Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - Explain Yo'self! + Fantasy News, #FootClan Mailbag

I'm not really throwing trust into Matt Jones, but I could see the path for Matt Jones to take over, young, over old. And before, it's like, whoa, you know, Mike loves Murray. That's not what I'm saying, just saying that he could become a value in drafts. So do not reach for Murray by any means, but if he falls to you in a good spot, don't be afraid to take him.

Pete Carroll came out and talked about Jimmy Graham being ready for week one. We'll get into it in the mailbag. There's a question about Jimmy Graham in the mailbag, so I'll save it for that. Okay. The Lions Camp, a couple quick bits of news, Eric Ebrin, is sitting out of OTAs with an undisclosed injury. Just monitor that. He's one of our guys that we kind of like making a step forward this year, or at least myself and Jason do. I don't know if Mike really does.

Jim Caldwell also said Amir Abdullah was recovering nicely from a shoulder surgery. It happened in January. Right. And when did Caldwell turn into John Fox here with the injury updates? He was like, he's got an undisclosed. We don't need to talk about it. From what I understand about this surgery and the recovery, they expect Abdullah to be ready. His arms should be prepared and ready to fumble again starting in September.

Have you, Abdullah's, I don't even understand why he fumbled so much. Have you seen those guns? They're ridiculous. Hey, that don't matter. AP is, I mean, AP's a fumble maniac too. Yeah, well, it's true. All right, let's go. This is an interesting tidbit that Mike threw into the back of the news here. The New Jersey Advanced Media's Matt Lombardo reports number two overall pick Carson wins, quote, seems to, which is such a great.

preseason phrase, have a better handle of the playbook than Sammy Biscuits. Uh-oh. You know, it's a new playbook for both guys. One guy was coming in expecting, hey, I'm going to the NFL. I got to learn something. I'm ready to learn. The other guy pouted for a couple weeks and said, I'm not going to look at your playbook. Is that what he said? That's what he said. Wait.

That was a quote? That was, yeah, direct. I was actually, I just played the audio. Play it again, would you? Would you play that again? Yeah, he said, I'm not going to look at a playbook. Why does he sound like Jim Gaff again? I'm not, I'm not sure. Maybe it's Bradford's lazy. I don't know. Oh, oh. I'm sorry. All right. Let's talk about, let's talk about the running backs in Philly.

Let's talk about Wendell Smallwood for a second, reported to be the, quote, key to the running back situation. I'm not sure what it means to be the key of a running back situation, but I do believe somebody has to carry the ball. And we talked about Ryan Matthews on the show. It's him in Smallwood right now and somebody to be named later. Yeah, and the reason why I just wanted to mention is... Unless you believe in Sproles returning. Because...

Like we talked about this, I think, a couple weeks ago. The Wendell Smallwood hype is going to grow. It is going to become a deafening noise. I feel it will be just shattering windows by the time draft season rolls out. I believe he is. Go ahead. I say people are going to reach from Wendell Smallwood instead of taking him as a normal handcuff. Personally...

I think that Ryan Matthews is an extremely talented running back, more than capable of being the guy for Doug Peterson. I know that injuries are concerned, so I'm not saying I wouldn't want Smallwood on my team to be a kind of a higher level handcuff, a higher volume handcuff? Like would you say a regular handcuff? Or is he more of a handcuff? That's a very good question, because I don't know for Smallwood. I think the volume would be there. I'm just not sure if he is ready. I'm not going to make...

a prediction on that because I don't believe they go into the season with these two guys. Which means he's just a handcuff. One of the things that we saw last year. He's the same size as Jamal Charles. He's not, he's a little smaller than Jamal. He's the same height. He's 510. I think he's the same weight. I think Wendell Smallwood. He gets a knock for being small. I think a lot because of his name, which is unfortunate. True. But he's, I think he's 510. 511 201. 511. That's not bad. Guess how big Jamal Charles is? 511.

And? Uh, Jamal Charles looks like... I don't know why they didn't give me his weight as well. Because he weighs like $155.199. So Wendell Smallwood is the same height and two pounds heavier than Jamal Charles. You heard it here. Wendell Smallwood is Jamal Charles. Physically, people who want to say that small was just a scout back, I'm just saying he could take it between the tackles as much as Jamal Charles. Yeah, I doubt that. But the point here that I wanted to make is that last year...

There were so many handcuffs that were just the wrong guys. And really over the last few years, we've had situations where it's like, okay, the guy goes down. And so everybody rushes out to get Nile Davis. And it's not even Nile Davis. You know, people rush out to get C.J. Spiller, and it's Tim Hightower. And so when you've got a situation here, now, I think the reason that the hype train comes is because.

there's really nobody else. I mean, if there's only one guy, go ahead and take that guy. It's Ryan Matthews doubt as well, which I understand the injury doubt completely. Yeah. But I'm just saying, Wendell Smallwood is one of these guys that watch out. Watch out with the hype train gets rolling. You know, I'm going to go, I have not watched a ton of tape on Wendell Smallwood in a long time. I'm going to go and do that, and I'm going to tweet out my opinion on him because I want to see, I think the opportunity he has.

is above average. And I like opportunity. I'm not sold on his talent, but I need to take another look. All right. Well, let's, uh, let's move on. Quite well, thank you. No. Clearly you are not. No rational person would do as you have done. Explain yourself. It's time. It's time to break bad. It's time to explain yourself, Mike. We're starting with you. Me? Me?

Yeah, all right. Of course we are. I'm going to make you explain yourself. I'm picking one of your players here. I'm looking at our rankings, and we're looking at half-point leagues. This guy is our consensus 41, and that's because of Jason and I yanking him down the rankings. He's 49 for me. He's 53.

For Jason? I did not realize he was that low. I thought I was... Don't worry about it. You're okay. You're with good company here. No, I looked at his stats again today just to make sure that I like them, and I liked where I had them. Exactly. So do I. And, oh, he's 21. 20... I know where we're going here. This is Tori Smith. This is Tori Smith. So sing me the song of Tori Smith, Mike. Sing it hard, sing it long.

All right, well, explain yourself. I am more than willing to explain myself. Here's the deal with Tori Smith. It is a matter of targets. I am a mathematical man, my friends. And last year, San Francisco had 525 attempts, okay? Tori Smith got 62 targets from there. Now, the last two years, Chip Kelly up in Philadelphia has averaged, averaged.

616 attempts. That is a difference, my friends, of 91 passes compared to San Francisco. Very big difference. That's a big target increase if we just do that. Oh, let me throw this part in. Anquan Bolden and Vernon Davis accounted for 141 targets last year. They are gone.

That is a raw difference of 232 targets to increase. We're talking they're going to increase by at least 200 targets. Tori Smith is going to be the number one wide receiver on that team. He will likely be the number one passing option on that team. We've already seen him. We've seen what his talent can do. He's had a double digit touchdown season. He's had a...

plus thousand yards season. So we know that the ability is there. Now the opportunity will match that. It doesn't matter to me that if it's Blaine Gabbert or Colin Kaepernick throwing the ball because Chip Kelly teams have never had under 4,000 passing yards. He has taken Nick Foles. He has taken butt fumble, Mark Sanchez. And he's, Sanchez didn't have 4,000, but he had half of the 4,000. So it's just the yardage.

It speaks to me that it will be there, and the passing attempts will be there. So I just, I don't see any way that Tori Smith doesn't produce some serious fantasy value. So this is a guy who on 425 attempts in San Francisco last year had 33 receptions. It's hard for me, obviously, to jump in on Tori Smith, but you bring up some very good points. 232 extra targets.

What happens if Bolden gets resigned in San Francisco? Does this change where you have him rank? He would move down absolutely if Bolden was there because Bolden's a possession type guy. But I would still have Smith probably in that upper three range because I think that he can produce Chip Kelly values speed. And that's what Torrey Smith has in boatloads. So I just, I think it's there. Yeah, I have.

I think I doubled Tori Smith's numbers from last year or close to it. It worked out that way. And that leaves him very, very low because he was so irrelevant last year. I think the reality that he is the guy there and that that offense is going to be more productive at the very least, even if the team is not good. Those two things are true, but I have a hard time.

When you look at, okay, what he's done at Philly. Well, in Philly, he had Deshaun Jackson and Jeremy Macklin and Jordan Matthews. He had weapons that helped him get to those 4,000 yards. I'm not convinced entirely that that means just because he's always had 4,000, that he'll be able, is just capable of producing that. Is Deshaun Jackson tremendously better than Tori Smith?

I don't know that he's tremendously better, but the cast that was around him when Deshawn Jackson was there was tremendously better. Are you concerned with, I mean, San Francisco could be one of the worst teams in the league, plays in a division with Seattle, Arizona, and the Rams who all have good defenses. Yeah, and that is, I understand the concern there. The concern would be that they are always losing and always passing the ball. Okay.

Garbage time counts, my friends. Ask Jacksonville. Here's the beautiful thing about Tory Smith, though, is that people, because of his last year, I mean, he's free. As far as what he's going to cost you to draft, Mike's not going to take him as the 21st wide receiver off the board. He's going to look at the ultimate draft kit and see his ADP when he goes to draft and go, oh, I'm just going to grab him at the very end of my draft. And if you're right on his upside, it's a worthy pick. So here's how we're ending.

your attempt to explain yourself. I'm going to ask this question, or you're going to ask it to me. Have you made myself or Jason change our ranking? Have you convinced us to make an adjustment to our ranking? Because right now we're at 49 and 51 or 53, I think. I'd say, if you ask me that question, that's not something I could answer. No, I mean, that's the question that we need to ask. And ask yourself. So, Jason, are you going to change your ranking based on that explanation?

I'm going to take a look at the total targets, and I might bump Torrey Smith up just a hair, because I think 53 is probably too low. He's still the number one on his team. And I will say this, compelling argument. I'm not going to change him in my rankings because I went through Tori Smith very recently. That's a lose. That's a lot. All right.

All right, so Andy, let's make you defend yourself here a little bit. Put the spotlight on him. We'll put it over to you. And we'll bring up a guy who Mike and I have as the 23rd ranked guy and the 17th ranked guy at quarterback. And you have him up at number nine. You've got him top 10 and that is Matthew Stafford. Explain yourself. All right. I can do that. Matthew Stafford is.

It's very interesting because we've talked about him on this show before. You guys, I believe, did this to me a couple of months ago, pretty much. Yeah, this is like our weekly spleen your Matt Stafford. Right. You at least came at me. It seemed like last week we had moved ourselves to the point where you were both acknowledging all his finer points, but clearly not to the point of moving him up in your rankings. And so that's really what we're talking about here. And the story with Matthew Stafford.