Fantasy Football Podcast 2017 - Early WR Rankings Part 2

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Before we start today's show, I just wanted to take a quick second and invite you to come alongside this show. You enjoy this podcast all year round, the fantasy footballers podcast. Come to our community website, join thefoot.com, join more than 2,700 fantasy football players and foot clan members as well as us, Andy Mike and Jason, on this exclusive community wall where we discuss everything. You get exclusive episodes. You get access to foot clan leagues. You get...

in-season expanded projections and flex ranks and game day updates and the perks. The perks are crazy. Crazy. Crazy. Mad perks. All right. So check it out. Join thefoot.com. Let's get to the show. A fantasy footballer's podcast coming to you from the fantasy jocks.com studios with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. It's a beautiful day. Look out.

It's a beautiful day. The sun is shining a little bit brighter. The songbirds are singing. Tweedle-de-dee. Something is in the air. Well, we are three weeks to the day, gentlemen, from the NFL draft. We are indeed. And you guys, over the next couple weeks, we have a monster, awesome, rookie show that we will be doing about a week before the draft. So if you wanted to enjoy.

the NFL draft this year and know all the guys to look for before the draft. Stay tuned. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. You get a picture of all the fantasy relevant players and then you get to watch the draft and see where they land and then get the feedback on the other end. But that's one reason that the sun's shining a little brighter today. There are other reasons. What could that possibly be, Andy? We'll get into it in just a minute. I want to welcome everybody to this show. Let them know what we're doing on the show today.

other than, you know, discussing some wonderful news that has come out recently. Here's what we're doing. This is, yeah. You can't even speak. No, I can't. You're so excited to talk about this blurb.

That's coming up that you can't even more than one blurb. You cannot form blurbs, whatever. This is the second wide receiver show. We did our wide receiver early consensus rankings on Tuesday. We went through 1 through 10. Today we're going to go 11 through 20, and then I'll probably give you some more names. These are our early wide receiver rankings. This will get you a picture of where we have the wide receiver position right now. I went on a radio show this morning, and the host was asking me, you know, what's something that you learned from last year?

that will affect your fantasy game this year. And we've talked about a little on the show, but last year there was a really, really strong push towards the wide receiver position and some doubts at the running back position.

And I think I said, you know, I kind of said the pendulum is going to swing a little bit back towards the running back. We talked already in our running back show about Zeke and David Johnson and Lev Bell, Shady McCoy, some of these big name running backs that can be stalwarts for your fantasy team. Well, today we're going to get into some of the second tier wide receivers, guys that we see that have the upside, which guys can be top five guys, which guys belong in this tier without the potential to move up. And a lot of the ins and outs and research that has been done here.

at Foot Clan Headquarters. So I'm very excited about the show today. You can find us on the web at the Fantasyfootballers.com. And like I said in the intro, the community is join the foot.com. You guys want to talk some news? Certainly. Mike does. News and notes from around the league. It's been a tough decision for me how to talk about this today. I understand. So.

I was on a phone call yesterday, and apparently some news had broken, and Brooks was apparently just waiting with bated breath for me to get off this phone call. And then he said, hey, there's some news. Mike's like, you're going to like it, you know, as Mike says things. That's like as happy as Mike can say something. You're going to like it. So I walked over, and I saw the news. Marshaun Lynch visiting the Raiders yesterday with permission from the Seattle Seahawks. We know that Marshaun...

went to Seattle and had a meeting with Pete Carroll and ownership, clearly to discuss the potential of coming back and playing. And on this show, we have had different opinions on whether or not he would come back. And so he has not signed with Oakland yet. It has been my contention constantly of all the people that Marcia Lynch wants to troll, Oakland is not who he wants to troll. You go look at that beast mode gear. He's been rep in Oakland in that beast mode gear for years. He doesn't want...

in my opinion, to lead them down the wrong road just to sell some shirts. And so that being said, he hasn't signed. So I'm going to, you know, I'm going to be very humble about this. Mike. I'm ready. I just. What do you got for me? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Yeah, you're wrong. I'm 100% now.

Oh, he moved to us. It's a done deal. I'm going to go out there and say it. I mean, I've always kind of been that in my heart. I put the 60% out. It's up to 100%. Marshaun Lynch is going to come back and play for the rate. The real question here that everybody wants to know who has been listening to this Marshaun Lynch saga over the last few weeks is really, Mike, what is your percentage? I haven't really thought of a percentage, but...

I mean, this... Do you think he's going to sign based on the current news? At this point, you have to buy into that. He is going to sign with the Oakland Raiders. He will unretire. The question for me is, I would not put myself at 100%. I think a lot of things obviously still need to fall in place. And I'm trying to think of the timing of things. Would Oakland...

sign him before the draft. Oakland would definitely prefer to sign him before the draft so that they can... I mean, I definitely think so. You can argue that they want to see what running backs fall where. Exactly. But I think the better argument for a team in their position that is set up to win now and compete would be that it would be better for them.

before the draft to take care of one of their positions and then go into the draft and say okay now we don't have to worry about the running back position this year next year's running back draft class is very deep we can worry about that next year and now add another piece in that third round instead of taking a third round running back or maybe a second round if they were looking there and add a legitimate

impact player this year and help the team. So I think it'll be over the next three weeks. And you kind of have to wonder how done this has been. This might have been, this might be a lot more of a done deal and has been for a while in Oakland's mind in the sense that they didn't bring in Adrian Peterson. They didn't bring in free agent running backs to compete for that position. This has been plan A, I think, for Oakland. So we'll see. The question for fantasy owners.

Right? Yes. And I know we're going to disagree a little bit on this. But what will Marshawn Lynch be? Where should he be drafted? Let's just go with the thought that this carries on to fruition. Sure. Things fall into place. Some sort of trade happens. That's what I think will happen, by the way. I do think that Oakland and Seattle will complete a trade. I don't think he'll be released by Seattle. I think there'll be some marginal. It'll be one of those things like a late round pick or a pick swapping around. Something like that is my opinion.

But if he lands in Oakland, sure. He's 30 years old right now. He turns 31 later this month, so he'll be playing at age 31 a year away from the game. We know what he was for four of the five years in Seattle. He was a top five running back. In fact, we'd come on the show and we'd say, look, there's nobody that's finished in the top five at running back consistently year after year other than Marshall Lynch. In 2015, injuries. There were several games where I think he played like half a game.

And then there were many games that he missed. It was not a good final year, last couple of years in Seattle, playing with a tougher offensive line situation. So, Mike, how do you see things playing out? Jason, how do you see things playing out? What is Oakland going to do with Marchand? And should fantasy owners spin capital? What are the range of possibilities for Marshall? So I did a historical look at running backs who are of that age.

Now, this Marshawn situation is interesting because there's a lot of different variables. I mean, you have basically a year and a half to two years off a great offensive line. But these are just the historical trends of what running backs have done at the age of 31. So I took back, took a look. Last year, 11 of 12 of the RB-1s had at least 1,000 rushing yards. And the one who did not was Melvin Gordon, who had 997.

So essentially, every running back one had at least 1,000 rushing yards. The lowest touchdowns of an RB1 was Jordan Howard, total touchdowns. He had seven, okay? The average amount of touchdowns for running back one is 12. Really? Yes. Total touchdowns. The average of last year. DJ bringing that up. Yeah. Most, like I said, the lowest was seven. So most guys were really around 10. Since.

Since the year 2000, there's only been 13 running backs of the age 31 and over who had over 1,000 yards. Now granted, two of those are Frank Gore. So not saying it's impossible, but Frank Gore is also a different kind of beast. So only 13 running backs, 31 and older, have had over 1,000 yards. Four of those running backs had double digit touchdowns. Seven of those running backs had 7 plus.

Seven times since the year 2000, a running back the age of 31 or older had 1,000 yards and at least seven touchdowns. How often do you think that running backs at that age, though, are given the keys to a backfield? That's what I was just writing down. I'm going to research this afterwards. There's a lot of different variables, but there's plenty of running backs who have played at the age of 31. Yeah, I was going to look at since 2000 running backs over 31.

who had a certain amount of carries, right? Like if you had 215 carries or more, how often did that happen? And then how did they produce? I'll look that up. But what you need to factor into that, though, is not just, were they allowed to get 215 carries? Is could their body, would their body allow them to get 215 carries? And Oakland has a pretty hyped up, you know, legendary offensive line around the league.

tremendous. They're basically the best pass blocking line in the league. The run blocking is not as great as a past blocking, but still very, very strong. 100 times better than Seattle. Yes. And that's fair. But Seattle's offensive line when Marshawn was great, was very good. But just historically speaking, only seven times.

has a running back 31 or older put up numbers that would have been a running back one last year. I can tell you one of those times was Ricky Williams when he was 32 years old and had come off of years of rest like Marchand has and he put up 1,121 yards and 11 touchdowns and had a monstrous fantasy season. The other example that comes to mind of a year of kind of rest for an older running back was Adrian Peterson when he had his suspension and then came back and, you know,