Week 1 Hype + TNF Breakdown, Starts/Sits - Fantasy Football Podcast for 9/4

Whole baby foot clan, we have real football to talk about today. We are breaking down the Thursday night matchup. We're answering all your questions. Big who to start questions are happening now, and we've got you covered. Make sure you subscribe right now because this season's going to be awesome. We're going on a ride together and enjoy the show. To the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in.

The fantasy footballers back once more. Jason Moore, Mike Wright, Andy Holloway. Happy to be with you. Wednesday episode of the show, we've got full deucers. Full deusers in the house. Al Borland, Papa Josh, the Falcon, feeling all right today in the building. In the building, yeah. It is ironic that the one day you say we have full deusers. No Kyle today on the microphone. Think? goodness. Yeah, I mean, is he really a deucer? Not really. I mean, you need to be in deucers alley. Yeah. He's a deucer of another sort. He's on a plane. He's on his way here. We've got League of Record draft tomorrow. We got so much tomorrow. I want to hear from the listeners because I have heard some, you know, a sprinkling of tweets and things like that about wanting more League of Record content in general. So I want to hear about that because.

Last year, the show, the show, gosh. The show moment, the show moment of the year was the Papa Josh in my situation. And I'm not forgetting you, Al, you're awful. But then, like, we were able to put up on the website, like the matchup. And so I want to know if people want some more League of Record content. I mean, things like that are always going to be split. You're going to be 50-50. Half the people out there are going to be like, that's awesome. And half are like, I don't care about your league, man. That's my guess. So we'll share some pictures from our League of Record draft on Thursday. And it's going to be fun. Going to break down the Thursday night game today. We're talking real football. We're going to talk about real football on the show. We've got news to talk about. We'll see if Mike and Will one more contract into existence. I gave it my best shot yesterday, everyone. You have been tweeting relentlessly trying to get this done. I think I'm out of ammo.

No, you're out of days too. I mean, you're running out of... Not on the Joe Burroughs schedule. We'll see what happens. Jamar Chase is a big topic, especially if you haven't drafted yet, or even if you have and you added him to your roster, you don't know if you're going to be able to play him. So stupid. It's so stupid. Here's some League of Record talk. Mike, you have the second pick in our draft. Thanks to the lottery. I have the pick just behind you. Our keeper system... Most of the great players are kept. There's a handful, just a few. Yeah. Monster great players that fall back into the draft. There's two of them in particular, AJ Brown, Jamar Chase. With the Jamar Chase holdout, he might fall to you, Mike, and guess who I play week one? You, baby! Go ahead, get that Jamar Chase and sit him on your bench and play me. I think he will. I think he would do that. It's not a one-week game.

Well, all I care about is our matchup. Okay. We have week one rankings up on the website, the fantasy footballers.com. You can go check those out. 20,844. That was the final count for the. That is the all-time record for the Megalobole. And I had my Megalobole draft last night. I let my son handle some of the duties, who's my co-manager in League of Record. He is acclimating to the advanced fantasy football world. He's got more and more into it. He did all right. He made one kind of interesting decision. We were very, we had Jamir Gibbs in the first round, and then we went some, you know, he went like a couple whiteouts. We got Marvin Harrison, and then he took a tight end. So when he was coming back in the fifth round or fourth round for another running back,

And pretty much the only other running back we got on the roster was David Montgomery. Oh, man, all in. So we're going big, big lions. Someone on Twitter told me the Lions were winning the Super Bowl. Yeah, that is a fact. You read that too? Mm-hmm. Yeah, somebody tweeted that out. So, yes, thank you everybody for joining the Megalibol. It's going to be fun this year. And then the community for in-season tools and resources, including the brand new ultimate dashboard, is at jointhefoot.com. Initial feedback has been very positive, and we're going to keep adding more and more to the ultimate dashboard. If you want to know what that is, it is an in-season lineup optimizer. It'll help you find spot starts. It'll help you find waiver pickups, a custom team news feed, and it's all synced to your league if you're on ESPN public leagues, if you're on Yahoo, or if you're on sleeper. Those are the three supported right now. You can also manually add your team, and that optimizer is going to keep getting better and better.

And that's brand new for 2024. It gives you a pretty handy news feed of what's going on with your specific players as well. Absolutely. Like if you have Kyle Pitts. Oh, my gosh. Welcome to Hungry for More, presented by Uber Eads. Oh, man. I'm hungry for more news. You beat me to the joke, Jason. I had to. You jumped on that grenade. I gave you. You need such a great segue to the wrong segment. You pulled the bin. And you just rolled the grenade on the ground. But at the end, I kicked it away a little bit. So just scarred. Only grew your leg off. Yeah. Yeah. We are, we've got hungry for more. We're heading into week one. And I chose an interesting player for this week's segment. I'm hungry for more. Oh, you and me both brother. Brandon Ayyuk of the San Francisco 49ers. Why? Yeah. Why do I want more? Because you've had none.

Because I want a wide receiver one if he's going to be treated like a wide receiver one with the purse strings and the trade offers. I mean, we didn't talk about it on the show. But it came out that the Browns offered a Mari Cooper in a two and a three for the opportunity to vastly, maybe not overpay, but just to write a big contract for Brandon Ayuk. And Iyuk didn't want to go to Cleveland. And he didn't want to go to New England, who also wrote a big check. The Steelers weren't willing to give up pickings on the way back. So San Francisco, that deal didn't come to fruition. Ayuk, he even came out and said over the last month he kind of made it hard on the team because I think he didn't know what to do. I genuinely think it was a little bit of like contract posturing. And then you get to the standstill and it was like, well, I guess I'm going to just keep holding. And then eventually you just sign the contract. You have that pot odds thing where you're like, no, I said, I said I was going to do this. It's like, ah, let's be honest. Players get the chance to miss camp.

Who doesn't want to miss some camp? I've heard they like to miss it. So I want, when I say I'm hungry for more Brandon Ayuk, it's the level up. I want to see him have his first wide receiver one season of all time. He's never done it. He may have played like a wide receiver one and gets paid like a wide receiver one. But in fantasy, he has not accomplished that goal. He was so efficient last year. It was one of the things we brought up in the off season about maybe a little bit of a, whoa, be careful with Brandon and I, because, you know,

You can't have that many big plays happen year after year. And, you know, he led all wide receivers in fantasy points per target. And so that level of efficiency led to wide receiver 14 missed the game. He was right on the edge of wide receiver 1 points per game. I mean, he was, I'm trying to look it up real quick. But he was at 13.2. Is that right? 13.2 points per game. And he missed the game. I mean, that's right. But I want top 10, Mike. We'll upgrade it. I'll let you know if that would have been top 10. But what do you think the chances are? I mean, we can want.

anything, but do you believe that Brandon Ayuk will be a, you know, look, he's been a top 15 wide receiver the last two seasons. Yes. How confident are you that he is a top 15 wide receiver this season? Pretty confident and I do think that there's a chance that like we look at that offense and we look at it with the chart of targets and you say, okay, some go to IUC, some go to Debo, kid will get some, McCaffrey gets some. And that's how you look at the offense. I do think the dial could be turned. I think this team could support Brandon Ayuk taking a step forward, and Kittle and Debo may be taking a step back. If this team is planning for Debo to leave next year, it could be time for Brandon Ayuk to be super alpha, right, on this roster. So hungry for more Brandon Ayuk. I have been resistant to get on that train where I believe he could be a top 10 wide receiver. But the market says he has the capability. Top 10 will be rough.

If the 49ers keep throwing at the pace that they do, they're incredibly efficient. Dead last? Yeah. They're incredibly efficient when they do. And looking at it, 13.2, I think it puts him like 11th or 12th in points per game. But that's, I mean, that's point one behind Jamar Chase from last year. Yeah. All right. I'm going to go with My Hungry for more, a very different same position, but very different situation. It is a rookie who has gotten. not a lot of love. Luke McCaffrey, rookie wide receiver for the Washington Commanders. This is a player I liked the college film of. I like the production, 13 receiving touchdowns, a 37% dominator rating. And then they traded away Jehan Dodson. And when that happened, I thought, look, this must mean Luke McCaffrey's having a good camp. He's doing what they wanted him to do. He was a third round pick. This is not like...

You know, I know he wasn't the Christian McCaffrey brother top 10 NFL selection, but he also wasn't, you know, Mr. Irrelevant Day 3, seventh round pick either. This was an investment the team made into him. And then they trade away last year's first Jehan Dodson. And I'm thinking, okay, he showed enough. And then a report comes out right after that that's like, I don't know if he's going to get run. And so I was a little scared off of it because I'm always looking for those guys like Malik Washington and Luke McCaffrey, those rookie. wide receivers that might just sneak into that starting lineup. But then the official Washington commander's depth chart comes out. And lo and behold, Luke McCaffrey is listed ahead of Diamie Brown on that chart at least. I mean, TBD until the games are played, but he's listed as the starter, which he should be. He's the next best, you know, Terry is the one. And they've been saying all offseason, they're looking for their two. I think they have it. So I would love to see Luke McCaffrey succeed.

I would love to see him start. And we got an early offseason breakfast narrative, boys. Uh-oh. Is he having breakfast with Jane Daniels? Well, listen to this early report about Jane Daniels from an ESPN article says Daniels clocks in around 5.45 a.m. It is what he did at LSU, too. Rookie receiver, Luke McCaffrey, has been joining Daniels in Washington. The two players watch film and then head to the practice bubble and walkthrough plays. Rookie, rookie connection at breakfast. Did we get confirmation that they're eating together? I think you were trying to. I'm trying to push it in breakfast. I think they got to eat. They got a whole day of practice. At least like a breakfast bar. They split one or something. I think there's sharing a breakfast bar. Or it's like a protein shake maybe. Yeah, well, their protein quote has got to be very high. At least a ground per pound. LLC is the pick. I like it. He's a fascinating player of Jay. Just some more context in there. He started as a quarterback.

in college and before making the transition to being a wide receiver. So really only two years as a wide receiver, but really strong production. And it's real narrative street. But I like the fact that he played quarterback, I think it gives you a different advantage out there. If you know how a quarterback is seeing the field. This is the Julian Edelman narrative. A little bit. The Travis Kelsey narrative. The Mohammed Sanoon narrative. A little bit. A little bit. Just the more knowledge you can get about the entirety of the football team. Josh Jacobs narrative. Did you know that? Really? He was a high school quarterback. Jacobs was a high school quarterback. Are you thinking of Montgomery was too? Oh, that is who I was thinking of Montgomery was doing. That's why I didn't know. David Montgomery was done an interview the other day. Wasn't he talking to Amman Ra? He was talking to Amman Ra. Was it that it? Yes, that shows hilarious because Amman Ra and his brother are on it.

I would say about half the show is them just mocking each other's teams and how they think their teams suck. But yes, Montgomery was like, they're like, what did you throw for? And it was like, oh, like 200 yards. You know, like he threw for like 200 yards. They were dunking on him. All right. So Mike, you got a wide receiver for us as well. Hungry for more? I have been pushed into this corner. So I will accept it with with hunger in my belly. It is T. Higgins. Current wide receiver one. This is kind of a hungry for what's left. Lots of opportunity. Lots of leftovers here. Yeah, that's a leftover situation. T. Higgins has, if you've been with the show over the last few years, T. Higgins has destroyed my soul in the League of Record for multiple years. And with these injuries, not being as productive as I think that he should be, because I do believe that he is a great player. But since.

Since his counterpart, Jamar Chase has come into the league, we've seen T without him five times. And in those five games, it is pure domination. It's from 10 points a game up to nearly 17, a climb of two receptions per game. Yardage jumps up almost, oh no, over 40 yards per game. So the fact that he, that's a small sample, of course, but it's, we're backed into this. situation. You are thumbs uping something. What are we got? Josh Jacobs. Oh, Jacobs was? High school dual threat quarterback. All right. Wow. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. We figured it out. I love it. I had moved on, but Al found it. So credit to Al, still trying to make up for last year. I love. Player who has become professional running back was a dual threat at the quarterback position. Weird. Weird how that happened. Yeah, just pocket passer, David Montgomery. But.

Like T. Higgins, to me, had already been shaping up to be a good pick at ADP. Regardless. With Chase there. Yeah, absolutely. Regardless of everything that was, like, Jamar Chase was still a top three pick. T. Higgins was looking like a great value where he was going. You didn't have to overpay where it was, you know, the last couple years. Last year, Jalen Waddle and T. Higgins, both being drafted really, really high expectations through the ceiling. And now they aren't there. And now we have all this. weird ambiguous stuff. Maybe you get a freebie week one. I think no matter what you probably do, because the reports I saw were now it's Jamar Chase could be trending to not playing. I'm going to hold out if I don't get a contract. But even if he gets the contract, what do you do if you're the Bengals? Put him right in that starting lineup. I don't know if you do. You do. As a full-time player, I don't know that he'll get his full allotment of snatch. That could be true. There could be some consequences from that.

I'm sitting here just like there was a time this offseason was dominated by not paying T. Higgins. And here we are with Jamar Chase. Yeah. Like this is not the first wide receiver that's been unhappy with this team. He just Higgins had to sign his deal and he's going to be moving on after the year. But the Bengals said, you know, Joe Burrow, we got you locked up and we're just going to play around with the wide receiver position. And it's a mess. There is a chart that if you mess around, you find out. And I think that they're about, they're hitting the apex of the find out part. It's unfortunate. The Bengals organization has, they've referred to that chart many times. The Bengals organization, the Bengals team as a whole, their ADP was, I think they're like they were one of my favorite most undervalued. I think T is undervalued, which I still feel weird, just calling them T.

I don't know why. I think Burrow is undervalued. I personally think Zach Moss is undervalued. So I wanted to talk about it before, but I was so scared by the situation, the vibes and the fact that why aren't you paying your players? But to each their own. All right. That was hungry for more presented by Uber Eats. Get almost almost anything for game day like tomorrow delivered with Uber Eats official on demand food delivery partner of the NFL order now. News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance. So we talked about Chase. That is the latest news, that it's trending towards the possibility. And again, this is media negotiation tactic 101. But it's getting, I mean, we got limited time. And the news today is Chase might not play. Like he might not play this weekend. Or he's willing to not play. Like he's not willing to come back and take snaps without a deal. And so.

You know, I'm with, I'm not going to not draft Jamar Chase. If it's a heads up in a full redraft between how far. Ammon Ra, I'm taking Amman Ra. You know, if it's, if you go further, if it's Jefferson or Chase, I'm taking Jefferson. And in our League of Record, for what it's worth, the top two names on the border, AJ Brown. and Jamar Chase. I do not, I think it's appropriate to take Brown over Chase regardless of the contract situation. Yeah, I think that's fair. This is, we cannot be living in this world where like everything's been perfect for Jamar Chase every single game of every single season. This is a player who, I mean, what's his highest fantasy finish at the position? I think it was probably a rookie year. He was five as a rookie 12 and then 13. He's missed games two straight years. So, you know, we know what he's capable of.

But there's really no reason you can't make a decision and say, I like A.J. Brown more. No, I think when you're talking about those tier one guys, the AJ Brown, the Amin Ra, for me, I'm a little hesitant with the Justice Jefferson, but I get it because he's the best. What about Garrett Wilson? Because I feel like that's in the same category. That's the tier of the Garrett Wilson, Alave, Drake, London, those guys. I'm not willing to do that. I'm not, because I can't imagine. I would squint a little bit at Wilson. The rest of them I'm with you. I just feel like you, you know, if you miss one week, whatever, you're going to have players miss a couple of games through the season. It sucks that it's week one, but whatever. Okay. All right, we have news. Guess what, guys? Kyle Pitts. Kyle Pitts is dealing with a hamstring injury. It was reported just now, but apparently it's been going on for a couple of weeks and hasn't affected him too much. I don't know how. I'm not a doctor, but like.

If my hamstring, it's either bugging me or it's not. It's not like, yeah, it's like 50% I'm out here practicing with 50% hamstring level. I don't know how this works, but you don't want to hear this, especially for a player whose major excuse since his rookie, you know, quote unquote, breakout thousand yards, but didn't get touchdowns. Did you just quote unquote a thousand yards? Yeah. Yeah, because it wasn't a good season for fantasy. It's a fair quote. I'm going to approve. He had a thousand yards as a rookie. And two touchdowns. And two touchdowns. I'm just saying no one was happy. The people that drafted the people that drafted Kyle Pitts as a rookie, they had a bust pick. If you finish it seven at tight end, it's not a breakout. No. Anyways, my point here is since that time.

All the excuses have been injury related. Oh, it was the was a PCL? Head, shoulders, knees, and toes. Yeah. And then it's like, oh, he couldn't turn left or whichever direction because he was coming back from that knee injury. Oh, yeah, the Zoolander. Yeah. And then, and now the hamstring. So it's. Hamstring. It's not what you want to hear. Yoohoo. I was finally, despite all of those comments, Mike, uh-huh. I was finally ready to pull that trigger in some of these drafts because he does represent this tremendous upside. with Kurt Cousins. But now I have pause again. Because if you're dealing with a hamstring, what are you going to do? Two tight ends? You're ready to go double tight end to start the year? I don't want that game. I get it. I'm just over here still blown away that 1,000 yards as a rookie tight end is not a breakout for you guys. It's not a breakout fantasy football season. That's what I meant. So it is for you. You think that was a breakout season? For the...

Has Kyle Pitts broken out in fantasy football? No, in football. Don't that? We're a fantasy football show. I feel like also. He is the second tight end ever as a rookie to hit a thousand yards. How many games did he play? Very, very good rookie season. Okay. He got an extra game. We don't care about that for the all time. As soon as we had a 17th game, everybody can do it. You guys are just blow torching. What if it's 18 games? Is you going to give the next guy the same credit? Yeah, if he hits a thousand. Oh my gosh. 50 games.

It's been a long time since those days. A long time. Three seasons. Let's do it on the field, Mr. Pitts. I don't know. Does it change your opinion of this hamstring injury, Mike? You're willing to pull the trigger? It makes me more concerned. Okay. Marshaun Lloyd didn't practice after practicing a couple days. They're giving them a day off. We don't know how. They said it was part of the plan and that it was on time. It's going to take time. Like it was. scheduled to miss. It was not a... It's good to hear that it wasn't like he went out, practiced, hurt himself worse. It was... This was the plan of bringing him back when he's going to practice when he's not. I don't know that he plays week one. I don't think he does. I think he might miss a couple weeks. And then the compounded news here is the other backup running back for Green Bay. Oh, my goodness. Emmanuel Wilson was limited Tuesday with a hip injury. And now their dual threat quarterback is going to go ham. I believe Josh Jacobs has the most...

total touches at running back over the last three years. He has been the most workhorse capable, and the team has come out and said, literally, yeah, that's what he does. He's fine. If we have to do that, we'll just do it. They have to do it. Over the first few weeks, Josh Jacobs will be very good. I don't know how he's not a workhorse. All of the running backs on this roster are injured except for him. And if you tell me that the biggest threat to Josh Jacobs on a competitive playoff team is a... currently injured rookie that has to acclimate and become a part of the offense, I think that's going to last a lot longer than a few weeks personally. Yeah. It was a late. Late surge. I don't like the late surge for Josh Jacobs. But I'm in. Yeah, my worry is the second half of the year. Ty Chandler has been announced as the kick returner for the Vikings. That's not the fun one. The Bengals announced Chase Brown is the kick returner for the Bengals. That's not the fun one.

Blake Corum was listed as the primary kick return. Oh my God. This value is over. You can't draft Blake. We're all going to die. He's returning kicks. Oh, man. Why even be on the team? You know what? I'd be a lot happier if it was flipped. If it was Kyron returning kicks and quorum returning punts. Because the kickoff is safe now. The kickoff is completely changed. So the punts, you've got to get knocked out. Well, you're a fair catch. Yeah. If it's a fair catch, have anybody else do it. Short hands. Okay. You trust his hands. Yeah. No, you know, that's not wrong. This is not even news. I mean, a rookie returning kicks is called NFL football. It's news in the fact that people wanted to react to Kyran. They should have reacted to Kyran. Then you should react to this. No.

Not at all. He's a rookie. He's a backup. He should return kicks. You're starting running back. Okay. Let me ask you this. Okay. Name all the other starting workhorse running backs of return punts in the NFL. Go. I'll wait. I can do some research, but it's going to be very low. Go ahead. What now? Take on returning puns? Just to be clear. Jimere Gibbs returning puns? Just to be clear. You do. You can't just say player, you have to say running back because Antonio Brown or those guys. Oh, totally different. Starting running. Starting. Yes, it is different. How is it different? Because the workload on a workhorse running back, you're not given your wide receiver, you know, 22 carries a game. It's a big difference. This is why you've never seen it. This is a story because no one's ever done it. I can't think of other than you telling me, Kyron, who wasn't their starter when he did it, did it last year. I can't think of another running back. In fact, if you went through the top.

the top five rounds of running backs. I don't think you're going to find one. We will see. We will see. Kyron returning kicks tells me it's a committee. That's what it is. It's going to be a committee. And I'm not just saying this to be like hot takey on the show. I traded Kyron away for Gibbs in our League of Record after the news. And there are those out there that think that some people reacting to that news is absolutely crazy. And that's fine. Kiron may go out. And by the way, he plays Gibbs Sunday night football week one. We're going to put it to the test. He may go out and just light the league on fire again. Or it could be a committee with Corum and Ronnie Rivers. So where have you moved Kyron rankings wise? Like in your head, what tier is he in now? Now that he is guaranteed in a committee, what do you see as his output? I put Gibbs above him. I mean, Gibbs was already above him. Yeah.