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FantasyPros - Fantasy Football Podcast
5 Moves You Need to Make Week Ahead Of Week 3 (Ep. 1710)
00:15:21
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Hello everybody. Welcome into Fantasy Pros. I'm Ryan, warmly joined as I will be all season long by Tara Roberts. Tara, we are talking some moves to make ahead of week three, which is kind of hard to believe that we're already thinking in terms of it being week three. Obviously we are recording this on Monday, so there are still a couple of games left here, the Monday night doubleheader before we're totally done with week two. But fall moves so quickly. Football moves so quickly every season, just the regiment of every week. It really does seem to fly. So we are on to week three here, looking at some moves that we want to make before we kick things off several days from now. All of our 2025 consensus rankings and tiers can be found at fantasypros.com rankings. You just want to mention that for everybody. You can also even navigate to our rest of season rankings, which are already starting to get updated post week two. So if you are thinking about some of the players that get brought up today on this episode, you, you can go check and see, hey, where are they ranked in the rest of season rankings to get a sense of what the experts are saying? Jor, we're gonna go, you know, through, through five here. These are in no particular order, so get us started here. Tara, with your first one.
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I'll start off, we'll start off positive here with a buy positive ish, because it is the result of an injury. But we could have done that regardless here. We're gonna buy Jordan Mason here, especially after the Vikings even in week one. You know, we said that the best path forward for the Vikings, when you're looking at that backfield, Aaron Jones is very, I love him. You guys can't see it. I'm wearing my Green Bay shirt. I've still got affinity for him, but the deal is that unfortunately he's just not as productive on the ground as we're seeing with Jordan Mason. When he comes into the game, it just looks different, it feels different. He's got a different boom to him in, in terms of his ground game there. And Aaron Jones was doing well from a receiving perspective. Mason looking decisively better on the ground. But now we've Got this injury concern with Aaron Jones and it's a good opportunity before we get a very upside fantasy performance where we see Jordan Mason as a three down back to go ahead and get in there and buy Jordan Mason. Because a lot of times when we look at him and his usage of the 49ers, you see him as the guy that, hey, he's early down. He's not going to be someone who's catching a significant amount of passes, but we have seen him utilized a little bit here early. From a receiving perspective with the Vikings, I think he's three deck down, three down back capable here. I'm pretty excited about Jordan Mason.
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I'm also excited about the opportunity. And by the way, I think I said this last week, but I want to say it again in case this is the first episode people are seeing that this doesn't have to be a buy low and sell high. It can be a buy high and a sell low too. Sometimes I think those are even more valuable pieces of advice. So if you hear like Jordan Mason and go, oh, well, you know, people know to, to buy, I think it's still worthwhile advice to say go buy. Even if people know that there's going to be value here. If you really believe in the player, I, I believe in the player. I believe in the opportunity. Are you worried at all? Just like the Vikings offense, what it has looked like seven out of eight quarters with JJ McCarthy and that the scoring opportunities might not be there?
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Yeah, it's been rough. I mean, we did see some promise there at the end of the week one game. But I will also say that it hasn't been, it hasn't been the most wonderful introduction in terms of defensive matchups here. I think he's still getting comfortable the schedule ahead there, particularly these next two matchups. We've got Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. Those defenses look complete mess right now. So I think the opportunity is there, especially as J.J. continues to develop.
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Give me your second move to make before week three.
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Oh, let's, let's stay on the trade track here. We're going to sell, but this is another one that has that caveat of what you were saying. We're not, we're not selling high. We're selling before this becomes a bit of a disaster here. James Connor. I think this is a good opportunity coming off of this game. We're on the surface you might be thinking that Benson didn't get the same amount of carries, so it's still James Connor's offense. But when you dive into the stats There are concerns there. Connor played 30 of 55 snaps. Benson played 25 turns around. Benson was higher on that end. He had more targets, less carries there. But again, this is starting to feel like a situation where we are getting confirmation of exactly what we were told in the off season. The Cardinals were very clear they wanted to increase the role of Trey Benson. Now I will say I don't think that he is going to just outright unseed James Connor and the role is going to disappear. But the guy that you invested the big draft pick in, that is James Conner. So if you want to try and get some value out of him before he gets stuck into this area where he's in that 10 fantasy points per game range and sometimes you're getting single digit fantasy points for a guy that you've been able to rely on as a RB2 for years now, maybe now is the time to get out before something weird happens here and he's a guy that you just can't move off of and can't do anything with.
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Are you interested in like on the flip side buying Trey Benson or is this more like I want to sell James Conner because I kind of want to not ride the roller coaster of.
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This backfield in general, I'm interested in buying Benson. I think the thing here with Benson and why you would be buying him is that I feel like James Connor's age kind of snuck up on us. Like sometimes we forget he's 30, this is the year 30 for him and not everybody can be Derrick Henry. So if we were going to see regression at some point, now makes sense. When you look at him, he's never been a massive injury kind of guy, but every single year there's, you know, two, three games here and there where he has an injury sits out. And now with the confidence that they clearly have in Benson, what if those two three games come, Vincent takes over as the lead back and all of a sudden he's just the offense is gunning and he's thriving and he just straight up does not relinquish that role. That's the reality too here. He's a high upside handcuff and I think it's perfectly fine to go out and acquire him as well.
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I'm not gonna lie, I kind of wanted to do this one last week, but I was worried that I was gonna hurt feelings. But now that we've got this week's performance, let's, let's just go ahead and do it. You gotta cut the cord with Colston Loveland and I feel bad because it's, it's bad, it's, it sucks to cut the cord on guys that were literally just first round picks. And we were so excited about it, but I very worried about him heading into the season. And this is showing exactly why I was worried. When we were looking at tight end strategy to begin the year, we know we had our big three, right, Although we've got injuries to the big three and that's an issue. But if you missed out on those, you know, you wanted to wait, target guys like Tucker Kraft, Tyler Warren, and one name that I never said was Colston Loveland. And there was a very particular reason for that. When you look at the Chicago offense and what Ben Johnson was trying to implement from Detroit, you start to realize that when there were two, two very solid pass catchers, there's just not a lot of room for targets for that tight end. That's why we saw that dip in Sam Laporta's production compared to his rookie season because of the emergence from Jameson Williams. Now cut to this year in Chicago, we've got this issue of Roma. Dunze is an absolute beast there. Then you've got DJ Moore there as well. Cole Comet hasn't disappeared. He is out snapping him. Unfortunately, this is just not a situation even with significant volume from Caleb Williams where you're going to be able to rely on Colston Loveland on a week.
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To week basis here in these early rest of season rankings being updated, you know, coming off of yesterday's games, Loveland is down to tight end 22 rest of season. That's fallen six spots just in the last week, you know, let alone what happened in week one. So he's somebody that by the end of draft season I was not drafting a lot of early on like that. Those late July, early August drafts, I was kind of buying into like, hey, of the. He, he, you know, he was drafted higher than Tyler Warren. He theoretically has a better quarterback situation than Tyler Warren, better play caller than Tyler Warren. So, you know, this is the, the upside rookie tight end I want to be targeting. That was not the case by the end of draft season. But you know, it's just, it's even more apparent now that we've seen some games play out. How, how wrong that was for me to think that early. And you know, I think he's a talented player here still. But yeah, the situation will need to change for him to, to be relevant. And at this point, like unless you're in some kind of crazy tight end premium format where you, you start three tight ends or something insane that I've never seen, yeah, there's, there's not a whole lot of reason to keep them around. I mean, maybe if you have super deep benches and say, hey, maybe second half situation changes. But beyond that, I'm with you on, on this as, as a drop here. Let's stick with the Bears and another player here that you want to make a move on.
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Yeah, I hate to rain on the Bears parade here. I did again. You know, I do love a good.
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I think the football gods are raining on their parade enough.
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Y. Right. Let's not beat up on them here. You know, I love a good sell high but sometimes, you know, it again you just, it might be time to sell and not have to deal with it here heading into the season. Right. We were all looking for, you know, oh, who's the next, who's the next Kyron Williams? Who's the next jsn? Roma Dunze was the guy that came up so commonly as the next jsn. He didn't even need the time that JSN needed. It's Rome Adunze's time right now. He is absolutely dominating when you look at target share in that offense. And again, this is a major reason why Colson Loveland has such an issue. Roma Dun is dominating. He had an over 25% target share in week one, over 30% in week two. DJ Moore's target share has not exceeded 20%. That's a major issue here. Now the good thing is, is that you don't have to panic. Sell him. Right? This is like a shop around and see what you can get. If, see if you can find someone that believes in him because for the entirety of his career he's been an incredibly reliable wide receiver to top 24 type of receiver right around there. Unfortunately that has been when he has been the wide receiver one on this team and I just don't think that we can count on him as being the consistent wide receiver one in this offense. Now at the end of the day, Roma Dunze is an incredible guy and DJ Moore is still going to have a pretty solid floor. He's going to get targets here. It is very, very focused in on Roma, Dunes A and DJ Moore. So this is not a bust situation where you absolutely can't put him in your fantasy lineups. But now he's a flex player who you'll be thinking about am I starting him or somebody else that has a little more upside matchup dependent there? And if you want to see if you can capitalize on him, go shop him around.
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When I made this list low key, it was going to be, it might have been like an even split with the AFC and the NFC North. Yeah, it would have been but I, I focused it in on a buy here with Breeze Hall. We'll end on a PA on a, on a buy low candidate here, a nice traditional one here in week one. Very encouraging from Breece Hall. 19 carries over 100 yards, caught a couple of targets there. Looked great in terms of burst. He looked good. That was a problem. Or was the good thing? The problem was is that we did have that red zone use that tilted towards Braylon Allen and that was a bit of a problem there. Right. But overall it's not as massive of an issue as you might think because again we're, we're knowing that this jets offense wants to implement a Detroit style offense offense that utilizes two running backs, a Thunder and a Lightning and hall being the Lightning there. So it wasn't surprising usage. It was actually encouraging that he had that level of carries and he was productive with it. Now cut to week two. Not a very productive day, right? 10 carries, 29 yards, couple of receptions there. But the positive here is that Braylon Allen was kind of non existent there, just a couple of carries. This is Breece Hall's backfield. He dominated the snap share. It is very clear that hall has value in competitive games and games where jets are playing from behind because he's the wide receiver or the RB one in that offense and no one is taking his job. Braylon Allen looked quite frankly that he might be competing with Isaiah Davis for who is more of that thunderbolt there. So when you're looking at somebody who you can buy cheap, Maybe the cheapest RB2 in rankings with true RB1 upside available right now, maybe getting a little bit of discount right there with Justin Fields and concussion protocol Breeze, hall is a good candidate.
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What do you make of the fact that the Bills run defense just got completely run over in Week one? I know the Ravens run defense is, you know, unique and special and you know, not many backfields have Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry as running threats. But the fact that the Bills like got really gashed in that Week one game on the ground and then the jets, who were so good on the ground in Week one were not able to do that against the defense that we had just seen get run all over. Do you make anything of of of what happened or is this just kind of like the game got away from the jets early and there was really nothing to be done about it?
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Yeah, I think it was a weird anomaly there. They got off to a rough start and again when you look at it was a game where we expected Bruce hall to do better on the ground here. But the positive I'm taking away is that no one else did better. It was just a game where they struggled as a whole and weird anomalies happen. Like we took and saw Derrick Henry struggle to produce anything against the Browns Def. It's possible that it was just a weird situation there for the Jets.
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We'll go ahead and wrap things up there again. Fantasypros.com rankings you can see, you know, week three rankings as they come up. The rest of season rankings are getting updated there as well. For Tara, I'm Ryan Wormley. Thanks everybody for tuning in. We'll see you again next time. Thanks for listening to the Fantasy Pros Fantasy Football Podcast. If you love the show, the best free way to support us is by leaving a positive review on apple podcasts@fantasypros.com review or on Spotify. Follow us on X, Instagram and TikTok at Fantasy Pros and subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube.com fantasypros.
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