Week 17 Studs & Duds + Championship Talk, Monday Punday - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/2

Well, here we are Monday one game left in championship week. We got the trumpets out. They're ready to celebrate. I hope you're celebrating with us. We're going through all the studs, all the duds. We're talking about my man, my favorite guy, who is just the best Mike Evans today. And I hope you really enjoy the show. Hope your spirits are high. Please like the video, subscribe. We're going to be here all off-season and enjoy. to the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Oh, welcome in. Happy New Year, the fantasy footballers podcast back with you. Because we never leave. We never leave. What do you want to do tomorrow, guys? Probably another show. Let's do it. Never going to stop. It might be healthier for us to stop.

I guess it depends on who you are and when you're asking. But Monday, January 2nd, the season is not over. We have a Monday night football game of epic proportions tonight. But we did have a weekend of football. Championships were won and lost. Some of them are still to be decided, obviously, tonight. But it was a heck of a weekend. We will cover all of it, studs, duds. And more. And more. I don't know what the more is, but we'll do it. I know what the more is. Oh, yeah. He's wearing a Mike Evans jersey. Oh, this whole thing. This is this old Mike Evans. Man, I've been telling you guys every week how good Mike Evans is. I just love him. I love Mike Evans. He's my favorite player in the whole universe. You did say that you would purchase a jersey if he were to win you a championship, which he did. And this is, um,

Mike Evans, the story of Mike Evans, the children's book, dare I say, the nightmare slash miracle of Mike Evans, is the, if you could bottle that story up and sell it, that would, you'd label it fantasy football. Because that is the exact type of mental torture, unpredictability that. defines the game we love slash hate. Mike Evans, my, I know people that dropped him before a championship weekend. I know the vast majority benched him. And this was not, to be clear, this was not a, you know, a lock to play him this week. Jason benched Mike Evans last week on purpose after.

thinking he was going to have a decent game and then having a second thought and playing Devon Singletary over it. Yeah, which turned out to be a good move last week. This week I would have benched Mike Evans had I had Derek Henry and Christian Watson, my two presumed starters. They were both out. And Mike Evans was a lock for my, he wasn't even my questionable player. But absolutely, I wouldn't have blamed anyone for having had the run that Mike Evans had been on for saying, you know, I worry he's not going to get a touchdown. Now, thankfully, Mike. You did have the touchdown lock guarantee. This is the, it took three of them, three locks to get the three touchdowns all in one week. But it was a good week. And he might be my favorite player in the history of fantasy football now. I'm talking about wide receiver one, Mike Evans, who is the wide receiver 11 on the season now. Mike Evans is, yes, this run has been fantasy football. But to me, it's also been a little bit of.

This is why you have a certain process. Now, it doesn't always work. Like the past. That process was true two weeks ago and last week. Yes. No, absolutely. That's what I'm saying. It doesn't always come through because there's human nature. There's just variance and the statistics. Those things happen. But it was looking at, you know, the outside numbers. How involved is he? It's like. What's been missing? And I mean, last week when he was my start of the week, it was highlighting, he's getting end zone targets, but he's not coming through with touchdowns. Now, of course, no ins on targets. These were not end zone targets. These were just, just wide open streaking down the field, which he's also had a few of those where there's been these just Mike Evans nasty drops of, I can't remember what week it was, but you had the free play where Mike Evans just all over the shoulder.

which he did three times this past week, but he just dropped it. So I don't know. To me, it's kind of just, it's like a, it's a fairy tale. It's a Disney story. You got, you had the ups and the downs and the perseverance and then, and then the huge payoff at the end. Wide receiver 34, 44, 74, 75, 46, 49, 32, 56. Jason. One. Yes. Which is, which is what I hope to have accomplished in our League of Record. Yes, which you did. Hopefully. So long. Yes. If Joe Burrow doesn't outscore Devin Singletary by 43 or something. 41.5. Oh my gosh. Which has happened. Which has happened once. Week seven, it would have happened. So that's where I'm like, I should win. I should win. But I'm not going to go there. You know, I'm not playing the trumpets yet.

because i don't want that coming back you've opened the cases oh i have purchased trumpets i mean i have trumpets don't hear what i'm not saying they are everywhere i just haven't started playing them right yeah you've got an abundance of trumpets the parade route yes for the city but you haven't booked it yet i have so many musicians lined up i mean these are excellent world-class brass players and i can't wait to hear the music but I will wait for the conclusion of this game. Look, I know you are riding high with Mike, but there are a lot of people that did not have him that are waiting on Diggs and Higgins and Burrow and Allen and... So many players. I mean, James Cook and Singletary and Mixin, and there are big time championships on the line. We took to Twitter. Now, the abundance of Twitter puns submitted this week were, like, if you had to break them down on a pie chart, right?

There'd be like a two-third sliver for like Mike Evans. Then there would be like an almost full one-third sliver for Justin Jefferson. Yeah, which is fair. I mean, I had both of them. I don't know the problem. They combined for almost 50 points. You were in a good situation there. It's wild because. The story of Evans has been disappointment for the entirety of the year. And the story of Jefferson has been breaking all the records for the entirety of the year. And when push came to shove in the championship game, it wasn't just Jefferson that let you down. There were other significant players. So let's jump into the puns. Let's start there. Let's go with Bustin Jefferson. Justin Jokerson. But we have Mike, fake heavens. And of course, Amari Koop, there it is. How about Duky Metcath?

Uh, Jahan Nottson. Yes, and Daniel Thrones. Oh, Mike, there is D'Andre Gift. DeAndre Gift. Uh, Trevor Florence. And Jared Studham. Oh, how about Austin Excalibur? Oh, my goodness. Or Christian McChampionship. Hmm, that sounds delicious. Can I get two Christian McChampionships, please? Those are sandwiches for you? Yeah, I mean, they had a Mick in the name. Yeah. It was nice to see those two running backs, Echler McCaffrey, have big weeks, especially with some questions around utilization. We saw that, you know, Trevor Florence, he didn't play the whole game. He got Houston. And because Travis E.T. and had a big game and they scored on the ground, he ended up with as bad of a game as you can expect.

Yeah, I mean, every single running back on that roster had a touchdown. They smoked the Houston Texans. Everyone had a touchdown. They were giving them out for free. Treps E.TN had an unbelievably great game. You guys want to guess whether or not he had 10 carries? Because he didn't. I was going to say, did he play 50% of snows? No, he didn't need to. I mean, it was like, it was a real bad. situation for Trevor Lawrence who had been on fire. I recommended him. I thought, hey, they are going to play their guys. And they did. They weren't going to rest their guys. They just got to rest their guys not because of the playoff implications, but because the game was over half time. Well, and that might have been what you would have seen in San Francisco, for example, if the Raiders hadn't come out and put together a really good game against them. I think there's two quarterbacks in football that have thrown three touchdowns against the 49ers this year. Patrick Mahomes and Jared Stedham.

So, you know, I don't know the playoff scenario for the Raiders. Are they still alive? I... Or have they been eliminated due to other situations? You should look that up because I would just be really... I think they're dead. I'd be really curious if they still had a chance with Jared Sidham to end the year, but probably out, I would guess. Let me cover a couple of things here at the top as we get into this final week of the regular season. Jason, they're going out. They're toast. Oh, they lost. Yeah, they lost. Because it went to overtime. They had a moral victory. I forgot. You know what's funny is when you were talking about? I had the same thought. I was like, yeah, well, they took care of business, which they did. They lost. Yeah. But they took care of a lot of business. This isn't hockey with the overtime loss. You don't get a point for that. Nope. I want to cover a couple of things with our schedule, the Fantasy Footballers podcast, as we head into the new year. Make sure you follow and subscribe to the show. We are not going away.

We are pivoting to our offseason schedule starting next week. We're here all five days this week. Next week we will be two days a week. Those shows come out on Tuesday and Thursday. And we also have a footcast. If you don't know what the footcast is, I don't know if we take very much time to define that on here anymore. But if you support the show at jointhefoot.com, we do an extra weekly episode. We cover everything that's going on around here. all the updates to the tools, to the website, to the apps, and we mostly spend that episode answering your questions, exclusive mailbag show for The Footclaim. And those are really fun episodes a lot of times, especially as we get into this part of the season. I mean, this is the questions that come in are all over the place, and we enjoy answering them. No, it's a great time. So if you want that extra episode, like if you can't, if you can't, you know, go from five down to two,

And you're like, man, I need to step that down a little bit. Join thefoot.com. Support the show over there. We're an independent podcast. And we appreciate everybody that supports the show. It's been a fun year. I've obviously seen, I mean, you guys have as well, all of the tweets, people enjoying just the duration of the year, the ride, right? It's a roller coaster. We cry together. We cheer together. Get your hashtags ready. Hashtag Foot Clan title. If you take one down. Yeah, let us know. Put it out there on socials. And you can follow us, tag us at the F of Bullers on Twitter. And like I said, year round, we're here. We'll get into the NFL playoffs. We'll get into the footie awards. We give our year-end awards. You vote on them. The truth episodes. The Super Bowl's coming up. Ten things to remember.

There is so much going on. And then we also have our spitballers podcast. Yeah, baby. If you need a full detox from football, you need a break and you just want to laugh at stupid people saying stupid things, we're your men. That's us. We got you, spitballers. Yeah, listen to the spitballers podcast. If you are taking it home or you are the commissioner responsible for distributing a trophy, check out fantasychamps.com. The code is free ring. And you will get a free championship ring with the purchase of a trophy or belt. Now is the time. I am going to get so much stuff. I am on the website now. I have no doubt. And let's get into the news. News and notes from around the league. Do you guys care if I just blitz this? Can I just run through it? I'll let you know if I need to stop it. Okay. I mean, we got week 18 coming up. Okay. So you have to, it has to be so valuable that the 4.9% need it.

Teddy Bridgewater. Oh, whoa, whoa. Let's hold up right there. You guys were jinx in the same joke. Teddy Bridgewater, finger injury, left early. Wait, it was a finger? Yeah, dislocated and broken pinky finger. So when he got stiffed mask slammed into the ground. Yeah. He heard his finger? His fingee. Yeah, that's a fingee for sure. Yeah, that's the pinky. I mean, I don't, I'm not trying to throw a football with a broken pinky, so I'm not blaming it, but. I had, I did not realize this. Jacoby Myers exited early with a shoulder injury. Nick Falls exited early with a rib injury. James Connor exited early with a shin injury. That one. Had a good game though. Before leaving, which was nice for fantasy purposes. Could have been nicer. Yeah. Could have been incredible. Skymore early exit with a hand injury. Also drop injury. And then Jalen Hertz expected to be available in week 18. They lost. Gardner did not.

get it done, and the Eagles are now up against it to secure the top seat. Oh, and two without Jalen Hertz. What is their situation now, though, with the Minnesota loss? I guess San Francisco still won. Yeah, San Francisco. I think Dallas is still alive. I don't remember the record off the time of head, but if Philadelphia wins, they get it. They get the number one seed. There's nothing else that they need. But it is on the line. Yes. But they could get it without winning if other teams. Right. Yes. All right. Any other news you guys want to talk about? Got the Monday night football game tonight, bills, bangles. Oh, I want that to be over already. Let's get. Let's fast forward time. All right. Let's jump into the studs. Studs of the week. Presented by Madewell. All right. Let's get into it. This was, this was the game. I mean, it took 17 weeks, but we got it. Tom Brady, 34 for 45.

The three touchdowns to Evans, 432 passing yards. And as Jason predicted, the Buccaneers found a way to win at the end. The crazy thing is how good Chris Godwin won as well. Yes, 120 receiving yards. Yeah, nine receptions, 120 receiving yards, 207 yards for Mike Evans. Just like, just do this, Tom Brady. Throw those two guys. Stop spreading the ball around. Daniel Jones, gotten to the end zone twice on the ground, twice through the year, the quarterback seven on the year. Daniel Jones, the wheels on display in this one, 11 for 91 on the ground. He had been on fire. I mean, he's been a top 12 quarterback four of the last five weeks. So he'll be, very likely he'll be back. Seems that way. Franchise tag or an extension. They want him and Barclay back. Jared Stedham, big game. No one started him. Literally started in 0% of leagues.

But he supplied what was necessary for Devante Adams. I can't imagine like the scenario where someone goes into their championship weekend would have been forced into that. It would have been the team that like had the collusion against him with Jalen Hertz last week. Sure. Yeah. I mean I have him putting up really important points in a championship game that is best ball picked him up the morning the morning of because it was like, oh, maybe he'll. Which is a weird best ball, right? Yeah, I mean, it's most best ball, you don't add people. Well, yeah, I mean, usually like we're used to drafting on underdog, that's like a preseason best ball. This is a full dynasty league where you just don't have to make your start sit decisions. You get your best lineup every week. I got you. Yeah, that makes sense. Patrick Mahomes, big week again. Without Kelsey. He led the team in receiving. He did? Yeah, so I wouldn't say without him. What? He was the leading.

Leading receiver. Travis Kelsey was 7443. He led the team? Yeah. See, this is the problem with that was spreading it around. Hold on. You're telling me Patrick Mahomes had 328 yards. Yeah. And Kelsey led the team. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if that was in reference to total receptions or yards. Okay. So you can go look at the box score, but I know he led the team in in receptions. Yeah, it's got to be receptions, right? I thought he had more yardage than that, though. I don't think he was in the 40s, was he? I'm looking at the stat sheet right now, and he is. So they just snuck out with a win again against the Broncos. I got to find out what happened here. This is ridiculous. Do you have the box score? I am getting it pulled up right now. It looks like receiving yardage.

The leader was Cadarius Tony. There we go. 71. That's much better. 52 for Jerich McKinnon and then 43 for Travis Kelsey. But literally everyone was involved. Sky Moore got involved. MVS was involved. Justin Watson had 27. Juju Smith Schuster, Blake Bell, Noah Gray. I mean, everyone caught the ball. Did he at least lead the tight ends? He led all the tight ends. Not in touchdowns. No. But to Andy's point, he did lead in targets and in reception. There you go. I knew I had heard something to that extent, which again blew my mind because of how underwhelming he was for your fantasy week. Yeah. And then Russell Wilson, whatever. Hey. I mean, two rushing touchdowns. So that was a good week for Russ. You know, worth a momentary reflection on Russell Wilson as we head into the offseason.

I am, I am, I have no qualms with being aggressively disinterested in Russell. Agreed. He has struggled immensely this year. But I will say this. This is a situation. He did not go into a better situation. He went into a worse one. Worst coaching. Worst wide receivers. Worst running back situation with Javante's injury and Melvin Gordon being released. and potentially worse offensive line situation in the end. So while I don't, I don't think this Russell Wilson from this year is prescriptive for every following season. You know, you saw Cortland Sutton was not good this year. Sure. Jerry Judy was their best receiver, injured at times. This was not D.K. McCaff and Tyler Lockett by any stretch of the imagination. And we know, I mean, they lost their coach, you know, before the season was over before it started.

Yeah, I mean, just the perfect hire fired before the season ends. The perfect fire. I mean, I just want to give, like, I want to give Russ enough credit for the resume of career. And, you know, people want to say system quarterback, you know, everybody's a system quarterback to a degree, right? If you're in a better system, you're going to be more successful. They obviously are coaching better in Seattle and turn Gino Smith into a functional offense. But that was also because Metcalf is. way, way, way better than any receiver that he has in Denver. And there's an argument to me made that he lost his number one receiver before the season began. Do not forget that Tim Patrick was lost to an ACL injury in the preseason. The numbers, if you look at Cortland Sutton this year.

They're bad. I mean, he's gone down in PFF ratings three straight years. He's 50-somethingth in contested catch, which is what he's supposed to do because he's 80th in separation, which is, you know, if you don't separate, you better win at the point of attack. Agreed. And so it just, like he's a great two, I think. I think that might be the truth about Colin Sutton because, you know, it's just possible that Russ is better, but not what people thought before the preseason. No, I. I'm in agreement here that I'm not going to pound the table and be like, oh, Russ, the bounce back is coming. But ran across a tweet. I apologize. I don't remember who sent it because it was just, you know, a fleeting tweet. But they were pointing out, look at Hall of Fame quarterbacks who have had like catastrophic years. And there's a lot of them. Yeah, like the one I can remember off the top of my head. Remember when Kurt Warner was done for the New York Giants? Yeah. He was cast aside and like.

Eli Manning took over. I don't even remember how the Cardinals got him. If it was just like, they had Matt liner. They needed a backup quarterback. And then Kurt Warner. I believe they cut him. I believe the Giants cut him after they made the switch. And then Kurt Warner comes to town, has a good offensive system, has Larry Fitzgerald and Anquant Bolden, and boom, he's back. So I'm with you, Andy. I'm going to leave a little bit of margin for Russ to be better next year. Yeah, so the Rams had released Warner and the Giants voided the second year of the contract after Eli took over and then he went on to succeed. That's a good, it's a good, you know. And there's other, there's other quarterbacks who have done it. Is Ross a Hall of Fame quarterback? He was before this year. Yeah, before this year, if he had retired, he would have been in immediately to me. You've seen the wide receivers come out and vehemently defend him lately? Uh-uh.

You didn't see Jerry Judy come out and make a public statement in his defense? No. So like, because obviously it's easy to pile on a man of that ego. It's so easy. Yeah, I mean, he does some certain things to himself. Also a lot of fun. Yeah, but Judy came out. Sutton's come out and said it. Hamler came out and defended him. We have his back. We know he wants nothing more to win. Judy said the media is trying to make something out of it that it isn't. You guys do not know what's going on in the locker room. I'm tired of reading things about my boy, making it seem like he's not a good teammate. That's not true at all. So, I mean. No, I get that. I've never said anything about it being a bad teammate, just a bad quarterback. His other teammates have implied those things. Jared Goff, start of the week, three touchdowns, 255. Boom. They whooped them. Deshaun Watson. What? He had three touchdowns, only threw for 169 yards, but had three touchdowns.

one of which was the worst tackling job I've ever seen on Amari Cooper. Just like on the sideline, the guy's like, ah, you can go. You just run the rest of the way. Then he had this massive touchdown that seems like I like you. You can go ahead. You shall pass. Sam Darnold played good enough to win this one. 341 and 1. The defense. 3.41 and 3. Sorry. Yes. One interception. Yeah. The defense couldn't stop Mike Evans on three plays. That was the offense. That was what did it. It wasn't the running game. It wasn't checked down dump truck material. It was Mike Evans getting loose behind the DB. All right. We're going to take a quick break. Come back with the running backs. Let's talk about DeAndre Swift. 11 for 78 and a touchdown, Mike. Four targets. No. Another touchdown through the air.

I've never seen somebody more actively, aggressively against the player succeeding than Mike every time DeAndre Swift had the ball this week. No, I mean, I bet you could look across the Twitter landscape and I'm sure you could find it because this line is incredible. This is a week-winning performance for teams that are not in the championship game. This is said as someone who had DeAndre Swift. Yeah, and I'm speaking for all the Swifters out there that got wrecked. on a weekly basis. But it was, it was excellent to see because he is a good player. He was on the Mike Evans plan. He is on, he is a good player and was not coming through and it was just very frustrating. teammate Jamal Williams had an awesome game, 144 rushing yards and a touchdown as well. Chicago is bad against the running. He's, he's the RB12 on the season. He also, I believe he led the.

He led the week in rushing. He was the rushing leader for Week 17. He's also now playing Pokemon. Did you not watch his clip? No. No, I didn't. I don't know what you were talking about. I posted it. But they were talking to him after the game. And he's like, man, I just want to get out of here and play him some Pokemon. He's like, stop talking to me. Yeah, it'll be a fun final week of the year for the Lions. I mean, what a matchup we're going to have next week. Yes, because Green Bay has to win. Both of them do. Yeah. It's going to be fantastic. Austin Echler finishes the years the RB1, 10 for 122 and 2. Just thinking about the first three weeks of the season and where we are now with Austin Echler. You know, the predictions of touchdown regression guys. You know he went from 20 to 19. Yeah, so is right. We got him. Regrets. Still got another week. Christian McCaffrey 19 for 121 and 1.

Six for 72 through the air, the RB2. Top of head. Who's your 101? McCaffrey or Eckler? McCaffrey. McCaffrey, yeah. Travis E.N., the big game. We talked about it. Jerick McKinnon is the first running back in the Super Bowl era to have a receiving touchdown in five consecutive games. He had two in this one. He was a, when you think about an end-of-season unheralded name that won people championships, Jerich McKinnon is going to be in that. List. There'll be people with Jeremy Kenan jerseys like Jason Evans jersey. Absolutely. Three of the last four weeks, he's been a top six running back. I mean, he hasn't been outside the top 24 since week 12. He's just been unbelievable and is a clear, important part of the passing game for Mahomes. Najee Harris, end of the year strong. 22 for 11 caught a touchdown. He's been the RB6 since week 11. That touchdown reception was.

I mean, he snashed that thing out of the year. Rahim Moster, you never know when to play him, but when he plays well, Rahim. Nine for 29. The strange thing was the eight targets. Like the ground game, it didn't work at all. And he's not normally this involved in the passing game. He went eight for 62 and one. You had Teddy Bridgewater leave. So you had some variables here, right? You had, yeah. Who's the backup quarterback? Skyler. Skyler. Thompson. Skyler sisters. I couldn't. The only thing popping into my head was like Scooter McGavin or something. That was his name in Happy Gilmore, right? Shooter. Oh, shooter, not Scooter. Now that he's older, now he's Scooter. He's Scooter McGowan. Yeah, that's, that's the third stringer in Miami from now on a shooter McGavin. Cordero, got into the end zone. Tyler Algier, the big game, 2483, start of the week. Josh Jacobs. Hopefully you played him.