Beyond the Box Score: Struggling Stud WRs, Emerging Must-Starts and More (11/25 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Summary

Fantasy Football Today Podcast Summary Episode: "Beyond the Box Score: Struggling Stud WRs, Emerging Must-Starts and More" Release Date: November 25, 2024

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1. Episode Introduction

The episode titled "Beyond the Box Score" kicks off with host Adam Aizer greeting his co-analysts Ben Richard, Jacob Gibbs, Jamie Eisenberg, and Heath Cummings. The team sets the stage for an in-depth discussion on the latest fantasy football insights, focusing on wide receivers, emerging players, and strategic considerations for the upcoming fantasy playoffs.

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2. Recap of Rams vs. Eagles Game

The team delves into their recent analysis of the Rams and Eagles matchup, highlighting the performance and fantasy implications of key players.

Jacob Gibbs reflects on the Eagles' dominant defense and their impact on the game:

"The Eagles are just really, really good. [They] are leading almost all the time."
(Timestamp: 06:07)

Ben Richard praises the Eagles' offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland for his transformative work:

"Follow these elite offensive line coaches. They dominate and put together offensive line units that can produce run games like the Eagles and the Titans."
(Timestamp: 07:12)

Adam Aizer discusses Saquon Barkley's stellar performance with the Eagles:

"Second Barkley with the best game of his career... 46.2 fantasy points."
(Timestamp: 08:19)

The discussion emphasizes Barkley's improved situation in Philadelphia compared to his time with the Giants, noting the importance of the offensive environment.

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3. Player Updates and Injuries

The analysts provide updates on various NFL players, focusing on injuries and their potential impact on fantasy lineups.

Adam Aizer shares updates on the Giants' offensive line and DeAndre Hopkins' limited playtime:

"Josh Downs... maybe you won't get Josh Downs this week at New England. Then they have their bye week."
(Timestamp: 15:58)

Ben Richard highlights Gardner Minshew's season-ending injury and its implications for the Eagles:

"Gardner Minshu is out for the season. What do you think this means for Jacobe Myers, guys?"
(Timestamp: 16:35)

Heath Cummings and the team discuss other key injuries affecting players like Cedric Tillman and Jatavian Sanders, emphasizing the need to monitor their availability for upcoming games.

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4. Must-Start and Emerging Players

The panel identifies emerging players who are performing exceptionally well and could become must-starts in fantasy leagues.

Josh Jacobs is spotlighted as the "Workhorse to Watch":

"Josh Jacobs, who has scored 20 or more fantasy points in three of his last four games."
(Timestamp: 20:40)

Ben Richard adds:

"He's getting in the end zone which changes his fantasy outcome by a massive margin."
(Timestamp: 20:58)

The team also discusses Trey McBride as an elite tight end option, comparing him to top performers like George Kittle and Travis Kelce.

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5. Advanced Metrics and Strategies

The analysts delve into advanced metrics to guide fantasy decisions, analyzing snap counts, target shares, and matchup considerations.

Jacob Gibbs examines A.J. Brown's declining target volume:

"83 catches for 1,477 yards... seven touchdowns on 112 targets. That's a phenomenal play."
(Timestamp: 09:10)

Adam Aizer discusses the impact of limited pass attempts in Philadelphia's offense:

"Jalen Hurts is averaging 22 pass attempts per game, affecting A.J. Brown's production."
(Timestamp: 09:43)

The conversation includes strategic advice on managing elite wide receivers like Justin Jefferson and Malik Neighbors, assessing whether it's time to panic or hold steady with these high-performing assets.

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6. Mid-Round Players Trending

The team evaluates mid-round drafted players who are currently trending upwards and may offer significant value moving forward.

Cortland Sutton is identified as a must-start due to his consistent target volume and chemistry with quarterback Bo Nix:

"Sutton is an absolute must start. He's got five straight games with 70 yards."
(Timestamp: 57:20)

Bo Nix is also highlighted for his improved anticipation and connection with Sutton:

"His anticipation has been better. He's got good feel for this offense."
(Timestamp: 58:48)

The panel discusses other mid-round options like Jerry Judy and Calvin Ridley, weighing their recent performances against their long-term potential and matchup considerations.

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7. Defensively Strong Teams to Avoid

The analysts identify defenses that are performing exceptionally well this season, making them tough matchups for wide receivers and running backs.

Adam Aizer lists key defenses to be wary of, emphasizing their impact on fantasy scoring:

"Defenses like the Chiefs, Broncos, and Ravens are phenomenal against the run and pass-catching running backs."
(Timestamp: 66:09)

Ben Richard concurs, noting the challenges of facing dominant defensive units and the necessity to adjust lineups accordingly.

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8. Audience Mailbag and Q&A

The episode includes a segment where the hosts address listener feedback and questions, adding a personal touch and community engagement.

Adam Aizer reads an email from Tony disparaging Ben Richard as a fraudulent fan, which the team humorously addresses by clarifying their genuine enthusiasm for the show.

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9. Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks

The episode concludes with the team summarizing their key takeaways and reiterating the importance of staying informed with advanced metrics and player performances to maximize fantasy football success.

Jamie Eisenberg shares excitement about upcoming games and player performances, particularly highlighting Bryce Young's improvement and Trey McBride's elite status.

Ben Richard expresses skepticism about some long-term prospects but acknowledges the current upside for players like Bo Nix.

Adam Aizer wraps up by encouraging listeners to monitor strategic decisions regarding starting players and understanding matchup dynamics to gain a competitive edge in their fantasy leagues.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Ben Richard (07:12): "Follow these elite offensive line coaches. They dominate and put together offensive line units that can produce run games like the Eagles and the Titans."
• Adam Aizer (08:19): "Second Barkley with the best game of his career... 46.2 fantasy points."
• Jacob Gibbs (06:07): "The Eagles are just really, really good. [They] are leading almost all the time."
• Adam Aizer (09:43): "Jalen Hurts is averaging 22 pass attempts per game, affecting A.J. Brown's production."
• Ben Richard (20:58): "He's getting in the end zone which changes his fantasy outcome by a massive margin."

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Conclusion

This episode of "Fantasy Football Today" offers a comprehensive analysis of recent NFL performances, player updates, and strategic insights tailored for fantasy football enthusiasts. By going beyond traditional box scores, the hosts provide listeners with nuanced understanding and actionable advice to dominate their fantasy leagues.

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Note: This summary excludes non-content sections such as advertisements, intros, and outros, focusing solely on the substantive discussions relevant to fantasy football strategy and player analysis.

Transcript

[Adam]

You know, I used to think all.

[Dan]

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[Adam]

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[Dan]

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[Adam]

Pine Tar and Coconut Castaway.

[Dan]

I love both of them.

[Adam]

My wife loves both of them.

[Dan]

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[Jacob]

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[Heath]

Fantasy football Today from CBS Sports.

[Jamie]

What a play.

[Adam]

Can you believe this?

[Jamie]

It had no idea.

[Heath]

It's time to dominate your fantasy league.

[Jamie]

Off to the races and he stays at his feet.

[Adam]

This is gonna go the distance.

[Heath]

Now here's some combination of Adam, Dave, Jamie and Heath.

[Adam]

Hey. Hey, everybody. What's going on? Hope your Sunday was awesome. We welco to beyond the box score here on fantasy Football today presented by BetMGM, the sportsbook. Born in Vegas, Adam aer here with Dan Schneier and Jacob Gibbs. Happy Monday, guys.

[Ben]

Are you. Are you going to be all right, Adam?

[Adam]

Why? What's wrong? Oh, shut up.

[Ben]

Yesterday I saw the life leave your body for a full split second. Literally a full second the life left your body. When Jamie came in and scheduled you, I warned you about recording from that studio. I had recorded there myself. When I went down to Fort Lauderdale office to work from there for a week, I had no idea what was to come for you, though. For you, of course, you went through an experience that none of us want to go through in any of our lives, and that's being scared. You know what list?

[Adam]

Yeah.

[Ben]

On the Sunday.

[Adam]

Yeah, yeah. It was. It was horrifying if you missed it. The video's out there and like I said, I look like the kid going on Splash Mountain. Right? The big. Right before the big drop. They take the picture. That's the terror in my face. We're gonna recap. Rams.

[Ben]

One more thing.

[Adam]

Oh, please.

[Ben]

Yeah, oh, please is right. The best touch of that by far was the immediate headphone throw after. Just like.

[Jamie]

I didn't know what to do.

[Ben]

Just chuck the headphones. Throw the headphones. Unreal. For those who haven't seen it, you can find it on. Where would you find it? You can find it on you. On our YouTube.

[Adam]

Go on Twitter.

[Ben]

Twitter. Thomas dropped it somewhere. Famous football today account. So enjoy.

[Adam]

We're gonna give you. Jacob's here too. Hi, Jacob.

[Jamie]

Hello.

[Adam]

We're gonna give you the advanced metrics that you need to know the snap counts. What's going on in the Buccaneers backfield? What's going on with Deandre Hopkins? Does he ever share the field with Judas? Ms. Schuster, what's going on with Jameson Williams? A dot four big topics today are do we panic on elite wide receivers like Justin Jefferson or Malik Neighbors? Should we be using the word elite for Malik Neighbors? That's. That's my ad libbing there. What do we do with the 49ers the rest of the way. I'll tell you what I would do guys. I don't have any odds in front of me. I would consider placing a Super bowl bet on the 49ers. I bet they are super, super cheap and they are a game out of first place and if they get healthy they are still the best team in that division and if they get into the playoffs you don't want to face the 49ers. I see the look, I see some disgust on the on your faces over there.

[Jamie]

That's a hot take. I feel like people are ready to bury the Niners.

[Ben]

Not the worst case, not the worst take. The more I think about it, it's intriguing. Take their schedule is tough. Their schedule looks. I think they have issues beyond just the fact that Brandon Allen played yesterday.

[Adam]

Who are some mid players that are currently in trend which could force themselves into your lineups? Mid players. I have a lot to say about the word mid later on in the show. And do matchups matter? Are there any matchups that we want to avoid in the fantasy playoffs or even a little bit before that? Let's start with Philadelphia 37 and the Rams 20. Eagles look really good right now. They are arguably the best offense in football right now. I mean they've been third best since they're by and they're arguably the best defensive football although they did they have two big injuries on defense. Brandon Graham is out for the year and also Bryce Huff, another pass rusher, he's on IR and Darius Slay has a concussion so that might mean he misses one game and they get Baltimore on the road in week 13. But Jacob, what are your immediate takeaways from Philadelphia and the Rams?

[Jamie]

Yeah man, the defense is insane. We got another 45 rush attempts for Philadelphia in this game and so that's just really tough for the past game pieces that matter. But even still, AJ Brown is just so good. He had a pretty dang good fantasy day. But like this is just where we're at with with the Eagles. They've faced a bunch of run funnel teams and they're going to continue to face those teams and they're more than happy to just run the crap out of the ball, especially because their defense is suffocating right now and so they are leading almost all the time. I it was interesting because like going into the game I wasn't worried about the Rams receivers and a lot of people online told me how stupid that was because of how good the Eagles are playing defensively and it's like I think these guys are just matchup proof and we kind of saw it all be true where it's like Puka is so good that even in this brutal matchup he just makes amazing plays where he's diving and making the catch on the sideline and everything. Like so yeah, it was, I don't know, it was basically like exactly what you what I expected for each of these two teams. The Eagles are just really, really good. But the Rams are also good and I think are going to be really good for fantasy down the stretch when they don't have to play the Eagles.

[Ben]

My takeaway is you come to Stoutland University and you come out unbelievable. It's quite crazy watching Jeff Stoutland, the Eagles offensive line coach, turn around players. Makai Becton, who they, you know, was an all around bust for the jets at offensive tackle, has come to the Eagles, converted to guard and he's a weapon for them in the run game. You could see it when you watch the tape, you could see it when you watch the broadcast. He took Jordan Myalata from another country, never played the position before, made him one of the best tackles in the entire NFL. So it's just something that I'm keeping an eye on in Fantasy as we move forward. Follow these elite offensive line coaches. Something similar happened in Tennessee this year with getting with them, getting Callahan, who's basically hall of Fame, one of the best offensive line coaches in NFL history. And look at Tony Pollard and look at that run game there. Despite not having great quarterback play and honestly they have good offensive line. J.C. latham's been great, but it's not like the Eagles level. So it's just something I'm following. You follow these offensive line coaches, they dominate and they put together offensive line units that can produce run games like the Eagles and the Titans that are weekly plays for us in fantasy and at this point like both top 12 plays, obviously the best player on the slate. But Pollard is a top 12 play at minimum every week.

[Adam]

Yeah. Second Barkley with the best game of his career career high in rushing, 26 carries, 255 yards, two touchdowns. Also four catches for 47 yards, scored 46.2 fantasy points, he said. I'm thankful for the fresh start. A big reason why I wanted to come here is I felt like this is a spot where I could rewrite my story and show everyone the type of player that I feel like I can be and was meant to be and it's working out right now, end quote. And I think you know people oh can't believe the Giants this and that. Like let's just be happy for that Barkley. Where do you think he would be if he were on the Giants? He'd probably be like RB10, you know, a good must start player but with some bad weeks, some big weeks, he wouldn't be anything close to this. So I think it's worked out for everyone. You know, the Giants needed to move on, he needed to move on. It's obviously worked out for the Eagles and, and good for him.

[Ben]

I'm happy every time I see this circulate on social media like from every new account jumps on it. Like look at the Giants when Barkley goes off. It's like if you are actually a Giants Finn and you know anything about the Giants, you know how far down the list this loss of Barkley actually is as far as this dysfunction and pathetic knit product that they put out there.

[Adam]

Take one.

[Ben]

Barkley has was two and seven with the Giants in every year but one. He didn't help them win football games they didn't win with Barkley. And let's not act like if he didn't have this offensive line that the Eagles have in his offensive environment which he wouldn't have with the Giants this year, he would be doing these things. Like we need to put common sense back into the discussion.

[Adam]

Yeah, no, that's not to say that it's all the offensive line. Obviously he gets the second level. He's incredible. But it's a, it's every, it's a perfect, perfect spot for him. Now Jacob, you mentioned the low pass volume and the Eagles, I mean the la. Look at the last seven games here, right. Since they're by. Jalen Hertz is the number three quarterback per game but he has nine rushing touchdowns and nine passing touchdowns in those seven games he is averaging 22 pass attempts per game. And it is just it. I mean it is affecting A.J. brown. I know he scored the touchdown in this game. He nearly had a second touchdown but he had just had four straight games with fewer than 16 PPR fantasy points. So it's nothing against AJ Brown but just this is his 17 game pace since the Eagles decided to be super run heavy. 83 catches for 1,477 yards. That's amazing. Seven touchdowns on 112 targets. That's a phenomenal play. It's a great, you know, it's a very good player but it's not necessarily a first round player. Just 112 targets. You know, that's insane. That's a 17 game pace right now and obviously he did this without devonte Smith yesterday. There's no, there's no actionable item here like you're starting A.J. brown. I get it. But Goddard is not necessarily a must start if devonte's out. Although Goddard was wide open for a touchdown and Jalen hurts his bad. You know he had a pretty good game. That was a bad throw. He had Goddard wide open. So it is just something to note like they are just too run heavy right now and it's not great for devonte Smith. Obviously it's not great for Dallas Goddard. But you're never going to sit A.J. brown for the Rams. I think you pretty much know what to do with all of the Rams except maybe not Matthew Stafford. I think if you didn't watch this game, Stafford was pretty, I would say lucky with that touchdown to Cooper cup late in the game. I would call it garbage time. It was pretty much a blowout at that point. What was the score? It was 37 to 13 at that point and he threw a late touchdown to cup. So I kind of thought that the wide receivers would do well because I'd catch a ton of passes and I thought Stafford would struggle. And at the end of the day, Stafford scores 23.2 points. You'll take it. But yeah, you're going to start Kyron. Although I got to say this about Kyren, guys. In his last five games, six games, he has two games with five catches and he has four games with a combined one catch. So he's a little bit risky. But yeah, I don't know. These are two teams. I don't know. We have major strong takes on them. It's really just Stafford to me is the guy that's going to be for the Rams anyway. The guy that's going to be a question mark most weeks.

[Ben]

So yeah, the strongest take I have is what you mentioned just now, Adam and what Jacob mentioned on last week's beyond the Box or which is devonte Smith is more name than game at this point for fantasy. Obviously he's a phenomenal actual NFL talent and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Every time I watch the Eagles it looks the same to me.

[Adam]

Run, run, run.

[Ben]

Find a nice on the outside for A.J. brown. Run, run, run. Maybe find Al Scott are leaking out.

[Adam]

But you wonder can Baltimore be the team next week that like the Chargers game with the with the Bengals last week right where Bengals or Chargers hadn't given up more than 20 points. Finally they get into a shootout. Finally we get Big volume. Couldn't Baltimore be the team that brings 30 plus pass attempts out of the Eagles? We'll see. But you know what, let's move on and talk about some other things and we'll, we'll look at that later on in the week. So what's coming up on beyond the Box Score, the other episode this week, guys?

[Ben]

So this week we make our transition over to Tuesdays on Fantasy Football Today Express and we will be doing just Jacob and I for the rest of the season. So the focus is going to be on the data. We're going to be diving deep into all these intricate data and all the sources and, and everything like that. And I don't know where I went with that.

[Adam]

All this.

[Jamie]

No, no.

[Adam]

I was reading a comment.

[Ben]

12 hours removed. This one was great. I saw this one earlier. Adamazer looks like he's 12 hours removed from asking a mechanical boardwalk genie to make him big.

[Adam]

Yeah, I, I guess I, people, I think people think I look like, really young in the, like where I am right now, I don't know. But interesting.

[Ben]

Yeah, I didn't know that take, but yeah. So join us on Tuesdays, Jacob and I at 1pm Eastern every Tuesday. From this point on, it's basically just going to be a Jacob and I deep dive into stats, into tape, into film and things like that.

[Jamie]

Yeah, like, there's a bunch of stuff I want to watch before the show that we just don't get to like. I really want to get into Arizona. How the heck they had six points. Like, what happened there? I think it's probably the Mike McDonald's defense coming out of the buy two weeks ago is playing much better. And so, like, this just gives us the time and space to like, really, really get into everything and really go beyond the box score. That's going to be what we're doing on Tuesdays.

[Adam]

All right. And what we're going to be doing right now is taking a quick break, giving you some news updates and we will be right back after this. On Fantasy Football today, everyone likes to.

[Dan]

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[Adam]

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[Adam]

Okay, welcome back everybody. News and notes. So we haven't got an update? Well, we did get actually a little bit update, not a concrete one. The Tommy DeVito will probably be okay to start on Thursday. Dable's optimistic, so hooray for Tommy DeVito. Gardner Minshu, though, he's out for the season. And what do you think this means for Jacobe Myers, guys? You know, I, I think it'll eventually be Aiden oconnell. You'd think. But what do you guys think? Like they have Cleveland, then they have a buy Maybe in week four, maybe that would be week 15 after the buy, maybe we get Aiden OConnell. But do you think Jacoby Myers is basically a must start guy?

[Jamie]

He's played super, super well. He was one of the guys I was going to highlight. I'll just go ahead and do that now. I did look and when Desmond R game, he still had three targets. So similar type of target share to what he's seen. But what he just did, what Myers just did is really, really impressive because we talk about, you know, this Denver defense all year long as one to avoid and for good reason. Prior to week 12, no receiver recorded more than six receptions in a game versus Denver, Myers had 10. This week no receiver had been targeted more than 10 times. Versus the Broncos he had 15 targets. That that was shocking to me. That is the first time really that we've seen somebody just aggressively attack these corners. And in games that he has played without Devonte Adams. He has a 28 target share and 15 PPR points per game, which would rank 16th among wide receivers in terms of points per game on the year. Is it going to be worse without mention? I guess maybe, but it's not like it's, it's not like Minshu is elevating anything. So I, I think just given the way that the offense is funneling through him, you're still going to start him in most spots. Averaging 15 points per game in this offense with some pretty tough matchups mixed in there is really, really impressive, I thought.

[Adam]

But yeah, but no, I just want to say by the way, I watched all of the Sir Tan snaps this morning and he did not shout. We knew he didn't shadow Jacoby Myers. He also did not shadow Brock Bowers portray Tucker got the tough matchup. He didn't shadow Tucker. He was on him a lot. It was a strange game plan. I don't know why he didn't shadow Jacoby Myers, but he didn't. And so that's, that's the end of the Denver matchups for Myers. Sorry to cut you off, Dan, but let's, I'm going to just move on here so you can talk about some more interesting things. Trevor Lawrence is going to practice today on Monday so he's got a chance to play against Houston this weekend. Baker Mayfield left with a stinger but I think he came back. He's fine. Brian Robinson Jr. And Austin Eckler are both injured right now. They have Tennessee, one of the best run defenses in football and then they have a buy. So we'll obviously talk about the Commanders running backs on the waiver wire show David Montgomery left in the third quarter. Think he's okay. And Antonio Gibson, I mentioned this yesterday, played 13 snaps in the fourth quarter. Ramandre Stevenson played one snap. Could have been game script. Could have been hey Ramon Dre, you are not doing anything. I've been pretty frustrated with Ramandre Stevenson. They get the Colts this week. Wide receiver news Josh Downs. This is a not a super serious shoulder injury but he's been classified as week to week. So maybe you won't get Josh Downs this week at New England. Then they have their bye week. Then they come back and they face the Broncos, Titans and Giants in the fantasy playoffs. That's Josh down so it might he might be out of your lineup for the next two weeks because at New England and then a buy Romeo Dobbs, concussion. Cedric Tillman is in the concussion protocol. They are at Denver And I'm super interested in that because I do feel, especially if Tillman is out, I do kind of feel like Patrick Certain will be on Jerry Judy a lot. But Judy had a 40% slot rate in week 12 against Pittsburgh. I'm excited about Judy, but this, you know, Denver, as you just heard from Jacob, is tough. So anyway, we'll get to that later in the week. Jatavian Sanders left in the second quarter with a neck injury. He's out of the hospital. That's good news. Giants left tackle Jermaine Illuminor left in the first quarter. They did not need that. Detroit's left tackle Taylor Decker left in the third quarter. I think he came back. Washington's got two injuries on the offensive line and Cam Robinson, left tackle for the Vikings, is hurt. San Francisco offensive guard Aaron Banks left with a concussion. Seattle offensive guard Anthony Bradford left two. And I will leave it at that with the injuries, except the Buccaneers on defense Jordan Whitehead out for the season with a torn Peck safety and cornerback Carlton Davis left with a knee injury. So keep an eye on them. They're at Carolina next week.

[Dan]

Now it's time for the Workhorse to Watch segment brought to you by Microsoft Copilot Plus PCs powered by Snapdragon, the fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever. In this segment, we'll identify a player whose battery just doesn't seem to run out, similar to co pilot plus PCs.

[Adam]

And Dan, that player today is Josh Jacobs, who has scored 20 or more fantasy points in four of his last five games. I'm sorry, three of his last four games. And phenomenal stuff. And we're loving what we see in what we're seeing from Josh Jacobs right now.

[Ben]

Yeah, this was a player Jacob and I discussed on last Thursday's beyond the Box Score as a good Buy Buy now type player because he was due touchdown regression. And that's exactly what's happening right now. Obviously didn't score as many touchdowns as we want in the first half of the season. That's progressing now. He's getting in the end zone which changes his fantasy outcome by a massive margin. And that seems to continue. We'll to me, seems like it will continue down the stretch for multiple reasons. One, I think that Jordan Love and the offense will find their groove and two, the schedule is very good for Josh Jacobs and for this offense. So I expect him to be pretty much a top five play rest of season.

[Adam]

All right, Josh Jacobs, Miami next week at Detroit, which is the one game in this stretch that he struggled with.

[Ben]

Yep.

[Adam]

At Seattle, New Orleans At Minnesota. Pretty vicious run defense in week 17, but so far so good for Josh Jacobs.

[Dan]

That was the workhorse to watch. Segment brought to you by Microsoft Copilot+PCs. Whether you're multitasking like never before, working far from power outlets, or sketching your own ideas into existence, you can do it with the new Microsoft Copilot plus PC powered by Snapdragon. Battery life varies by device and with usage and settings.

[Adam]

Time now for our email of the day. It is from Tony. And the subject line was, dan's a fraud. Well, that certainly got me to click. All right. He says dan's a fraud. On last week's Mailbag show, he said he was a huge fan of the show are you afraid of the dark? And had a bootleg box set, which is a wild and telling admission. It's the equivalent. It's the equivalent to someone saying they were a big fan of hanging with Mr. Cooper wild. Anyway, while Adam, whose job is based in digital media, was somehow having trouble cropping a photo, dan read a YouTube comment, a YouTube question with the riddle, what can you put in a barrel that makes a barrel lighter? And Dan brushed it off as a random riddle question. It was a reference to are you afraid of the dark's first episode. Yeah, I guess that was one of the missing episodes from his bootleg box set. Typical Dan. Really strong take with no substance behind it. In all serious this all seriousness, though, Mailbag is my favorite FFT show. I thought this was a classic email. So here we go. You're dead, exposed fake fan. The chat is turning on you, Dan.

[Ben]

This one's going to be tough to come back from. All the evidence is right out there in front of my face, and I have been exposed as a fake. Are you afraid of the dark fan?

[Adam]

Yeah. That's okay. I didn't. You may remember Midnight Society. So you got that?

[Ben]

Yeah.

[Adam]

All right, Jacob, take it away with the advanced stuff that we need to know.

[Jamie]

All right? Yeah, we've got a bunch this week. This week was wild, man. This week was like a great reminder that we don't know anything in a lot of ways. Some are fun, some are not. Like, I. I couldn't believe how good Bryce Young looked. Bryce Young legitimately looked better than CJ Stroud yesterday. I was. I was, like, just shocked. And I really like what the Panthers are doing. They're using more motion. They're seventh in motion this week. That has crept up as the year has progressed. And Bryce yesterday was blitzed like crazy, and he had an answer for it. Almost all the time. Like, he was. These receivers weren't coming down with some of these passes, but, like, he was almost always giving people a chance to make plays. And if he wasn't, it was because he was just getting rid of the ball and not taking a negative play. I was. I think this is the best I've ever seen him play.

[Ben]

That's gonna be a game that I'm gonna watch for tomorrow's show. That's number one on my list.

[Jamie]

Definitely, definitely. Like he. He was just standing in against pressure and staring it down and making throws to the seam, like all over the field, just spraying just like right on the money. And he also scrambled and got away from stuff and made some plays with his legs. The other thing I wanted to hit on with Carolina was we saw a 36 first 3 target rate for David Moore, which is just super random. And I think it's actually a Jalen Coker note. I think when Coker gets back, it'll be him and Thielen and Liget as the three receiver sets. And I was a little bit nervous as somebody who has a lot of the two rookie receivers that we're going to see a ton of Adam Thielen yesterday, it could just be that it was the first game back, but he really didn't seem to be getting open at all and wasn't targeted hardly at all. So unless they just go away from entirely, I think we'll see Coker step right back into that role. And he has that kind of like first retarget upside that we saw David Moore fill yesterday. We've seen him get those types of targets this year.

[Adam]

Yeah. I just want to point out one thing about Thielen is that he had at least two end zone targets. I'm not sure if either of them counted. On one of them, he drew a pass interference. On another, he had the ball in his hands and it got smashed out of his hands on a big hit. And I can't remember if they threw a flag on that. So those may not count as targets. I'm looking right now that he have. He had one end zone target, so I think that one did not get flagged. But he had one official end zone target. He had another one. He drew a pass interference. But what was. You know, he had what, a. Yeah, only a 4. Only a 15 target per out run rate for. For Thielen. Okay.

[Jamie]

Yeah, I played a lot, like two thirds of the snaps. He just wasn't really a factor. Arizona was probably the biggest disappointment for me this week. I was so excited for the Cardinals coming out of their buy. That offense is like basically top 10 in every efficiency metric. Rushing, receiving, anything. And then they put up six points against Seattle, which might be a Mike McDonald note. The Seahawks Davidson play pretty tough in the two weeks coming out of the buy. So excited to dig into that more. But yeah, I really, really was bummed about the MHJ usage. I thought they would find creative ways to get the ball in his hands. Instead, Marvin Harrison Jr. Had the highest average route depth that he has since week five. So yeah, that's something. I'll, we'll report back on that tomorrow. But absolutely insane usage for Trey McBride. Trimming Bright had a 59 first read target rate which was obviously the highest on the week. And I think that's the highest I've seen for a tight end all year. Even with the Brock Bowers games, I think that's the highest. It was just him all day like very first play there. It's a designed rollout to train bride and they just like kept going to him over and over and man, this guy is so good. Just like for reference on where he's at historically among tight ends that are under the age of 25 and have had 300 or more routes run and average two or more yards per out run, there's only been seven over the past 10 years and two of those are McBride. The only one with a higher yard program rate than McBride has this year is George Kittle. The other guys are Travis Kelsey, Brock Bowers, Kyle Pitts and Mark Andrews. He's really, really an elite player. And like I don't. Maybe he'll literally just never score a receiving touchdown, but I doubt that is actually going to be the case. Thank you, Adam.

[Adam]

No, I mean I was about to make a touchdown joke, you know, but thank you did it took it away from me.

[Jamie]

So assuming like he does start scoring touchdowns and it's like this guy is, is the tight end one, like that's basically where I had him last week. And then Ben Gretsch talked me into Brock Bowers, which I think makes sense like to be that excited about Bowers. But it's like I think it makes sense to put Trey McBride in that same exact company. Like he's been so freaking good and his offense I think is going to be a lot better than the Raiders. So there is the upside for touchdowns. Okay, I'll just, I want to talk about Caleb Williams. He continues to play better. I'm really excited to get in and watch this game. He had the fourth highest passer rating for a quarterback that's faced Minnesota's defense all year behind a bunch of veterans Brock, Purdy, Stafford and Goff. The Vikings have been so tough. I was really, really worried about Caleb because his upcoming matchup just looks like a buzzsaw that he's going to get put through. But like, he came through pretty much unscathed in this one. The Vikings only got pressure on 22 of the drawbacks. I thought that was interesting. That's the lowest pressure rate that they've generated all season. So I think, man, this is the.

[Adam]

Healthiest his line has been in forever. Yeah, yeah, let's go.

[Jamie]

I think that is like partially a line note and then also he's getting the ball out quicker. His time to throw is the lowest it's been all year. That's two straight games where he's recorded a new low. Also, he's navigating the pocket well and scrambling. He. He still takes some sacks that he shouldn't, but he did have five scrambles. Again, that's back to back games. He was only averaging two and a half per game under Shane Waldron, so he's doubled that in each of the past two games. And the guy who really benefits from it, apparently is Keenan Allen, which I guess makes sense with getting the ball out quickly. 14 first three targets for Keenan Allen in this game over the past two games since the change at offensive coordinator. He has a 34 first retarget rate. Romo Dunes has a 26 first retarget rate. DJ Moore's is 22%. So pretty. Pretty interesting stuff in Chicago. I'm curious what you guys think about DJ Moore, because I think we're pretty encouraged after the first game, but not so much with this one.

[Adam]

Did you see his ADA at the last two games?

[Jamie]

It's been. Yeah, so his adot.

[Adam]

His adot in the first game with Thomas Brown as offensive coordinator. Week 11 was negative. It was less than zero behind in this game. It was like four yards or something. So they keep doing these wide receiver screens to him. I don't really love that. I mean, it's working, I guess. He's getting a lot of catches. He turned one of them into a touchdown. I believe in this game, but I don't. I don't love that. That's so gimmicky to me. I don't say it's going to continue. I. I still view DJ more like they threw 47 passes in this game. It played in overtime. They only. I think they had 46 in regulation. I still view DJ Moore as like a borderline number two receiver, I think.

[Ben]

Yeah, that's how I feel in now in the flex discussion. I literally just cut him before this week.

[Jamie]

Oh yeah.

[Adam]

I don't know.

[Ben]

I don't trust it.

[Adam]

It's been so bad this year. I don't. Yeah, I, I don't. It's not like he hasn't been getting targets, you know, he's been good.

[Ben]

He really doesn't look good running routes out there. Like all those off season articles about how much weight he put on and we were like laughing them off. Yeah, well, kind of looks like it's playing out a little bit at least.

[Jamie]

Yeah.

[Adam]

See him catch a ball, I'm like, oh, it's Romo. Oh no, it's Keenan Allen. He just looks big. He looks big. I don't know.

[Jamie]

To your note about there being a ton of plays there were. It was 73 offensive plays in this game. Only the Raiders had more this week. On the like short adot note, I wanted to bring up the Jackson Smith and Jigba. We talked about last week how like in the second half they funneled things to him more this week he had a 36 first retarget rate. DK Metcalf had a 29 first week target rate. So another signal of him potentially kind of becoming the one and Metcalf completely disappeared in the second half, which is what happened last week as well. He just hasn't been effective. I don't know if he's all the way healthy or what is going on. But only one first read target four Metcalf in the second half and then Jackson Smith. Ejiba created almost all of his yardage after the catch. 66 out of whatever he finished with 77 receiving yards came after the catch. His ADOT was 1.9 yards. That is a little bit frustrating because he had just been torching defenses down the field the past two games and then this week they kind of went back to the short roll. I mean, I'm still psyched to see him get the looks, but I just, I wish we could see him like unleashed down the field. You know who was unleashed on the field? Jalen Waddle. By far the best game of his season. That was only the second game. Over the past two years the Waddle has had over 100 air yards. I cut up like all his targets. If you want to go watch those on on my Twitter feed, he I had another almost touchdown where it was an accurate throw by two of the almost got Intercepted and the bottle bobbled it and almost caught it. So it could have been an even bigger day. But he did all this with only a 19 first read target rate because the offense continues to just funnel through Johnny Smith. I don't know if that's like a revenge game thing or something, but massive first retard rate for Johnny Smith again above 30. He now leads the Dolphins in receiving first downs on the year ahead of Tyree Kill. He's just been so good and the usage backs it up that it's not just like something random.

[Adam]

I, you know, I was trying to look, this is one thing I didn't get to is see if Christian Gonzalez shadowed Tyreek Hill and I just thought like even if he didn't do that great of a job on Tyree Kill, you know, if you're TUA and you've got obviously their best cornerback by far on Tyreek and you're not one of those teams that has one wide receiver, you know, you can throw to HN and Waddle and Smith. I wonder if that's what happened. I don't know. I, I think there was a little bit of that. I am seeing a tweet from Alex Barth. It says Christian Gonzalez in coverage per PFF's initial charting. First Tyreek Hill versus Tyree Kill. One target, one catch, 10 yards versus Jalen Waddle. One target, one catch, 14 yards. So he is really good. I know I talk about him a lot, but he's a good player and I, I'm going to guess that Hill had a lot more Gonzalez than Waddle did. When I, it was weird. Like I wasn't watching that game too much. Man, it was tough to watch like seven games at once. I had, it was in the office, had to have all the games out at the same time and it's really hard to focus. And that game I wasn't watching, watching that much of, but when I did watch it seemed like he was typically around Tyreek. So I think that may have played into it with Tyreek just not having that good of a game and the other guys all having better games, you know. Hm. With the two touchdowns and Hill and Jalen Waddle going crazy.

[Jamie]

Yeah. Tyreek only had a 16 first rate target rate. So that was below Waddle and that's the lowest I've seen his in a long, long time. So I do think that probably makes some sense that he was covered by Gonzalez a lot. A couple first three targets I wanted to hit on and then I've got a few More notes just two more after that. Devon Vale for the Broncos had a 29 first retard rate, which tied Cortland Sutton's. He's just been kind of working his way into a bigger role all year. I haven't taken the Broncos that seriously, but I have been looking into them more and more and like he, he's intriguing. Like some of his per route data is decent. This might be a guy to have on your radar. I know people have already been picking him up in deeper leagues and stuff. They like him a lot. Yeah, 29 first week target rate for Romeo Dobbs, who is concussed and almost assuredly not going to play on Thursday. So if the we'll see if if Miami's offense is able to put points on the board in the cold, but if Green Bay can like finally be forced to not run the ball on two thirds of their freaking plays, then I think, I think we're live with Christian Watson and Jane Reed. I know it's been incredibly frustrating for those two, but like, surely we're going to see the packers start to throw the ball more of the next couple of games. Like they've got Detroit after that. So yeah, that was an encouraging note for Dobbs, but I do think that usage has got to shift somewhere else because he's going to be out Bucky Irving Bucky Irving week There was a lot this week that made me feel like a fool. I was validated by my boy Bucky Irving. He's so, so good and I've just been pounding the table all year that I really do think he can just overtake Rashad White and be like the guy. Like, I know White has been good as a receiver, has, has made lots of explosive plays as a receiver. But Bucky Irving's been really good as a receiver too. He had over 700 yards receiving in his two final years at the collegiate level. He is fifth in the NFL in yard sprout run among 36 qualified running backs on the year, ahead of Rashad White. Rashad White is ninth. There's nothing negative against White. He's a good receiver, but it's like maybe Bucky's better. Maybe Bucky is just the guy. We finally saw Bucky play more. He had a higher snap rate than White for the first time in his career and he had a 59 route rate. Rashad Whites is only 34. That was the first time White's rate has been below 40 since his rookie season. So this really is unprecedented. And I mean, it makes sense. The guy is Making crazy plays all the time.

[Adam]

I have one more note on the, on the Bucks backfield since, since Tampa Bay, since Rashad White came back from his injury. It's the last five games. Rashad White I think is going to keep the third down roll. But how about just the first and second down snaps between White and Irving? It's been pretty close for each of the first four weeks since Rashad White came back. Like white plus one, Irving plus five, white plus three, white plus one. It's been pretty close. The first and second down snaps, it was Bucky Irving plus 1333 first to second down snaps yesterday for Bucky Rashad White with only 20. My. Yeah, it's like, I don't know what that could change. My other concern is that Sean Tucker was their goal line back. He came in at the one yard line twice, he scored once, he fumbled once. But that sucks if that. If they're just trying to find some type of role for Sean Tucker and it's that role that's annoying. But, but since he throws the running back so much, if, if he's going to be on the field more than Rashad White, Bucky Irving is going to be pretty good.

[Jamie]

This is assuming rational coaching and like that's always dangerous. But it's like, are you going to keep doing that? You've got to win. You have to. The Bucks, you have to win basically every game. Like, are you going to keep playing around and trying to make this guy who fumbled to the goal line your goal line back when you have a guy who's awesome in every regard, every facet of the game? Like, that doesn't make any sense. That doesn't make any sense to me that you wouldn't just like let Bucky be the guy.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[Jamie]

Will Levis. You brought this up on yesterday's recap and I thought it was a really fun note. He got sacked seven times in the first half. That's the most first half sacks that a quarterback has taken since 2010. And since 2000 there have only been four quarterbacks. You've been sacked seven or more times in the first half. Will Levis is the first one to accomplish that and win the game. I love Will Levis stats. They're so ridiculous.

[Adam]

I want to know if Dan, you know what, we got to take a break and we'll come back, we'll finish up. But I want to know if Dan is buying into Will Levis and. Or Bo Nicks because he's. He is. He was not big on those guys. I want to know how he's feeling about Will Levis and Bo Nicks. We're going to take a break, finish up with Jacob stats, get into our big topics. We'll be right back after this.

[Dan]

Well, I just downloaded a new game.

[Adam]

On my phone and it is awesome.

[Dan]

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[Adam]

The games are fast paced.

[Dan]

Each game takes only three minutes. Your objective is to win two out of three locations by having higher total power than your opponent. And as you win, you earn cosmic cubes. I think my favorite part is the Snap mechanic. If you're feeling confident in your hand.

[Adam]

Or maybe you want to bluff Snap.

[Dan]

To double the cosmic cubes or if you're not feeling confident, you can retreat anytime to minimize cube losses. So this is where the strategy component really comes in.

[Adam]

I love that.

[Dan]

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[Adam]

Winning collectible card game.

[Heath]

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[Adam]

Okay, we are back here. So anything, do you want to finish up on Levis, Jacob or you want to throw it to Dan?

[Jamie]

I don't have. Yeah, I don't have a whole lot more. I just wanted to bring up that like Stroud again was pressured a ton and just I wanted to get some thoughts on him. He wasn't one of the big topics. Where are you guys at? Nico Collins was able to get out of it unscathed even though he had another touchdown called back. But like man, this offense they've got, there's so much potential because they have matchups where it could be massive shootouts down the stretch, but they're also matchups where it's like that defense could really Get a lot of pressure like the Chiefs and the Dolphins. And it's like I, I'm losing faith every, Every passing week. Stroud looks really rattled.

[Ben]

Yeah, I've lost faith a while ago. I feel like this happens sometimes with rookie quarterbacks going into year two, running into the same, Running the same system, a lot more tape on them. And they're taking away concepts that worked for Stroud in year one, like, where is Tank Dell and why aren't we seeing Tank Dell as a weekly staple in this offense? Somebody who can move the ball and produce offense for them on a weekly basis? And that's part of the issue as well. I have lost faith in them. I think their offensive line is at a bad, really bad point for them this season as well. So I think that's playing a huge factor.

[Adam]

I wouldn't say I've lost faith. I mean, I think Nico Collins is so good that he's.

[Ben]

Oh, yeah.

[Adam]

No, I mean in Stroud, I. I think Nico Collins can make C.J. stroud relevant. And C.J.

[Jamie]

Stroud'S good.

[Adam]

I mean, he throws like a lot of nice balls and I think for much of the game he looks pretty good. But then there's just too many negative plays. There's too many sacks and way too many interceptions right now. The interceptions are. Are crushing him and taking points off the board and taking fantasy points off the board. So it's hard to.

[Ben]

He doesn't really. He doesn't run?

[Adam]

No, he doesn't run.

[Ben]

The margin of error is so thin for him. He has to essentially light it up as a passer on a weekly basis to be fantasy relevant or to be like a top fantasy play.

[Adam]

I didn't think he played poorly against Dallas on Monday night. I just thought it was like Joe Mixon's night. And then you had that Nico Collins 75 yard touchdown, whatever, called back. I don't know. I. I don't. He's certainly not a must start, but he's not a. I wouldn't necessarily drop him. I just think if he cleans it up a little bit, there's enough good in there. Personally, I think there's enough good with Nico Collins back that he could have some good weeks. All right, Jacob, anything else?

[Jamie]

No. You want to talk about Bonix?

[Adam]

I want to talk about Bonix. I want to talk about just some snap counts real quick. Tony Pollard played 94 of the snaps without Taj Spears. Jonathan Taylor played 96 of the snaps. Amir Abdullah played 90 of the snap. So if you get another week without White and, and Madison, you get a workhorse in Abdullah, but he's got Kansas City, who's not just great against the run, they're also great against pass catching running backs. I wanted to talk about Kate Otten. One catch for 30 yards on three targets against the Giants. He had an 87.5% route participation that was sixth best amongst tight ends. So he still had a great role even with Mike Evans back. I didn't talk about this on the recap last night because I don't really take it that seriously and I don't. I still don't really. But the Giants are number one against tight ends. They are the hardest matchup in fantasy. They see on average about four tight end targets per game. The fewest tight end targets per game. I might be wrong about them being first, they might be first, second or third, but they are one touchdown this year allowed to a tight end. It was Davion Sanders. So I don't know if it's just a tough matchup. Like I don't buy the Giants personnel, but they're doing something right against tight ends. And it was a bad game for Aten, but that gave me a little bit more hope. TJ Hawkinson played 68 of the snaps. That was his highest snap share by far. And Johnny Munt filling in for Josh Oliver played 46% of the snaps. So it was still good. So I don't think it was just necessarily Oliver being out that Hawkinson played the most that he's played all year. DeAndre Hopkins only played 45 of the snaps and with JuJu Smith Schuster on the field, 37 snaps with JuJu on the field. Hopkins was on the field for 14 snaps. He's being out snapped by Justin Watson. So it's like I know he caught the touchdown, he gets some end zone targets, but he just will not. I don't think it's ever going to happen. I don't think he's ever going to play enough to be consistent. And another good encouraging week for Jameson Williams. They didn't throw that much. He led the team in receiving, I believe, but he's had a target share around 20 to 21%. Jameson Williams for three straight weeks and last two weeks he's had an ADOT below 12 yards. If you're watching on YouTube, I have no idea where to look. I don't have my normal camera so my eyes are all over the place. But yeah, encouraging stuff. I think for Jameson, not as encouraging in my opinion for DeAndre Hopkins, even though he caught the touchdown Encouraging stuff for TJ Hawkinson and for Kate Otten. I'm hopeful that it was just a matchup thing. All right, I think we'll get. We'll get your. Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

[Jamie]

I meant to mention on Kate, on they did a 9% first read target rate this week, which is really, really low. And I think that's just kind of what we can expect with Evans back. We've not seen him be productive with Evans back.

[Adam]

We've never seen him with just Evans. We've seen him with Evans and Godwin. This was the first game with just Evans and it was really discouraging on paper. Will it, you know, will they throw more when they're not running for four touchdowns, first of all against the worst team in football? And then was it just a bad matchup against the Giants? That's my glimmer of hope for UK Doton managers. All right, we have our four big topics and. And Bo Nicks will come up in one of them, so we'll talk about that. But give me your quick thoughts on Will Levis, Dan.

[Ben]

So short term, I think Callahan may have been able to figure out something that can work for him occasionally. Not consistently. A lot of bootlegs, which is something he had to do with a player like Will Levis. Get him out of the pocket to find reads, let him throw down field. Long term, I have absolutely no faith that he will be a good quarterback in the NFL. I will stand by that. I will have that. Take now. It's what, November 25, 2024. We'll revisit this at any point. 2025, 2026, 2027. I'm still not sold the Titans won't draft a quarterback in this coming class to replace Will Levis right away. So that's my take on him. And we'll get to Knicks, I guess, in the big topics.

[Adam]

Well, I did some in person scouting this weekend. I was at the Miami game. The Miami Wake Forest game. Saw a little Cam Ward.

[Ben]

What do you think?

[Adam]

No, I'm not really feeling it anymore. I don't know. That really feels not a great quarterback class.

[Ben]

The Giants are going to get a top pick in a class like this.

[Adam]

Yeah. Yeah. All right, time for our four big topics and we're gonna go. I'm gonna give you guys three minutes on each. Ken Meyer says is it time to panic? On some elite wide receivers. Justin Jefferson and Malik Neighbors. Those were the two that he asked about. Jefferson and Neighbors. Are we panicking?

[Ben]

Well, I, I said last week we should be Panicking on Neighbors. I. I was. You know, people came back at me for that, I think on the show. And I understand why, but I have to understand when things are not guaranteed to get better with Tommy DeVito and it looks like they're almost going to get worse with DeVito because the offense is going to punt more. One thing that the Giants are actually good at before benching Daniel Jones was plays per drive. They were six most in the NFL. And plays per drive, a really surprising stat for the Giants offense. A lot of people didn't see their biggest issue was getting down to the red zone and not scoring well. Now those plays per drive are done because they didn't have good plays per drive in this game against the Bucks. They're punting a lot. It's three and out a lot. The whole first half was disaster. 35 passing yards. So now with Jermaine Illuminor, their backup left hat, their right tackle was moved to left tackle injured, they're down to their third and fourth tackles. Interior Offensive line's not playing as well as it was. This just looks like a dead offense to me. So, like, he could still get games like this. 1 Adam 6 for 64. I think we're gonna be looking at a lot of games where he'll have the number of yardage that the first number in his yardage is the same number as his reception. So, you know, 10 yards per catch type of situation.

[Adam]

Malik Neighbors is since week seven, since the Andrew Thomas injury, he is number 33 wide receiver. 33 per game in PPR, he doesn't have a touchdown. He has the fourth most targets since week seven among wide receivers, the 13th highest target per route run rate, the highest target share among wide receivers. But he's 26 in yards. He has zero touchdowns. He has one red zone target, he has one end zone target, and his Yak per catch is 1.6 yards.

[Ben]

Wow.

[Adam]

Since week seven, the first game without Andrew Thomas, his big play rate, his explosive play rate, there are 49 wide receivers who have had 25 or more targets since week seven. CD Lamb has the lowest big play rate. Wandale Robinson the second lowest. Malik Neighbors, the third lowest. I view him as a similar to D.J. moore, borderline 23 wide receiver. I think it was encouraging that obviously at halftime they were like, can we get him going? And they threw to him, I think, on the first three plays of the half. But, like, they're just, they're just the worst offense in football and they're never going to score a touchdown for the rest of eternity. So Jacob, what do you think about Justin Jefferson? I think it's kind of interesting to think about Jefferson that the, the Vikings were before Hawkinson came back 28th in tight end target rate and now they're seventh and tight end target rate. So. And now Addison's got this target share the last couple weeks. So do you think Justin Jefferson is a top 12 wide receiver? I think he's probably the borderline that per game full season.

[Jamie]

Yeah. I pretty much anytime you ask me about somebody like Justin Jefferson or CD Lamb or whoever, like unless there's some huge change in the infrastructure, I'm not going to have changed my opinion like There is with A.J. brown. They're running the ball way, way more. I, I guess with Minnesota like the left tackle is a problem but other than that like I, I would expect him to be fine. I would expect to be a top five guy.

[Adam]

Yeah, me too. I, I think you know we're going beyond the box score so I'll give you a little beyond the box score here on like Minnesota is still a low pass rate team but in their last four games since Hawkinson has come back they have run the most plays in the NFL and they have thrown 33, 34 passes per game, something like that. So you know a 34.5 pass attempts per game. So if he were dealing with Hawkinson and Addison on this low pass volume team like we saw from the in the first seven games when they averaged 27 pass attempts per game, that might be a problem. If they go back to that, that might be a problem. But it's Justin Jefferson, like who the heck's going to sit Justin Jefferson? The worst combination would be his target chair kind of remains not, not super impressive and they get back to throwing 27 passes per game. Benjamin Murray is our second big topic. What do we do with the 49ers the rest of the way? Specifically Debo Samuel, Jacob.

[Jamie]

Yeah, the Niners. I don't like, I don't share the optimism that you do because I don't trust the medical reporting there and I have no idea what's going on with Party. I don't like maybe he'll be back but I don't know. It wouldn't surprise me if he's not back this weekend. They lose and it's like just over. So I don't really trust these guys. As far as Debo independent of all that, like just how he's playing. I did watch every single route that he ran last week. He looks normal, he looks fine. To me, I'd wondered if maybe he wasn't. Some people. I've heard people say that like he's not getting involved in the offense as much and they think he's not as healthy. It's true that like they are running the offense through Juwan Jennings, but they also were designing some things to Debo and he looked like basically the same guy. I think it's mostly just that Purdy has been. He's gotten programmed where he's like hero balling so much this year that that leads to more Juwan Jennings type of looks than Debo Samuel type of looks. But they have more zone heavy matchups coming up and I would expect Debo, if all things are equal with the offense, to be basically what we normally get with Debo.

[Ben]

If birdies in the line of book four.

[Adam]

Yeah, we need Purdy.

[Jamie]

Right.

[Adam]

And I did mention, I don't remember when Wednesday. Maybe he's got. Going into the week, Debo Samuel has the fourth lowest open score on the ESPN metrics. Fourth lowest out of 121 wide receivers. But I also mentioned that he doesn't usually score highly in that. No, he's almost always toward the bottom. This is bad. But yeah, and yeah, as Heath mentioned, you saw him on that kickoff return, he looked incredible. Right.

[Ben]

So, yeah, still has the explosiveness. I think that whole offense though has really looked terrible to me from watching that game. The offensive line without Trent Williams, we talk about that a lot in past seasons on fft. Like the impact of not having Williams on the field. And it was pretty obvious in that game. I went back and watched. The one thing I had a chance to do this morning was watch all the McCaffrey snaps because I have him. And so what are you. What are you nodding at?

[Adam]

The chat. The chat.

[Ben]

Yeah, go ahead. There was some weird stuff going on in the chat today. I had to go off the chat tab to the private chat tab.

[Jamie]

The chats. The chat said earlier that I look like I would camp out in front of Bass Pro on Black Friday. I'm like, where is that coming from? I've never hunted in my life.

[Adam]

Yeah, yeah, I didn't get that either.

[Ben]

But having watched Spencers.

[Adam]

I can't see.

[Ben]

Jacob as a Spencer's guy. Do you remember Spencer's growing up? Oh, my God. That's like the goth store, Jacob.

[Adam]

Yeah, we would go in there, but they had like funny things for teenagers.

[Ben]

That's exactly what it was. Yes, but my point was on McAffrey, just watching those snaps back, I think the Failure right now is with the, the. The blocking scheme and the run game right now in San Fran. More than McCaffrey. I was surprised, enthused to see that as somebody who has McCaffrey and waited out for so long. I was like, is this guy just done? No, I think that's the issues. They need Purdy back. They need Trent Williams back asap.

[Adam]

Okay. Oh, man. I got. I'm gonna try. I was trying to look up this 49ers Super bowl odds, but I'm unable to right now.

[Ben]

I am curious what they are too, to see if you can get it at a good price. I don't think maybe what you think they.

[Adam]

Okay, they're probably missing their three best players yesterday. In. In. You could argue it, but Bosa, Williams, Purdy, they obviously need to get healthy. If they get healthy. And look, they. They seemed optimistic that Purdy's coming back next week. Trent Williams was kind of a game time decision, so I'm optimistic that he'll come back. Bosa, I don't know. But you know, it makes a big difference when you don't have your quarterback at your left tackle. And again, they're one game out of first place with a five and six record. What do you got?

[Ben]

This is accurate. They're plus 6,600. If this is accurate. That's an insane line. Like, that's like. It's so valid. Why is this. This can't be right.

[Jamie]

I think it's over, guys.

[Adam]

I don't know. I mean, I can't believe they're getting.

[Ben]

Seven points right now against the Bills on the opening line.

[Adam]

Yeah. All right, let's go to our next big topic here. And. Oh, this is where I talk about the word mid. Broken helmet podcast says mid players who are currently in trend, like Cortland Sutton, who could force themselves into your lineups. It's a good question, right? Because do you keep writing it out with Malik Neighbors? Like, obviously I'm starting Courtney Sutton over Malik Neighbors, but do you ride it out with Malik Neighbors? You go with like Jacoby Myers or something. He's not quite as good as Cortland Sutton or Jerry Judy. You know, hopefully you can start both. But. But who are some players that are. Have become must starts and the whole mid thing? I think Cam Ward actually said. I was listening. Yeah, I was listening to Cam Ward post game radio on the drive home and the guy asked like, how would you rate yourself today? He said, I'd say middle. It's like, that just sounds so weird. And you're not even using it ironically like people are using it for reals, like irl. It's not a word. It's like part of a word. It's the.

[Ben]

You'd rather him say I said middling. I played middling. Yeah, see, that wouldn't make sense either.

[Adam]

How about average? Okay, mid. I don't like things.

[Ben]

Shows this disconnect you have with the younger generation. You're too old now. You can't understand that. Oh, yeah, they have their own slang. We had our slang, too, back in the day. Okay. We had our own slang that we used to say.

[Adam]

Yeah. Fat. P H A T. Like, aren't you glad that's gone? Aren't you glad that's gone?

[Ben]

I am, but we used to say it at the time.

[Adam]

All right, but we're. But we were kids. Adults. It's fine for a college. No, no, no. Okay. He's fine. He's fine, he's fine. I'm saying adults. We should not be saying mid.

[Ben]

Okay. I don't know if we need to, as adults be policing what other adults say and don't say.

[Adam]

I think that's exactly what we need to be doing here. Exactly what we need to be doing. All right. Anyway, Sutton and Bo Nicks are two that I wanted to talk about here. Sutton is an absolute must start. He's got, I think now tied to Marius Thomas's Broncos record five straight games with 70 yards. I believe I read that. I'm sorry if I got that wrong, but I feel like that's true. Either way, he's just absolutely on fire. Eight or more targets in five straight games, and I love the chemistry between him and Bo Nick. You will see Nick's throw to Cortland Sutton before he even makes his break. Okay. They just. They just know where. He just knows where he are, where he is, and I love it. So Sutton's in there. Bo Nick's on me. I'm more confident in. You know, he hasn't even been running lately, and we know that's part of his game, but the last three games, not really running. He's been over 20 points. I know.

[Ben]

Two.

[Adam]

The last two games been over 20 points, too straight. Oh, no, I was right. Three straight without a lot of rushing. So he's in there for me. I. Not necessarily a must start because you have other good quarterbacks, but. But I like him. What do you think about Bonix Dan? How are you feeling about him? A little more optimistic.

[Ben]

Definitely a little bit more optimistic about Bo Nicks. I think Jacob did A good job breaking down last week and I think you could find it on his Twitter page. Like all of Bo Nix's 20 plus yard throws on the season. Still think most of what he's doing this year is within the scheme and within what Champagne has cooked up for him. But you made a great point. There is some anticipation and some anticipatory throwing on his tape like especially with Gorton Sutton. They've developed a nice rapport fast and he's getting the ball out quick and his ball placement hasn't been bad. Some good arm talent examples the throat. The touchdown to Sutton from this week was a really good job. Changing his arm slot, putting enough touch on the ball to get it over the top and allow him to make a play away from his frame and he did for the touchdown. So I have to warm up to Bo Nicks. I personally am skeptical of this long term when you have that kind of arm talent you can't challenge defenses. In my mind at least on a consistent basis. Top down, it's more, you know, you know, within the scheme. It scares me long term. If I had to bet right now will Bo Nicks be a great starter in two, three years, my bet is still easily. Definitely no personally, but it's hard to ignore what he's doing. His anticipation has been better. He's got good feel for this offense. He's playing within the scheme, he's doing everything they ask. He can run so fantasy wise I mean he's been unbelievable.

[Jamie]

His ball placement hasn't been bad on those deep throws but I would say it has been mid.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[Jamie]

And that's backed up statistically. He, he actually going into this week led the entire NFL in deep throws which is nuts like by volume, total deep throws and he had the lowest turnover worthy throw rate but all of his accuracy stuff was 20 to 30th and so what that tells me, and I think what you'll see if you watch that clip that I have of all of his deep throws is that there's some wild throws in there especially early where it's like he's. It's almost Anthony Richardson type stuff where he's missing people way, way over the top and it's not turnover where they throw because no one have gotten to it. But it's also not a catchable throw and you see that reflected in like his catchable target rate is highly accurate throw rate and stuff like that. He's definitely gotten better as the year goes on but I still see him do stuff where it's Just like you've got. You've got to clean up the mechanics on this or it's just. I don't know how it's going to work. I think he can work in this system with Sean Payton, but I feel like this is basically his ceiling already. He's kind of reached. It is like he can operate the system really well, but he's not necessarily going to elevate it. It's kind of what people thought. I think Brock Purdy was early on in Shanahan's system, but with Purdy, it's like, I do feel like he. He was showing the traits as a passer to where, like, he. There might be improvement. And then we've seen that improvement come to fruition. Maybe it will next. I don't. It's possible that I'm just biased. That's what people keep telling me. I'm a chief fan.

[Adam]

There was some. There was some Purdy slander on the. On our shows yesterday that I. I was really not happy with because I. You talk about throwing anticipation. Brock Purdy is so damn good at that. That's amazing. Throws the guys and you're like, that guy's not open at. Oh, my gosh, now he's open. Brock Purdy is great at that. Obviously, the system helps, but Brock Purdy's great. And then I said that. You guys can get in on this debate. Jamie was saying that, like, everyone in the 49ers organization will tell you that Trent Williams is their most important player. And I kind of. I think he pushed, but I think he, like, reeled it in a little bit. And I said, okay, it's the Super Bowl. The 49ers game is about to start in the Super Whatever, and you have to. You're. You're. You know, you have to choose one player to not play. Would it be Brock Purdy or Trent Williams? Like, who would you rather be without? You know, and that's what I. I think it's gotta be Purdy. You know, it's gotta be Purdy. No, no, no. You'd rather be without Trent Williams. You'd rather have Purdy.

[Ben]

I'm with you on this one. Yes.

[Adam]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ben]

I don't think he gets enough credit for what you just said.

[Adam]

Okay. I am sorry to. To detour. I'm sorry to detour. I want to know who are some players mid players. Let me give you. When I said for reals earlier, it was a joke. It was. It was an ironic use of for reals. Sure, sure, sure. What the dilio people here, but let.

[Jamie]

Me give you some mid players.

[Adam]

Yeah, yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

[Jamie]

Last month. Here are some mid round drafted players is what we're going to go with because we don't want to call mid who have been performing really well. You tell me your confidence level in them. Jackson Smith, think Jigba, wide receiver 3 over the past month per game.

[Adam]

Never gonna be top 24 receiver.

[Jamie]

Okay. Jerry Judy, wide receiver. Jerry Judy, wide receiver 8. How are we buying that?

[Ben]

Top 16. Rest away for me.

[Adam]

No wow. No, I don't think so.

[Jamie]

Brutal matchups.

[Ben]

People say wow to that, but. And normally it would be a while, but we have Garrett Wilson going into this week as the wide receiver for overall wide receiver is a dead position this year in fantasy.

[Adam]

I'd still rather have Wilson than Judy.

[Jamie]

Okay, Johnny. And Taysom Hill, receiver 4.

[Ben]

Right.

[Jamie]

Taysom Hill tied in one per game over the past month. John who tied in four.

[Ben]

For real, baby.

[Dan]

For real.

[Adam]

I like John, who to me is closer to tight end 10. I'm thinking rest of season he has. He has a couple of really tough matchups and he's got target competition, right? He's got target. They do. He's got target competition. Like it's not a knock on him. But you could so easily see a game where Tyreek hill just gets 15 targets and. And John who gets four like that. That is so within the realm of possibility.

[Jamie]

You'd rather have Taysom. I would.

[Adam]

Not in ppr, not in people.

[Ben]

Jonathan. Than almost all tight ends. I'm. I'm. You guys on John who. I think that they've completely shifted their offense around. What where they're at with TUA and his concussions and this new version of this offense as we've seen in previous years. Mike McDaniel, when he finds something he likes in his offense, he runs it back and back and back. This offense has run through Johnny in a lot of ways.

[Adam]

It's only two games though, with John, who, like, he was good before that, but he wasn't great before that, I don't think. Okay, but he scored six points.

[Ben]

Tight end.

[Adam]

He had six. Six and four targets in the three games before these last two when he went berserk. And that's what I'm expecting. I'm expecting up and down from these Dolphins receivers. Go ahead.

[Jamie]

Jacob Jacoby Myers and Jordan addison, both top 24 receivers. They're both top 15 over the past month.

[Ben]

Addison for sure. For me, for sure.

[Jamie]

Top 24.

[Adam]

1.

[Ben]

That's the one that I. I'm Less on Jacobi.

[Adam]

I'm less on Addison, I think because.

[Ben]

Like Addison benefits from just being in a nice pass first offense with a healthy pass game and so much attention on Justin Jefferson every week that he's gonna get one on ones all game, every game.

[Jamie]

Quinton Johnson, top 30 receiver.

[Ben]

Yes. Love Quinton Johnson rest of season.

[Adam]

So here's the thing. I have a hard time figuring out like who's wide receiver 30. Right. But like I just said, Malik Neighbors is wide receiver 33 in his last. In since weeks. Right. Or whatever it was in his last seven games or since week seven. I forget. And since week seven I'd rather have Neighbors than Quentin Johnson. So. Yeah. Because I don't know that. I don't know that Quentin Johnson. If McConkey's out, that's one thing. If McConkey and Disley, everybody's healthy. I don't think, I don't think he is a top 30 receiver.

[Jamie]

You taking any of these guys over Josh Downs?

[Ben]

No.

[Adam]

It's a tough question to ask because he's hurt.

[Ben]

Yeah, it's healthy.

[Adam]

But Downs to me is like a little bit overrated. He's not a high target guy. He plays like half the snaps, 60% of the snapshots. No, I am taking Myers for sure over downs, not Quentin Johnston. And I think I take Downs over. I think I take healthy Josh Downs over Jordan Addison.

[Jamie]

I think he's basically the wide receiver 30 line. I have him higher than that, but most people have him about 30.

[Adam]

Okay. I had, I did have John Smith on this list. I had Jerry Judy on this list and I had Calvin Ridley. Ridley is one that's sort of concerns me because he's just so reliant on big plays. Every week he's making these huge plays. Even had one called back. A huge touchdown called back.

[Ben]

I don't have any faith. Long term. They're not actually running like a good rhythm time passing game. They're just like running random bootlegs and taking shots downfield and running the ball.

[Adam]

Like he's got two matchups. Here's the thing about Ridley. He's got two matchups left against the team that gives up the most big plays in the NFL and that's Jacksonville. So that's two of his remaining five games. That's huge. The other teams he faces are kind of middle of the pack and big pass play. So I think he'll have a good finish. But it wouldn't surprise me if there's a game or two in his last five that are Pretty bad because that's just the nature of a guy who's doing almost everything on deep balls. It's. It's hard. It's hard to trust. All right, let's go to our last one here. It's from Adam Plank. Should we avoid certain defenses or is that overblown this year?

[Ben]

It feels like it might. This might be the year it would be overblown. There are years where there are dominant defenses. I'm not necessarily sure. I see too many dominant defense in the NFL this year. Who would be the dominant that we avoid?

[Adam]

Yeah. So here are some matches. So wide receivers against the Eagles now, I think we need to pause on that because one, Darius Slay might be out this week, but two, they are pretty thin up front with their pass rushers. Their pass rush has been incredible. And I don't consider cup and Nakua those types of wide receivers. I consider guys like Terry McLaren those. Those outside receivers. They're not doing the things that cup and Nakua are doing. I think that's a concern against the Eagles, but I'm not sure. Maybe that's down the road. If they get a little healthier. A number one, a true number one wide receiver against Patrick Surtan, we have enough evidence at this point. It's horrible. Is that going to happen to Jamar chase in week 17? I don't know, but I wish he weren't playing. The Broncos some run defenses that are just vicious right now. The Titans run defense, Chiefs run defense. Three touchdowns to running backs their last two games. But if you don't score against the Chiefs, you're in trouble.

[Jamie]

And the other running back has more than 60 yards against the Chiefs all year. And they faced a bunch of really good running backs.

[Adam]

Yeah, and they're elite against pass catching running backs, too. That's the thing. Like the Ravens run defense is phenomenal. Now, I don't know if Roquan Smith's going to play tonight, but when they're healthy, they're phenomenal. But they give up a ton of receiving yards. The Broncos run defense, phenomenal run defense, but they gave up a lot of receiving yards to running backs. The Chiefs don't. Minnesota's run defense has been pretty good lately. Detroit's run defense, the last three running backs they face. Joe Mixon, 25 carries, 46 yards. Travis Etn, 12 carries, 27 yards. Jonathan Taylor, 11 carries, 35 yards. That's the Lions run defense. Tight ends against San Francisco. That's been a brutal matchup. We don't talk about that, but they've been great against tight ends, Titans against the Giants, too, and then wide receivers against Chicago. You know, I talked about this on the show yesterday because Jefferson got shut down. Pretty much any wide receiver that gets eight or more targets against Chicago has a big game. But I believe it's only happened five times. So it's just something to consider here. I don't think they're that great against wide receivers, but for. They just don't see a lot of targets. Anyway, those are some of the matchups that I'll be looking at going forward. Is there any others? Like, I don't know, maybe? No, I think we're good there. All right, guys. Thank you. Good show today, fellas. Well done. And I am not. Are you afraid of the dark? I don't know, but I am definitely afraid of Jamie Eisenberg now, I'll tell you that.

[Ben]

It's all there.

[Jamie]

I don't look like Ryan Gosling at all, right?

[Ben]

No. Is that what you're saying? I'm getting great comparison. Someone said you look like Eminem. Ryan Gosling some good stuff.

[Adam]

Well, he's always got the hoodie going. Yeah, like I can see the Eminem thing. But you look, you look less like Ryan Gosling than Dan looks like Jason Alexander. Have a great day, everybody. We'll talk to you tomorrow on Fantasy Football Today with the Waiver Wire.

[Jamie]

Paramount.

[Unknown]

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