Midseason Review + TNF Preview, Stone Cold - Fantasy Football Podcast for 11/3

I have such confidence that it's a not just a crappy quarterback in a good matchup. It's a good quarterback and a great matchup. So it's like. It's T.Y. Helton against Houston. Right. Yeah. You have very high confidence that the streamer is going to come through. Otherwise, yeah, he is who he is, which is a low-end quarterback one that will have explosive game. Which says to me that you might want to trade them. If you think that there's issues with the lack of mobility.

and you know you're not going to be pivoting. You're going to be playing them every single week. You're going to end up with some of the bad games if you could trade, you know, high. I wonder if you could trade him for Matthew Stafford, who's been on fire. The quarterback for me that I worry about is Jalen Hertz. Jalen Hertz. Earlier when I said there's two quarterbacks that I think of who's just been great all year. It was Tom Brady and Jailen Hertz. Obviously, one bad week that's last week when they blew the...

socks off the Detroit Lions. Jalen Hertz actually looked good for the first time in real life and was terrible for fantasy. And the only reason I worry about Jalen Hertz is just that I feel like he could lose his job. I don't think he's going to be bad for fantasy playing. But he's my biggest concern of just, man, they go, he's not the answer if they lose a couple games, if they are out of the playoff contention hunt in a month from now.

you know, maybe Gardner comes in. That is my only fear, which Alan hurts. That's the same name I have. The gap between number three and number 10 is three points. So it's kind of Allen and Brady on their own. And then Lamar through Burrow, it's pretty tight. So falling out of the top 10, wouldn't be very hard to do if you had a few bad games. Is there somebody outside the top 10 that we didn't discuss?

that you think could be a second half star at the quarterback position. I threw Aaron Rogers out there simply because not this week. Not this week, but just the ceiling and the fact that there have been games where he's been, you know, you've had injuries, you've had the COVID stuff and missing Devante. And you just know what he can offer you and how we won people championships last year. It's hard to leave Rogers off that list. And I think I'd lock him into my lineup.

you know, over a Hertz or a Herbert or a borough on the second half of the year. It is funny that Aaron Rogers is great. No one's going to debate that. But he's very similar to Justin Herbert. He doesn't do a lot on the ground anymore. And so you have to have a perfect game. You got to have three touchdowns or you're disappointed. And that's the reason the guy I think could get in there is Tase of Hill. Give me a quarterback that runs a ton. If you are a quarterback that is going to go out there and put 50.

yards up on the ground. Your baseline is super high for fantasy. He will obviously play four games last year. It was a quarterback one in all four of them. So he is the name to monitor once he gets back from the concussion protocol. And I think Ryan Tannehill is set up here for a real explosion. You look at like he's played well. He's he's currently in overall points a top 12 quarterback by weeks, you know, point per game. Maybe he didn't make this list.

He's at a 3.8% touchdown rate where the past three years of his career have all been over six. And even if that number doesn't get up to six, they're going to have to change the offense in Tennessee without Derek Henry. Without the Yeti, I don't think you can just keep, you can't carbon copy what they were doing with Adrian Peterson. So I think that the passing touchdowns go out, the passing volume will have to go up. And Tannenhill...

becomes a second half star. What an amazingly cool science experiment we get to see. We get to see Ryan Tana Hill without Derek Henry and say how much of his efficiency has been the fact that they're trying to stop the run because teams are going to do that now. That's one I do disagree on that one because of that. I don't know if I believe in Tana Hill without what the play action pass represents with Derek Henry. So that one will be, I mean, you're right. It's kind of like a live test here of, you know,

Teams are not going to respect the run the way they did with Derek Henry. Right. But it might have a lot to do with whether Julio Jones is a part of this offense or not. Because if he's never a functional part, I know what I'm doing. I'm stopping AJ Brown. That's all I'm doing. Sure. And I'm going to let Adrian Peterson try to get down the field. So that should be interesting to watch. And maybe that would kind of confirm that Tanahel is a better player than we even think he is if he can do that.

Running backs. Let's talk about the top 12 running backs, fancy points per game, half point per reception. Yeah. Number one's Derek Henry. That's, uh, he's my pick to not be there. Yeah. Uh, he may still be there at the end of the year. I mean, it's true. It's possible. He was crushing, man. Over 22 points per game. Meanwhile, no one else is over the 20 threshold. Like he was a true advantage.

at the running back position. Yeah. Yeah. And Al Borland, my division mate is rejoicing in the fact that I don't get him and have that advantage for the rest of the year. Eckler is number two at 19.5 points per game. Jonathan Taylor's at three. Naji at four. Camara at five. Cordarrel Patterson at six. This dude, man. At the halfway mark, man. Love it. Ezekiel Elliott at seven. Darrell Henderson at eight.

Aaron Jones at 9, Kareem Hunt at 10, Joe Mixing at 11, and DeAndre Swift at 12. This is all fantasy points per game. You know, Cordero with no Ridley, I don't think he goes anywhere personally. That's one of the big names you bring up. Number six, he's just too important to this offense because they just don't, they just can't function without him. And he does it in two different parts of the game. So I have confidence he's going to stay there. The question is whether you would, you know,

If somebody in your league doesn't have confidence in Patterson persisting at this level, would you go trade somebody for him? Would you go trade somebody that surprised the other manager? I don't know if Kareem Hunt fits that bill, but that kind of player where you say, I'm willing to give you a perceived guarantee at running back to go get Cordero because maybe the ceiling's even higher than we think.

Yeah, see, I, that's one where I disagree with you. He would be my pick to fall out. And I realize, not because he's going to be bad, he is so necessary to this offense. Now I think his receiving work will be five, six, seven receptions a game. So he'll be fine. The problem is he's had a lot of his fantasy value come via touchdowns. He's got seven touchdowns already on the year. And without Ridley, I think this offense.

will not be as good. And if the touchdown opportunities don't come, that's my only worry. I don't think he drops to being a bad fantasy asset, but I'm not confident that he is going to be able to, you know, stay. He's the running back six in points per game, and that's because of touchdowns. I just can't see that happening on this offense the rest of the way personally. Didn't you, last week you did bring up, though, that.

The reason you didn't have confidence going into this week was because of the presence of Gage and Ridley. So. Well, that was. And now the confidence is gone because Gage and Ridley. Well, yeah. I mean, I didn't. The reality. Which one is it? It's both. It's both because you had last week.

He was having receptions with Russell Gage out. He was getting a lot of targets. He took all of Gage's targets this past week, too. Exactly. With the full compliment coming back, it was worrisome. But Russell Gage doesn't help the offense score more touchdowns. Calvin Ridley does. So Russell Gage coming back hurt his target volume. I think the target volume comes back up now, but Calvin Ridley going away hurts the touchdown upside. I think he's here to stay.

You know, Kareem Hahn is in this list. I feel like I took the easy way out. But, I mean, he's the name that I'll pick for somebody in the top 12 that won't be there by season's end. You've had the injury. And it's just, he doesn't fit the mold of the rest of these guys, which are kind of the, most of them are alpha mold, the number one player for their team. So, you know, I don't know where this season is headed for Cleveland. It hasn't been a very good direction right now.

They've dealt with so many different injuries, and, you know, Baker may not stick around if he gets re-injured, so I'll go hunt. Yeah, I think Kareem Hunt is, he's still safe when he comes back, assuming he's actually healthy when he comes back. Seeing about, you know, in those games, he was right around the 50% snap mark. Like, they really were splitting between him and Nick Chubb. And, like, as seen this last week, like,

Deerness Johnson was given an opportunity inside the green zone, essentially, and he made it a tremendous cut, scores a touchdown. So they're not, even with Cream Hunt out, the Cleveland Browns said, no, we're still going to do some splitting here. So I expect that hunt will be back into. You don't think Deerness will be used more after he's proven himself? I don't think so. I mean, it's been an incredible story, but when you have.

I don't think it turns into a three-person time share. Yeah, the money and the talent of Chub and Hunt. And we saw De Ernest come in and do well last year. And when the guys came back, it was like, thank you for your service. Yes. You are no longer needed. Mike, who do you think we'll drop out? I think it's possible that Joe Mixon falls out. I don't, it's hard to know exactly what is going on here with Mixen because he's been very good for fantasy football.

The volume is absolutely outrageous. He has the second most rushing attempts in the league. But he just, he has these games where he's like, even though the Cincinnati offense is starting to fully take off, especially in the passing game, with all of the elite talent there. And Burrell stepping it up, Mixing still has these.

times where his efficiency goes to crap, even when you have to worry about the passing game. So if anyone can slip out, I think that Mixon could, you know, he'll still be a top 15 guy. But if I have to pick one of them, he would be my pick. Someone outside the top 12 that will be a second half star. You know, I've got a, I think Delvin Cook is going to be. Sure. You know, it's strange for him to be outside of this top 12 at this point in time, obviously dealt with the injury. But.

If I know anything about Minnesota is when they struggle, they go back to the room and then they decide we're going to run the ball more. I mean, that's just what Mike Zimmer does. And the identity of the offense, much like in Tennessee, is predicated on Dalvin Cook success, play action passing off of Dalvin Cook and him being the piece. You know, if you can get him at a discount right now. Right.

Like you could be, there's a chance. He's outside the top 12. He could be the best running back in the entire second half. Like not many players outside the top 12 could be the number one over the second half of the season. Cook fits that mold. So he's my pick. Yeah, my pick is David Montgomery. I mean, another player that's dealt with injury. He'll probably not be back this week, even though his timeline would allow him to be because they've got the buy week next week. So I think he comes back fully healthy off the buy. He was really, really good beforehand.

He was one of those players at the start of the year. We said, man, he just looks actually special, actually different. And Khalil Herbert is giving people a lot of fear, and I don't think that that's necessary. You know, it was a 70-30 split to start the year with David Montgomery. So I don't think David Montgomery is going to a 50-50 times. I think Khalil Herbert's just played his way into the RB2 role. And if anything, you...

You look at the success of the running game with Khalil Herbert, and you say, yeah, David Johnson is going to, or David Montgomery is going to come back into that successful running game system. I think he has a great second half of the year, and he's got a really good schedule as well. And I want to shout out a person. Look, we've clowned on him for kind of a while here for fantasy football. We? Okay. I'm looking in the mirror.

I'm looking in the mirror, absolutely. And it's Josh Jacobs of the Las Vegas Raiders, who, when he's been on the field this year, he has been productive, shockingly, running a bunch of routes, seeing targets, something that we had been begging the Raiders to do over and over. And then they're like, we're going to bring in Kenya Drake. And so it was just the, how do you see a world where you pay $10 million to a pass catching running back?

that Josh Jacobs targets go up. Nothing makes sense for how the coaching staff operated on things. And then looking at the schedule, Giants, Kansas City, the Bengals, Dallas, Washington. Like, it's pretty juicy here. We talked about it for Derek Carr on yesterday's show. It's real juicy here for Josh Jacobs, too. So I think that he is someone that, like, even you can maybe go trade low for Dalvin Cook. It's possible.