Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - AFC North Breakdown, News, Mailbag

Catch percentage, his yards after catch are just incredible. He is a beast. And he got better and better as the season went along. So I see a trend where he's going to come in this year and you look at his work ethic in the offseason. I think he's going to be a huge star. I think he's going to move in and out. I think that he's not just going to be relegated to the slot. And he's the big guy. He's the tall receiver. It's going to be...

him and Ertz scoring the bulk of the touchdowns through the air. Aguilar's not, he's not 6'5, like Matthews is. Now I'm remembering. Now I'm double guessing myself. Matthews is 6-3, I believe. 6-3, okay, 6-3. But he's big, and I just don't, I don't see them keeping him a player like that just in the slot. They're going to move guys all over the place. If he's in the slot, then who's outside? They're going to put a rookie and Josh Huff. Miles Austin.

You think Miles Austin is going to play over Huff? No. Yes. Maybe. I don't know. I do. It's possible. The names that are all getting thrown out are the reason why I'm a little bit not willing to jump onto the Matthews bandwagon. It's not a dislike of Matthews to player. It's just the realization that I think, you know, Ryan Matthews, Darren Sproles, Miles Austin, Josh Huff, Nelson, Nelson, Aguilar, Jordan Matthews. These are all names that are just game to game. I mean, we saw games last year where.

Shady didn't have, you know, they'd score 40 points. Shady wouldn't put up any numbers. Yeah, but Macklin was a monster almost every single game. He had very few duds. But he's not stepping into the Macklin roll. Right, but somebody in Philadelphia is going to be a wide receiver one. Yeah, I can agree with that. I can agree with that. And he, and Matthews might be. So the Bears have signed another stick in the mud. Daniel Thomas. Yeah, he'll be cut. You think so? Yeah, he'll be cut eventually. Uh, uh.

I don't think so because they think they want a better end. How many running backs are they going to keep? Well, I guess it's him or Khadim Kari, right? So he'll probably get cut. He's probably not worth talking about. You got Forte, Quiz, Langford. Yeah. He's getting cut.

Yeah. No, Daniel Thomas? Yeah. Yeah, he might get cut, but the interesting thing from my perspective is a little bit more shade on forte. I just think it really shows the coaching staff and what they think they have. They've come in and inherited a team with a great running back, but an old running back. And as a coach coming into a brand new role.

you are looking towards the future. You're building your team and bringing in your guys and all of that. And so they drafted a running back despite the fact that they had a rookie and they had forte. And then they go and they sign, you know. It sounds like a campback situation though. Yes. Maybe. And it very well might be a camp back. I just, I think that it, I actually think he makes the team. And so we'll, we'll see on that. But I think it shows. Carrie could get cut. Yes. Yeah. The giants have, uh,

announced Victor Cruz is not expected to start the year on the pup. So if we assume he is not starting the year on the pup list, is Victor Cruz draftable? And if so, where? I think he's draftable, but you've got to get him really late. And I think people will start reaching for him. I don't like him. I think we just were talking about Ryan Williams a second ago, who's what, like two years now removed from essentially the same injury. Two or three.

And he just has never been able to get back, never been able to be the same. It's a totally different injury than most of the injuries that these guys come back from. So I don't believe he's going to be able to return to top form. So I don't think I'll have him on my roster. But he's worth a late flyer. Because if I'm wrong about that, if he is healthy and comes back, and especially by the second half of the season and his Victor Cruz, and you can get him in the ninth or tenth round.

What other upside are you really going for in the 9th and 10th? Yeah, I don't see it at all. I'm not drafting him. A guy who, Victor Cruz, his whole game is built on quickness, lateral speed, being shifty, and he had one of the worst possible injuries that you can have to your knee. I just don't see him coming back anywhere close to full strength. I don't see him recovering anywhere close to full strength through this entire year. Maybe next year.

But I'm hands off on Cruz. Do you want to hear an interesting stat about the Giants? They averaged more points before O'Dell Beckham than after. Points per game? Points per game. Yeah. And I attribute that to Rashad Jennings being healthy in the beginning of the year versus what they got. They didn't get much out of Andre Williams. But it was an interesting stat because everybody thinks that their offense was through the roof with O'Dell or that it was trending. Well, it was just O'Dell was getting 10,000 targets a game. And I don't think you can sustain that.

One guy that is starting the year on the Pup list is Jets running back Stephen Ridley. It looks like he will. It's not official. But it looks like Ridley will be starting on the Pup. They knew what they were getting into when they signed him because he's coming off an ACL injury. Does he have any late year value if that running game can't get going with Ivory? No. No. I mean...

If he does, it's going to be obviously waiver wire. There's nobody that's going to be drafting him and stashing him. His potential upside, I don't think, is that great. Unless you have an IR spot. Yeah. One guy we have to talk about is Josh Hill because a lot of, obviously, Jimmy Graham has left New Orleans. Yeah, he's not there anymore. And...

That leaves a giant hole, and everybody wants to assume that a guy can come and step in. And I'm hands off on Hill after seeing a report that Mike Triplett said he doesn't see a major breakthrough coming through. And that's not so much the report that I care about. What I care about is that in OTAs and in camp, Benjamin Watson seems to be getting more of the passes. And he's a super capable tight-in in terms of that. There's also only sub-packages that Josh Hill is being utilized in. So...

We haven't really talked about Josh Hill very much. I don't think he was in any of our, you know, he wasn't in any of our top 10 lists, but he's on a lot of sleeper and breakout lists for players that they're seeing that they're going to be reading about. Any thoughts on Hill? Is he worth a flyer because of the goal line? Yeah, he's a good red zone target. I think I could see him being the type of tight end that ends up the year with 10 touchdowns, but like, you know, 600 yards and.

and not many catches because I think that they'll bring him in for... Sounds like a nice year to me. No, yeah. And so, yeah, I mean, that would be really nice when you've got him in those games where he gets in the red zone. So I think he's a matchup streamable option. Personally, I don't think you need to draft him because I think when you do draft him, he's going to be on the waiver wire in short order. I don't think someone's going to draft him as a high upside guy and then through the first four weeks be like, man, I got him. I think it's going to be like, nailed it. Yeah, I think... What about Watson?

Would you rather have Watson? Not on my fantasy team, but I love Benjamin Watson in real life. I think Jason hit it with the streaming. If I find a week where whoever the Cardinals are of this year and maybe it's still the Cardinals and they just can't stop a tight end, I'm going to fire up, I'm going to fire Josh Hill and try and get that touchdown. All right, let's get into...

the divisional breakdown of the AFC North. Before we do that, I want to remind you about fantasydraftwizard.com. You can go to fantasydraftwizard.com for free, and you can basically mock in a couple of minutes. You just jump in, choose your draft spot, hit a button, go through the draft, test out your strategies, send us how you do. Yeah, we get so many of those. Hey,

you know what do you think of this team yeah what do you like about it what don't you like and if you tweet us those pictures we respond to all of them we'll tell you what we think whether you nailed it whether we've got a you know a piece of news that can maybe help you and your future drafts better we do we do our best to get to them all and when I reply I don't like to say yeah cool I give you why I like it I give you why I don't like it so if I don't get to you I'm working on it working on it you didn't see it probably yeah

All right, AFC North. Let's start with the Pittsburgh Steelers. They were the second best offense last year. That's crazy. They were cruising. In terms of additions, they drafted Sammy Coates. They signed DeAngelo Williams. Not any big losses on the offensive side other than those by suspension. Levy on Bell will be out the first three games of the season, barring a change to that suspension. Lance Moore is gone.

Um, thoughts on the Pittsburgh Steelers, their offense, their fantasy implications. Well, I'm devastated of the loss of, of indoor Lance Moore. That's, uh, that's bringing me down. He's old, he's old school. But, uh, I had to look up, uh, at Big Ben because he's, uh, he seems to be a consensus top six guy, top five, top six around the, uh, around fantasy circles. And what.

I found interesting about Big Ben is he had eight games of one or less touchdowns. He had five games with less than 250 yards, but he had four games of three plus touchdowns, including two games of six touchdowns. So there was some high volume scoring in a short amount of time for Ben. That'll hurt you on a fantasy table. Well, you had those two ridiculous games. With the six touchdown games, back to back.

And it's difficult for me to want to ride that kind of a quarterback. I mean, the Steelers' offense has just been sensational since, really, since Todd Haley came and took over. But when a guy has, you eight games with one or less touchdowns, I mean, that's a kind of a crippling thing where...

And the cost for Big Ben, you're kind of locking in a guy that you're going to want to keep in your roster. Historically, he hasn't been a guy that's finished in that top, top eight. I think he finished in the top five once. He had a great phenomenal year. And other than that, yeah, he's normally outside the top eight. The real question this year for me, when I look at the Steelers, is Martavis Bryant.

Martin McBride. Because if he does, like Mike, you're super high on him. Very high. I'm pretty high myself. I think that he fits the offense, what they're needing. And they've always shown over the last, you know, several years that they can really support that second wide receiver. And they were kind of missing it a little bit last year. So I think he could really plug into that role. So the question is if Martavis Bryant is going to do what we want and expect him to do, doesn't that kind of fill those holes that?

that Big Ben has been missing and take away those games or not? It could, and since you brought up, Marta was Brian. Marty McBee. I'm glad you did. So here's the scoop on Brian. He didn't play games one through six. And so the rest of the season on 48 targets, 26 catches, only 26 catches. So a guy that were getting super excited about it, 26 catches. Miniscule. But he had 549 yards.

and eight touchdowns. He's six four. Just blazing speed. 21 yards a catch, which is going to come down if he plays any kind of consistent like we think he's going to do this year. Here is why I'm excited about Martavis Bryant. During the regular season, he averaged 44% of the snaps. His high was 59%. That was week 10. Come to the playoffs. Now, we're talking one.

one game, but we're talking about a game with huge implications. This is your season is on the line. You want your best players out there. 83% of snaps. He got nine targets, nine targets in one game where he'd only had 49 targets in 10 games. So in those nine targets, five catches, 61 yards, and a touchdown. I think that Bryant easily takes over the wide receiver 2 position, and I think their offense can sustain that.

the Bryant with the vertical threat and Antonio Brown still getting his. Yeah, the question for me is just distribution of those targets. We talked about the fact Marcus Wheaton is going to be moving inside of this slot. That's the reports from camp, which means Bryant will get the majority of snaps on the outside. That's what we want to see with an up-and-coming guy. You've seen a lot of wide receivers in fantasy actually ascend in the second year.

Right, instead of the third. It's kind of that third year trend is what people talked about, but you've seen that with some second year jumps. I'm excited about Bryant. I don't know if the offense will be statistically much different in terms of total yards per game and total, you know, those type of things. You know, a lot of distribution goes through Levion Bell.