Starts of the Week, Wk 3 Matchups, Boom Boom

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Robinson, and you're listening to the Fantasy Footballers podcast. To the Fantasy Footballers podcast, coming to you from Draft.com Studios, with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Ah, welcome in. So excited to be with you this morning. The Fantasy Footballers, Jason Moore is here. Yeah, yeah, I am here. That is correct. Wow.

Well, I just look, in preparation for this show. Yeah. I'm already, I mean, the show's rolling. I'm still doing research. Digging in deep because I want to, you know. That's how they normally do it on the tests at school. You want to be doing your study right up. Right. Right before the test. But I'm just, I'm browsing here the game log of 2015 for Ryan Fitzpatrick. Dude was great. He had three games that whole year where he didn't throw multiple touchdowns. And in one of those, he threw 300 yards.

This was Decker and Marshall? Yeah. And a Noon. Okay. Well, Godwin, D. Jacks? I was considering O.J. Howard, Mike Evans. I was considering how difficult I find it mentally to rank Ryan Fitzpatrick because of our upcoming quick question. And no longer. No longer true. I thought you were going to say because of beard bias, which is one of the reasons I can't. I have a hard time working with Mike. I can't trust that. I grew up. I grew up in an environment where we didn't tolerate.

Men with beards. Not of that length. No, that's a good, uh, that's a good environment, Andy. Yeah. Right. Right. Uh, Mike is here. Hey. Do you, are you having any deep contemplations on Ryan Fitzpatrick this morning? Oh, that's his beard. That's his beard. That's his beard rubbing. I don't know if that's going to come across on the audio podcast. Just turn it up. It was, crank it. It was Mike saying no with his beard. I got beard kisses for my microphone.

We have a great show today. Fantasy forecast starts of the week. Jason's boom boom kicker. We did a Reddit AMA yesterday. And one of the first questions was, look, why is your audio quality so great? And then, you know, it's so that we can capture the beer. That's, we, you have to cover your bases. All right, quick question for week three.

Who's been the hardest player for you to rank? Okay, you can go to the website, the fancy footballers.com, use the start sit tool, click on the ranking, see who we have ranked for week three. Who's been the hardest player for you to rank? Oh, certainly not Ryan Fitzpatrick. Who's moving up? Yeah, no, for me, I would say it is Carson Wentz. I am not afraid, you know, I said this yesterday. I'm not afraid of.

him coming back, but I am a little worried about the weapons. I mean, whenever your team goes out and signs Jordan Matthews, you know you've got an issue. Hey. Darren Sproles might not play, which, you know, is a great, you know, pass catching running back. So if it's just Agalore, and if Agalore goes to the outside because of Jordan Matthews, there's just slight concern here. But the matchup is good. Carson Wince is good. And so I'm, I'm.

I'm pretty confident in him, but there's a smidge of worry. Certainly. The first game back. Yeah, first game back. I will jump in here. The hardest player for me to rank New England Patriots running back. Rex Burke had, Rex Birkenstocks, Rex Goadhead. What do we do? Rex benchhead. What do we do with him? Because week one, he came out, played 50% of New England snaps.

at the running back position had 21 opportunities against the Houston Texans. Then he had the weird injury week. He was in the concussion protocol. What was happening? He came out. He actually started the game and then vanished because the New England Patriots were in such a negative game script that everything went in the favor of James White. And so now what do you do? Because this is a great matchup.

for the for the Patriots they should be they should have a a nice lead over the Detroit lines this weekend Sony Michelle just got back in right made his first appearance last week I'm sure that was part of what ate into Rex Burkhead and now that you know presumably he's even more healthy and could take more volume it's a problem there's a too many variables for like for my company look you you probably have to you might have to start it if you are in a situation where

You know, there are a number of injured running backs. There are people that maybe you don't have confidence in. But let's put it to the test, right? I mean, we all have Burkhead ranked outside the top 24. We have them in the 30 range this week, which is, you know, that's Peyton Barber, Isaiah Crowell range. Yeah, I have him back to back with Carillon Johnson. And so that should show, you know, carry on is the third on a depth chart and is not a guy that you want to start yet. I would start Burkhead over Carrion. I would too.

He is ahead in my rankings by one. Mostly because I think New England's going to be ahead in this game. That's why it's hard to rank you. And Theo Riddick's going to go out there and ruin Jason's life. Yeah. That's true. I think that's what he does. I'm going to stick with the Patriots. The hardest guy for me to rank this week. Maybe the rest of the season is going to be Chris Hogan. Now, he had one reception in week one. He had three last week. Now, two of them were touchdowns.

But four receptions on the year is not what we expected from Chris Hogan going into week three. He's not been the go-to target monster that we hoped for. And look, I have them lower than the other two guys in this office. I have him at 22 this week against Detroit. Jason's up at 15. Mike, you got him at 18. I just have a problem with Hogan right now. And look, I would try to get rid of him. That's what I would do because...

Coming off a two touchdown week, Edelman's going to be back. Yes, Gordon may not play this week or he may be very limited, and it's going to take time for Gordon to get involved from a target and snap count percentage standpoint. But he's still going to be there, and he's still going to be involved. So when you talk about all the different pieces, now is the time that I'd try to get rid of Chris Hogan. What do you guys think? Yeah, I get...

Your argument for the arrow trending down on Chris Hogan as the season progresses with Gordon and Edelman coming back. I am not worried about, you know, I've got him as my wide receiver 15 this week. So I expect a big week from Hogan. So if you're not able to capitalize on his five-target three reception multi-touchdown game this past week, I think you might have a great opportunity next week. If he puts up another good game in Detroit, which I think he will.

you'll be able to get more and have more people interested in Chris Hogan. Yeah, Hogan is a bit baffling similar to Burkhead because we're only two games in, very small sample, and it's hard to make any conclusions from that Jacksonville game. No one on the Patriots offense was lighting things up. Rob Gronkowski got completely shut down. James White led the team in targets. I mean, it's hard to really gleam anything from that data.

No, that makes a lot of sense. And it normally takes New England a little bit of time on both sides of the ball to figure out their rhythm and what they're doing. Well, they're so old. It's just they have to ease into it. Yeah. It takes plants a really long time to grow. It's true. Speaking about the plant, man. He's got to get the leaves out. Got to get those beams of light. Photosynthesis. Thank you, Mike. Bill Nye. Boy like Borough.

Twitter at the FBF Ballers. You can follow Mike's science takes over there. They're hot. Yeah, very, very impressive. The Fantasy Footballers.com's the website. I mentioned it earlier. And we want to invite you to join thefoot.com, our fantasy football community. This is, look, we're an independent podcast. We always have been. 600 plus episodes. We plan to stay that way. It gives us the unique opportunity to.

iterate and improve and build this show around you, right? It's built around the Foot Clan. It's built around helping you win your league, enjoy your league more. At the end of the day, we want you to make us part of your fantasy football experience and we hope to add value every single day so that you enjoy fantasy football more. And that means...

Part of that's winning. Part of that's how you play. Part of that's just thinking and talking about it. This show, a lot of people don't know this if you're new. This show was born out of the three of us at our previous job almost 10 plus years ago. Every day at lunch we would go out and torture the programmers by talking fantasy football all lunch long. Oh, I felt so bad, but I couldn't stop because I love fantasy football so much.

Yeah. So, I mean, it was born out of that passion of loving the game. And that's where this show came from. So we invite you to join our community filled with thousands of people that are just like us. Sit down at the table with us every day. We really appreciate all the support from everybody else. Yeah. And that's why we build special tools for the Foot Clan. We've got, you know, the premium projections, the flex rankings, the consistency charts, all of those tools available. And an extra episode where we just answer your questions, any question.

that you have. So let's get into the news. News and notes from around the league. And that was jointhefoot.com. That's how you can come and join the community. All right. Steve Wilkes, Cardinals head coach, said Larry Fitzgerald is going to play in week three against Chicago. He's at home. Jason, I read some of your advice on Larry Fitzgerald yesterday, and it was all based around if he's at home, you're okay starting him.

Do you feel that way this week against the good Chicago defense? I do. I think that the Chicago defense is good. The pass rush is going to be good. But Larry is, last year, he went to the Los Angeles Rams and put up three for 30.

Okay? Last year? Last season. When he had 100 receptions and a thousand yards, he still had a bad game in Los Angeles. I realize this offense looks worse, but I think you can play Larry Fitzgerald at home in front of this crowd against the Bears. I mean, for sure. Now, if you're in a standard league, I'm less excited about it because touchdowns seem like they will be lower than the last several years for Larry Fitzgerald or non-existent. But if you're in a PPR league, half PPR, Larry's fine.

Melvin Gordon's practicing in full case Keenham was not practicing Wednesday. Precautionary do not practice and he's expected to practice Thursday and play Sunday in Baltimore. A reminder on Fridays we do in and out and we give you our judgment call on who's going to play and who's not going to play. Evan Ingram was limited by an ankle injury on Wednesday. We'll cover that tomorrow. Geo limited in Wednesday's practice. That's interesting because... They're just saving him up. The workload for Geo and...

Walton, I'm telling you, it's going to be more split than you think. I do not think that Gio Bernard is going to carry the bona fide load in this game. I do. Yeah, I do as well. I get it. I get it. That's fine. But I'm just giving you my take on that. Mike McCarthy said Aaron Jones is going to play. He's active. He's going to play behind Jamal Williams and Ty Montgomery. That was McCarthy's quote. He said, Jamal and Ty have played good football. I know what Aaron gives us, but his role will be secondary.