Week 16 Studs & Duds + Monday Punday, The Owl and the Andy - Fantasy Football Podcast for 12/27

I'm starting to feel very uncomfortable because every answer was Justin Jackson and it was, I said, I'm like, okay, here we are. I've pushed all the chips into the middle of the table because the answer to almost nearly every question I'm getting is Justin Jackson. Thank God. He came through. When I, I got to give my 10-year-old credit who's on his way to a title game. In the middle of the week when I told him, Austin Eckler was declared out or, you know, towards the weekend.

I expected, it's his favorite player, Austin Eckler's his favorite player. And I expected, you know, tears practically. And he just looked at me and he goes, hmm, well, I got Justin Jackson. And he was right. I mean, goodness. Fantasy playoffs, when you have the backup running backs, you win championships with these guys oftentimes. Every single year we do, I mean, our league, Mike, that we are.

going to the championship in. We've lost Derek Henry and Dobbins and Kareem Hunt and now James Robinson and every running back. But it's Sony Michelle and Rashad Penny. It's these guys who just, they're coming up out of nowhere. And nobody was out of nowhere more than Rex Burkhead this week, who was our DFS dart throw of the week in the DFS pass if you're playing along there. But Rex Burkhead went nuclear, 150 and 2 on the ground against the Chargers.

Who can't play defense for what it's worth. No. I don't know if you're chasing this one. I don't feel like I'm chasing Burkhead as much against San Francisco next week. Not nearly as much, no. What about this? Go ahead. What about Andy's champion? Andy's superstar against Al Borland. Damien Harris. Oh, brother. Oh, man. You all have yourself a game. Yeah, 18 for 103.

Touchdowns for Mr. Damien Harris. He gets to play Jacksonville. I mean, Harris is excellent. Like, he isn't excellent running back. My biggest takeaway here, though, is, and we've seen the numbers. Buffalo had been falling apart. But, like, what happened? What happened to the Buffalo rushing defense? They did enough to win the game. I get it. But, like, over the last month and a half, it just, they have gotten destroyed.

by fantasy running backs. And I don't think that was a letdown that I would have ever seen coming, given that the way the beginning of the year started. Yeah, it's been crazy. Yeah, it's similar to the Steelers. I mean, if you remember through the first half of the season, the Steelers were team, you did not.

play against. You did not want to. And then you look at the trends. If you go to our streamfinder on the fantasy footballers.com, you can see like the trends and very easily look how different parts of the season are going. But to me, what's happened since week 10 for the Buffalo Bills, when you look at that and you go almost every week, they're giving up a monster performance, you can trust it. You can say, okay, something has happened here where...

They're not stopping the run anymore. When you look at, you know, Chase Edmonds had a huge game, very Justin Jackson-esque, had a touchdown, had nine targets, eight for 71. You know, when I look at these studs, David Montgomery, a big game, Sonny Michelle, Rashad Penny, you're really asking the question is, can I roll this back, right? Can I, can I do this again next week with a player like Burkhead, Damien Harris, Chase Edmins? You know, Sonny Michelle has Baltimore next week. He seems locked.

Yes. And then Rashad Penny, you know, against Detroit next week could end up being like Sony Michelle and Rashad Penny were first round duds that may win championships for a ton of people. Yes. Rashad Penny, I mean, I was, I was very guilty this week with him against Chicago, with the way it looked last week where he just getting banged up again is I don't know if I can really trust Rashad Penny as more than anything like a, I guess he's a desperate low end running back too.

But Monster Week, and now coming up against Detroit, Penny looks like he will be a, just that waiver stud that jumps in your lineup and helps you win a championship. All right, with wide receiver studs, we have to talk about those bangles. T. Higgins, Jamar Chase, 23 targets between them. Higgins went 12 for 194 and 2. And Jamar Chase went 7 for 125 and 1. What a loser.

Only 125 yards? It's funny because you start to look at these two and you know Jamar Chase is going to get drafted higher than T. Higgins next year. No question. But on any given week with the talent, skills, and ability of these players, it reminds me of like, you know, Larry Fitzgerald was always drafted ahead of Anquan Bolden. But they're both talented enough to dominate a game. And so, you know.

It's going to be hard next year not being on the Higgins side of things when you have two players that are extraordinary, but one is drafted lower. Well, and it's great to see now as the season has progressed, Joe Burroughs gotten fully past, you know, whatever injury and same with T. Higgins, who struggled with some injuries in the beginning of the year. It's awesome to see the Bengals figuring out how to use both of these players so that you can.

confidently start both of them. I know a couple Thursdays ago on our never not working segment, we deep dove on what the reality is of that wide receiver core. In the beginning of the year, it was all Jamal Chase and T. Higgins was gone, and that's just not the case anymore. I think going forward for years, you're going to have two great options and really as great as T. Higgins has been, and really his whole career. I mean, I remember...

leaving last year thinking the two players I wanted to make sure I had was T. Higgins and C.D. Lamb. And then coming in this year, obviously, it changed with Jamar Chase added to the team. But you're talking about you're not going to game plan T. Higgins when Jamar Chase is there. Jamar Chase is the one that you're afraid of the real taking it over the top, breaking plays, destroying your game. And T. Higgins is just the beneficiary forever.

Devante Adams 13 targets, 10 for 114 and 2. Al got to use him to demoralize me. A.J. Brown, 16 targets, 11 for 145 and 1. It was fantastic. Do you know he had a 55% target share? Hold on, yeah, hit that button because it was like lost in the, a little bit in the shuffle of the, you know, the...

The holiday weekends. His activation came down to the wire. I was on Twitter because it was up to like 3 p.m. our local time when they could actually activate him. And it was 250 something. And there was still nothing. And it was, oh, well, if it's this down to the wire, are they really going to put him in? And then when you just are so late to activate him, will he really go in there and be the guy?

And, of course, you know, the time rolls through. AJ Brown is officially activated. And so if you had the fantasy courage to plug him in, congratulations, because he dominated not just the targets, but 11 for 145 and 1. It was a fantastic game for Mr. Brown. He had 73% of the wide receiver target share.

Like when he's dropping back, he's going, where is A.J. Brown? And it's, it's great to see going forward. Miami and Houston to finish the year out. You have to include Alman Ross St. Brown in the, yes, the rookie stud category this year where, you know, he's ending the year on fire. Al played him in our matchup. Oh, wait, no, he didn't, did he? No, he did not. But to his, I thought he did. To, yeah, that's a good troll there.

to the credit there for Owl as soon as when it was not Jared Goff and it was Tim Boyle. There was no way I would have played him. I am guilty. I bailed out. I don't know how you play St. Brown with that dude as the quarterback, even though it's the Atlanta Falcons. And then another game of 11 targets. That's a complete month. Four straight games.

of 11 or more targets for St. Bray. Do you want to know what his pace, his season-long pace is over the last month, this rookie Amun Rae St. Brown playing for a bad offense with mediocre to bad quarterback play? He would be on pace for 195 targets, 1445 yards and 12 touchdowns. He has been dominating for the last month, so he is a player you need to pay attention to going into the draft season next year. How much of this?

should be attributed to Dan Campbell taking over play calling. Because he took the play calling away. And I guess DeAndre Swift's injury has got to be significant. And Hawkinson. Yeah. And Hawkinson. Yeah, that's true. But it is nice to see that, like, they're making a priority to get him the ball no matter who's the quarterback. Yeah, I definitely think that the targets are caused because of Hawkinson and Swift being gone.

But what we're paying attention to and loving is that the talent, this isn't too big for him. The rookie has come in and while the targets are being forced his direction, he's dominating with this. So going forward, I mean, this is really promising for the lion's offense next year. If they got healthy and could do something about the offensive line with Swift and Hawkinson and Amin-Raw St. Brown and whoever they add, there's some hope.

They need to add a big bodied wide receiver in the draft. That's what they need. They need somebody, T. Higgins size to complement how, you know, Ammon Rae St. Brown is undersized. And so that would be helpful, I think, for their offense. Diggs and Cooper, two of the stalwarts of your fantasy teams, both put up seven for 85 and one. So that was nice in your fantasy semifinals. And then Debo, of course, went back to the success through the air category, nine for 159.

Incredible. I doubt many people played Isaiah McKinsey or Byron Pringle, but they both had nice weeks, and you might have pivoted into them out of desperation. McKinsey will be interesting next week. So was that, Gabe Davis is, he is out next week against Atlanta. He will be out. He will be out. And then I would imagine that Beasley's out then as well. Yeah. But I mean, the matchup against the Atlanta Falcons, if McKenzie's a full-time player.

He would be interesting. There were a couple of players that people pivoted to that ended up the wrong players, which was like Isaiah McKenzie was better than Emmanuel Sanders. Some might have pivoted into Emmanuel Sanders. And then Tyler Johnson. And who got completely goosed for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Tony O'Brien. Tony O'Brien.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so Devante Smith ended up five for 80 in a touchdown, Cooper Cup, 10 for 10-109. And that feels like a down game for him. What a bad game. I know he set the NFL record for most consecutive 100-yard receiving games, but no touchdown, which is both disappointing and a little embarrassing at this point. Yeah. So.

Tight ends, Mark Andrews is unstoppable. No matter who the quarterback is, he's done it with Lamar. He's done it with Huntley. Now he did it with Josh Johnson. I'm up next. I want to play quarterback. I know where to throw the ball. I'm going to the giant Mark Andrews. Who will, now that Kelsey lost this week, he's going to finish as the number one tight in on the season. And I feel better about our dynasty trade, Andy. Yeah, you smoked me. Dalton Schultz, 8 for 82 and 1.

So another nice game for the doctor. He was yelling. Gerald Everett, four for 68. And Kyle Pitts was six for 102. And of course, no touchdowns. He doesn't do that. He has 949 receiving yards in the year, which is now the second most in NFL history. He is 127 behind Dicca with two games to go. So if he sets that record, that will be with an extra game. But nevertheless,

What's crazy about Pitts' season is that I think Jason and I will be simultaneously correct about him, where Jason's point at the beginning of the year was that, well, he's a rookie tight end, so he's not going to do enough for the draft capital. And he's right. He scored one time on the year. The one touchdown has disintegrated him. And my point before the season was that he'll probably have the best rookie season ever, which is going to be right on a number of metrics, but it won't be enough to have...

You know, if he had two more touchdowns, he'd be the tight end four on the year. But still did enough this week, 6402 to keep pace with a lot of the other tight ends out there. Yeah, I mean, the talent going forward, obviously in his rookie year for what you had to pay up for, I think most people regret the draft pick and would have used that capital elsewhere. But as a rookie to really show out and dominate yardage-wise, receiving-wise,