Fantasy Football 2017 - Week 1 Matchups, In-or-Out, Kareem the Dream

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Coming to you from the Playdraft Studios with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. Oh, man, was last night fun. Football, football. Football. I tell you what, I've got no energy left for the show today. My cartwheels. I need to. Right off the top, I want to tell a story. All right.

Andy Mike and Jason back to Fantasy Footballers podcast. Thanks for tuning in with us. This fine Friday morning, September 8th, not the 7th, the 8th. Here's the story I want to tell. You listen to us, and we've talked all off-season. We've done the draft. And yesterday we had our starts of the week. And look, we recognize some things when a lot of people listen. And they listen and they want us to get it right. And we do our best to get it right.

But there are low risk and high risk situations when we make our picks. One of the higher risk situations week to week is if one of our starts of the weekends up on a Thursday night football game, it's kind of putting them up on a pedestal, right? Like there aren't a bunch. Everyone's watching. Yeah, like if it's a Sunday game and we get 7 out of 10 right, you know, the bad ones kind of wash out a little bit. I'm just giving you the insight, right? Like the trolls don't come out as much because we hit some and we miss some.

But on Thursday, you're just putting it out there. And then if you start the year with the start of the week on a Thursday, you're really risking our entire livelihoods. And that's what Jason did. I was freaking out, man. And that's why I wanted to say this, because you said your energy is gone. And I'm going to tell the people why. Jason, his start of the week was Mike Gillisly. Now, when it was brought up before the show, I was like, dude, what are you doing? Like, I mean, Mike has Gillisley on multiple rosters. I think Mike thought, like, well, be careful.

Be careful right here. So he goes with Gillisley and the game starts out and Burkhead comes in for the first play. And this is after Burkhead Twitter has had been electric all day. One of the Patriots beat reporters was hyping him up to the point that a full sleeper bot hype alert came out and said, this guy's expecting a big game from Burkhead. He hyped Burkhead up. Burkhead was hyped up so much that I moved.

Eddie Lacey for my starting lineup to put Burkhead in last night. I did not recommend it on the show because look, this was, it was a glory play. It was a hype train play. And Rawls had been playing, and I was like, oh, Rawls and Lacey and who knows, Chris Carson. So I didn't work out for Burkhead. But Jason was living and dying on every snap in this game. And he wasn't, he doesn't have Gillisly. He did it for you. I'm playing against him. He's, Mike was playing me with Gillisly. And Jason.

When Gilsey ran in the first touchdown, Jason lost his mind. He was screaming. He was cheering. All because he made the start of the week pick for you guys. And then the penalty flag came out. And he froze like a man who had witnessed death. And then the touchdowns they started to pour in. And we'll get into that when we talk about Thursday night football. But I will tell you right now, Jason lives and dies for these picks trying to get your fantasy team.

Right. It sucks when we're wrong, man. We will be wrong. Okay, we do not claim that we will get all these right. But it's good to be right sometimes. Yeah, that's a two-toot moment for sure. This is going to be a great show today. We have, we got Foot Clan Friday. We're going to talk about the Thursday night football game that you all watch last night. We're going to get into the news and notes. Talk about which players are not going to play due to injury.

or what we think about the injury situations. And then we're going to get into the fantasy forecast and walk through the rest of the games, which is going to take a little while. We have quite a few games left on the forecast. And we're also going to do a live draft in play draft. Because each week we're taking on one another. The food bet. I'll tell you what, it is so great that we are doing another one of those because we have two for week one, one of which has already started. And I feel like we're going to lose because Mike has cream hunt.

Yeah, yeah, he does. You can follow us on Twitter at the FF ballers, and let's go ahead. And let's just start talking about last night's game. The Thursday night football game will take the place to the quick question. So much happened. When we got into the studio this morning, I quizzed both of these gentlemen, and I said, look, Tom Brady threw the ball 36 times. How many completions did he have? And the answer is 16. 44% completion percentage. Cam Newton thinks that's bad.

Even Cam Newton thinks that's bad. I know a lot of fantasy owners cursing Tom Brady, whereas on the other side, Alex Smith was 28 for 35 for 368 yards and four touchdowns. Oh, Alex. Brad Evans, you dog, tweeted this picture of a guy dancing, you know, that one guy that started Alex Smith. I ended up being that one guy in our dynasty league because I had Andrew Luck.

and my stopgap was Alex Smith, and I got lucky. Yeah, you were forced into a corner. I was, but now I'm going to pretend like I meant to be in that corner because Alex Smith lit it up, two touchdowns of over 70 yards. What's your reaction to these quarterbacks in game one in New England in Foxborough? Is this just adjusting to know Julian Edelman that we're seeing? Yeah, for Alex Smith, it's, look, this is why he is the ultimate streaming machine because...

He has these games every once in a while, and he's always on your waiver wire. Now, no one was calling for this against the Patriots, but so do not overreact. Alex Smith has not become a weekly starter. So don't freak out to that. And don't freak out to Tom Brady. I mean, this is the offense for New England. They got to figure some things out because the...

The team is so reliant, and Tom Brady is so reliant on that, Wes Welker, Julian Edelman, they need the man underneath who is just fearless. And on top of being fearless, invincible, nearly, because I guess Edelman's technically hurt, so he's not invincible, but Edelman would frequently go across the middle, fearless, get blown up and just stand up like nothing happened. Amandola tried to be that guy?

But then his health meter depleted once again, and he's got a concussion. He's out. But you saw he was, he was the go-to target, six for 100 yards. So it's now moving into next week. You don't even have Amandola likely. Who was concussed in this game. They're going to be trying to figure some things out. So my, my hot, sneaky pickup, my trade four low, go get James White. Completely agree. They are, I think that they will go back. They will watch the film and the page will.

Patriots will say Tom Brady's holding the ball way too long. We cannot perform like this. We have to have an outlet. And that outlet now just de facto will be James White. And I think that he is an excellent target to go get on the cheap. Jason, is Tom Brady a target to go get on the cheap? Yeah. I mean, he's certainly, any time a guy has an outlier performance on Thursday night to start the fantasy season. To the extreme high or to the extreme low, they become.

either a guy that you look to possibly trade or a guy you look to target because there are the owners in certain leagues that now have written Tom Brady off. They have them and they go, oh, he's old. Oh, he needed Julian Edelman. And they'll trade him for 10 cents on the dollar. So I would not be like trying actively to get him, but I'll go look at who has Tom Brady and I'll make a junk offer. And in, you know, three out of 10 leagues, you're going to get him.

All right. And then look, we talked about Gillisley, 15 for 45. Three touchdowns on the ground from two, two, and one yards away. This was Leighette Blunt. Reborn. Perfect storm for Mike Gillisley. So this is another, don't overreact. I would not go try to trade for Gillisley. I would actively.

I would actively, and I highly recommend trying to trade Gillisly right now. Okay. But what are you trying to get for Gillis? I'm trying to get something really good. I'm trying to trade him in a package with someone else to get something like a Devonta Freeman or a Melvin Gordon or someone that is a reliable RB1. I mean, he looked good. His stat line will be great, and you'll have those owners that will buy in. Because Gillisley...

You know, I made the argument for him to be the start of the week because he's the goal line back in a great situation, and he will have that. I mean, Ligarrett Blunt had 18 touchdowns last year, but Ligarrett's 18 touchdowns in the games where he didn't hit Pater, he was really not good for your fantasy team, and his consistency rating is not very good. And I expect you're going to see that from Gillisley this year. All right, it's time to talk about the other side. This is the headline story. Corrine.

Kareem, Kareem, Kareem. Oh, please don't trade him just because you can. Oh, Kareem Hunt. That's a debut. Yeah. Comes out, fumbles the football on the first. And he had one fumble in his entire Toledo collegiate career. Folkland, my head almost blew off of my body with that fumble.

But he comes out and instead goes 5 for 98 through the air for two touchdowns, 17 for 148 on the ground, which is a nice 8.7 clip, absolutely lights it up, shows the kind of versatility that you love in a premier back in fantasy. And this is why the second Spencerware was injured, we all put Kareem Hunt in our top 15 instantly for the season long, because the opportunity said to do so.

Andy Reid's history said to do so because of what happened. Not only does he usually produce a good running back in the ground game, but he always, always, always, always utilizes that running back in the passing game in ways that take advantage of the skill set. And you saw that last night. However, once again, don't overreact. Don't think. Don't Carlos hide this. Here's the true. Remember Carlos Hyde against the Vikings a couple years ago.

What are the odds that that was the greatest fantasy performance of Kareem Hunt's career? I think they're high. Very high. Yeah. So incredible game. Just because of the amount of touchdowns. The yardage, I think he can he can come close to replicating that again. But three scores is a lot. Yeah, I mean, we have seen on Twitter all the different trade offers that are being made for him. Mike put a tweet out there. People are. And so let's say this. Let's say you have Kareem Hunt.

And what is your excitement level? Because I have seen people say, I was offered Julio Jones for Kareem Hunt. Is that an auto except for you? It is for me, so long as, I mean, it's always tough when it's a running back for a wide receiver. You've got to look at team and other things. But in general, if this was a redraft starting, you know, over knowing what we know, I would take Julio first. Yeah, it breaks down to.