Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - Values & Injury Review, News, Mailbag

with a guy who can throw it past everybody. Did you see what Mike Wallace said about? I did. Yeah, it's funny quote. I did not. What are you talking about? Oh, he threw Teddy Bridgewater under the bus. Oh, wow. Somebody like Mike Wallace would do that, huh? Yeah, he's just saying, I want to go to a place where I can trust the quarterback, and he's got a proven track record, and he can get me the ball. Are you kidding me? Nope.

I can't stand Mike Wallace. Classic. I really can't. That being said, Teddy Bridgewater was terrible this year. I mean, he didn't. He was, he did what he was asked. I think. Terrible is not the right word for. Yeah. When I watch the games. That is not. That is, that is. Stefan Diggs was grabbing balls that the other guys weren't because they weren't near him. And he was making some great plays. But I'm just saying nobody's saying that Bridgewater was otherworldly. But he led a playoff.

you know, team. Adrian Peterson led a playoff team, but I will seed. Next point of news. No, I just think a lot of Minnesota fans are going to take issue with a guy whose second year had a really good season. But like you said, let's move on. All right, Bears re-signed Zach Miller to a two-year $6 million contract. The demand for him on the open market just didn't seem like it was there. He won't. Zach Miller was very headstrong and staunch that he was going to get $5 million a year. Nope. After playing one year of football when he

Couldn't stay healthy for like three years. Yeah, and the next bit of news, I have a special bit of news. Now, I thought about using this on Mike Wallace, but we'll go on. Oh, okay. Mediocre signing of the week. Kimbrow! I forgot there was an end to that. Kimbrow Tompkins has been signed to a one-year deal in this week's edition of the mediocre...

wide receiver signing of the week. I think it would have been better on Wallace. I agree. Wallace kind of fits the bill a little bit more of a guy who gets overpaid. There are people out there that would say he's not mediocre, but I think he is. Now, this all goes back to last year where it seems like every week some middling lower tier wide receiver is signed, and it was kind of an entertaining thing. So we're bringing it back. And in perfect form, Kimbrel Tompkins to a one-year deal after last year. Now that's very...

Nice of the Jets. That's genuinely how I feel. Yeah. Because he was hurt. He got hurt. It was solid. It's just really nice. It's a really nice thing. So any other news that I'm forgetting something from today that you want in there? I'm scouring everything. I think we've got the good stuff. You got the Chris Johnson talking to Miami. That could be interesting. I could see them sharing the load there. Donald Brown did sign with the Patriots. Yeah. Yeah. For now. He keeps getting work. I don't really get it.

And I can get... All right. We're not talking Jason here. We're talking injuries. NFL injuries over the last year. We want to kind of recap them. I mean, this is good for us, too, to just walk through these names. Remember who's coming back from injury? For a couple reasons. There are one reason. Because what is our job here? What does this podcast exist? We help people win championships. That's what we do. Fantasy football championships and entertain.

Oh, okay. Yeah, and we entertain. But the reason, the way we do it is by providing information and you make your decision. Those of you that write in and say, hey, thank you for getting me my title. We appreciate you thanking us for the show very much. That's why we do the show. But we always say this, you won your title. Thank yourself. You made the decision. Treat yourself. You got the title. As Jason's motto in life is, treat yourself. Yes. Yes, repeatedly.

And so with the injury thing, there's a lot of reasons. Okay, one, you got players that are coming back that could have worse years because of their injury. Two, you got players that struggled last year in different ways. Mike would say C.J. Anderson is a prime example of somebody who struggled with an injury, played through it. And so they're the deceptive value potentially. There's players out there that have that, okay, I played hurt for half the year.

Now I'm back to full strength, and maybe now I'm a draft day value in fantasy. And then, you know, and so we want to be caught up. And so we're going to start with everybody's favorite category, which is the lacerated kidney. I mean, you got it. Starting in with the lacerated kidney. This is a tried and true NFL tradition, and Andrew Luck and Keenan Allen faced this last year. Yes, they did as far as where they're at. Andrew Luck is now fully recovered.

100% ready to go. So this is in the past. That's how you should treat Andrew Lux's kidney. It's not a recurring injury type. A lacerated kidney is not like, well, you don't have very thick skin. So you're going to lestrate your kidney again and again. Yeah, over and over. Romo style. I believe that.

I believe both these guys are completely ready to hit the season. Who's the second guy? Keenan Allen. Thank you. Yeah. I mentioned it before. I thought we just started with Andrew Luck. No, so those guys are ready to go. The difference, here's what the difference between Andrew Luck and Keenan Allen to me is not so much, you know, they both had an injury that is not reoccurring, that is not going to get in their way from performing this next year. So it's like, hey, that was an afterthought. But now take a look at the season.

One of them before the injury was having a otherworldly season. And one of them before the injury was playing terrible. Right. And there are those. And we're not going to tell you who. No. You have to know. No. Keenan Allen had an incredible start of the year. I think we threw the stat out there a couple weeks ago about, you know, I think he was second in the league in receptions through week eight. He had 67. Jones had 70. It was really close. And to add to your point of his health.

The Chargers are looking to re-sign and extend. Yes. Or I guess extends the right word. Extend Keenan Allen right now. So there's no fear. You don't have to worry about that. We're all, I think, all here very, very high on Keenan Allen this year. Very, very high. And they brought in Travis Benjamin, which we did not see as a negative to Keenan Allen and don't see as a negative. We think that's a good thing for that offense. It's a good thing for Philip Rivers to get those two guys back. I mean, he was throwing to Dantrell Eminol last year. Yeah, it's just, and he's going to be the guy that opens things up for Keenan Allen.

The Michael Floyd plus, or not Michael Floyd. Malcolm Floyd. Yeah. And so in terms of luck, though, Mike, give me your thoughts on the fact that he did indeed have a very troubling beginning to the year before the major injury happened. Do you believe he was dealing with shoulder pain or some other kind of nagging injuries that caused that? Or do you, like, how do you project him this year in a couple minutes? I project a pretty solid bounce back for luck in the Colts. We can't get in a player's head.

But it's just, he felt like he was pressing too hard. Maybe he, maybe he was just shouldering too much on top of, let's not forget, the woes of the offensive line. And then all the times that, then Pogano, throwing Andrew Luck onto the bus, essentially saying, well, the offensive line's been that bad.

forever. Like, yeah, it takes its toll, Chuck Pagano. A man can only be hit so many times before he starts getting freaked out that he's going to get hit again. So I think all of those things factored in. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully the Colts do the right thing, the logical thing, the same thing, and you beef up that offensive line to protect your franchise quarterback. But I think Andrew Luck will be back.

I think we're going to see, we won't see what we, uh, the two years ago where it was just a multiple touchdowns every single week. But I think he'll be very solid. So, uh, I'm not concerned about him. Yeah. All right. The whole wrap up here is public service announcement, Ryan Grigsson, get some offensive line help. Please. Yeah, they were the case study and the fact that you can have all the expectations in the world about a player or an offense and it can go a different direction, uh, for a season.

I mean, there was disappointment across the entire offense there, and yes, injury and those things, but he was struggling before. So we expect bounce back from him. Let's talk about the torn ACL crew from 20.

15. It's a gang. The all-torn ACL team is a pretty good team, to be honest with you. You got at quarterback, you've got Joe Flacco. At running back, you got Jamal Charles. You got a couple of nice whiteouts in Kelvin Benjamin and Jordan Nelson. And then you got Dion Lewis playing the scat back on that offense. That's a pretty good offense right there. Sure, they're dragging themselves by their arms across the field.

But this is a nice... But they've got really strong arms. Right. And that's something people don't realize. Your arms get very strong. Yeah, when you have to be in a wheelchair and you're pushing, you just got those guns. Yep, yep. So Kelvin Benjamin was the first to fall, Jordy Nelson shortly after that. So let's talk about those whiteouts. What do we think Kelvin Benjamin's role will be? You have a superb offense in Carolina.

He should be ready for training camp. He got injured very early. We've seen players come back from this without issue. But his role, I mean, you're talking about a team that was dominant, right? 15 and 1, went to the Super Bowl. Now Kelvin Benj. And Kelvin was the go-to guy the year before. Right. Now he was gone and they succeeded with an offense that didn't have him in there. So the question is, do they stick with that or do they go back to him as they're won? I don't see any reason they wouldn't go back to him.

As they're won, he's clearly the best individual receiver of the group. But what does one mean on a Cam Newton-led team? Because Benjamin's one season wasn't some prolific Des Bryant, AJ Green season. It was touchdowns, okay? Yeah. It was touchdowns. It wasn't massive quantity. I don't remember, Mike, if you want to effort this, what his reception total was in his rookie year? 73 receptions rookie year. I could see him getting, I'm not projecting him above 6570 this year.

Yeah, I think that's very fair for the total catches. The interesting thing to think about is how many rushing touchdowns did Cam Newton have this year? The answer is 10. Yeah. How many did he have last year? Five. Because Kelvin Benjamin was getting all the touchdowns, not to mention. I don't know if I make that connection, though.

I see the connection completely because when you get in the red zone, that's where Calvin Benjamin made his work. It wasn't the Tedgin Jr. fly down the field type of role where he would get his touchdowns. So can I, let me explain why I'm and see if you guys are on board with it. You got a floor. It's a big, there's a big difference here. This offense this year in Carolina was a play from ahead defensive.

type of team. You are running the ball late into the games. You were putting games away. If you remember where Calvin Benjamin, where did he make his money? Where did he make his money? Yeah. Oh, for sure. Calvin Benjamin was the last five minutes of the game fantasy producer two years ago. So to me, I don't make the connection between goal line. We chose not to go to a wide receiver. You could have thrown to...

Olson, you could have thrown to Funches, you could have thrown to other guys. They were killing the clock. They were running the ball more. So that would be the one. That's fair. I'm just thinking of it as the total of the pie of the amount of touchdowns. If Cam's not getting him with his legs, then Calvin's getting him through the air or other guys. I mean, Cam Newton did have essentially double the amount of touchdowns through the air this year. And that speaks to the, they were a much higher-powered offense this year.

I just, if you go, you can go back to last off season, I was not a big Kelvin Benjamin supporter. None of us were. And just because of the draft price that people were paying up for, they were expecting a huge leap from Kelvin to become an elite level type receiver. Or the same. We all projected the touchdowns to come down. That was all it was, right? It was like, we thought the touchdown number was not reachable. Because he was.

And he can improve these things like yards after catch can improve. But Kelvin's yards after catch were not existent. They caught the ball and got tackled. Yeah, right. That's where he went. And so I just don't see a monster season for Kelvin. I think he can be good. I think he's a solid wide receiver, just not a transcendent. All right, let's move on. Jason, what have you heard about Jordy Nelson other than the fact that Ted Thompson has come out and said that he looks great? And he clapped for him like this.

I guess no one can see that. You know, when doing this research, when doing this research for all of these injured players, there's one thing that they all had in common. Their GMs thought that they were really ready to go and that they're going to have a great season. So I think this whole list is going to be fine. They didn't come out and they didn't say, I'd like one GM to come out. You know, he looks like he's really slow in his recovery and probably going to give us a mediocre year on the field.