Transcript of Preseason Hype + Fantasy Curses - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/14

Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your hosts Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright.

Ah, welcome in. Friday, August 14th, the Fantasy Footballers Podcast. Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and the Bear back again.

We have to assume that Mike has the lettuce diarrhea thing. Hope is— I'm sorry, I said assume. Hope, right? That's the word we're looking for. Yeah, we have to hope.

Thank you, Al, I think.

He was close. He's close to coming back. He'll be here Monday for sure.

Yeah, he's in preseason form. You know what I mean? And he's a man of few words. He hasn't really even given us details about what he's—

No idea.

The only thing he said is he's like, it's whatever he's got, it hit him like a ton of bricks and he's down for the count. And we choose to believe he has the lettuce diarrhea thing.

Hope, Andy.

We hope he's got—

Hope he has the lettuce diarrhea.

The funny thing is, is the difference between him being infected He wouldn't know. He wouldn't know the difference.

He's had the lettuce diarrhea thing for 15 years. Yeah, it's been a long time. That's how he keeps in shape.

Yeah. I think one of the ways they treat that is the hot salsa at Chipotle.

Yeah.

I think that's one of the treatments. Something like that. We have plenty to talk about though, Jason.

We've got preseason games going on.

I mean, maybe LaFleur is a good coach. I don't know. The Cardinals quarterbacks are like 49 for 4. 55 in the preseason.

Maybe, maybe, maybe it was preseason defenses.

We will, we will tell, we will talk through what we saw last night. That'll be a big part of the show. We will get into some mailbag questions and right here, right now, Jay, just start using that brain of yours to decide which of our doosers will do the mailbag drop and why. So just think about that.

We got a while before we have a little bit of time. I will, I will work on it. I'm going to workshop that.

Keep them all guessing. Yeah. And I, but I got good reasons for all three, right? I want you to pick one and then give us the reason when we get to the mailbag. And then we'll find out together. It's really good. Let me see. I'm looking at the faces.

I want to see who's sweating the most. Happy, happy.

Three happy people.

Okay. Oh, see, he's— Josh, give him the thumbs up.

Josh is playing the reverse psychology game. Our Megalashow, our live event here in Phoenix presented by SiriusXM and sponsored by GMC and PetSmart Friday. The 28th, it's 2 weeks away. That's 2 weeks from today. We'll be live in Phoenix, 800+ foot clan. There are a handful of seats you can still grab at ballerslive.com, but that is coming up. Super excited to be in person with you before the season kicks off. We'll be doing bold predictions. You'll be part of a live episode of the show.

You'll get to do the mailbag. Like right now, it's an honor. So whoever, whichever doozer I make do the mailbag today is an honor. I'm honoring them.

Yes.

Yeah, you are. And we want to honor everyone of the Foot Clan that will be at that live show. BallersLive.com.

Might not be honoring the ears of the listeners, but the people doing it, it's an honor. You can follow us on X at theFFBallers. Follow Mike at FFHitman, Jason at Jason Moore. I'm at Andy Holloway. And it's a great time to jump into our free Discord at BallersDiscord.com if you want to be part of the community. I don't know what that number's at. It's probably 60,000, 70,000 folks in there. Great place to find leagues, talk about your upcoming drafts. It's just a great community of human beings that you can check out. Our quick question of the day today, Jason, you ready for this?

I am ready.

Who is someone that's going to be annoyingly relevant in fantasy this year? So you might give this type of player a nickname like a snap goblin. Somebody that is just out there either stealing snaps from somebody else or stealing production from somebody else or just—

The Tyler Allgeier of the past and possibly the Tyler Allgeier of the present as well. My answer for this is there's two things that have to come together to make us really angry. One is you take a talented player and you put them on the bench in certain situations and two is the coach that is required to do such things. So to me it's Tyrone Tracy.

Oh, this is a Matt Nagy.

I mean, I do think by the end of the season, Skadaboo will have established it. But to start the season, like, I love Cam Skadaboo, loved his tape coming out. I mean, we've talked about that for, you know, a year and a half. And then he proved he was the dude that he was in college on the NFL field. He could continue to run people over. And and then unfortunate injury. And it looks like he should be the centerpiece of this offense. Him and Nabers should really be the engine that makes it work. But I just don't trust Matt Nagy. I think that Tyrone Tracy is an above average back. I mean, it does take a back behind the starter who is capable. They're not going to throw in, you know, a Zemir White and be like, go, you know, take over. But Algiers good. Blake Corum's good. Tyron Tracy's a good player. He's not a bad player.

It would be annoying if 2-minute drills were Tyron Tracy's. Yeah, that would be annoying.

Involved in the passing game and all of a sudden you're, you're sitting there with 14 opportunities a game for Skadaboo. You'll be really upset.

I have 2 names. One is Dontavian Wicks of the Eagles. I think that will be an annoyingly relevant player because he will stand in the way of what fantasy players want to see the most.

We're saying Makai Lemon.

Makai Lemon, like a rookie wide receiver having success. That's fun. You know, a kind of journeyman, rarely relevant player that switches teams.

Let me, let me push back on that. What if Wicks becomes a very relevant wide receiver flex play on a weekly basis? Would that— like, I don't see Tyron Tracy doing enough where you could start it. But what if Wicks is startable? Because I think that's in the range of outcomes here.

It's in the range of outcomes, but it'll still be annoying because the process of a wide receiver 2 or maybe the 3rd or 4th target on this team when you consider Goddard and Saquon, that player's probably not getting stronger over the back half as Mekhi Lemon gets healthier and more involved. So that's where I think it might be annoying because I don't know if you can ever count on him, but he will stand in the way of somebody. I also just want to mention this. This is more annoying, I think, just to like you guys or other people that don't want him to have any success for some reason. I think Jaylen Naylor is going to be annoyingly relevant for the Raiders.

So this is like, you think he's good.

I think he's better.

That will annoy me. I just, it would, it would very much annoy me.

To put it in the most plain stupid language possible, every offense plays 4 quarters and they have to have somebody go run routes on the outside and receive targets. And this team has got very few names that isn't, that aren't Brock Bowers that, but they're going to get the ball. And I think Jaylen Naylor will be an annoyingly relevant acquisition that I think will be, I think it's more likely that Jaylen Naylor is that flex guy that you can start than it is Dontavian Wicks. I think so.

I don't think so. I think Brock Bowers takes over, but that, but that would be annoying, wouldn't it? That would be super annoying. Other shout out names. I think if LaQuint Allen is involved for the Jacksonville Jaguars, oh man, everyone will be upset because it's like, if it's not Tuten, let it be Crawd. And if LaQuint Allen comes in for passing work, it's just going to be nobody. Kenny Gainwell, obviously. He was a thorn in the side for the Steelers backfield last year, leading the team in receiving. Bucky managers will be not happy there. And then we saw it in preseason, Charlie Kolar. He could end up being very, very, very annoying.

Why can't you say Kohler?

Well, now I'm going to go further.

It's not— you don't like—

it's Kolar.

It's not Kolar.

No, it's Kolar.

Like Kolarney songs?

Yes. Yeah, that's right.

Like a molar? Like you pull your molars?

Yes, exactly.

Dummy. All right. News time.

News and notes from around the league.

I've never heard that in my life until you said it yesterday. Yeah. I mean, every time I've ever heard Charlie Kohler's name.

Kolar.

Oh gosh.

Yeah. No, I just want.

And then yesterday you just invented. I mean, maybe. I'm going to leave the door open that I've said it wrong my whole life.

No, no, no, no, no.

Everybody else has said it wrong their whole life.

But that you don't need to leave that door open.

Okay. All right.

This is not, this is not inside information where I'm trying to correct you.

Okay. You don't, you don't have a video of like his mom when he was 3 years old referring to him with his last name. You know, this is, we had a preseason night.

Yeah. Lots of news.

I want to kind of go through. A ton of names and talk about some things that I saw, talk about what I loved, talk about some things I hated. I will start with what I kind of said at the top. It is kind of a weird thing to say because the Cardinals have the lowest projected win total like we've ever seen. It's 4.5 wins.

3.5.

3.5?

Yeah, it moved down. It opened at 4.5.

Okay.

Yeah.

So 3.5 is like—

unbelievably low.

And this is a 17-game season. We have not seen that in decades. So to say all that, through 2 weeks, their quarterback play, their offensive play calling, all of that stuff, even if vanilla against bad defenses, it's hard to ask for much more than what you've seen. Jacoby Brissett was perfect yesterday. Great touchdown pass to Marvin Harrison. You saw the week before how good Carson Beck was. Gardner Minshew was 12 of 14. The Cardinals are 49 of 55 or something like that. At the quarterback position. So I'm just saying like, and then what else you saw from Arizona last night was Jeremiah Love's debut. Electric. Yeah, he's like the minimum possible descriptor. 11 for 58, 3 for 14 comparisons to Adrian Peterson on the cuts. Amazing work in the receiving game. And to me, it's a headline move to have so much work given to Jeremiah Love. And not like just be splitting it with Tyler Allgeier the whole time, who did get work. But like, I don't know, it gave me more confidence that this is just something that's going to be obvious and in place. Cardinals are going to be trailing in a million games.

Jeremiah Love is going to be the pass catcher in all those situations. What I saw last night was, was a top back in the NFL and whether the opportunities are there or not, I'm just saying crack the door open that the Cardinals offense, even if their team sucks, their offense might be a lot better than people expect. Therefore, Jeremiah Love could be better than people expect.

Yeah, you, you can never shut the door on someone that talented. Every time he touches the ball, he will gain extra yards above expectation. There's just, he is, I mean, he's truly a sensational elite level. You're talking about the, the Bijan, the Gibbs, you know, the Gente, those guys that are drafted there. You know, going all the way back, Zeke and those types where it's like, yeah, this is a difference maker that other guys can't replicate it. So it's just a matter of how many times does he touch the ball and is he catching the ball or getting carries more and then how many opportunities around the goal line. That is the whole argument against Jeremiah Love. No, nobody out there is saying he's not, he's overrated. He's not. He's unbelievably good.

We broke down everything that it takes to be a running back one in fantasy two shows ago.

You average 10 touchdowns. You get probably not going to happen.

Well, I think you could easily get 10 combined touchdowns. That's right.

It's combined touchdowns.

Yeah. So I mean, I think that's an easy— I mean, if Gente can do it last year, this is— Jeremiah Love's a better player as a runner and a passer than Gente. He is. In my opinion, they're not very close to me in terms of where I mean, they might be close, but I think Jeremiah Love is a better player. Mike talked about he scouted him better than Bijan. He scouted him better than, than Gente. I just think that 10 is, 10 is not out of the realm of possibility at all. We've had years and years of bad offense in Arizona where James Conner was a double-digit touchdown threat. So I, all I'm saying is like, what is the ceiling for Jeremiah Love? This is not the promise. This is the ceiling.

What do you think the ceiling is this year?

Honestly, I mean, I have— you said you didn't trust Matt Nagy in New York, right? What I saw last night was very encouraging to me, not just the play by Jeremy Love, the snaps with the starters, right? Why did you not see— if they were going to do the real stupid coaching mechanism, why did not— why didn't you see 50-50 snaps with Tyler Allgeier, the offseason acquisition?

Well, they did. The first quarter, they split carries. The first quarter, Algiers saw 3 carries on the first drive. So they, and so, you know, it's, it's, as the game went on, Love got much more work and is obviously the more explosive player.

I think the ceiling for him is like running back 5.

Yeah, it's around there. I mean, I feel like I put it closer to—

The floor is much lower than the guys being drafted in that range.

But I don't, I don't, I don't mind taking the shot on someone who is as talented as Jeremiah Love.

It was nice to see him on the field.

And LaFleur, this is the thing, like Nagy gives me no confidence. LaFleur gives me confidence that, hey, he's just going to try to score the most points he can with a bad team.

DeSean Stribling was awesome. I mean, he's 7 for 63 with the starters, pulled with, I think, 7 minutes left in the first half on 8 targets. This is an offense where this is what you wanted to see. This is the, this is why the ADP is going to rise. You have Mike Evans, who is an injury-prone older receiver who has never been a high-volume receiver in his career ever. He's a 70-80 catch guy. Ricky Pearsall is out for the season. Juwan Jennings is no longer a member of this team.

No.

So this is what you want to do. The opportunity is great. Take advantage of your opportunity to start.

What is so exciting about this? So the draft pick was mocked and the history of the 49ers was mocked. Reaching on guys who are not good enough for where they're drafting, especially in those like, you know, second, third round is there's, there's a laundry list. In fact, it seems like they did it already again this draft with Kaelen Black. However, that doesn't mean that they get everything wrong. The camp reports on Stribling have been outstanding. They've been saying he's the best wide receiver in camp. So to see that happen in the first preseason game, you go, okay, I mean, this guy was taken like, like 33rd or—

Yeah, 33rd.

Yeah. I mean, overall in the draft. So the capital is there. The opportunity is there. The question is, is the talent there? And the reports have been that it's been there. And then he shows up in the first game.

Super impressive. He has the speed. He has the size. He has the hands.

And I don't know that his ADP can go too high. Like it will rise, but he's so low in ADP that your average leagues probably won't draft him, which will keep his ADP just buried.

I'm going to the strip club.

Oh man.

I'm going to the strip club.

You naughty boy. You naughty boy.

So I was excited. Let me go to a bad, something bad I saw yesterday.

Okay.

That was the last possible thing I wanted to see from Cam Ward. Is what I saw yesterday. The Cam Ward, the Cam Ward, you're like, oh, it's a preseason game. That matters to me because we had a freshman year where there was decision-making challenges. And what I saw yesterday, I believe he was 5 for 12 passing, Jason. And he wouldn't take easy throws. Instead, he kept the backpedal game of getting the pass rush and, oh, I can backpedal out of this like Kyler does sometimes. I was disappointed and it really concerned me. It's one week. Maybe he comes out and he's better next week, but I didn't like what I saw from Cam Ward. It concerned me about the Carnell Tate, about that offense. And I've been optimistic about them, but it's all dependent. And we've said this a million times. It's all dependent on Cam Ward taking a step forward, not backwards or neutral.

Yeah.

Neutral is not good enough.

No, he has to take some step forward. But I do think that one preseason game is not enough to move me off of my belief in Carnell Tate.

Fernando Mendoza was 10 for 16, 97 yards and a touchdown to Jack Bash. Poor Mike, not here to celebrate it. But there you go.

It was nice to see. Yeah. Behind the scenes, I don't know if the Foot Clan is as aware. I know he loved Bash, especially if you listen to the Dynasty Show. Bash was one of the guys that Mike was really excited pre-draft and then surprisingly he got good draft capital and was like, okay, they saw what I see. And then he did nothing. In our Slack, any whisper of Jack Bash is like, we're back, baby.

Yeah, we're not.

No, but we're not.

Naylor, Tucker. I think Benson's better than Bash.

Mendoza looked good though.

Well, and people need to realize if Mendoza is what he's supposed to be, Brock Bowers will have stability for a decade. So that's an exciting proposition for him. Like the Cardinals with Trey McBride, we don't have that answer long term. So when you look at a dynasty league, if you weren't already on the Bowers over McBride side, just keep that in mind. You will have stability if Mendoza works out at the quarterback position with a play caller and head coach that you trust. And Clint Kubiak. All right, you want another, um, where do you want to go? Negative. I got a real negative for you. Okay. Uh, you can probably close the door on Arondi Gadsden being a thing.

Oh, that's a big one.

I mean, he played 27 snaps and they sat their starters. So Charlie Kohler, David Njoku rested with all the starters, and here was Gadsden playing 27 snaps.

Yeah, the, all the reports, this is so We talk about this time of year, don't overreact to preseason, which I would, I would urge you on the Cardinals front. Like that seems like the classic, look how good this team is. Do you remember when the Steelers were just unbelievable? They didn't have a drive that didn't end in a touchdown for the entire preseason with Kenny Pickett. They were so good and it was, and we kind of bought in and it was like, oh, it was preseason. However, the things that we say pay attention to are things that continue from drumbeats in camp, like stripling, and also snap orders and like who is out, who's rested with starters. The camp reports on Gadsden is that he has not been playing with the starters at all. And then the Chargers come out and they rest their starters and Gadsden plays. So that is really bad news.

Yeah, it's not great. Not that he was high on our boards anymore, but it was kind of confirmation of what we expect to see. Honestly, Charlie Kohler is like entering the deep sleeper category because you think he could be out there all the time. And you talked about yesterday, he had collegiate production. He got paid a bunch of money. Njoku is not in his prime. Like you could get it like Will Disley had relevance with Herbert.

Yeah. I mean, like one. So did Gadsden. Herbert's good at throwing to the tight end. And so. This is an offense I think you want pieces of. It just doesn't seem it's going to be Gadsden. It could be Njoku. It could be Kolar.

Oh gosh, don't do this.

I'm going to do it.

Isaac Teslop played. All the starters for Detroit rested.

Teslop. You know what I'm saying?

You're in real special form. Yeah. I love that. So we just got, for those listening, we just got what looks like all of our monitors broke because that was the Teslop drop minus the sound. Yeah.

So for the audio listening audience, you're like, what? What? Yeah.

No, there was just like, it's like our monitors broke.

Interesting.

It's supposed to be an electrical effect. Man. Does he want another chance at this?

I'm just wondering as I'm deciding who does the mock, you know, the mailbag drop here. Maybe I should penalize Jeremy on that one. Hmm. Jeremy's trying to say Dropbox broke it. I don't know about that. Okay, it's one of Jeremy.

It's Kohler, Jason. It's Kohler.

I just, I know, I know it's Charlie Kolar, but I'm just saying it confirmed it.

All right. Anything else from the headlines?

I mean, we have, I would say a couple things.

Hampton and Keaton Mitchell sat as well with the starters. Kamani Vidal played. He's definitely a depth piece.

There's good news, bad news with the Packers and Jaden Reed specifically. The good news is they played a ton of 11 personnel, which that's when Jaden Reed's on the field. The bad news is when they went down to 2 wide receivers, he wasn't there. It was Golden. Matthew Golden is in 2 wide receiver. And I will say this right now, they don't have Tucker Kraft. When Tucker Kraft comes back, that is more likely to have 2 wide receivers on the field, 12 personnel.

And by the way, Kraft will be there week 1.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just saying right, right this second. The reason they were playing so much 11 personnel. I wouldn't look into that like, oh, they're going to be all 11 personnel anymore. They didn't have Kraft yet. And this one's really stupid. I mean, this is, this is an irrelevant one, but I just, for some reason, it, it, it's one of the things I was watching for, but like the first play, you know, the honorary, who gets the honorary first snap? Jaylen Warren got it over Rico Dowdle. So I don't know. That's, I feel like that backfield has the potential to have real fantasy relevance for where those guys are drafted. But I just don't know which way to go. Like, I'm like coin flip right now. So I was paying attention and I saw Jaylen Warren out. I was like, okay, maybe.

Is that how you have him statted? Warren ahead?

I do have Warren ahead right now. More passing.

Now Mike and I are both Rico.

Yeah. And I don't blame you. I don't blame you at all. My argument has always been that I think that when push comes to shove, Aaron Rodgers is going to want the The not, not even the better pass catcher, they can both catch the ball. But Jaylen Warren's such like a veteran. He's going to be in the right place, the right time, the right pass protection. He's just, Jaylen Warren does everything right. Rico plays well and then somehow gets benched. So I assume maybe he doesn't. So that's where I think I'm on the Warren side.

Yeah. Yeah. We, we got to draw the line there. We are going to take a quick break and then come back. And get Jason's analysis of who's doing the mailbag drop.

Important.

Can I, can I like just contribute a few thoughts to your process?

Yeah, no, I've got a, I've got a, I've got a chart here.

Mike's not here. Jay Grizz. Oh, he said he's not going to do it.

Okay.

The mailbag drop. So we've got the three doosers. We've got Al who obviously had that huge snafu a moment ago.

Yeah, that was a factor in one, actually minus two because he's tried to skirt it with Dropbox.

Yeah, blame something else. And then, then you got Josh and look, he's always deserving.

Always. He's, he's minus two for age and baldness.

Age and baldness.

And honestly, I'm giving him another minus one for that thumbs up. He gave a thumbs up earlier like you could call on me.

Right.

Give me a—

yeah, that was annoying. He's annoyingly relevant. He's the annoyingly relevant deucer too.

Yeah.

And then we have the Falcons who, I mean, it goes without saying what happened at the end of last yesterday's show. Excuse making. I don't even know about the, about your video and like, oh, I'm going to take like 3 days to figure the traces out.

He did finally get it out.

Yeah. You don't want to know why? Because I called him out on the show.

Exactly. And I went, blah, blah, blah, blah. Good work. Yeah. The video's out if you want to see me golf poorly and give a few stat nuggets. Actually, the video. I think is, is, is doing well. I'm not too ashamed of it, which is so shameful.

Right. You should be ashamed of not being ashamed.

Yeah. But I actually am not ashamed. I think it was a good video as well produced. And so for the honor of how good that was, it's definitely the Falcon. I mean, what an honor I'm giving you. Mailbag. Oh, we're about to have someone fired on live TV.

Oh my gosh.

We are about. Can I explain?

Did you not understand that Falcon was supposed to do that?

Okay. So Matt, Jeremy suggested that all of us do the mailbag together, which we were fine with. And then Matt DMs me.

Oh, do you guys own the company?

Matt DMs me and says, let's not jump in with Jeremy so that Jeremy winds up doing it all by himself.

Matt.

Oh, that's true. Jeremy and I were talking saying, hey, we're not going to screw each other over. And then Matt didn't do it because he thought we were all going to do it together.

I've got a fix for that. It would be kind of—

Is it change of employment?

No, change of employment is part of it. I got a fix for it. I'm not hitting that drop again, but you're going to be doing this. You're going to do the music. You're going to do the music and the mailbag.

Get the camera over there.

All right.

So we're going to be doing the whole thing.

You're going to be the guitar. You know how the drop sounds. And this, keep in mind, and I, your job might depend on it. So let's go. Let's get into the mailbag.

All right. Mailbag.

Yes. Oh, you know, it's good when, when you can hear Al Borland probably on our microphone.

I promise you are responsible for more than 2 car accidents right now.

All right.

We're in the mailbag.

We're in the mailbag. We're going to get it started. Lots of questions. Lots of things to talk about. I will say that was terrible. I mean, like, like you didn't hit any of the beats. Like you, you're in here for every show.

He's heard it before. He's heard it right before.

And he went, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. Real Kolar situation. All right, Kolar. Matthew writing in, the Madden curse has given many reasons for us to believe it is somewhat true. Can we really be high on Caleb Williams? And then I've got the chart here of the Madden.

There's a lot of curses.

Well, listen, here's what the Madden curse really is. And I don't know if we just want the joke answer. Here's what the Madden curse is. It's called you can't be the best at the game 2 years in a row. That's the Madden curse. So was Saquon Barkley cursed last year? Because Saquon Barkley wasn't— he didn't do it. He didn't win the Super Bowl and finish number 1 at the position. He was okay. Wasn't good.

Was he okay?

I mean, I would say he's a medium level of curse.

But I'm just saying, Saquon Barkley last year. Let's say we didn't expect him to be, I mean, he was being drafted maybe to be the running back one again, but he wasn't even a running back one.

If you want to say he's cursed, that's fine. The year before, McCaffrey cursed. But before that, we had a run of 4 straight guys.

Mahomes.

Josh Allen, Lamar, Mahomes twice with Brady. To me, it is you reward the guys that played the best by putting them on the COVID Then why did they reward Caleb Williams?

That's the real question. Because he didn't play the best.

He had one play that was worth putting him on a cover for, the fourth down conversion. I'm high on Caleb Williams. I'm high on the offense. I like that he lost some weight. I, I, I'm high on Caleb. I don't think he's cursed.

The accuracy.

I think you were already cursed as a bear.

Yeah. So this is the uncurse. This is the uncurse.

This is the reverse the curse.

Yeah.

Put him on the COVID I agree.

I'm in on Caleb.

Can't triple stamp a double stamp.

You can't triple stamp a double stamp. You just can't do it. No. Caleb Williams should be very good this year. The fact that he changed his diet, lost the weight, but then The accuracy reports are very good. Everything that I've been watching, like camp videos, not the ones that are like the team puts out the one highlight, but like when I'm watching pass after pass after pass, there's no, it's just, it's been very accurate. And that's if Caleb Williams could be accurate. In fact, here's a stat that I shared in the golf video is the fact that Caleb Williams, the only two players that were worse in accuracy last year for Caleb Williams Was Matt Falcon? Who was— who are the two?

JJ McCarthy and Shadur.

Yeah, JJ McCarthy and Shadur Sanders were the only guys worse. Now you could say, well, that's really bad for Caleb, but that's also like, what if he's average? What a step up for this offense if he's not throwing, you know, 58% of his passes for completions. It's a huge growth opportunity for a guy who wasn't bad last year, but still it's like he doesn't need to go from 27 passing touchdowns to 42.

No, no. And I think he's going to run a ton. I think the upside of these, you know, a full season of Loveland, Burden, Odunze, that head coach, that offensive line, Swift and Mnongai. There are— it may be a lot of bluster for the Bears. You know, their head coach is overconfident maybe. But the personnel are capable of executing it. Bowers question from RJ. Is Brock Bowers at the end of the first round crazy? I like him better than most around that ADP. I think a funny question or part to throw in here for context, Jay, you got to pick 10 yesterday. We talked about Jefferson. I mean, I don't see it being out of bounds to draft Bowers over Jefferson.

We had a question. Question recently on a different show where it was like, where is too high? And 10 was the spot where I said I'm okay drafting him there. Would I personally? Probably not. There's still some guys there that I really like. But if you're taking that tight end, if you believe he's going to be a point different, you know, like 2 points better than second place, that is absolutely worth a first round pick. And so, you know, once you get past James Cook, Jonathan Taylor, the 5 wide receivers and the superstar running backs. I feel like you're at the back of the first and you could make an argument that Brock Bowers is just as good as any of those guys. So yeah, the back of the first, it's earlier than you maybe should take him. But if you don't take him there, if you want Brock Bowers and you don't take him there, you're probably not getting—

I guess you're not. If you, if you are drafting at the turn, at the turn specifically, then you don't have a chance.

No, you don't take them. Yeah. And I don't think it's bad to take them at the turn.

G Thorpe writing in my league always has a huge quarterback run after, after the first one gets drafted. Should I stick to ADP value or grab a quarterback early? So this is tears. You know your league now. That's, that's one of the things that this show is all about is you cannot perfectly apply everything we say to every single league situation. We want to give you like advice that you apply to your league context and then you go and benefit. If you know that that's what's going to happen, let me tell you what's going to happen. If there's a huge quarterback run after the first quarterback gets drafted, that means a ton of wide receivers and running backs are dropping further than they should in their ADP. So that's a guarantee.

Yep.

When we did our mock yesterday, I was thrilled when 2 or 3 quarterbacks went right in front of where I was able to take somebody because they get knocked down the list. So I wouldn't get caught up in the run, right?

I mean, I definitely wouldn't get caught up in the run at quarterback. There are certain positions where what happens with the tiers, tier-based drafting, and if you've got the UDK, all of our rankings are in tiers so that you can kind of group certain players. It's not just like, oh, this guy's the 5th ranked quarterback and this guy's the 9th ranked quarterback, if they're in the same tier, they're basically saying the range of outcomes is so similar to those guys. When you're drafting by tiers, that's where the dictate of you look at which guys you want, like what tiers you're happy with leaving the draft. For me, there are lower tier quarterbacks I am happy leaving the draft with. If you're not, then when you start running out of the tier above that where you're like, this is where I'll be happy, then yeah, pull the trigger even if it's ahead of ADP. But I agree with Andy specifically on quarterbacks. If your league pushes quarterbacks up, that is the perfect opportunity to just keep smashing running backs and wide receivers, getting better value than you should, and then grab the late guys that have the chance.

You know, there's a handful of late quarterbacks this year that are—

There's a lot of them. That are actually a lot.

Yeah, that are really exciting.

I mean, there's a world where you're getting Matthew Stafford wildly late and he's great. I mean, Goff is another one. Purdy is another one. Dak is another one. I mean, even Darla, Caleb is another one.

Darts going, uh, last I saw was in the 9th round. That's an exciting one. The funny thing is there is a—

I'm at my maximum scared at this exact moment, by the way.

With Dart?

With Dart.

Oh, for sure. For sure. I mean, again, Nagy ruins all, but there is a quarterback who was the quarterback 7 2 years ago, and that was his rookie year. Then he was the quarterback 6 this last year. Then they added a wide receiver 1 to the team, lost nobody, and he's being drafted as like the quarterback 15. So if you're in a single quarterback league, he's basically not drafted, which is Bo Nix.

Yep. And Trevor Lawrence. And I mean, the list goes on. So, so just keep, bear that in mind.

Scarf up them running backs and wide receivers.

We have, obviously we were supposed to do our top 10 tips and tricks show today. Mike is out. We've kicked it back to next week. It's going to be great. But one of the things I'm going to talk about as a teaser.

Oh no. Oh, tease. Okay.

Tease is fine. Tease is the difference. Spoiler tease. Yeah.

Well, it depends on how much you give away.

Is I'm going to talk about. How important it is to keep grabbing those running backs and wide receivers in the context of the last 20 years of fantasy and what you need.

That's good. That was a good teaser.

I didn't say anything.

Honestly.

Yeah.

I want to hear it.

Yeah. And you're going to. Awesome. If you subscribe.

Unless I catch that lettuce diarrhea.

Can you get that from another person?

I think so.

Yeah. Really?

Yeah. You got to kiss it.

Yeah. I think you'd have to like, yeah.

Yeah.

So yes. League tendencies. We just talked about that with the quarterbacks. Let's go to T Grove here. Dynasty question. Is Davante Adams worth trading a 2027 second round pick?

No.

To get?

I don't think so.

I mean, if you are— this is the nuance of dynasty. If you're a contender, I'm happy to add Adams for a second round pick. Why? Because that second round pick is going to be late if you're an actual contender. And Adams, I think, can give you another year of high production. You need the depth in dynasty. I'm okay with it if you're a top 3 team.

If you're— the nuance matters there. If you are really, truly a top 3 team, I'm one of the best, not, not like I'm a, I'm competing for a championship, but I'm one of the 7. There's 7 of us that are in it. If you're like a top 3 team and you know this is going to be near a 3rd round pick if you do well, okay, you can, you can convince me. But otherwise I do think in general, just taking teams out of it, a 2027 2nd round pick is probably worth more at this point than Davante Adams who It's not outside the range of outcomes that Davante Adams this season is done. Like he could come out this year and be like, oh, okay, he, you know, he's 33 and 34 this year. He just kind of lost it.

It's funny because I'm, I'm like leaning on McVay and the Rams and their moves at wide receiver to tell me that Adams still has it in some regards. Yeah. But they did that with Allen Robinson and they were wrong before I was wrong. But they were wrong.

Yeah, you can't always do it. We just make probability bets here and probability bets say a guy turning 34 this year doesn't have a lot left in the tank.

Help me understand this question on Instagram here. Westbrook writing in better 2026 for Carnell Tate or any Bears wide receiver. Is that just—

Yeah.

So Tate versus—

That's—

Tate versus— in the 6th round versus Burden in the 5th or Dunze in the 6th.

Exactly right. That's what it is.

So Tate or the Bears. Yeah. Okay. I know what he's going to vote. I think I'm going to vote it too.

I am not.

I like Tate, but I can't imagine that one of the Bears don't outperform Tate.

I can easily imagine Tate.

You have a good imagination.

Well, the thing is, is Colson Loveland could very well be the number one target. It could also be Rome. It could also be Burden. And should all three be very, very involved, I think that there's a world where you're disappointed definitely with the two wide receivers because a tight end doesn't need to do as much to be valuable at that position. But if, if Colson Loveland has a breakout season, really good, if he dominates and becomes like, hey, he is a tier 1 tight end, which a lot of people are projecting. I know we are pretty bullish on him. If that happens, I don't think that Burden or Odunze splitting the rest will be a top 15 wide receiver, in which case, Carnell Tate should easily lead this team in targets. I think he gets 140+ targets this year as a rookie. Ooh.

Yeah, that's a lot.

Yeah. And if he does, it would be—

You're not worried about the like Wondale and Ridley and any of those guys contributing to the— It wasn't— I mean, it wasn't a good day last night for Tate. Not that it needed to be. He didn't catch a pass. But I was just curious what you thought there. Let's take a break and we'll jump into some more mailbag. I'm still mad at Falcon, by the way. That was one of the— That's one of the worst things that's happened.

We were literally doing a recording of a podcast listened to by millions and he made it worse. But then you made it better.

Okay. By making him do it again. Yeah, it's good, but it's been a tough 2 days for him. We'll take a break. A lot of people don't understand that it's Owl, O-W-L, Borland, right?

They think it's Al Borland.

A lot of people don't know that it's not Falcon. It's Failcon. Right. F-A-I-L-C-O-N. That's right.

Failcon.

The Failcon.

Fly.

Fly, Failcon. I accept. Oh, all right. I sensed a tiny bit of humility in his reply right there.

A tiny bit of humility, a tiny bit of shame, a tiny bit of sadness. Not enough of any of those.

Not enough of any of those.

That's right. That is what I was saying.

Instagram question from GSLaney41.

People say, I want to work for the ballers. No, you don't.

Good job on that video yesterday.

Great job. Thank you. No, he was talking to me on the swing.

Yeah. Yeah. Because you left the—

it was not the swing.

You left the microphones out at home. When is a time you threw analytics out the window on a player you had a gut feeling on? I mean, I think part of me is doing that with Davon Achane right now. Because, sure, you know, you, we've, I understand you can comprehend all the arguments of something and still choose to reject them because arguments, analytics, those are percentage odds of something happening. If let's say you have something that has a 70% chance of happening, you might say, well, I'm really up against it. Well, there's a 30% chance that you're wrong. And so for me, I'm throwing out Malik Willis's lack of passing to the running back. Why? Because it's Achan and he doesn't play starting quarterback very much.

I love that take. It's true. You are spitting in the face of the probabilities, but it's— you're right to point out that the probabilities are not guarantees. So, you know, if you believe that this is the exception to that rule, there are exceptions to that rule. That's— I would say this year, the player that I am that way with is Travion Henderson.

Okay.

I totally recognize that Ramondre Stevenson is kind of that starter, that Ramondre Stevenson is good, that Ramondre Stevenson is a better pass blocker, that Ramondre Stevenson is an important part of this offense. And I'm like, I don't care. Tre'Veon is better and he will take over this backfield and score a ton of fantasy points.

I feel like it's almost a great segment is I don't care. It's just called I don't care.

I don't care.

Yeah. Yeah. There are, there are going to be players and you know what? I'll tell you this. One, we tell you to go with your gut all the time. Yeah. So if you don't, don't just go blindly with ADP or our opinion, go with your gut.

And that way you can be mad at yourself.

Right. But you can also, there is no better feeling than when you press back against the consensus opinion and win.

Oh yes.

You're a hero.

Yeah.

I mean, it feels great. So, and by the way, all the consensus opinions, they're not going to be right.

Not all of them.

And that point I was talking about earlier on the 10 tips and tricks, we're going to talk about some of that as well.

Skyler, what a show coming up.

Skyler Jensen writing in, would I be a dog if I took CeeDee Lamb in the first and George Pickens in the second?

Oh man.

Or is that cat-like?

So that, that can win. However, genuinely, no joke, if you draft those guys, you absolutely have to get Dak Prescott. The— there are— there are large-scale tournaments that have been won by a double stack at wide receiver for a quarterback. If you pick the right time, the right season, the right team, the quarterback with their two main weapons can work. I would—

I won with Reggie Wayne, Peyton Manning, and Dallas Clark before. I ran— I won with Peyton Manning, Demarius Thomas, and Julius Thomas before.

So you— So you have to have Peyton Manning as part of this.

I did notice that part. Yeah, no, but I mean, Jimmy Graham and, you know, Drew Brees with Colston, like those things happened.

They can happen if you believe, go with your gut. It's putting a lot of eggs in a basket, but it might be a real nice basket. You know, it's like, whoa, that's comfy. Those eggs ain't ever breaking.

Nice basket.

Trey, would you do that? Would you be tempted if you had CeeDee Lamb? No, I wouldn't either.

No, I'd pivot away. Why isn't Baysal Tuten high? I mean, I also don't want to play Chase and Higgins on the same team. I mean, I just don't. It's just not part of the way I want to run my roster. Trey wants to know why isn't Baysal Tuten higher on draft boards?

The reason Tuten isn't higher on draft boards is simply the reality that he might not be the pass-catching back and he might not be the goal-line back. If he's, if he's neither of those, he's a terrible pick. Right now he projects to be the starter and therefore have the most work, which would include some goal-line and some pass-catching. LaQuint Allen has been working in as a pass catcher. Crawd was not there for the offseason. So he was not, we didn't really see what the split would be, but this could turn out to be a three-headed backfield. Now the, you know, the coaching fallacy of like, will they do the right thing or what is the right thing? If Tuten is truly good enough to take over the backfield, he's so much more explosive. I mean, it's like 4.32 speed. If he really takes it over, he'll be an outstanding pick in fantasy football. He'll— this could be a very good offense. I think the Tuten bros are super bullish. But if you're asking the question, why isn't he higher on our rankings? It's because we project more of a timeshare.

40x40 writing in on Instagram. Does J Grizz prefer smoked or unsmoked salmon?

Oh, he is, of course, of course smoked. He's been so domesticated. He's like, oh, raw fish.

Yeah, it used to be raw. Oh, he would right out the river, right out the river.

He'd bite that head right off. Off, but then he's like, I'm cardboard now.

Smoke it. Yeah. So, but you said smoked.

Yeah.

He wants to smoke that. Mark, for defense and kicker leagues, does it make sense to reach for studs?

It actually kind of does, but less so at defense.

Is that like the Brandon Aubrey and the Seahawks defense?

Yeah. You know, the thing about the defense is a lot of times in years past, it's been very hard to predict. Dick. You think it's easy before the season. You're like, oh, well, this is clearly going to be the one. And then all of a sudden, you know, defenses take 11 people on the field at once. And if things don't work out great, you go, okay, well, I reached for this defense, but then they're the 5th best defense, which is not a good place to reach for the 5th best. Right, exactly. Now, if, if I had to, like, if I had to guess on the defenses right now, like the Texans defense is unbelievable.

Yeah. I mean, I think you're very safe there. I think you're safe with Seattle. I think you're safe with Denver.

Yeah. Denver.

Those feel like the safest ones, but I wouldn't— I mean, again, I gave you 3 names. So why take the first of the 3?

Yeah, that's fair. I could not confidently say one of those 3 teams will be the number 1. I'm very confident. I mean, the Rams, if you've got Miles Garrett and Aaron Donald, maybe they should be the number 1. I don't know. Whereas I think at kicker, it's like, okay, Brandon Aubrey. Yeah. Go ahead and reach on him. He's going to score more fantasy points than probably everyone else.

Tyler brings up a good, a good question here because I almost, it was almost the answer to my Quick question of the day. Is Adonai Mitchell the best sleeper no one is talking about? I think that is absolutely the case. I mean, I think he's one of the best. It was him or me mentioning Naylor. Adonai Mitchell is going to have a prominent role in a Jets offense, probably playing every down. All the arguments that, you know, you have made for your boy Geno Smith apply to Adonai Mitchell in terms of more targets, more yards for the Jets than they've had in your years past. And I, I think he showed when he arrived in New York last year that he could play with not good quarterback performances. So to me, he is a deep sleeper. But that's the category for me is deep sleeper.

I think he would have been an appropriate answer for the quick question of like, who would be the snap goblin keeping someone else upset? Like if there's Omar Cooper Jr. believers out there, first round draft, it's so weird. I don't remember the last—

Omar Cooper's getting negative price.

I don't remember the last time we had a first-round NFL-drafted wide receiver who's not injured. That's like, I mean, he's undrafted. He's undraftable.

It's funny because that, you know, in fantasy, I mean, it was Omar Cooper and Sadiq there, right? Yes. Neither a guy.

No.

Looks like they're going to be super relevant. Sadiq is trying to get back by week 1.

I think Adonai Mitchell will be the clear wide receiver 2 for this team. I don't know. My Geno argument of the Jets having more passing work volume yardage counting stats than they did last year is true. But I do think Garrett Wilson soaks up. He's such a target hog and I think he's going to have a 30% target share of this offense.

Yeah, I look at Mitchell more like, you know, what Trey Tucker could do at times in Las Vegas last year, which ironically was with Geno. Like there were games like Trey Tucker, like Adonai Mitchell is going to be a downfield threat very often. I think big play potential for him. He's going to be up over that 13, 14 yards a catch. But yeah, I mean, you should have more arguments against the sleeper than for them. That's what makes them not drafted or drafted very, very late. Last question from Joshua. It's a good one. We, right now we're in the middle of our UDK for Life giveaway. What is the best way to use the UDK to do tier-based drafting? I think you touched on this earlier. But what about specifically with the way the UDK functions in terms of the app or the—

so, you know, marking players functionally. I like doing it personally on an iPad. I mean, not everybody has an iPad. You could do it on your iPhone. You could do it on your laptop, your desktop, whatever. But if, if you have one, I really love putting that sucker landscape and you mark all your players. You highlight the ones you want to target, highlight the ones you want to avoid. You've got all of the tiers. Right there. You scroll.

Yeah, you can mark players as drafted. I think people don't necessarily know that.

Just swipe and mark them as drafted. So as your draft goes along, you can just follow it. You can make sure that those highlighted players aren't missed. Alternatively, and I know we're old men, but like Andy, your favorite way to use the UDK, we have customizable printable cheat sheets and you print it. You bring a marker and a piece of paper. To every single draft that I can remember. And that is a really easy way to see everyone at a glance. You never miss anybody, any players further down the list. Even if you're using your iPhone, your computer, web browser, iPad, it is nice to have that printed cheat sheet handy right next to you. So maybe check that thing out too, because you can, you can turn on what you want on if you want ADP on. Or not. It's a very valuable resource.

Those of you that have already been in there using the mock draft tool, that's coming to the web very soon. It's right now on iOS and Android, but this is the perfect time to jump in. Your drafts are on the way. I can't imagine a better next week of shows. Breakout sleepers, values, busts, 10 tips and tricks. So I think it's going to be a fantastic week and a mayhem mock draft is taking place next week. The UDK for Life giveaway, if you pick it up before August 24th, We're doing a live stream that evening. We're giving away a UDK for the rest of your life. We just decided we'll let you bequeath it if it's in writing to your next of kin. So it's a UDK for life.

This will, of course, be a UDK Plus. This will be cream of the crop. Yeah, cream of the crop. You get the best forever.

But ultimatedraftkit.com, jump in there. Everybody that's purchased it up until that date will be entered to win.

Even for as long in the past.

Yeah. Well, I mean, this season.

This season.

But we'll give away a signed Ja'Marr Chase jersey as well. Community is over at jointhefoot.com, but we're going to say goodbye for today. We'll be back. I think tomorrow we have Adjust the Tips showing up on YouTube. So you want to get up. We do. And check that out. YouTube.com/TheFantasyFootballers.

Take care. Thank you for listening to another episode of The Fantasy Footballers Podcast. Join our fantasy football community on jointhefoot.com and follow us on Twitter @TheFFBallers.