Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - WR Rankings Part 2, Fantasy News, Review-a-Saurus

pristine auction. Look, if you've been listening for a while, you've heard us talk about them. If you're new and you don't know who pristine auction is, they are an incredible place to find signed merchandise of anything you want. Look, if you listen last year and you got your championships, your hashtag footclan titles, you want to sign Jordan Reed jersey or Kirk Cousins or David Johnson or whoever, you go to pristine auction and you can find these things. I keep finding jerseys cheaper.

that are signed, then I can go into the store and purchase. All authentic, too. I'm thinking I'm just going to start, like, buying jerseys to wear from a pristine auction. Totally authentic. Great, guys. And if you've got a present to get or you want to deck out your man cave or, you know, your girl's room, whatever you want, go to pristine auction. That's P-R-I-S-T-I-N-E-Oction.com, and browse the stuff. It's free to browse, free to bid. You only pay when you win. And also... When you sign it for a free account, let them know the footballers sent you. Yeah, this is big news.

Time out here for a second. This is real big news. Did you just go, Zach? Time out. Breaking news. Breaking news. We might have mentioned this a little bit before, but David Johnson will be, if you are in the Phoenix or the Arizona area, or even like New Mexico or California, you want to drive out. David Johnson's going to be at pristine auction this Saturday, and that's really cool. You can sign up, get tickets on the website. We'll post it on Twitter. Yeah, you can do that. But even more important.

We're going to be there as well. So if you want to come and get the real valuable stuff. It's been a while since you've tuted. Come see us. We'd love to see it at Pristine Auction this weekend on Saturday. Wide receivers. All right. Yesterday we went through our top 15 wide receivers going to read them back very, very fast to you. Antonio Brown, Julio Jones, Eldel Beckham Jr., A.J. Green, Des Bryant, Marshall, Allen, Robinson, D'Andrey Hopkins, Mike Evans, Alshon, Jeffrey, Demarius, Thomas, Keenan, Jordan Nelson, Sammy Watkins, Brandon Cooks.

And if you wanted to hear us talk more in depth about any of those wide receivers, you just have to, you know, scroll down and click on. Play yesterday's show. Play yesterday's show. Today we're going to talk about kind of the second tier of guys. Very important to talk about these players. A lot of different opinions about where they'll finish. And so I think these are some of those team.

maker or breaker type of players. We'll get through as many as we can, and I want to get into the mailbag a little bit on today's show as well, answering some listener questions. So let's go ahead and kick it off with Amari Cooper. Amari Cooper, wide receiver, youngster from Oakland. Very good rookie season. Had an injury towards the end. What is your perspective on Amari Cooper? Where are we going right? Where are we going wrong? Let me say this before you jump in.

I want to know what you think about this. You know, if you're hyping a guy like Mike Evans, I feel like you have to hype a guy like Amari Cooper. Am I right or wrong? You can somewhat be right. I don't think that the thing about Mike Evans is he is the alpha wide receiver for that team. You have Vincent Jackson who is assumingly the two, but he is.

He's past his heyday. He's still a fine player, but he was not like a Michael Crabtree, Mari Cooper situation. And it's funny you bring up Mike Evans because people crush Mike Evans for the drops. You know who had the second worst drop rate since 2006? That was a Mari Cooper. Dropped 20% of his passes, of his targets. So if you're going to crush Mike Evans for the drops, you certainly have to pile it on for Cooper. That doesn't change.

how I feel about him, though. But the interesting thing, and this is, uh, this was compliments of my man, uh, Scott Barrett, DFB. You may, he was, uh, previously dude fantasy, bro. However, he talked about the drop rate and then he looked at goal line targets. Michael Crabtree had eight. Seth Roberts had three. Mari Cooper, Mr. Dropsy had zero, which I thought was, so he didn't drop any in the red zone. That's what you're saying. No, goal line targets. I'm saying that, no, I'm saying that car did not trust.

Amari Cooper. But he also didn't drop any red zone goal line targets. Sure. Okay. Because he didn't get one. Yes. All right. All right. But he still put up a very productive fantasy season. He, you know, to me, I feel like you have to look at the tape and say, Amari Cooper, despite the injury at the end of the year, still went over a thousand yards. That's a rarity for a rookie wide receiver. Still scored six times.

Apparently all big plays because he wasn't targeted in the red zone. Goal line. These are goal. I was talking about goal line. The thing is I'm not trying to just disparage Cooper. I'm just trying to pump the brakes a little bit to say that I don't think Cooper can be that top eight.

Guy, I think he can't. I don't think he can. Cooper is the perfect, you know, we do these fantasy face-offs from time to time, and in fact, we have a fantasy face-off article on Cooper. He's the perfect guy right now to do this with, because I believe that people either think he's going to take a step forward or that he's not worth the draft price right now because worked into his draft price, if you're going to your draft tomorrow, is a step forward. Where you're drafting him right now is...

He is going to outperform last year if you want to return. Here's some guys. He's going right next to Keenan Allen. But so is my, that's what Mike Evans is too, by a lot. Well, but Mike Evans has worked into, I mean, his job position, you're basically estimating a huge step up for Mike Evans. Uh, I, I don't think that that's actually true. How is that not true? Well, Mike Evans and Amari Cooper are literally.

They're two wide receivers apart. I mean, you're choosing right now between Mike Evans and Amari Cooper. Yes, that's why I said both of them. You have two years of history with Mike Evans. You have a double-digit touchdown season, and you have, you know, over 1,000 yards. So I think that there's a little bit more data to say that Evans will do it. Cooper had that injury at the end of last year where he could have had a better season.

last year, and maybe he takes that step forward. But he's being drafted ahead of guys like Alshan Jeffrey and T.Y. Hilton. Brandon Cooks. Those are guys that I would probably prefer over Amari Cooper. Okay. Just for draft value. And that's fine. I'm not all aboard Cooper, you know, being this ascendant fantasy top five guy. I do think he's absolutely capable. He's the kind of guy who, um, athletically, I mean, you saw him outrun.

in open field. He was in the top 15 and yards after the catch. He was somebody that is a game breaker on the, for me in the open field, he's the one guy that reminds me most of O'Dell Buckham Jr. where you can take a catch and you can athletically just beat people to the end zone. That's why I think you could see, not projecting, you could see his touchdown total double. Yeah, no, and I love guys where you can get a screen and he could take it to the house. And that is definitely Amari Cooper. Yeah. And there, you know, he's obviously.

completely different than Mike Evans. Mike Evans was like 250th in the league and yards after the catch or something like that. Yeah, well, not 250th. That had 250 yards and was like very different in the 50s. So different players. Let's move on from Amari Cooper. To another foot injury. To another foot injury. This is Julian Edelman. Look, a lot of people doubted him as a fantasy producer before the draft last season and he rewarded those that drafted him.

Yes. He was a dominant force for the first part of the year. He had seven touchdowns, which was really the game changer for him. You talked about, you know, Amari Cooper had six last year. In nine games, Julian Edelman had seven. That changed everything because he was already being targeted so often that, you know, he's the number one guy there. So what is the effect of Brady being out? Where should you draft Edelman? Is he kind of like?

The way we view Jordy Nelson with the, okay, if he's healthy and he hits, you've got a top 10 guy. And I actually, I'm rising personally on Julian Edelman because the ADP of him is going down. Not a ton, but you can see the effects of what players want in him because of the Tom Brady suspension. In the fourth round, you got Randall Cobb, Jarvis Landry, Edelman, Macklin, and Tate, and Baldwin's there at the end.

Julian Edelman is the clear target to me for if you want to take a wide receiver in the fourth round, I would be ecstatic about that because look, he's not suspended. He's going to play those first four weeks and I think he can give you some pretty solid production. Not the levels that he'll give you when Tom Brady is in, but I think he can still be a solid wide receiver too. And then you're getting a guy with who.

Maybe it's gross because you don't like how the situation is, but he's got top 10 upside to me, especially if those touchdowns can continue. I love players like Julian Edelman, like Wes Welker, because every single year, their value in the draft goes, it just plummets because nobody wants the guy that isn't 6'5, you know, that that isn't that.

big red zone target. About two yards to catch. That slot guy. If you look back to when the season ended, right, in March, and people remembered what Julian Edelman was doing on the field, he was a second round pick. But as the off season has continued, he just continues to plummet. And now I think you're going to be able to get him at the end of the fourth round, maybe even then the fifth round in certain drafts, because you forget how involved he was. I will say this.

I'm a little worried about those first four games without Tom Brady because the timing routes and those things that, you know, I think he needs Brady to be a true super valuable talent, but you're not going to get zeros in those first four weeks. No, no. And once Brady's back, you're talking about a guy who can absolutely be a wide receiver one, and you could draft them as your wide receiver three. I agree. So let's move on from Edelman, go to number 18 on our list, which is T.Y. Hilton, and guys, I vetted this. In week 8 of 2015, he had a foot sprain.

And so you've got, we're keeping the theme going. He was only on the injury report. He didn't miss any games, but he had a foot injury for one week. So T.Y. Hilton, we talked yesterday about Brandon Cooks, and I see Cooks and Hilton in the same vein. Good offenses, good quarterbacks. Last year, in more ways than one, Hilton had some bad luck, still put up a big season. And, you know, I could see him being a value right now. I mean, I look at him as a value in the draft.

What do you guys think? I agree that he can be. 135 targets? Right. And he's going right now in the third round. He's sandwiched between Cooks and Demarius Thomas. So it would be, it's going to depend on what my team looks like and the draft for if I'm going to go on in Hilton for that price. Let me ask you this. Reports out of camp, Hilton's been the best player on the field. Yeah.

You're talking about him 18 in our wide receiver rankings here. Let's say you went into a draft and you wanted to go with Grankowski or you wanted to go with running back early and you end up in a position where T.Y. Hilton is your wide receiver won on your team. Yeah. How do you feel about leaning on T.Y. Hilton, a guy with 69 receptions last year, 1,100 yards, but touchdowns. Yeah, the touchdowns for Hilton are actually funny of...

rookie year seven, then five, then seven, and five. Hey, clearly, we know. Seven. No, doesn't take Nostradamus here, know that he's going to get seven touchdowns. You book it. What you know for sure you're going to get from Hilton, 130 plus targets in over 1,000 yards. So my answer to your question is, do I feel comfortable? No, I just don't, but I should.

I was going to say you're almost describing AJ Green. Yes, I should. I certainly should. And that's one of those just weird things where you feel the, the ups and downs and the ebbs and flows of Hilton's production. But you're going to get, you're going to get right around wide receiver 1 numbers from Hilton. T.Y. Hilton at his value point right now, which you can check for me. I don't know where he is today. I just said middle of the third. Middle of the third. Or Dante Moncrief.

I like the value better for Dante Moncrief because if Dante Moncrief finished this year ahead of T.Y. Hilton, I wouldn't be shocked. I don't expect that to happen. I think T.Y. Hilton will be the wide receiver one for the Colts. But it wouldn't blow me away. In fact, when Andrew Luck was in last year, I believe that it was actually not Hilton, who was the number one, I think.

Moncrief was pacing as the number one there. So I could see that happening. And you're talking about, you know, several rounds of difference in cost. I'd rather grab one of the guys right around T.Y. Hilton so that I can grab Moncrief because I'm not grabbing both. You know, as we get to this next guy on the list, I'm reminded that we left one bit of news off that we need to let people know about. And that's John Brown. Yes. So.