Fantasy Football Daily - 2021 Franchise Focus: Arizona Cardinals

Episode Date: July 5, 2021

Joe Dolan (@FG_Dolan), Tom Brolley (@TomBrolley), and Graham Barfield (@GrahamBarfield) preview the Arizona Cardinals 2021 season in the companion podcast to the 2021 Franchise Focus piece on FantasyPoints.com. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time for the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by FantasyPoints.com. Top level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. Hello everyone. Welcome to the 2021 franchise focus series here on the Fantasy Points podcast, where we break down each and every NFL team. And we're going to break down each and every NFL team with individual podcast and an individual article up at fantasy points.com. And these podcasts are here to give you a little bit of a taste of what we're doing with these extensive franchise focus articles.

My name is Joe Dolan. Joining me today are Tom Broly and Graham Barfield of the aforementioned website, both of whom are extremely good at their jobs. We have some sort of title for them. I'm not really sure what it is, but they're very good. That's all that you need to know. And what we're going to do here on this franchise focus series is touch on one or two points about every team. This is our first one. We're going to go in alphabetical order that we might skip

Green Bay in Houston for obvious reasons, just for now. But we're going to go in alphabetical order, and we're just going to talk about every team. And this is how we're previewing the 2021 NFL season up at FantasyPoint.com. So if you go to FantasyPoints.com and you're a subscriber, if you're a subscriber, you can get access to these articles. And what we're going to do is we're going to have stuff. We're going to have the basics. It's going to be the betting lines. It's going to be Scott Barrett's strength of schedule, key off. season moves, season props, things like that, just all that information put together. We're going to have pace and tendencies from Graham.

We're going to have key statistics from Graham and Scott. We're going to have Wes Huber's scheme notes so you know how the team plays. We're going to have player profiles in there. And then we're going to have John Hanson wrap everything up. These things are going to be, they're a team effort, and they're going to be monstrous. Now, I'm not going to give that spiel on every podcast. I'm just going to remind people to come listen to this one so you know about it. But I just want you to know that we are in the process of putting these up.

And if you're listening to this on Monday on July 5th, well, then the article is up. We're actually recording it on July 1st because, you know, we want to be able to enjoy our holiday weekend. But we're recording it on July 1st and hoping that nothing changes majorly for the Arizona Cardinals in that time. Tom and Graham, it's a fireworks accidents over, you know, the 4th of July, blown up fingers or anything like that. Don't even mention it. Don't even mention it. Yeah, okay. Anyway, yeah, not going to be talking about that. No, the Arizona Cardinals is up first.

I want everybody to follow Tom on Twitter at Tom Broly. Graham on Twitter at Graham Barfield. I got to get on that. Now that Twitter reopened the verification process, I'm going to see if I can get the game in there. So you're no longer going to be a fun guy? Ross calls me the fantasy gangsta, which I'm not too sure about that. I think it's too much and more would take issue with that. Well, yeah, I saw you're watching.

you know, Lifetime movies he was saying. Hallmark. Now, Hallmark. Yeah, I don't know if that makes you a gangster if you're watching Hallmark and Lifetime movies. Ross keeps saying Lifetime. And I said, no, Ross, Hallmark. Lifetime movies are bloody and gorgeous. Tomato, tomato.

Yeah, it's one of those things. Anyway, we're going to be talking Arizona Cardinals today. So these podcasts are intended as a companion piece to the articles. And also going up on the website, by the way, Tom Broley is going to have betting previews for these teams with leans, best bets, you know, all those things. But let's start by talking the Arizona Cardinals guys with the basics. And here's what their season odds are.

Now, keep in mind, 17 games this year. So their season win total up at Draft King's Sportsbook is eight, minus 133 shaded to the over. They are plus 600 to win the NFC West, plus 190 to make the playoffs. So they are not favored to make the playoffs right now, plus 2,000 for the NFC Championship, plus 3,300 for the Super Bowl. Their wins total has gotten a little more juice to the over. It seems like people are just betting that over just a little bit. And their Super Bowl odds have gone from plus 5,000 in early February to plus 3,300.

I guess people are excited about some of their additions. And what are the key additions? Well, I would argue the big key one is on the defensive side of the ball, J.J. Watt, Zaven Collins, the linebacker who's the first round pick. But for our purposes, guys, and this is where I'm going to start, It's at the wide receiver position where they added A.J. Green and Rondale Moore to the mix. Graham, let's start with you. A.J. Green was awful last year.

I mean, in every conceivable metric, he was terrible. There was a chance that he was just out on Cincinnati. They franchise tagged him. How much is left in the tank here? I mean, statistically, he was just miserable. In an offense that really wasn't all that bad, at least when Joe Burrow, Was that the hell? Right. Yeah. And I think we were talking about this earlier the week with the group. Like, A.J. Green last year just could not separate. Like, if you looked at T. Higgins or Tyler Boyd or even Auden Tate's, like, separation stats or on target throw rate, any of those stats, like Green was miles behind them. And I only looked at it with Burrow at quarterback. I didn't really care about Brandon Allen or whatever. But yeah, the thing, the thing now is, Joe, is like, I think what they're going to want to try and do is get green in a lot of sense.

single coverage against off the ball corners or, you know, off the line of scrimmage corners, and they're going to move them around and play them in the slot. So, but, you know, now they have the pieces here to go four wide. And I think one of the things we're going to have to keep an eye on is just how often Arizona does go four wide. I mean, they can go with Hopkins and green out wide, have more in Kirk in the slot. Kirk plays a little bit outside too. They can kind of mix and match their pieces here. So it'll be interesting to see how it all works out. But I mean, at the end of the day, it's still new Copkins getting 150 darkouts here. Yeah, Cliff tried to do that, you know, his first season there in 19 to really play the four

wide receivers. And, you know, he just didn't have the personnel to really do it. And he kind of reeled it back in towards the end of that year. And, you know, just a little bit last year as well. But, you know, this is, you know, kind of just the moves of the offseason. You know, Kenyon Drake is out of the mix here. Chase Edmonds could be, you know, kind of the go-to. Back in this backfield now, he kind of, you know, fits that kind of four, four-wide kind of personnel as well. So got Rondale Moore drafted. He's going to be playing all over the field.

So this is finally kind of like the personnel that, you know, Cliff has been really looking for whenever he first got here. The roster was very thin in 2019. That's why they had the number one overall pick to get Kyler Murray. So, you know, they've made incremental improvements with the roster here. and now they can kind of do what Cliff has always wanted to do here. Yeah, they had to sign Michael Crabtree for God's sake in 2019. Yeah, they had to sign Crabtree to get a receiver body in there.

So, yeah, they're definitely in a much better spot around what they want to run. By the way, they are still, there is still like, the door is still cracked open for Larry Fitzgerald to come back. And obviously, it would only be in a part-time role. And I think people, people are not drafting A.J. Green based on name value, though, guys. His positional ADP is wide receiver 70. I mean, it goes, literally it goes from Hopkins at wide receiver 4, and then the next guy off the board at that position is Rondale Moore at wide receiver 63. So there is like a, oh my God, it's like a 15 round difference between Cardinal

wide receivers, which is fair at this point. But Graham, and this is one more question for you before we move on to Rondale Moore, and I want to talk to Tom about him. He was 32nd among wide receivers in targets. He had 104 of them. but 67th in fantasy points. So he had 104 targets, no receiver with even 80 targets finished behind green and total fantasy points. This is PPR. And per SIS, the Bengals lost 0.18 expected points per green target, the worst among any wide receiver with 50 or more targets. And in his final game is Bengal.

Now, I will say this, he played 16 games. And if you were to tell people before the season, AJ Green is going to play 16 games, I think his ADP would have been pretty high. But he played 16 games, but the season ended in auspiciously. He didn't catch a single one of his six targets in his final game as a Bengal. A lot of this could be on Brandon Allen, but he wasn't even producing with Joe Burrow. Is there any interest in A.J. Green Graham, even at that ADP, which I mean, at this point is free. Yeah, no.

You know, best ball is a game of opportunity cost, and I'm looking for upside in the 15th and 16th round. I would much rather just, you know, spend a. slightly earlier pick on Rondale Moore and hope for some big blow-up, you know, a couple big blow-up weeks for more. I saw a quote earlier this week, or maybe it was from last week. Cliff was saying he's already impressed with more the player after the catch. And, you know, that's not really that surprising. I mean, if you watched him, that's exactly what he was. It's just an explosive playmaker after the catch. But I do think more as like a perfect fit for this offense because, man, I mean, like the Cardinals, you know, they don't throw the ball downfield. This is not an error rate.

offense. They are, you know, quick, quick throws around the line of scrimmage and more fits that way more than Green does. Yeah, I really haven't had that type of player. If you look at, you know, a type of player like DeAndre Hopkins last year, he's, you know, obviously great at what he does and, you know, catching contested passes and just getting open in the intermediate area. But they haven't really had this guy that really, you know, picks up yardage after the catch. Christian Kirk is more of a vertical guy. And Larry's. Fitzgerald, God love him, but he's, you know, he's not creating after the catch at this stage of his career. So they finally have that piece to really maybe unlock this offense.

And they were, you know, even using Chase Edmonds a bit, you know, just to try to create those kind of things out of the slot a bit last year. So they finally have that piece in Rondale Moore. And I'm with you, Graham. I've been kind of, you know, reaching a bit for him. You know, especially when I take Kyler in that fifth, fifth, fifth, sixth round, area because I'd much rather have Rondell Moore stacked with him than, you know, if I miss out on Rondell Moore and I have to take A.J. Green like in the 15th or 16th round, I would prefer not to do that. So I've been finding myself reaching a bit for Rondale Moore whenever I take Kyler Murray in that

fifth six round. Let's go to that backfield where Chase Edmonds is now being paired up with James Connor, who is a free agent addition. We're looking at Edmonds right now. ADP 6th round. He's RB 28 in ADP. Connor, ADP of 101. That's eighth, ninth round, RB 38, so just 10 running backs between the two of them. And digging into the numbers for Edmonds, he was a top 36 running back 11 times last

season, a reliable enough flex play. Eight of those finishes came in the top 24. So he was a decent RB2 at times. The question now becomes, can Chase Edmonds take over this backfield? He has never had 100 carries in a season. Given the caveats, though, guys, I kind of feel like his ADP is fair in the sixth round. Now, I saw JJ Zacharison was kind of calling that the RB Dead Zone,

where the guys like Miles Gaskin and Edmonds and Mike Davis are going in that fifth, six round range where they're not really the sexy kind of running backs you want to invest in. But if you're in the spot, Tom, where you need to take a running back in the sixth round and Chase Edmonds is there, I think you can do a lot worse. Yeah, I haven't gone too much in on him. You know, that's usually a spot of the – That's a quarterback. Yeah, that's quarterback tight ends in that fifth, sixth round.

And if I'm not taking a quarterback or tight end, I'm usually taking a receiver. But, you know, on a few occasions when he's slipped into that beginning of the seventh round, and I've found myself taking him. But, you know, it is setting up pretty well for him here. you know, James Connor is a step down from Kenyon Drake here. You know, he's obviously had a lot of issues staying on the field in Pittsburgh. And he does catch the ball fairly well.

He can take some snaps away from him there. But we also thought the same thing about Kenyon Drake. And, you know, he goes and signs with the Raiders. And he's going to kind of play that pass receiver role in Las Vegas. He really wasn't asked to do it much in Cliff Kingsbury's offense. So you have to think that they're probably viewing James Connor kind of like Kenyon Drake as the grinder, as the pounder on the early downs. And they don't really want to play him on third downs and passing situations. And I don't blame him.

Edmonds is excellent in those situations. And, you know, I've been the one prop I nearly gave out, I gave it out as a lien in the betting preview is, you know, Chase Edmonds's receptions. It's sitting at 45 and a half. It's a number he went over last year. I think he was at 53 catches. You know, I think he gets up over. Yeah, I think he gets up over 50% of the snaps. We get the extra game here.

James Connor has issues staying healthy. So I didn't quite get there because I don't know just how much involved Rondale Moore is. You know, I could see some gadget-type plays. Maybe, you know, that takes, you know, Chase Edmonds out of the slot a little bit more. But, you know, it's definitely one of my, you know, favorite liens of the early process here over 45 and a half. Couldn't quite get there. But I think it's a pretty intriguing overtotal there.

That's kind of my thought, too, Tom, is like maybe the Rondell Moore pick is like, you know, they just pass a little bit more. Instead of, instead of giving those carries, those dead carries to Kenyon Drake or James Conner, they just, you know, kind of give screens or, you know, short area passes to Ron Del Moore, even Christian Kirk and DeAndre Hopkins. So I'm with you on that. James Connor guys He was really bad last year And I know the Steelers' offensive line was trash But I mean he was fourth and positive run Fourth from last and positive run rate

Ahead of only Todd Gurley Adrian Peterson and Frank Gore And all those guys are like 46 years old And Gurley has the knees of 46 year old So I just yeah I just don't really want any part of Connor At cost of him The funny part with Connor is though

When I looked at his baseline numbers And Graham I know these these can tell a different story. You're like, oh, he actually touched the ball more than I thought he did. He played more games than I thought he did. What that just ends up saying is, like, he kind of like was just there. But he had 936 yards from scrimmage. We know he can catch the ball a little bit.

James Connor is like a ninth round pick. And Kenyon Drake is leaving 264 touches behind. You know where I'm going with this. zero R.B enthusiasts are going to be drafting a ton of James Connor this year, just in the event that he scoops up the majority of those 264 touches. Yeah. Well, I mean, Edmonds is going to have to get hurt for him to get most of those, right? Yeah, Mike, I would think, though, but the nagging question I have is,

Chase Edmonds has never had 100 carries in a season. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe we're looking at a Latavius-Marie-Alvin-Kamara type of split where Camara is playing, you know, 70% of the passing downs, and then Conner's on the field for whatever, like 60% of the running plays. As someone that follows the Steelers closely, it was horrific at the end of last season with him. I mean, they were reaching to play Benny Snell over him in December.

Like they were just looking for anybody to give that running game a pulse. And James Connor was not doing it. So, you know, we saw what the Steelers thought of Benny Snell this offseason when they used a first round pick on Nausea Harris. So, I mean, Connor was one of those guys. I probably started him in, like, my best ball rankings, like, around 90. And he's just a guy I've just continued to slide back. I'm like, I don't want to draft this guy. I'm not, I, how can I have him in the 90s or the low hundreds?

And I don't want any part of him. So he's just been a guy that's been sliding back in my rankings. Just about every time I go and look at him, I'm like, well, I haven't drafted him yet this year. So I might as well move him back some more. Yeah. It's the thing with Connor is. like, you know, and everybody's going to argue about the Pittsburgh's decision to draft a running back in the first round. Okay, noted. However, what does that decision tell us? This is,

this is the way Greg Kosell's got me thinking about it. What are teams telling you with the decisions they make? The Steelers are telling you that they thought the running back was the problem. Now, does that make them right? Does that make, mean that they thought that the offensive line wasn't a problem? No. The Steelers are, I think many would say, a pretty sharp organization based on their success. They thought the running back was the problem. So that's something you've got to reconcile as well. Well, they also thought David DeCastro was the problem, apparently.

Yeah, well, I mean, DeCastro thought DeCastro was the problem because I don't know if he's going to be able to play. But, yeah, I mean, well, anyway, we'll get to the Steelers in, oh, my God. That's, in August. We'll get there eventually. It'll be the end of July. Yeah. But anyway, that's a little bit of a breakdown of the Arizona Cardinals. There's plenty more.

And I mean, guys, I mean thousands upon thousands of words more about the Arizona Cardinals. Hold on. Let me, let me go through here and see what the word count is on this document. I'm looking at the document. We're at 3,500, guys. I think we'd add a few more sections. On Arizona and the betting preview as well. So that's, I mean, we've got the 6,000 words.

So much more about the Cardinals up at Fantasy Points.com. Standard subscribers, you get the franchise-focused team pro. profiles. DFS in betting subscribers, premium subscribers, you get the betting, you get the betting preview as well with all of Tom's liens. And by the way, Tom, I want you to toot your horn here because I wish I tailed you. Yeah, 8 and 0 on the season bets last season. Win totals. So, yeah, very nervous. I'm not going to be able to duplicate that this year. I'm already calling it. I'm calling my shot. I'm Probably not going to go undefeated again this year, but just looking to have a winning record. 71, Tom.

7 and 1. That's what we got. Yeah, it's going to be a huge fall off. I'd be very happy 7-1. Follow Grand Barfield on Twitter at Grand Barfield. Follow me on Twitter at FG underscore Dolan and follow Mr. 8&O on Twitter at Tom Brawley. This has been our franchise-focused podcast on the Arizona Cardinals. I hope you enjoy the full series up on the website.

We'll be back tomorrow when we're going to talk Atlanta Falcons. Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points podcast. Remember to subscribe, rate, and review on your favorite platform. And come join the roster at FantasyPoints.com.