Good Vibes / Bad Vibes + League Traditions, Preseason Hype - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/29

The biggest draft weekend of the off season is coming up very soon. We're getting into good vibes, bad vibes, a bunch of news that we need to break down, trying to find you some values for your upcoming drafts. Make sure you like, subscribe, leave a comment, and enjoy the show. The Fantasy Footballer Studio is brought to you by Samsung Galaxy. Visit Samsung.com to learn more. To the Fantasy Footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore. and Mike Wright. Oh, welcome in. Oh, it's low. Cracket, crack, crack, crack a lack of. Snap. Annie Mike and Jason, the fantasy footballers back with you. Welcome in one and all, Monday, August 29th. Big, big show today. Lots to talk about tons of news. Just got done with one of the biggest draft weekends of the year. I've seen a lot of sparkling, beautiful teams on the Twitter.

with their draft analyzer grades from the UDK. And we've got the biggest draft weekend of them all coming up soon. So this week will be very important. Lots of preseason reaction to talk about. We're doing a good vibes, bad vibes show today. We're picking them up. So very excited. A couple of headline pieces of news here. If you are drafting this upcoming weekend, make sure you get the ultimate draft kit. I was very happy to get a text from my younger sister who was in her first fantasy draft ever this past weekend. Good for her, good for her. And got her hooked up with the UDK last minute, an hour before. She sent me the roster.

This is a brand new person. It's beautiful, Mike. There's, there's Cortland Sutton's on the bench. There's Alan Robinson's on the bench. Okay. I mean, she just totally. The rest of the league did not have the ultimate draft kit. It was a 10 team league. But still, it was, it was nice. But check out ultimate draft kid.com. If you get the UDK Plus, you can get your draft grade. Share those with us on Twitter. If you want to use the hashtag UDK, we'll be able to find those and reply to some of your rosters. And then the Megalobul, if you want to participate in the Megalabalibol. Yes. Oh, brother. Oh, man. The Megalabole starts this weekend. The first drafts will kick off on.

Sunday, which is September 4th. You have Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before the NFL season kicks off on Thursday to get in on the Megalobole, play in leagues with the Foot Clan, win the Megalibol and then play with us in 2023 as part of the listener league, which we are doing our listener league draft today. I mean, this is the time, gentlemen, this week, this weekend, let's go. Absolutely. Yeah, we'll be, we have a live show on Saturday here in Phoenix. It's going to be fun. Quick question of the day from Mike in Minnesota. A league mate and I are planning on doing a podcast for our league this season. Very nice. Like how you guys started out. What tips do you have for running a great league specific fantasy podcast? Well, first off, this is incredible. Doing it like the way that Andy and I did it, I mean, I don't know if you can.

Like, it's good to have goals, is what I'm saying. Like, to try and replicate what we did. You want to shoot like Steph Curry. It doesn't mean you get to. Sure, sure, sure. Thank you, Jason. But, I mean, it's just figuring out what do you want, what do you want to talk about? The way that we ran it, we talked about, like, the big trades. We would go through the box scores and see if there were any, you know, like close matchups. And then see, did someone make a... a really poor start sit decision and then we would roast it's really just roasting people it's shame you're you're roasting the other people in your league you're remembering it now because you have the microphone and they will listen to every word that you have to say i will i will say you also pumped them up it was it was it was if there's if there's anyone to really celebrate like oh man what a great move this guy

made a surprising start, worked out great, one is weak, or someone made a great trade. Trades are the best because you're usually going to roast half of the party. Sure. And then praise half the party. Yeah, I think anything a commissioner or people in the league can do to build, you know, one of those traditions in your league, power rankings. We used to come out with power rankings every week. The podcast was really fun. Everybody. looks forward to it. I know Kyle, you said you did the podcast thing in one of your leagues. People still beg for it. They ask for it all the time. And you said, no, I don't have 10 hours a week anymore. I have kids. Yeah, all right. 10 hours? You were putting in 10 hours? I'd stay up super late Thursday night. A lot of re-recording. What are you? Wow. You know how long, uh, Mike and Andy, how much work Mike and he put in on that about 45 minute recording? About 46 minutes. That's right.

But like I said, not everyone can be this level of great. It's hard. But that's awesome. I love anything that makes your league more fun. Yes. News and notes from around the league. Well, the big news story. It was shocking when it started hitting Twitter and Sleeper and all of the news reports. But commanders rookie running back. Brian Robinson Jr., who literally I had gotten other reports about him basically securing the lead runner job in Washington. Sure seemed that way. He was shot multiple times in an attempted carjacking. The injuries were non-life threatening. Ron Rivera later tweeted about it, said that he had visited him. He was in good spirits. And then there was a report today that he may be released from the hospital as soon as today.

We really don't know the recovery variable here. And, you know, Brian Robinson, the person comes way before the football player. But this is a football show as well. So we have to address that. Obviously, very thankful that this wasn't more severe and that he will be recovering. Yep. I mean, the timeline, all we really know is a rap sheet tweet came out that said, Brian Robinson is basically he's hopeful to play at some point this season. I mean, but with that phrasing, that means you need to leave margin that he may miss his entire rookie year or at best he's gone for multiple months. So the manders.

I have to imagine they're preparing, they're moving forward like they won't have Brian Robinson this year. They're not going to count on him. And what's crazy about that is this has been the off season of Antonio Gibson's demise. He has been from early, early off season was on our bus show who's, you know, an ice pick. And, you know, that was looking like he was replaced. And the majority of the reason for that was Brian Robinson. And if Brian Robinson at the very least isn't going to be ready for the beginning of the year. You've got to... It changes the situation. Absolutely. The outlook for Antonio Gibson is he's not one fumble away from being able to be just completely benched if the guy that they just drafted on day two is not able to come in and replace him. And I don't know this off the top of my head. I haven't paid close attention to the very bottom of the debt chart. Is Jared Patterson still on the roster? Yes, he is. Yeah, he just played. So what I would say is if you're drafting this upcoming weekend, you're going to have...

a handful of days here where you may get more information. So we'll be monitoring that. Obviously, hopeful that he recovers well. And obviously football is his dream, right? It goes beyond anything that we would talk about. It's his dream to be playing on that field. And he had established himself as an important part of this roster. So hopefully you can get back to doing what he loves doing soon enough and glad it wasn't worse. We have a shoulder injury being reported suffered by Deontay Johnson during the preseason game against the Lions should not be a long-term issue, according to Field Yates. It was a holy crap catch, too. It was. Was that the sideline throw from? It was Trubisky. Okay. It was Deontay running a nine just on the outside. And like it audibly made, I watched, I was watching this one live and just a.

Got a holy crap out of me as I was watching. It may have been something else too. But it was just like a sensational catch, full laid out, but landed on his shoulder. Now, we do know that Tomlin said, had this been week one, Deontay Johnson likely would have been back in the game. Okay. Well, that's good news. He's a player that every time I come up against the potential of drafting him, I end up going somewhere else. And a lot of the time that happens because the narratives for the other players around him sound more enticing, right? The narrative for Deonte Johnson is he had an amazing season, but you, you know, George Pickens gets the offseason hype. You've got two quarterbacks. We don't even know who the starting quarterback is. Right. And so, but at the end of the day, you know, we talk so much about talent winning out and Elijah Moore, right? You know, who cares who the quarterback is in New York, Elijah Moore can ball. Like, Deontay Johnson's proven that to a much greater degree at the NFL level.

Sometimes I look at these drafts and it's like the D.K. Metcast and the Deontay Johnson picks and these like middle round wide receivers, you know they're going to pay dividends. You just don't have that sexy pick feeling. Yeah, I think the difference there is that those guys are going in that, you know, fifth round versus Elijah Moore going eighth round. Yeah, the cost is much higher. Yeah, the people that you're picking between them or someone else, you know, is Cortland Sutton and Mike Williams. Najee Harris, speaking of the Steelers, Alyssa Frank sprain early in training camp, played in the final preseason game. So. Yeah, I mean, if you remember, why playing the preseason if it's serious? This was a couple weeks back. The news at the time was that he got stepped on. And he was off to the side and he left practice. And so missed a little bit of time, I believe, with that. Watching that game, the stat line.

Not impressive at all. It was four carries for 10, three receptions for 11 yards. Watching him, though, I believe he had a couple bigger plays called back on penalty. If you watch that Lions Steelers game, holy crap, it was just nonstop penalties. It was very difficult to watch. So he didn't look like someone who had a Liz Frank injury that was prohibiting from being able to perform on the field. There were some reports that he. got up gingerly a few times throughout the game. So it's certainly something that should factor in to where he's being drafted. I think we've kind of had, we've been a little bit worried about his ADP because it's first round. And we have him ranked a couple spots behind where his ADP is. So don't take him off your board because of this, but it's another input. Yeah, I mean, you just can't imagine if it was serious. They would ever take a chance. I'm putting him out there in the final preseason game.

Darrell Henderson, able to do full speed workouts right now in practice. Cam Acres not able to do that yet, and they are the kickoff game. They play the bills in 10 days. Doesn't feel good. No. No, I mean, if you're coming off the Achilles and then having other, you know, soft tissue issues in your lower body, it's not a great sign. I think right now Darryl Henderson is a, is a. draft a value. Yes. And Cam Acres is, you know, I've, I had him on the bus show last Thursday because of this. It's, it's really not his fault. Like, if these two guys were being drafted in the exact opposite positions, I'd be like Darrell Henderson is someone I'm avoiding and Cam Acres is worth that risk. But, uh, I think these will be more of a one to punch. Ginole Smith officially named the week one starter for the Seattle Seahawks. This is good news.

For Gino or for everybody else? I think it's good news for D.K. Metcalf and Tyler Lockett. I would much rather have them, Gino being the quarterback of this team over Mr. Irresponsible Drew Locke, who, Drew Locke had his opportunity. Like, Gino played a couple snaps, not very much. And Drew Locke came in and turned the ball over twice. Yeah, there was a time in which Gino was less responsible. Sure. But compared to Drew. Very responsible. It's also the second offseason in a row that Drew Locke couldn't win a quarterback competition. You remember he was battling. I wonder why. Maybe next year, guys. Also, please remember all of the very, very positive words from Pete Carroll when this trade happened. Yes. And how they meant nothing. There are rumors about Darren Waller hiring Drew Rosenhaus as a new agent. I'm mentioning this. It's so funny. Because.

I might be hiring a new agent. It's good news to me. It's very good news. It gives hope that this is more about a lock-in and a contract-related situation than just the hamstring injury. And most of the time when those situations happen, the guys end up playing that year. So even if he doesn't play in the preseason, the hope is that Darren Waller lack of practice is a hold-in, like you said, whether they get a deal or not. He's probably out there on the field. It doesn't have enough leverage, I think, to. hold out. Yeah, it could be positive news to getting him out there and being healthy and making us less afraid to draft it. Yeah, I think it's worth sharing this information and people can make their own decisions. When I'm in the draft, I don't know for sure that this isn't a hamstring. You know, he hasn't said that he's holding in. A lot of players, we know it's a hold-in because they basically are saying it's a hold-in. On this one, now we have hope that it's a hold-in.

Sure. I know that his hamstring was injured earlier, so I'm still out where he's being drafted. Elijah Mitchell returned to practice on Sunday, putting him on track for week one. Debo Samuel missed practice. Should be good to go for week one, had a contusion behind his knee. Sam Darnold, high ankle sprain out four to six weeks, so Matt Ruhl can't do any flippy floppy with Baker and Darnold or anything weird. Oh, yes, he can. I just can't use Darnold in the flippy floppy. Russell Gage, yet to resume practicing, that's not good. I mean, the vibes on Russell Gage right now have gone from off-season darling to Mr. Irrelevant. Yeah, I mean, he's pretty much undraftable, and this looks like a grade two based on the timeline. So it's more serious than, you know, the little Julio Jones, man. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, you have to glance his direction for sure. Oh, it's more than a glance from me at this point. Ty Montgomery left the final preseason game for the Patriots. If you didn't know that he was their potential third down James White running back, he was. That's what his role was going to be in this offense. And the injury seemed significant. Damian Harris from Andre Stevenson. They've been getting third down work already in the preseason. Ramandre seems like a really, like, strong floor for where he's being drafted. He's very interesting. Should he really be the player that gets that passing role? Which he has the ability. He does, I mean, he's a much larger dude than we're used to in that role because for years for the Patriots, it's been a smaller scat back. But Stevenson has the chops. All right. Do we have any other breaking news, gentlemen? I'm not seeing any more news. Let's move on.

Good Vibrations. All right, we are going to further dig into the preseason storylines, the good vibes, bad vibes. We had the privilege of seeing at least a number of teams kind of take a, you know, starters approach this past week and give them a driver to or even more. Last. season when we did this episode, this was when Mike brought up Damian Harris's good vibes heading into the season. He ended up being very valuable. We also talked about the Bill's passing game looking strong in the preseason. Jason brought that up and how it looked like maybe not a one year wonder and that obviously proved to be true. So you can get an indication this time of year about, you know, the direction of these teams. I will begin.

with a team that I think some feel we don't give enough respect to. What? But I think respect is earned. And they earned it today, which I'm going to say, my good vibes candidate is the Bears offensive performance for the final preseason game because you saw a super impressive Justin Fields. Let's start there. Went 13 for 13 from a clean pocket for 14 yards and three touchdowns. He looked great rolling out. Yes. Made great decisions. It certainly threw into the back of your mind that this was a Matt Nagy problem. And yes, it's one preseason game. I'm not going to overstate it, but this is good vibes, right? Right. And you don't get better vibes than 13 for 13 from a clean pocket. Ended up with three touchdowns on three drives. Very encouraging. Also found Ryan Griffin, found Cole Komet for a touchdown, both tight ends.

Found Dante Pettis for a touchdown who apparently will have a role because you don't have other wide receivers outside of Darnell Mooney. But very encouraged by Justin Fields. And I'm just, I want to bring that up because if Justin Fields has something, if he has an offensive line that can do more for him than they did last year, then there's no reason why Justin Fields can't be in similar discussions to the reasons why you like a Trey Lance. Sure. Like those are such a, you know, Justin Field is not being drafted. Trey lances, everybody's darling. But the gap is not that big if you get better performance from the offensive line. And Justin Fields looks anything like he did during week one. It was so nice to see. Or sorry, final weekend. Utilize him on those rollouts so much more effectively where it's like using Fields' strength, which, yeah, really did seem like a matinee. You watch this and you go, there's a lack of a matinee problem here.

And that's very similar to my good vibes. Well, let me finish. Oh, sure, sure. I have some other players to talk about here on the Bears' offense. One is Cole Komet, who has looked really strong this preseason. He's kind of our late round pick at the tight-in position, which I'll talk about that a little bit more in the context of my bad vibes later. But then I want to bring up David Montgomery because Montgomery played 20 of the 22 start. starter snaps on this offense. Yes, he did. To Low Herbert only came in for two snaps. It's very evident that he's the backup. I mean, this is a lot like, you know, we've seen Madison, Alexander Madison perform spectacularly every time he's been given a full-time opportunity, but he's never, that's never meant he gets a bigger role in the offense when Dalvin Cook's healthy. This is at least encouraging for those taking David Montgomery later that.

He should be okay. He should be in that starter role. And what if this offense can do more than we think it can do? Because Montgomery has done a lot for fantasy with not a lot from the offense, not a lot of, you know, moving the ball down the field frequently. So I think there are some optimistic thoughts here for Montgomery. I think David Montgomery is an even bigger piece and a bigger takeaway. It's amazingly good for him because what we saw, you know, we talked about him. a little bit last week of, and I said, there's a new coaching staff. We don't know that they're going to use David Montgomery as the workhorse like we've always seen. Now, if you fast forward to week one, right, like after week one where we've seen the real teams and what they're doing, like, okay, NFL's here, the game plans have been revealed, if we saw the utilization that we just saw in their, you know, warm up game where they were playing their starters.

We'd go, oh man, we made a huge mistake. It is going to be David Montgomery as the guy. This is the only chance to make that change. You have to project and predict what's going on into the season. And we saw, I believe it's true. So like for me, I, David Montgomery goes from a guy I'm scared to draft to kind of the last guy in the tier. where I'm willing to draft them now. He was the beginning of the dead zone to me where I was bypassing him. Now he's the end of the non-dead zone running back. Yeah, going behind Cam Acres, which is kind of wild. But yeah, the Bears vibes, very positive. And then I'll just throw it out there as a sentence. The Saints offense as well looked great in their kind of tune up heading into the year. Landry, Alave.

Winston, Camara. Yeah, that was, I mean, I'll jump in because that is my, oh, I didn't realize that. My good vice player is Alvin Camara. If you watched the, uh, the snaps where James was in and the starters were in, Alvin Camara looked like Alvin Camara. He looked sensational. And if you're, if you were just box score hunting, it wasn't as good because Camara had multiple big plays that unfortunately got called back, uh, for, for penalty so you just that's you don't have that context which would be if we could get just like a you know a a resource here of like plays called back by penalty it'll be the NFL I would really appreciate that those are so hard I get it's like was the play only because of the the penalty totally understand that but

But it would be good data to have. So Camara looked fantastic. And over this entire offseason, Camara has just been in this weird, nebulous zone of, yeah, we all have him as a top 10 running back, but he's got off the field stuff. James Winston, is he really going to be good enough for this, for this offense to keep it going? He's coming off of his own devastating knee injury. We have a new coach, Sean Payton, the offensive. Guru was gone. It just was a mess of you didn't really know what to do with Alvin Camara. And you can see that in his ADP, you know, on sleeper, running back 10, going in the middle of the second round. And I think that Camara is, Camara is just going to be exactly what he has always been for his entire career, which is a stud running back one. And he is being not drafted that way. Yeah, I mean, you've had that cloud of the legal issues hanging over him.

all off season. So, yeah, he looked great. He looked vintage. I, uh, it was a reminder for me. I was talking to Mike about this, uh, the other day after we both watched it. And it was like, it was a reminder of, yeah, he's really good. Yeah. You just watch him run and you're like, man, I, I still has the juice. Yeah, I've been forgetting. I, I do wonder though if you're going to, because under the breeze, you know, you had that huge touchdown year with Breeze. You know, Mark Ingram came in, finished the drive. It seems like he's going to be the goal line option. So it's not like Camara can't score from six, you know, six yards out, eight yards out, 40 yards out. If I recall, this is just off the top of my head. So it could be wrong. I think it was one of those, Camara had a huge chunk play and just got dragged down right in front. And we just talked to Austin Echler about that of like, do you really need the, do you need the wrap off? And he said, yeah, yeah, we got to take that. So I.

I think that could have been a product of that of Camara just needed a... Ingram had a catch his brain. Yeah, Ingram had a couple red zone touchdowns, I believe in this game. Did he have two? Yeah, he had two. All right, Jason, look forward to hearing from you, but not right now in a minute. Oh, my gosh, I'm looking forward to hearing from you, Jason. Oh, look no further. I'm going to talk about the grownups, the grownups in Jacksonville, the Jaguars, who last year were... treated and ran by a toddler. I mean, just you had a newborn baby Trevor Lawrence coming in trying to find his way to walk. He needed a parent. Yeah, and he was being raised by a toddler. It didn't work well. It was a disaster last year. But the vibes out of Jacksonville feel mature. They feel like what you want an NFL team to be doing. Trevor Lawrence.

has looked really good in camp and in the limited action that we've seen him in. He's looked really good. Christian Kirk has also looked really good. He was targeted on 36.3% of his routes in the preseason game against the Steelers. And, you know, I mean, they rested their starters this last week, which I feel like is almost a good thing because this is a mental game in Jacksonville where it's. Keep the good vibes heading into the year? Exactly. Doug Peterson is here. Urban Meyer is gone. That dumpster fire. I mean, when you hear the players talk about the difference and you see Trevor Lawrence smirk and smile and try to politely walk the...

Not going to be petty line. The politically correct line while still dropping bombs. I mean, it's just well done. I really feel like things are positive. And, you know, you've seen Travis E.T.N has been a really explosive playmaker that a lot of the beat camp reporters are talking about just the most explosive player on the field. And this isn't about his fantasy value. This is James Robinson. is positive. He looks like he might actually be there for week one. He's not going to go on the pup. I mean, everything has broken really, really well. Zay Jones, an offseason signing, has looked great in camp. So there's been no negativity around this team that was mired in, urban mired in negativity. That was very nice. That was very nice. Complete accident? Complete accident, but wonderful. Even better. Yeah.