Starts of the Week + Frightful Weather, Tilt Time - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/22

We have a gigantic episode here for you today because there are so many important decisions to make and so many difficult decisions that are affected by weather. We're going to dive deep on how the weather can affect you, get into our starts of the week, and an incredible boom, boom kicker. Like the video, subscribe and enjoy. The Fantasy Footballer Studio is brought to you by Samsung Galaxy. Visit Samsung.com to learn more. To the fantasy footballers podcast. With your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Oh, welcome in. It's semi-championship time. There's a lot of syllables squeeze in there. Of all the things you could have done. What would you have gone with? Something with the weather probably. It's weather week. But it's semi-champions.

I don't even know if that's an expression. I've never heard anyone ever say semi-champions ever. Yes, semifinal. There you go. Whatever. Whatever. You worked extra syllables into it. Right. It's semifinals. That would have. No. No, because I believe that the time is in fact the key word. Okay. Okay. Of the sentence. Tilting time? I don't know. Sure. That's, but that's daily. That's not a hourly. That's not a specified portion of Thursday show. I'm sorry. It's your domain. We should just. Let you be you. It is semi-championship time. Come along, football. We are now in agreement. Enjoy semi-championships. Thursday, December 22nd. We will have a football game this evening. Never not working on the show today. Maybe the most important one of the season, maybe of the history of never not working. I find this to be the single most challenging week.

in the history of our show to give analysis for. Because at least from what I understand, those of you that have chosen to follow this show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, subscribing on YouTube, that have gone along for the ride with us, you will not necessarily accept, I'm not sure, as our analysis for the week. But due to the insane... Weather patterns in this country for what Mike would deem semi-championship weekend. Yes. It is really, really hard to cut through the mess. I don't know what you're talking about. This is football weather. This is what it's really cool. And everyone's going to have a great time because, I mean, if you're a real football fan, you're going to really enjoy these 30 mile an hour crossing winds. The advantages.

that like the Jets, Cleveland, I mean, the advantage that these teams have this specific week with the outrageous weather, it's off the charts. We've never seen it before. I'm not going to argue with anybody that a world full of domes is better for fantasy football. That is a concession I will happily make. If you remove your interests in fantasy, it can be very entertaining to watch teams. battle through the elements. Not all of these this week will be entertaining in that fashion, but, you know, this is a high T weekend. Sure. And this will be, it'll be difficult because we haven't seen a weekend quite like this. So much is on the line for your teams and weather changes. I mean, yesterday on this show, as we began the episode, the wind was projected to be.

13, 14 mile an hour wind in the Thursday night football game. Now you have weather advisories. You've got 17 to 20 mile an hour winds. You have gusts that could exceed that greatly. And so the weather is also changing. And we're sitting here on Thursday, right? That's a 24-hour period where the advisory changes to the negative. Last week we saw it kind of move more positively with the Buffalo game. And so definitive... you know, guarantees right now are hard as well. And so you're going to have to be a fluid fantasy football player this weekend. You're going to have to make, like I, I'm jumping right into the Zay Jones discussion for tonight. That's also known as the Christian Kirk discussion or the Garrett Wilson discussion, the Trevor Lawrence discussion. Evan Ingraham discussion. Yeah. And so I might legitimately be turning the television on tonight before I make that call.

See if you can see the wind flags moving around there on the pylons? You know, because there's some talk about the heavy rain coming in the second half, right? And so, you know, we got enough out of Buffalo in three quarters before the snow came down. Like there are, there's nuance and Jason is taking us through it all on never not working today, which I am desperate to receive this information. So I know it will be edifying to the listeners out there. But these decisions are tough enough on week six, week seven, if you had them. Now it's semi-final week. The second guessing, I mean, those monsters, they live under the beds of fantasy football players. Maybe you should have started somebody else this week. You know, that's the creepy monster that lives under the bed for fantasy players. I know that monster well. He's in the closet. He's under the bed. He's in the backyard, peeking over the fence. He's everywhere. Mine's a lower voice, though.

Oh, really? Like, you can barely make out what he's saying. Mine, I'm much more goblin. Yours is, yeah, his is goblin. Yours is more Buffalo Bill? Yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah. Slash Andrew Luck. Yeah. Wait. Is Andrew Luck? Does he live in my house? I think he's the fancy football monster. That's how he's been saving all his money. Yeah. You should have started the other guy. You'll never make the right decision. All right. A quick reminder before we jump into the Never Not Working. And obviously we got a million matchups to get through. We got starts of the week. Lots going on. And Jason's boom boom kicker last week was electric. So we need to get to that as well. But a reminder, it is, it's Christmas weekend. We will not have a Sunday live this weekend. We've got the main slate of games on Saturday, games on Sunday. Family time. But you can always go to Christmas Football.com.

for the latest, greatest information. Oh, okay. I forgot. Yeah. That's a good website. Good word. That's a really good website. So Christmasfootball.com? Yeah. It's an incredible website. Yeah. Christmasfootball.com. Let's move on. Let's do it. Let's get into it. Jason, teach me. Never not working. Presented by Head and Shoulders. Scamp Shield Technology. Available at Walmart. All right. Well, it is weather week. And to give you a good example here of how the weather is this week, Kevin Roth, probably one of the most well-known weather people in the fantasy football industry, an actual meteorologist, does some great work for roto grinders. He said this is without a doubt one of the worst, if not the single worst week of weather he's ever seen in the NFL. He's been doing this a long time. So we wanted to get into what do we need to worry about?

What do we not need to worry about? What tweaks can we make going forward? And here is, after doing some deep dive data research, here is the digestible end result nuggets that you need to know. Dating back to 2000, we took a look at every game to see if the totals of the games were affected. Let's start with temperature. Temperature is mostly irrelevant. It does not really have an effect on game totals. within the game. So if you look at games that are sub 30 degrees, 42.7 total NFL points scored is the average. If you get below 20 degrees, it's 41. So it's like a point different. If you get below 10 degrees, it's 41.8. It goes up a little. They're all right around the same. The average of the scores in these cold weather games is fine. And if you think about our normal weekly process, we're saying the

That's very average. That's just a normal average game. They're not the wonderful barn burner 50 point extravaganzas, but they're also not, you know, the 37 points. So I don't worry about seeing cold weather games that don't have wind. What will have an effect is that the running game is usually improved. I've seen some reports about yards after contact in sub, in 20 degree, sub 30 degree weather. being better for running backs. And that just makes sense, right? Cold guys. Because it hurts when you get hit? Yeah, cold guys trying to tackle an ice block is not quite as fun. So maybe bump up some of those running backs in cold weather games. Now, let's talk about rain, precipitation. That has a negative effect on passing games. Unfortunately, the data, we don't have a great example of.

Not all rain is the same. Sometimes it's a rainy game and it's fine. And I've seen big fantasy performances in rain and sometimes it's extremely heavy rain where, you know, it's a nightmare. And usually those rainy games that are a nightmare, it's actually still the wind that is the problem. Here's what rain does to the passing game. Completion percentages usually drop to 57% on average. Passing yardage drops from 240. on average to 216 passing yards. So you look at the passing games and you say, okay, well, they could still do enough, but you're not having your giant big performances. Better get in the end zone if you have those wide receivers. Exactly. Now let's talk about the real elephant in the room, the real problem, sustained wind. This is what you need to look at. Snow gets all the glory, all the weather weekends, all the football love of, oh, you know, it's a real football game.

But wind is the actual Andrew Luck monster here. 15 plus mile an hour sustained wins is when things start changing game plans. Deep passes are tough. The kicking game is very difficult. And anything over 20 mile an hour sustained wins, that becomes a major problem. It goes from we're affecting the game to rut row passing game pretty much is not going to work well. Passing attempts, they fall off significantly during windy games, which is not the case for cold weather games, even if the efficiency still goes down a little bit there. How predictable can we be with the timing? Wind, we can usually know a day or two out. Obviously, the wind changed here from yesterday to today, but when we're projecting wind, it is easier to be right and accurate of that than it is over rain. Rain? Because rain, literally, we're talking about a stadium. It's got to be...

in that exact spot during those exact windows of the game that is being played. So that is much more difficult, you know, even a few hours ahead of the game. Now let's look at this week and how it applies. Here's the cold games that aren't major wind. Seattle at Kansas City, super cold, 10 degrees, but very light winds. So I'm not worried. I'm not, I'm not, you know, getting off of. You're not abandoning. I'm not abandoning any of the passing game here. I will slightly bump up some of the running games. Maybe Pacheco and Kenneth Walker have a slightly better game. Cincinnati at New England, Atlanta at Baltimore, the Raiders at the Steelers. These games are going to be very, very cold around 20 degrees, not major wins. I'm not worried. Again, slight bump up to the running game. And then the Houston at Tennessee game.

Hmm. Yeah, baby. Oh, if there's a team that's going to make business decisions about not tackling the biggest, strongest guy in cold weather in Tennessee. Oh, come on, Yeti. It's time to eat. Derek Henry should have a good game, is what I'm saying. Yeah, if you're looking across the aisle and see you're matched up against Derek Henry, you better, you better enter whatever spiritual. decisions and asks that you possibly can right now because you're in trouble. Except you're ill and move on. Don't take that from me. The major win games this week, there's two and a half of them, we'll say. New Orleans at Cleveland, this is the real nightmare game. It could get 10 degrees with wins up to 30 miles an hour. We're talking sustained wins. Massive gusts below that.

Total has dropped to the lowest over under in a decade. This is going to be a game where there isn't a path. Like I won't be starting anyone in the passing games in that. I don't know how you guys feel if there's a specific player. You're like, well, what about? None of them are top tier. I mean, especially because Crystal Lave's falling off. Like no one in this game, I feel like is a absolute must start before. There's no Jefferson's Chances, Diggs in these games. So let's talk about the next game. Go ahead. The Buffalo Bills go to Chicago. Well, you got Stefan Diggs in here. You could get to 10 degrees. There's rain, possible snow, and winds of 20 plus miles an hour. So in this game, the quarterback situation is fantastic. You couldn't ask for anything better than two of the most mobile.

running quarterbacks in the league. I am not worried at all about Justin Fields or Josh Allen because they could each have 100 rushing yards. They don't need to throw the ball to have good fantasy games. Maybe their full upside is slightly nerfed, but they're not going to have a bad game. I'm not viewing them any differently. Stefan Diggs. I don't think he has a phenomenal game, but there's no way I'm benching Stefan Diggs. It's not that they're not going to throw the ball at all or they can't. And if you tell me who in the NFL can throw it, through the cutting winds is Josh Allen and his cannon. But players like Gabe Davis, kind of, you know, you go, oh, can I? Can I not? He only gets a certain amount of shots a game, and if the wind affects some of those. Cold commet has been kind of on the tight end. Cold this week. Cold commit. So, you know, those guys. Colcomo does not like to be cold. Yeah, those guys are off. And then the final game to discuss is the one we talked about yesterday, which is happening tonight.

The tilt for tonight's game because of how it establishes your week, it's extreme. You could just avoid it, right? You could opt out. But there are some really big players in this game that people have counted on. Garrett Wilson, Zay Jones, Christian Kirk, Travis E.T.N. Trevor Lawrence. You know, the wind advisory right now. Yeah, give it to me. The wind advisory technically begins 10 p.m. Thursday to 10 p.m. Friday. And it says South winds 20 to 30 miles an hour. Gus up to 55. Wait, 10 p.m. tonight? Yeah. Eastern. But that's eastern. So, you know, and that's for portions of southern Connecticut, northeast New Jersey, and southeast New York. So this is a little bit more of that you don't know exactly where you're going to be. I've seen the most recent projection I've seen on wind is about 15 to 16 miles an hour. So. So that will have, if it's in that 15 to 20 mile an hour range, it will have an effect.

But it will not destroy it. So you've got to make that decision. And honestly, I think the best advice we can give you while we're recording this Thursday morning is what Andy already said he is personally going to do. You've got to turn that TV on. You've got to hop on your phone and look through Twitter. There will be videos if it's gnarly. If it's gnarly, that'll be your timeline. We'll be sharing those on the fans. I'll tell you what I'm doing too on Twitter. Yeah. You know, I'll post. I'll post exactly whether I'm playing Zay Jones or not tonight.

And really that is, and I know it sucks because it's the Christmas weekend, you're going to have family, you're going to have things going on. But whenever you can just pop in a few minutes. Priorities. Right. What do you want for Christmas? Yeah. Tell them you want a fantasy championship, so I'm going to need to, look, wrap my phone so I can unwrap it and get on and take a look. I thought you might need to save some Christmas morning presents. in advance in case you need them as like pick me ups through the weekend. Oh, you thought you opened your whole entourage of present? Did you lose, honey? Here's the couple I held back. So in summary, you're saying in cold temperatures, expect fewer overall plays, passing games get the downgrade a little bit. Just a little. Just a little. A little bit ski. Running games get more volume. More volume in the running games. And then in games with sustained wins, fade those passing games unless you have.

I guess I would say unbenchable options that are, it's too risky to put us to Fond Diggs on your bench on what Mike would call semi-championship weekend. Yes. Thank goodness this, if it was like a Justin Herbert Joe Burrow game, what a nightmare that would be for. pocket passing quarterbacks. Thank goodness it's Fields versus Josh Allen. Honestly, it's a huge difference. And you can follow us on Twitter. We'll be sharing stuff. Jason at Jason FFL, Mike, at FF Hitman. And I'll post what I do with Zay Jones at Andy Holloway tonight. Main account is at the FF Ballers. That was insightful. It's what we need this week. Get up to 100% DNA of protection that is never not working with head and shoulder scalp shield technology available at Walmart.com. Use it every time you shampoo and see the difference. News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance. See, the fire is so delightful, but the weather outside is frightful. Yeah, man, they've been singing about this for years. Yeah, it's all about.

Your football team on Christmas Day. It's going to be going to be, I think we're going to remember this weekend. Let me put it that way. I think this is going to be one of those weekends we remember. We might not wish it to be, but I think it is. Jokes on you, I remember nothing. Well, that's good because Eagles head coach, Nick Siriani has said, quote, it looks like it's going to be Gardner Minshue when asked about the quarterback situation. The writing was on the wall, but, you know, the hopes that we. We hold out for these players. Gardner Minchu in place of Jalen Hertz. It's going to be a nervous downgrade to the offense. You know, if anything, you know, do they depend a little bit more on Miles Sanders than we saw last week? I don't know if you're going to be able to do that. You're going to try, but you're going to play your A.J. Brown. You're probably going to look at your options with Dallas Goddard, and we'll get into it more on the matchup. But unfortunate.

Big weekend, no Jalen hurts, Jason. Yep, it is, it really stinks. And the fact that they are in a nice air-conditioned, controlled environment just makes Gardner mince you all the more appealing as a pivot option. Yeah, and it's a tough one because he could have some success, tough defense, you know, on the road. It's going to be fun. We'll break it down. Ryan Tannehill. Seems like his season might be over. He hasn't been practicing. You're going to get a downgrade for all the passing options. I just don't. What makes what Derek Henry does to Houston so amazing is that he already did it with Malik Willis this year. And to me, I would imagine if you told 11 defensive players to tackle one person, they could do it sufficiently just to see what Malik Willis can do in the pasty game. And yet they still can't. Well, the Texans can't.

The Texans I'm speaking. Yeah. Nick Chubb didn't practice for a second straight day. Oh, oh. The team is still optimistic he will play, but wants you to be scared and nervous. Uh-oh. Amari Cooper also did not practice. But we're not playing Amari Cooper. True. Right. Kenneth Walker did not practice Tuesday and Wednesday. Uh-oh. Yeah, that's a little, a little scary, but he's been dealing with the ankle issue, and they... released Tony Jones. I saw some beat. And Homer. Yeah, I saw some beat reporters saying that that gives them confidence in the health of Kenneth Walker. No, a fan didn't practice, didn't practice. And then this one's big. Marquis Goodwin had a, he had a limited practice, but it was not based on an ankle injury. The limited practice was based on a wrist injury. And then he ended up with a limited practice due to an ankle. So.

Marky's good one, if there's any doubt around him, I think you have to just go away from that secret little opportunity personally. Does it push you away from Gino? Yeah, that's the question I have. This is a big deal because I talked about at the beginning of the week. Well, Noah Fant is also important to the passing game and he hasn't practiced in two days. And Kenneth Walker is important to the offense. Like, you know, there's only so much you're going to be able to do with tertiary options. D.K. Metcalf. It's a real challenge. And you're in Arrowhead. Like, this is not a friendly environment. Let me just ask you a simple question. Yes. Who would you start Gino Smith or Gardner Minchu? Let's just say if like semi-championship week was on the line. I, look, I know you have Devante Smith. The weapons that Gardner has, they're, they're mighty and strong. And they're much better than what you have right now with.

D.K. and no one. Excuse me, Laquan Treadwell, former first rounder. Start the right one, Jason. That's all I'm hearing. That's all I'm hearing is. You'll probably win or lose by the difference between the two cornerbacks. Yeah. Okay. More news. Cole McCoy officially ruled out. Trace McSorley will start against the bucks. I wanted to give a little bit of a history lesson on Trace McSorley. It was a six-round draft pick drafted by the Ravens. Comes out of Penn State. Senior season in Penn State ran for almost 800 yards on the ground. When you know he's coming into this first start of his NFL career, I do believe Arizona is going to have a more defined Trace McSorley game plan for him, which will include his legs, right? And moving the football and getting outside the pocket. So I'm not going to eliminate the possibility that this game for Trace McSorley himself is better than we saw last week.

I'm still playing DeAndre Hopkins, but beyond that, like the Hollywood Brown situation, I'm really nervous about Jason. I think it was on the Sunday or it was the party room. It was the party room. I went through and looked at the specifics of Trace McSorley when he was targeting DeAndre Hopkins, so, you know, for clarity on that. He started basically the second half played pretty much exactly half the game. He targeted DeAndre Hopkins six times in the half. So if you extrapolate that out and say 12 targets, that is phenomenal. He only completed three of those, though, for 28 yards. So, you know, would you want a six for 60 game out of Hopkins? Is that what you're hoping for? It was a tougher defense last week against the Denver Broncos compared to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I'm with Andy that I'm playing Hopkins, but.

Yeah, maybe I make some different decisions with my flex players. No, yeah, that's a good point. When you don't think you have a ceiling for a certain type of player, maybe you put a ceiling in there. I think that's all we have for news other than Zonovan Knight is technically questionable for tonight. It makes it pretty nerve-wracking, but then you have this game that might be run-centric. So it's all about your other options, right? The Zay Jones decision I have tonight. If I had Hopkins to put it, it wouldn't be much of a decision. But I don't. I have a Darius Slayton or a 2-2-at-well or, you know, it's a Dynasty league where my pivot options are nerve-wracking. Out of curiosity, if your pivot option was Michael Carter, like which running back is more. Yeah, I'd play Michael Carter tonight due to the injury concerns and what we saw last week with snap counts, but it's going to be probably shared and scary. All right, that was today's news and notes brought to you by USAA Insurance. Learn more at USAA.com slash insurance.

You know, that is a good point, Kyle. We didn't mention Travis E.N yesterday, and we didn't mention him today. People, if we miss any player, they always bring it up. Yeah, because if they have them on their team, they want attention there. And I think that's fair with Travis E.T.N. Tonight, you know, I think you're starting Travis E.T.N. Yes, that is correct. Yeah, I mean, you are starting Travis E.T. And he hasn't been great in in. difficult matchups, and this is a difficult matchup, so I'm not expecting huge things, but he ran for over 100 yards last week. And what we've talked about, if the wins are more in the, you know, the rain, they're going to favor the running game. And he is getting still like 80% utilization, which is a dream for fantasy. So I do think you start Travis E.T. And you just have to worry about the ceiling. He's sitting at the running back 21.

on our weekly rankings right now, which seems, you know, he's an RB2 with obviously elite upside as an athlete, could make a big play. That's what we were seeing early in the year, but we haven't seen one in a while. Into the forecast we go. Fantasy forecast. The forecast is cold. The Knight King approaches, and he seeks your fantasy team. Let's start with the Saturday games. Buffalo, 11 and 3, the Bears. Three and 11. Oh, palindrome. Yeah. The Draft King Sportsbook line, Buffalo minus eight, the overunders, 40. That only gives the Bears 16 points in this one despite being at home. The windy city itself going to impart some fear. Now, you didn't have pass catchers in Chicago that you were counting on. Yeah, that's real nice. You know, Darnow Mooney's out for the season. Claypool didn't play last week. You're not, you're not pringling this weekend. Don't pop.

Oh, just stop. The only pass catcher that's been in consideration has been Cole Komet, and he is out of consideration there. So on the other side, Josh Allen's going to be in your lineup. He had a vintage week last week. He has elite weapons. He's been using Dawson Knox a lot more, which I think could come into, it could come into effect tonight with short area targets. You know, you want to make up for. some of that wind. You've got a bigger player in Dawson Knox. I don't really want to start him if I, you know, if I can avoid it. But the Bears are pretty good against tight ends. But Dawson Knox has been coming on. Do you have any confidence in his role for tonight's or Saturday's game? I don't have great confidence. Number four and number three tied in the last two weeks. Yeah, he's gotten it done the last two weeks. One of those weeks was poor weather. This is.