crap, this team, when I pull it up on paper in the offseason, I look at my team and I go, why am I even going to try? How can I possibly compete with this? And then that team is in full rebuild before the end of the season. How could anyone last year have competed with my... sensational team right of bejean robinson breese hall and travis etienne i had three like top six startup running backs and now travis etienne is dead breeze hall is only dead to me if there's any silver lining of your situation is that you get to talk about it to millions of people and be an example of the fact that you can look like you are

invincible and the thing is you and you would have been just to be clear you would have been beaten by somebody that was rolling out juba hubbard james connor and chase brown last year yeah that trifecta of players would have been a better situation they wouldn't they would have beat the snot out of me and i'm not saying you can't win with those with with that going on but if if you've been playing dynasty for any amount of time rebuilds are they're it's rocky man sometimes a team can rebuild in one to two years. Sometimes you look at your league. That team has been rebuilding for five seasons. I'm a retool guy. I'm not a rebuild guy. Yes. You are the Rams, the New Orleans Saints, where you just keep pushing the salary cap forward, hoping that the salary cap grows enough that you'll be able to handle the hits to your personal salary cap. But as we've seen for the Saints. Yeah.

And the Rams, to lesser extent, like the Rams had a period where it looked like things might be going sour. The Rams were able to pick up the pieces much quicker. I'm hoping on that one. They're stuck in mediocrity. When the credit man shows up, you hide under the bed. You know what I mean? Don't answer the call. Don't answer the door. Draw the shades. Hide under the bed. He is not home. No, no. I haven't lived here in years. All right. Moving on. News and Notes from Around the League. Well, I believe on our last episode, when we were trying to have the fun discussion about James Winston, I was like, yeah, but Russ is going to be their quarterback. And Russell Wilson signs a one-year deal. The people hate it. They're so angry. We hate it. There's no more. Oh, that's a long boo. That's on me. There's no more opposite. We hate it.

locker room speech than the Russell Wilson speech versus the James Winston's I have they're the most opposite uh Russell Wilson's locker room speech do you unlimited diarrhea yeah how like James Winston I don't get crazy and authentic Russell Wilson crazy crazy inauthent yeah but but he's now the starting quarterback for the Giants and I don't look the Steelers infamously made the switch from a winning season with Justin Fields over to Russ, and it started awesome. The egg was all over my face, because I thought it was a silly move. I'm like, you're winning with Fields. Roll with Fields. Put Russ out there. Offense improves. They're looking fantastic from Week 714. They go 6 and 1 in that time with Russ. And then Owen Ford end the season, and Russell Wilson looks like he shouldn't, but he doesn't belong on a football field anymore.

I'm not, so like, yes, he can play. But what is the point? What is the point is the Giants? You're not, your coaching staff, you're not saving your job with Russell Wilson. You're not saving your job with James. So why even invest money into Russell? So there's different. Just get James and fix other stuff. So I don't disagree and you can easily say, look, Pittsburgh, this deal, it's a 10.5 guaranteed deal. If Pittsburgh thought, that Russ was their best open market option. They would have brought him back immediately. Which means that they genuinely believe that Aaron Rogers or somebody else that they find will be better than Russell Wilson for this team. Because it's not like Mike Tomlin's not up against it, right? Like he's facing, I mean, I know he keeps coming up with these winning seasons, but there's a fatigue growing in Pittsburgh with the kind of. They don't win in the playoffs. Yeah, we don't win in the, we haven't won a playoff game in years. We haven't found our solution post Big Ben. We know that we can't win a Super Bowl, much less a playoff game right now.

And yet Russ wasn't the choice. It might be Aaron Rogers or somebody else. But there's also the side with the Giants where you're like, okay, fill in the blank outside of Russell Wilson. Is it, I mean, you're picking at six. There's a good chance that. That could get Chadour. Maybe. But Chador is probably not bringing you further than Russ this year. Mind you, their win total did not change from three and a half wins. It went all the way to three and a half wins. And we looked at the schedule. Three wins is, I think they'll get three. Yeah, and they're picking at three, speaking of three. No, they're picking at six. The Giants? The Giants are three. Six is the Raiders. Oh, you're right. So I think you have a very, it's a gamble, of course, when you're talking about quarterbacks.

I think there is a near 100% chance that Sanders is available at three. Well, maybe they take it. I would agree that he's available. Whether they'll pull the trigger on that is very questionable. This is a coaching staff that really wants to win now to save their job, which is why they're going out and getting better in quarterbacks. They've said this is not stopping them from taking a quarterback at three, and I could see that happening. It's just what? I mean, how do we not have cameras in there if a rookie has to come in under the tutelage? of these two caricatures. What must see TV that would be? Can we get the Giants locker room for hard knocks? Just even a live cam. Again? I don't think the Giants will ever sign on to do that show again. No, they'll be like, no, you are under official orders from Roger Goodell and they say, no, we're still not going to do it. Stefan Diggs, three year deal with the New England Patriots, 26 million guaranteed.

He was the wide receiver 11 last year before injury, averaging eight target, 62 receiving yards per game. He is 31.2 years old. This is the New England Patriots paying a stink. You called it a stank tax. Stank tax. This is the way that you acquire players when you are at the bottom of the league sometimes. You got a. Diggs. Diggs is at the end of his career. Remember the Christian Kirk contract? All good players at the end of their career genuinely have to make the choice. Yes. They genuinely have to say, do I take a discount to go play for a contender, try to get my Super Bowl? This is my last contract. Or do I take that's money? And this was a three-year deal worth up to $69 million. That's a pretty nice deal for Stefan Diggs. So I don't blame him. And the truth is for the Patriots, I don't, like this is a bad...

Like, I can't believe how much money someone's giving out for this version of Stefan Diggs coming off a week eight ACL. But I don't blame them because they have all the money to give. The salary cap was wide open. They have to pay players. They need wide receivers so bad. It's a huge upgrade for them. It is an upgrade for them. And it wouldn't be an upgrade for every team. No, it's great for Drake May. I think this is, I think this makes a lot of sense. For fantasy purposes, you have to be more, you know, I'm not bullish on Stefan Diggs.

just changing Drake May into a fantasy superstar, but it's certainly a positive for Drake May. I'm open-minded for Drake May this year. I already was. Yeah, that's fair. But I'm also, I'm also scared because I was a guy that thought Will Levis might be able to get it done with a new head coach, and that didn't happen. But I like the fact that they added somebody finally to a receiving room that. you know, needed it desperately and we'll see what happens. I mean, Diggs, they say, is healthy. They were healthy. He's healthy enough for them. Oh, he's got to be ahead of schedule. It was reported that he is exactly on schedule, which is ahead of schedule. Being ahead of schedule is now on schedule. Okay. But they also said that he's supposed to be ready for week one. Original timeline from that surgery date, we would not have put it. We would have said a good chance to start on the pop.

But what's been reported since the signing is that it looks like he will be ready for week one. All right. What else do we have? Chris Godwin hitting all the milestones in his rehab. We knew he was doing well. And Rogers likely to play for the Steelers if he doesn't retire. Stop talking about him. It is. I mean, the only holdout now has to be on Roger's side of he still thinks that he can. Weasel his way into the Minnesota Vikings and play for a Super Bowl contending team. But it's, dude, it's the Steelers. This is it. Go sign your contract if you actually want to play. Go the Steelers. You have a chance to win. Stay away from my Vikings. We'll find out in the next six to eight months where he's going to play. All right. That is going to be it for the news. We'll take a break. We'll hit regress or impress.

This is being a body. I don't know. What are you doing? I don't know what. I mean, the podcast listeners, sometimes it's a blessing to only listen. Because whatever we just saw. But not today. Today, uh, what was that? You wanted to see a very, very, unimpressive Andy Holloway. Oh, I thought I looked great. Yeah, I mean, I was gold-plated. You were gold-plated. Um, I mentioned it at the top. We're talking about some second half studs, regress or impress. Will they keep up their second half pace? What do you guys believe? And will they deliver on their ADP most importantly, right? Where they're being drafted. We'll start with a quarterback. Jared Gough. This is a player, you know, golf was 17.6 points per game in the first half, QB 15. In the second half of the season, he jumped up to 23.7 points per game. Good enough for the quarterback four. In fact,

Goff had the kind of year that is very worthy of an MVP. I was so close, guys. You did? I went bold prediction, top five, and he was the MVP, and he was the quarterback six, and he had a resume that frequently wins the MVP. If you had gone top five finish and top five MVP voting, you would have been there. Yeah, quarterbacks with not very bold, though. Fair enough. Quarterbacks, yeah, he's going to be. He's going to finish top five in the voting. I mean, but Goff, top five MVP voting, that's, I don't know, that seems bold still. But, yeah, I mean, teams with 14 wins whose quarterback threw for 4,635, which Jared Goff checks that box, you've got a handful of them, Dan Marino, Kurt Warner, Tom Brady, Aaron Rogers, Patrick Mahomes. Every single one of those players won the MVP. Patrick Mahomes did it twice one of those years he didn't win it. And Jared Goff didn't win it this last year. But you were close.

This was a year in which the Dominator term was not as pronounced, as in when he's at home in a dome. He was still three points a game better, but like you go back two years. He was 10 points a game better. Then he was six points a game better. So more even play, home and road. It was an impressive year. I am a, you know, we all love Alman Ra. We like Sam Laporta. We like Jamir Gibbs in the passing game. We like Montgomery in the passing game. And I'm a big James fan. So all the weapons, the offensive line, everything is in place for, you know, the Lions, I think, have the coaching staff or a head coach, I should say, at this point, to maintain a level of excellence and aggressiveness. And all, you know, I just feel very confident that they have a system in place that goes beyond losing their offensive coordinator. Do you guys feel like...

that second half was just a little run for Jared Goff or is he going to be in fantasy consideration? He'll always be in streaming consideration based on the matchup, but I'm going to have to, I would call this one a regress as the, when it really turned on for Jared Goff and the offense was when the offense had no choice but to go full throttle because of all the losses on the defensive side of the football. I know they had a couple games here in the middle where they're holding opponents down, but generally speaking, if, like when they're winning these games where they're, they're scoring in the 20s, which, like, that's still a lot of points. I mean, the, the Lions scored so many freaking points per game in this season. It was outrageous. So you just naturally, I would start my expectation saying they're not going to hit that again because teams usually don't. But when the Lions are scoring, you know, 20-something points a game,

Goff is fine. He's just fine. It's when things really explode that you get the, you don't have to worry as much about all the rushing touchdown. David Montgomery, like six points from every single game. That goes to David Montgomery because he's getting a rushing touchdown. That's just how the team operated last year. And so with the rest of the points, you have to hope that Goff gets all the touchdowns. So I don't know that he's going to hit. 37 again. Yeah, I mean, losing Ben Johnson and other offensive coaches is a slight problem, but it really is if you just look at like the data of history, the teams that finish number one in scoring don't usually do that again the next year. And if you look at how they did this year, they scored 33.1 points per game. That's wild. That is wildly high. The gap between them and the number two team is about the same between two and seven.

So they really did kind of lap the field with their points scored. It's just very unlikely that they repeat such a magical offensive system, even if they're great. They could be top three next year in scoring, but that would still. What were they in 2023? I believe they were number three. They were high, and then if you had made the bet that they were going to regress, it was incorrect. They were number five. I just bring that up as the devil's advocate because you've got a top. They were great in 2023, right? Right, yeah. I mean, he was the quarterback seven in 2020, is the quarterback six last year. Right. So you've got two consecutive top 10 years being drafted as the quarterback 11. If you buy the fact that this system, this team, this structure, the players, the talent,

are not going to go far off the mark, right? Because there's other things than just total points per game, right? There's a, there's big plays, right? There's Jameson Williams not being suspended for parts of the year or being more integral for big plays. And Sam Laporta going back to his touchdown total of 2023 and less rushing touchdowns maybe. Montgomery's not as effective. There's just other ways. Yes, there are ways. I look at them like Baker Mayfield and the. the Buccaneers' offense. You've had two consecutive years with that system. The opposite coordinators changed, but the structure of the team and the talent is the same. I think the difference is consistency. Like, I know the home road splits were a little bit better for golf. But this year, which was his better year, where he was amazing and number six in fantasy, he was not actually, like if you had him, if you started him every week, that wasn't a good process. It was tough. 41% of his games hit.

20 points. He was a C in consistency. He had some big games that down the stretch when their defense was bad. Moore had to go on his shoulders without David Montgomery. I just don't think he's drafted as well as you say quarterback 11. Yeah, I don't mind that discussion. I'm thinking of it in terms of fantasy finish. I wasn't thinking of it in terms of do I want to start him every week or anything like that. More just do I think over 17 weeks that he's going to have the kind of games with this offense and the talent? to get to quarterback eight, quarterback seven, I think probably. So if you're asking at quarterback 11, will he finish ahead of that ADP, fantasy finish wise on the course of the season, I would say probably. He'll probably be top 10. He's been top 10 the last three years in a row. That doesn't make it a good pick. It would be a bad pick if you picked him at quarterback 11, and he finishes a quarterback 8 with a season like he had this year. That's not going to help you win.