Sleeper Picks + Preseason Battles

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Coming to you from pristineauction.com studios with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Oh, welcome in. Hey! Oh! We're back. And better than ever. It's Thursday, August 22nd. We've got preseason week three tonight. Oh, yes. I believe we have six ball games. Not enough. Well, they'll play on Friday and Saturday as well.

I think maybe even Sunday. Not enough days. There's a game on Sunday. You know, if we could separate the season like that where it's like Friday through Sunday. It basically is. Right. I don't know. Thursday, Monday, sometimes Saturday night. Sunday, Monday. Sometimes Sunday is at 6 a.m. because they're playing an international game. Yeah, we could do without that. I like it. I'm an early riser.

You've been up for three hours when the game is on. That's 100% right. The East Coast has to like it, right? Because that's like, oh, you wake up, good time. There's a game on. Not for us. It's like, we've got to set an alarm clock to watch football. You do. Yeah. Well, certainly. No, it's funny because preseason week three, you get into this time period where, like, we're starved for fantasy football, for NFL games for months and months and months. And then like,

The Hall of Fame game comes, and that's like half a peanut on the, and you just eat it because you haven't had anything to eat for a long time. And then like week one, like a whole peanut. And then you got like two peanuts in week two. Week three is supposed to be this dress rehearsal, but it's really like five peanuts. But I want a meal. Like, and we're getting to the point where we're going to get that teams. Some teams are playing everybody tonight. Some are not. Some are playing nobody tonight.

This weekend, the Bears, they're not going to, they're not messing with it. They're just, Chase Daniel experience begins. Again. So today on the show, we have our sleeper picks, our individual sleeper picks. Let's get into the quick question because it's a continuation of that. What position battles are you watching the closest during week three of the preseason?

For me, it's the Kansas City Chiefs' running back situation. The Kansas City Chiefs have been a little bit more inclined to say that they're going to play their starters. And while early in the offseason, there didn't seem to be a positional battle. You have Darwin Thompson, who has seemingly leaped Carlos Hyde. You've got the whole question. Some reporters saying they don't expect Carlos Hyde to make the roster. And then, of course, Damien Williams, a high draft pick. Is this something to worry about or not?

You know, I would love it if Damien Williams, for his sake, if he just doesn't play in the game, they get a look at Darwin Thompson, you know, and it's, it's. I'm not sure that's in the best interest of Damien Williams. If Darwin Thompson balls out. Yeah, if Darwin Thompson's all alone reports, I mean, we're going to talk about it. Sure. I'm just not sure if that's the best thing for Damien Williams. I think if Damien Williams comes out and has five or six touches.

You know, three or four touches does something with him. That might be better. But that's one to watch, no doubt. I want to see the continuation of the Jordan Howard, Miles Sanders, Philadelphia backfield. Some in the fantasy community scooping up as much Jordan Howard late as possible. Others like myself love Miles Sanders and the opportunity for him to become a workhorse. So I want to see first snaps. Does Miles Sanders continue to...

beat out Jordan Howard in a yards per carry like he's a yard in a quarter more than Howard this preseason. Not a lot to go on metric wise. You just need to use your eyeballs, watch these guys play football. And I will be watching Washington. I'm so sorry. Look, allegedly Darius Geis is going to play tonight. It's been quite the adventure, the ups and the downs of Darius Geis from his preseason debut last year.

Oh, that was so nice. When he had the huge play ends up tearing his AC. Well, getting hurt. He said he was fine. Then it was a torn ACL. Then there was setbacks in the recovery, infections, like big problems for Darius Geis. And he has been interesting because fantasy football players during the off season, they were still willing to go in on the potential of Darius Geis, you know, late 4th. And then it kind of settled into a fifth round, a six-round pick.

He's dropped all the way to the back of the seventh round where if he comes out and shows that he's establishing dominance of this backfield in the back of the seventh round, maybe I'm back on board. Is there any way for him to really do that in one preseason game? Establish dominance? Like you said, eyeball test. Does he look like he has his burst back? Does he look like the player who was coming out of college? Because if he does, then he can.

in my opinion, can hold off Adrian Peterson. Chris Thompson will still have his role in the backfield, but I think he can hold off AP and be their primary one, two, down back. Guys going in that range, Kenyon Drake, Rashad Penny, Daryl Henderson. I mean, I can't imagine that he does anything tonight that I don't end up feeling like he's setting a trap in the fore. He's covering it with leaves.

For us all. A pungy pit? Yeah, a little pit where tonight, you know, carry one. He puts a bag of leaves over it. And then in the regular season, it's just not the backfield I want to. I just don't imagine what he can do. But I'm curious. I want to know what he looks like on the field for, is it a back half of the year thing? And then like guys going right behind him. I'm just talking running back position because there's wide receivers in there that I love. I was going to say, sounds like I'm taking a wide receiver in that range. Like my man, Diti. He's in there.

But behind him, Royce Freeman, Jordan Howard, Kareem Hunt, like if you're looking for a running back in that range and Darius guy shows that he is healthy and ready to go, he would vault to the top of that list of running back. My hope with this, Andy, is that he's going to go out there with a rake and take the leaves out of the way and show the hole if he just doesn't look good. If he comes out there and is a little hesitant. Just don't get hurt. I don't want him to get hurt. No, my goodness. Like.

Stay healthy, my friend. You've been through it. Get healthy, my friend. Yeah, yeah. All right, we have some news we're going to get into. Lots going on in the fantasy world. Remember, the great refrain. You don't win your championship at the draft. You set the foundation for the year. Subscribe to the podcast is five days a week. We're here all season long. Every single week we'll be bringing you our favorite starts.

laying out the kind of the whole picture for your fantasy team. This show is about more than just like this guy or that guy. It's about kind of bringing the arguments forward for these players. We don't always agree for goodness sakes. Look at yesterday's show. Christian Kirk and Carry on Johnson. That's the best part. Yeah. And so we debate those things and we also want like.

The reality is we want the really easy decision of like, here's a list of 10 players. We'll put them in order you make a pick. That's not how you win at fantasy football. The way you win at fantasy football is realizing that, okay, that's a piece of it. We rank players. But one team, a certain pick is better for that team, right? One player's more risky. One player's safer. For another team, that decision, the same two players might literally be different. So stay here. We're going to help you win. We're going to help you have more fun playing.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Leave us a review that always helps the show. Wherever you're listening to the show, we appreciate you tuning in. And I want to remind people, the Megla Bowl. You can still enter the Megal Bowl tournament. Jason, we've talked about this. This is the biggest tournament that we've ever done. If you are a foot clan member, you get an entry. There's over 4,000 of you in there already.

You just go to join the foot.com. You enter. The winner gets a 2020 listener league spot and an invitation to hang out with us for Wild Card weekend. Saturday. Wild card Saturday. And it's just going to be a blast. So check it out at join the foot.com. We've already got thousands of foot clan members in this tournament. It's hosted by Sleeper. It's going to be a ton of fun. And then Mike mentioned the ultimate draft kit right now. Get it at ultimate draft kit.com. Let's jump into the news.

News and notes from Around the League, presented by Sleeper. All right. Ian Rappaport coming out, saying Melvin Gordon's holdout, expected to continue into the season. Cool. This is, I mean, just incredible insight. Breaking news, letting us know that literally nothing has changed. But, yeah, hey, the good news is it'll hurt his draft position a little bit.

Maybe you can scoop them up later. But the reality is we've said this for a long, long time. This is an ugly holdout. Melvin Gordon's going to probably stay out as many games as he can to accrue the necessary season. Come back halfway through the season is my guess. But I just can't see them coming to contractual terms to get him out there week one or even week three, I'd be surprised. He says he's waiting for a call. So I'm just picturing he walks over every 20 minutes to his cell phone on the table.

Takes another glance, goes back to working out in his helmet. That's a thing he's doing now. He does the whole thing. He just calls back. Oh, I was in the shower. Yeah. I thought I heard the phone. Did you call? Did you? I was blow drying my hair. You got the money? You got the money? Look, the nice thing for this. And look, Ian Rappaport is doing, he's just doing his job. He's squishing hope. Well, because you should not have had hope at this point. The nice thing, though, is.

If this is going to change, it changes overnight. It's a contract gets sent over. Melvin Gordon approves, and then it's done. Melvin Gordon's back. The report had been the gap is 10 to, you know, he wants 13 million a year. The team's willing to pay him 10 million a year. That's the gap. So is that gap worth 6, 7, 8 games? Probably. We'll find out if either team. Here's a solution. 11.5 million dollars. Let's play football.

Real quick, guys, you're drafting them this weekend. You're drafting where you're comfortable taking out. Pure redraft, it's like six round. Yeah, I would agree with that. You're not going to get them there. All right, the Cardinals have signed Michael Crabtree formerly of the Ravens to a one-year deal. Yes. Mediocre signing of the week. It might be our last time of the season to play that drop. It was worth it. Yeah, obviously you had Kevin White.

let go from the team. He did not get it done. And by that, I mean, as an NFL player. And you also had the injury to Hakeem Butler. So, you know, Crabtree is going to be on the field. He's going to, you know, obviously they're not paying him over a million guaranteed two and a quarter million with upside to not come in and play. He's going to be a vet opposite Larry. And then Christian Kirk, I wonder if this. I don't, I don't share that thought with you. You don't think he's going to play?