Fantasy Football Daily - 2022 Take Talk Ep. 3

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

Brett Whitefield (@BGWhitefield) and Steven ORourke (@callmesteveo7) preview Week 1 NFL games. --- 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 FantasyPoint.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, and welcome to episode three of the Take Talk podcast. It's a good week this week. It's week one, and you get us twice in one week. I'm Stephen O'Rourke, and with me, as always, is my co-host, Brett Whitefield. Today we're going to talk about what in the world happened last night, and we're going to preview the games we're most excited about this week.

Brett, you said you have a correction you have to make from our last episode. Go ahead. Yes. So, listen, you know, sometimes when we get in the heat of the moment, we're talking super fast, especially when we're trying to not record for three hours, which is really hard for us, apparently. So when we were talking about the Eagles and their outlook for this season, I actually made the blunder of saying Javon Hargrave was, good against the run and bad as a pass rusher, which I actually meant to say the literal complete option of that. He's actually a really good pass rusher and he's not a good run defender at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure if we went back and looked at our data from last year, Steve, like he, I'm pretty sure he was like top three in pass rush win rate for interior defensive linemen. I think he had over 60, or pressures, over 80 total wins on the season. So he was a beast

rushing the passer, not good stuffing the run. So I would like to apologize and just, you know, come clean on that. Javon Hargrave, beast pass rusher, but he is one of the worst run defenders in the league. I think that's why they drafted Jordan Davis on top of Fletcher Cox also getting old, but I think they really wanted to show up some of that run D. So there we go. Correction made. I feel better about myself.

Let's move forward. That's what we do here. We own our mistakes. We're not going to hide. We're not going to hide behind anything. and anything like that. We're going to own our mistakes here. Heck yeah.

So we're going to talk, you know, we want to talk about last night's game, obviously. And then I think we're going to get to, you know, the week one preview, which that's why we're doing this. I would call it an emergency pod because, one, Steve and I really, really wanted to break down the week one schedule for you guys. We didn't get a chance to do that despite recording for a total of five hours between the first two pod. And also we're going to get into some, you know, review of last night's game. So you get us two times in a week, which is pretty fun. It's exciting. Yeah.

So let's just get into last night, dude, because it was kind of a cluster. It was a mess of a game. It was really, really crazy. I mean, I kind of expected the Rams to show up a little bit more than they did. I think everyone was kind of picking the bills to win. but man, that was like the offensive line just got bamboozled, snap in and snap out. They looked horrific. And it was, I mean, it's not like Buffalo did anything crazy.

I don't think they blitz once. Going through and watching the game again last night, that was just four-man rush every time. And the Rams offensive line looked just lost, completely lost. They ran a decent amount of stunts on their, defensive line. They were looping guys pretty consistently, but still, it's four-man rush. You can't allow the amount of pressure that they did on a four-man rush like that. Oh, it was utterly ridiculous. How many times did Stafford drop back? I think it was like 50,

49, something like that. Dude, they, the bills generated pressure or had like a true pass rush win on like at least 27 of those. I think I counted, 26 or 27. So over 50% of Stafford's dropbacks, he was getting pressured or he had an offensive lineman losing. Sometimes the time to throw is too fast to actually chart a pressure. Right. But we do chart a pass rush win on those plays. And I mean, 50% is ridiculous. And then there was so many times where not only was their pressure, dude, it was coming quick.

Fast. Fast. And this actually brings me to a point. I actually kind of wanted to start the pod talking about this guy. but last week we did the season outlook and we talked awards right if if vaughn miller is going to play like that every week he's in the conversation for defensive player the year right i he has to be he looked incredible like he looked like vaughn from three four years he was setting up no booms like so easily he's me he did it at the start of the game you i mean they kind of touched on it in

the broadcast a little bit but he's he was looping outside to start the game and then then he used, he, like, used, what, used that with, like, note boom expecting him to do that. And then he just bull rushed him. Like, he was savvy. And he was savvy with his pass rush moves. He looked so good. I think we saw glimpses of it toward the tail end of the Rams run last year.

But it still was like, okay, well, you can, you can kind of see his age. But like you said, this was, this was late 20s, Von Miller. Yeah, this was nuts. He has so many different pass rush moves, and it's really good to see him kind of string them all together. I know Brandon Thorne, I don't know if you guys follow him on Twitter. Great follow. I would call him a buddy of mine.

He's an O-line guru. He's, you know, part of the O-line masterminds crew. And he does a great job of documenting every weapon in Miller's arsenal. But it was on full display last night, man. Yeah. Like you said, he hit that speed rush to start the game. And No Boom immediately opened that gate. and overset to try to run them around the corner.

And Vaughn just says, thank you. I'll raise you 20. And just hit him with the bull rush on the very next play. Stunded it. Absolutely stunned. Stund him. No boom had no idea what you hit him. It looked like a semi-truck.

It hit him right in the chest. And then from that point on, it was just, it was chess. I mean, Vaughn Miller was playing chess. No boom was playing checkers. It was pretty nuts, man. So if we're getting vintage Vaughn and he can sustain, obviously he's not going to have two sacks every game guys. But if he's going to sustain that level of play, that high quality pressures,

those super quick pressures, he's going to end the year in defensive player of the year talk, for sure. Absolutely, especially if Buffalo's defense is going to be able to play like that. Yeah. The whole year. That's another thing I was impressed with. It wasn't just how bad the Rams O line played. It was the depth. Right.

But the Bill B line played. Like they had multiple guys rack up multiple pressures. Like Philip. Gregory Russo. Yeah. Phillips from the inside looked. Yeah. Looked dominant.

Yeah. And he's been, in my opinion, he's been an average to above average player his career. And he looked awesome last night. Ed Oliver can get after it. We talked about Gregory Russo already. Boogie Basham. Yeah.

It was one guy after another. I mean, it was truly crazy. It was incredible. And I will say, like with Trudevius Whiteout, they were kind of trotting out just like a roll just a rolling cast of people to just see who was out there. And I can't really say that there was anyone that looked especially deficient. No. I mean, Cooper Cup is going to get his.

That's fine. Like, you deal with that. That's fine. Outside of one play, Steve, they actually held them to what, like eight? yards of catch or something. Like they were making him work for everything. Yeah. I know he ended up winning the one, the one deeper ball later.

I think it was like a three route, like 21 yards down field or something. Other than that, though, everything was pretty well contained in short. Yeah. I was really working for it. I think he finished with like 13 receptions, 126 yards and a touchdown. Yeah. And it was, yeah, Benford and Elam, the two rookies. First of all, I didn't know that Elam actually lost out a starting spot to a six

rounder from the same draft class. I didn't know that. I had heard, like, I had listened to one of the Bills beatwriters. I can't remember his name, but I had listened to him kind of, kind of foreshadowed a little bit. He said that they liked what Benford was doing, but that was also mid-training camp. Yeah. You know, that for sure doesn't always mean anything. Yeah. I kind of like mixing those guys up, because what it really allowed them to do is, I would say, keep confidence pretty high. And one thing Cooper Cup is good at is he's basically the Vaughn Miller of wide receivers where he has so many different release packages, so many different ways he can run routes that he plays that chess game in a game where he'll set you up to hit you with a route later on.

Right. So by switching those guys in and out, I actually think it maybe saved them a little bit because he wasn't setting up the same guy all the game, you know? Right, right. I thought there was a really interesting way of approaching it. Kind of prevented him from picking up on what guys are falling into and everything and their, you know, what their defaults are. For sure.

And do you know what? They play such a zone heavy scheme, too. I mean, shoot, they were playing split safeties for most of the game. A lot of quarters, cover two. They would mix in some cover three here, but here and there. But for the most part, it was a lot of split safety stuff. protected those corners. I thought it was an excellent game plan. And look, when your D-line is playing at that level, you can play split safeties, right? Because you're getting yourself into favorable,

you know, predictable passing situation. Right. Stopping the run on first down. And you're just letting those guys get after it. I mean, that's, that's honestly how you protect young corners and they did a great job doing it. And that was why I think Stafford locked, like, locked in so heavily on Cooper Cup is because they were just, they were basically just running like, hey, go find the hole in the zone. That was what they were telling Cooper Cup to do it looked like on most of his routes. Like it was just finding that whole. But what happened was that Stafford looked rough. He did.

Granted, he was under pressure most of the game. Like, we have to acknowledge that. But even like he just, he didn't look like the same player that we saw last year. He looked like he looked like. the injured version of him that we saw in Detroit a couple years. Right. He, you know, there was moments in that game, Steve, where I'm like, wow, this elbow injury is way more significant than they're letting on. Right.

But then he would come back and make a ridiculous throw. Like that outrouty threw to cup, the one I already mentioned, that was between two defenders and that ball was screaming. It was perfect. I mean, he dropped it right, like right between the high safety. and the guy in Johnson running underneath. Yeah, and you're throwing an out route, you know, so outside the numbers, 20 plus yards downfield with the amount of zip that Stafford had on it, I was like, well, that didn't look like there's anything wrong with the elbow.

Right. Then we saw him consistently missing guys high the whole game, and I'm just like, and you and we're not going to beat the, we're Detroiters thing every single pod, but it is true we saw a lot of Stafford play. And that is kind of his MO when he gets pressured, things get a little won, mechanics kind of fall apart. He does start to miss a lot of throws. He's not,

throw for throw, he's not a very accurate passer. No. He just has the capability of making ridiculous throws. And he did have a couple ridiculous. The touchdown pass the cup, too, at the back of the end zone. That thing was a thing of beauty. Yeah, that was beautiful. That was perfect.

Beautiful pass. But yeah, for the most part, he looked skittish. The whole thing with Alan Robinson, I know that's a huge talking point for everybody right now. I don't think Robinson was that bad. You know, he, there was plays he didn't, you know, generate a ton of separation, but there were also some plays he was open. One of them was in the third quarter. They had, it was a third in, what, three, I think.

The one, you remember the play Acres came in on and he was blocking for Stafford on the scramble? Yeah. So that very play, Alan Robinson's 10, 15 yards downfield running wide open across the middle of the field towards Matthew Stafford. And Stafford just says, nah, bro, I got this. And he runs for the first down. And I'm just like, like, so there was moments. was certainly wide open. Right.

Certainly. And he's also a guy who doesn't necessarily need to be wide open either to catch the ball. That's the thing with Arob, right? That's why we liked them with Stafford. So I'm really curious to see where that relationship goes this season. Hopefully they kind of have the epiphany of like, wow, we really need to spread this ball around a little bit more. I mean, McVeigh called to it in his post-game presser. He said that he said that Alan Robinson needs to get more involved.

or they need to get, not he needs to get more involved. They need to get him more involved because I think he ended up with like a 5% target share. He was on the field for over 90% of the snaps. He ran a route on over 90% of the snaps. It's not that, like, it's not like they weren't utilizing him. It's just that, I don't know. I feel like Stafford, that pressure came fast and it came early. and I think that he did the thing that he does sometimes,

and that's where he just finds his guy for the game and locks into him. And it has, like, has trouble looking off. Because, like you said, Robinson was winning. Like, he was winning routes. There wasn't, you know, it wasn't like he was getting bodied up at the line, or he was just, like, smothered all game. Sure. Yeah, I mean, I think,

staffer's a little rattle. Let's talk about the other quarterback, though. Josh Allen, he looked phenomenal. Yeah. I know he had a couple picks. One, one certainly was not his fault. The Isaiah McKenzie one. Yeah. Yeah, not at all. Braddasket plus, and then McKenzie just kind of had a short meltdown there. The other one, I do want to talk about, too, the Troy Hill pick. That was, I kind of put that one on Allen for sure. I know people on Twitter were freaking out. what an incredible read by Troy Hill and great break on the ball.

Alan was really late getting that ball out. Yeah. He kind of telegraphed where he was going with it. Troy Hill was actually pretty well beat on that play. And because the ball came out so late, he was able to catch back up to it and pick it off. That was the only moment, though, the game where I was like, that was a mistake from Alan. You know, obviously he had a couple misses here and there, but, you know, you're going to, you expect that every game from every quarterback. Right.

For the most part, other than that one pick, he was dialed in, man. just, you know, a handful of really, really good throws, great decision-making. I mean, shoot, they didn't punt. Did they end up punting at all in that game? I'm not even sure they did. I don't think so. I don't think so, no. Yeah, so without that McKenzie pick, I mean, that score of the game is probably 38 to 10.

And then you're maybe getting into the 40s if some other things go certain ways, you know? Like what? They had four turnovers? something like that yeah yeah yeah the jack jack jacks up too right yeah and also like he doing something that everybody was like asking him to do that like this year like one of the big things is he was taking what was there for him he like he took the underneath routes he took the easy throws it wasn't trying to force force a ball and like force a ball deep to his guy like he took his chances when they were there.

And then when they weren't, he was, he was dumping it down. He was hitting the guy, he was hitting a guy in the flat. He was hitting a guy, you know, short middle. Like, it was impressive. His, like, his decision making was impressive. And it's something, like, something that everybody, like I said, has been wanting to see. And if that's a development that we get to see with him this year, I mean, look out. For sure.

I'm just looking at the throw-for-throw charting we did. Yeah. Actually, you did it, so I'm going to put you on the spot here. But it looks like we charted him for one uncatchable pass the whole game. Yeah, I don't have it pulled up right now, but that sounds absolutely correct. I mean, every ball was hitting his receiver in the hands. And it also had deep shots, too. It wasn't like he was just thinking of it.

Right, right. Some deep shots in there. I mean, that throw to that throw to Gabe Davis. on that post route. Yeah. That was, I mean, pressure bearing down on him and he just puts it perfectly in Davis's hands. Even the bust were Diggs, you know, Ramsey bit for whatever reason.

I'm not sure what Ramsey was thinking on that. But if Diggs doesn't hit the turf monster right there, that throw looks awesome because he hits him in stride, but Diggs trips and falls as he's making the catch, which is kind of funny. Yeah. And Ramsey, we can get to him too. man, he looked really poor in this game. He did not show up the play.

I, like, if you didn't tell you, like, if you didn't say it was Jalen Ramsey, you would have thought that was like a below, like a replacement level player. Yeah. It was super weird. The first touchdown he gave up, you know, it was heavy play action. The whole team bit on the play action. It wasn't just Ramsey. Taylor Rap is screaming across the field trying to get there.

He just can't. I mean, it was just too big of a bus. It was a great play design. It was a good play design. Technically, well, and also, you see Josh Allen out of the pocket and he's naked like that, you have to address it somehow. And also, like, Ramsey knows no one is behind him. So I think, like, he knows, like, he's responsible for making that tackle because it's, you know, he's like. Well, yeah, I just prefer that my star cornerback, the guy on Gabe Davis in that moment isn't the one coming up and playing Allen at the line of scrimmon.

Yeah, absolutely. Because that's just a mistake, any, any way. you slice it. The other one where digs takes him deep, I have no idea what Ramsey's thinking there. Play action I can live with. Like we said, you see Alan, that's scary. You know he's going to get the first down if he keeps it unless you do something.

The other one, man, it's, well, it actually wasn't quarters. It was quarters to that side. It looked like they were playing like a cover six. Right. You know, they had cover two on the other side and then quarters on that side. And it was a bracket, basically. They had three defenders for two. two players. So they have the linebacker playing underneath. The safety was clearly keying the number

two there. And he's in Ramsey's field of view the entire time he's backpedaling. Right. I have no idea what caused Ramsey to come off that and leave Diggs behind him. That was the weirdest decision I've ever seen from Ramsey. And it cost them six points. Yeah. I watch, I think I watched the play like 10 times and you like, it couldn't figure it out. Like you said, he's just like slow playing it digs runs does like it's not like digs faked or like you know did a head fake anywhere to make ramsie think that he was coming back or anything like that he just ran right by him yeah i it was like i don't know if ramsie was trying to get cocky and like thought that he could bait a throw or it was like one of those where he's like no way is he

going to make the throw but it was so bizarre because it it just looked bad. Yep. It looked bad. Overall, the Rams, that's the bottom line. They look bad. Their star players didn't really show up to play. Stafford had bad moments.

Ramsey had bad moments. Cup was, even though the stat line looks good, he was mostly contained outside of a few plays. Donald played pretty well, actually. He was getting doubled a lot, but he had a good amount of passers wins. But ultimately, the game plan for Donald was good. Rams just didn't really show up. Bill's executed. They get the dub.

We're 20 minutes deep. Let's move on. I have a game I want to play with you. All right. Let's do it. So here's the deal. We probably don't want to go through every single game this week because we just don't really have the time.

And you know how much we talk. So what I want to do, though, we've kind of picked a handful of games we would like to spend a lot of time talking about. Yep. So the game I want to play is I want to go through all of the other ones. and I'm going to say the game's name, and I want you to give me the first two thoughts you have about each single game, about each team in the game.

Okay. And how it relates to this week. Okay. Okay. I think this could be fun. So let's go Saints Falcons. Oh, Saints. What does their wide receiving core look like to start the year?

And could be good, right? Could be very good. Who's healthy? Who's not? Who's playing where? What is, like, what is that? that look like. And just what does James look like coming back?

Yeah. Falcons. I don't even like, how, like, how does Kyle Pitts look? What is it, what does the start of the year look like for him? And how do you start to develop the young guys you have in your offense and defense? Like, is it, like, is it going to be, like, is it going to be bad every week or are you going to be competitive? Right. That's it for me. Pits and Drake London, what does Arthur Smith have planned to get those guys the ball and get them the ball often? It needs to be a priority.

Not just, you know, they're not really going to probably try to win a ton of games this year. Well, they're going to try to win a lot of games. They're not going to. But for the development of the team, you need to see how good those two guys are. Yeah. I truly think that. Especially if you want to find out about Marioita, like where's he at? this second chance he's getting. And then also potentially Desmond Ritter. Where's he at as your rookie?

They need to find ways to get those guys the ball to see where the team is at as a whole. Right. So we agree on that. Cool. Cleveland Carolina, give me two thoughts about that game. Cleveland's defensive backfield, this is a good opening test for them. Carolina has a good amount of weapons.

And I think the Cleveland backfield is a top five unit. So what do they look like? Baker Mayfield, obviously, playing his former team. How much juice is there in the game? What does the offense look like for Carolina? Is Baker healthy? How does he mesh with the weapons that he has? Because he has a good amount of weapons.

And Cleveland, on offense, how do they manage while Watson's out? What does Brissette look like? What is their game? plan do they lean more run heavy and let and kind of have brousset game manage those are those are probably my overriding thoughts initially but the big thing is the is the fireworks that could come with baker mayfield playing cleveland and his antics coming out because i'm sure they will that is the storyline all i'm going to say about that game is i would like to see baker mayfield win that game and I would like for him to go into the audience and find a giant Carolina Panthers flag

and run out to the middle of the field and plant it right in the flag right in the right in the center of the field except it is in Carolina so it wouldn't be that dramatic. If it was in Cleveland that would be even cooler but yeah like do we do we get a do we get a flag plant and a crotch grab yeah that that'd be tremendous especially if you like walked right up to the brown side line and just like stared them down and then gave the crotch grab hero status all right 49ers bears i think this one's got a chance to get ugly what do you think i agree um i'm excited to see how brisker looks i think that brisker could be a huge part of that bear's defense going forward and this is um a big opening test for him uh what does how does

Trey Lance look. Yeah. How, like, how does Trey Lance evolve that offense to be more than what it was with Jimmy Garoppolo? And how does Justin Fields look? Yeah, that's, that's it for me. Two young QBs. Yeah.

But I am excited to see Brisker. I like, I like him as a prospect. He looked good in preseason. So I am excited to watch him. But like you said, this game could get ugly fast because it's a bad offensive line playing a deep, healthy, fast defensive line. So we could see something similar to what happened with the Bills and the Rams last night. Yeah, for sure.

I think it's going to be ugly. I think the 49ers are going to destroy them. They're going to have their way. I think potentially big games for IUC and Debo. Yeah. Especially if Kittle doesn't play, which sounds like is probably what's going to happen. But back to Bristker, I loved Brister coming out. I think he had a first.

round grade for me, if not really darn close. But that secondary has the chance to be pretty good. I know they're a rebuilding team and they have almost no talent. But that secondary, they do. Jalen Johnson's a solid corner. They drafted Kyler Gordon. Eddie Jackson's a stud. And now they're adding, you know, Jaquan Brisher to the mix.

That might be where they hang their hat this year. It's like, hey, we know we've got the secondary figured out. But unfortunately for them, that D-line will not do them any favors. And I expect the San Francisco 49ers offensive line to tear them to shreds. Yeah. What do you, if you had to guess, over under 25 pass attempts for Trey lands. I would, 25, I would say under.

Unless this thing gets so out of hand, where Shanahan's just like, this is an opportunity to get some reps. Yeah. I mean, that's what I think. So let's do it. Let's get some reps. I think I would bet the under on that for fields too. Yeah.

Like, they might just dominate them in the run game. and like, Trey Lance throws a couple deep balls. They work a little bit of play action. And like you said, gets out of hand quick. Yep. All right. Philly, Detroit.

Our home count team here is playing a team that utterly destroyed them last year. Yeah. Give me two quick thoughts about that. How does this, how does the offensive line in Detroit look with some of the injuries that are popping up? How does Jared Gough look? to start the season. He looked good at the end of last year, and everybody's boasting about the confidence that he has.

So what is it there come game time? And does he look more competent, more, you know, energetic with that offense, with more weapons? And then for the Eagles, it's how good is that offense? Yeah. How much does A.J. Brown open up that offense? And do they utilize them correctly? Yeah, it's a good test for both teams, in my opinion.

So Detroit, they have the second youngest team in the NFL. I think they're starters, their slated starters, they have the youngest starting group in the NFL. And they're going against a pretty good team, a team that's really good on the O line and the D line. Two areas, the lines feel like they're pretty good as well, actually. They think they've got a pretty decent D line and a really good O line. So it's kind of be interesting to see how they fare in game one. Yep. And additionally, the Eagles, they want to.

take that step forward as an offense. Last year, they destroyed the lines just pounding the ball, just running constantly. Yeah. I want to, this is a great opportunity for Hertz to show everyone what kind of improvements he's made, especially with AJ Brown. This line's secondary, it has

potential to be decent or better than last year, but it's still not going to be very good. And this defense early in the season could really struggle. And the Eagles have a chance to exploit that. I expect Eagles to go nuts in this one and Hurts to have a great day.

So, yeah. Colts, Texans, this is such a boring. I was going to say, I blanked immediately. How does the Colts offensive line look? What is, you know, what's the difference? How much of a difference does Matt Ryan make compared to Carson Wentz? Does Matt Ryan look like he's aging or does he still have some youthfulness to him? the Texans is Davis Mills the answer and I guess like I guess Damien Pierce what does that look like

is he everything he's everything he's being talked up to be but like you said this is just like it's just a boring game the Texans are the Texans are going to be a boring team this year they are they are I'm not even going to say anything about that game yeah you don't need to New England and Miami. This game is interesting for a lot of reasons. We probably should have put it in the other bucket, actually, the bucket of games we want to talk about because I am intrigued by this game. But to keep things brief, give me two thoughts.

Patriots, dolphins, go. What does a Matt Patricia Lenn offense look like? Okay, and we're done with this conversation. I'm not excited about it, but I want to see, I like, Because for all intents and purposes, the Patriots should be a team that could contend for the playoffs under Bill Belichick. They're not completely devoid of talent or anything. But what in the world does this offense look like? Who is he pulling from?

Where is this going? I like Mac Jones should take a step forward. Should. Should. They have, you know, I don't think they have the greatest table of weapons for him, but it's an interesting group. If Tyquan Thornton was healthy, I would feel more enthusiastic about watching this game. Yeah. So some backstory for the fans, too, about me. I was raised a Patriots fan growing up in the Metro Detroit area, hardcore Irish family on my mom's side. So I kind of been part of, you know, rooting for the dynasty.

I'm still, I would still consider myself a Patriots fan. But Bill Belichick, I feel like, has just been so rough the last couple years in his decision making. I'm having a certain level of, of Schoed and Freud watching this all kind of unraveled since Brady left. And I don't know why I feel that way. Maybe maybe that means my, my fandom is dwindling. I don't really know. But it pains me to.

see a Matt Patricia lead offense, to see what he could do to Mac Jones, because I love Mac Jones coming out. But man, I just, this team is set for a major regression. I think Miami might give it to him. Yeah. They're playing in Miami, too. Yeah, on the Miami side, how does Tua look he's set up to have his best season ever? This is, I mean, this, honestly, like, it shouldn't be a make or break, but it is kind of a make or break season for him in a sense because you can't make like there's no excuses for him. I'm excited to see a Kyle Shanahan-esque offense with just pure speed running around. Yep.

What is how Jalen Waddle's back at practice, right? And healthy-ish. I think he was an LP yesterday. Was he? Okay. But I don't know. I mean, if you get Waddle and Hill on the field together, that's dangerous for for anyone. Yeah.

Yeah. But just, yeah, what does that, how does that Miami offense look? How does Tua look comfortable? And, you know, does he have a little bit more of a little bit more depth in his throws? Like, is it still going to be the six, seven yard dink and dunk? Do they open it up a little bit more? What does that look like for Tua?

And then on their defensive side, I'm really just excited to watch Javon Holland. I think that he's going to have, he had a good year last year, and I think he's going to have a really good year this year. So I'm excited to see what he does for that Miami defense. So what I've gathered from our conversation today is that you love big physical, versatile safetys. I do. It is.

I do. You're excited about Jaquan Brisker and now Javan Holland. You just give you all the versatile safeties because that's. I mean, my favorite player growing up was Sean Taylor. Okay. Well, there you go. always just like that that's just always what I've gravitated toward is watching that and watching a guy who's bigger, faster makes plays in the box and I mean obviously Sean Taylor was a animal but yeah that's

definitely my archetype right on okay we definitely spent way too much time talking about New England Miami but it's all right Ravens Jets this is another one like this one o'clock slate is honestly pretty trash. Yeah, unless you have a team that you're specifically rooting for, like just throw on red zone. Yeah, for real. Because there's not going to be a game that's going to excite you. It's rough, rough all the way around. So Baltimore Jets, a lot of people are expecting a jump from the Jets. I'm not convinced yet. They're still the Jets. Ravens, I think. I took some crap, too, for my take the other day that I think the Ravens win the division and they do it decently easily unless the Bengals change some things.

Right. I actually got some DMs about this. I was surprised. So first of all, we got a ton of love from you guys. My DMs were full of kind things except for maybe Ravens fans. Or no, not Ravens fans. I'd probably be Cleveland fans if I had to guess. Coming in my DMs, crying about my Baltimore take.

John Costco, you're one of them. but listen like this this this um this raven seam is really good and i expect them to just destroy the jets but give me your two thoughts uh what does lamar jackson look like healthy how does how does how does he work with uh rashad batman and mark andrews because those are going to be the two guys that he's going to lean on um their defense what does it look like with a new defensive coordinator and healthy. What does a healthy defense look like for them? Because they didn't have that at all last year.

I don't even have anything really for the Jets. Yeah. I don't really either. It's going to be a flacco revenge game. Yeah. Does the Flacco Elijah Moore connection that everybody's touting because of one week last year? How does that pull through this week? I've actually seen a stunning amount of people talking about that.

Really? It's more than what I would have expected, but I've seen a lot of people who are like, this is what Elijah Moore did with Joe Flacko last year. Look out. I know our own Scott Barrett, the dink stats expert at fantasy points. I know he's expecting big things from Elijah Moore this week.

So maybe he's pulling on some of that Flacco mojo. But yeah, you know, someone's going to have to catch passes for them. I don't think Flacco will get blanked, but it could be close. Yeah. Let's go Jags, commanders. Another just, what is this game? Why do they do this to us week one? They gave us great primetime games, I think, with Buffalo, L.A., Tampa Bay, Dallas,

and then even Denver, Seattle, which is boring in of itself, is more compelling than most of these 1 o'clock games. So anyways, Jags, commanders, I'm not even sure. I mean, go ahead. For the Jags, it's two things. It's the transition out of the Urban Meyer disaster. Yeah, we'll see how they recovered from that. And Trevor Lawrence. I mean, the Jaguars, it's all about Trevor Lawrence, maybe a little ETN, too.

but Trevor Lawrence, how does he look this year? Do we see the development of what, of the flashes that we saw last year? And yeah, that's about it for the Jaguars. The Jaguars have 100,000 linebackers. Their defense is just like their defense. Let's talk about that. What are they doing a linebacker? What are they doing anywhere on their defense?

Yeah, true. I mean, anywhere. This linebacker situation is wild. Like, it's, I don't know what, like, I mean, to me, linebacker is very similar to running back where it's like, it matters if you have like a Hall of Fame caliber player, like Bobby Wagner in his prime. Right.

That matters. But otherwise, it's not that important. And they have said, well, screw you guys for thinking that. We think it's very important. And they've, holy cow, they spent a lot of resources there. Didn't they just claim somebody to that guys? cut at linebacker? Let me check.

I mean, probably. I thought they did. Yeah, but I mean, so they spent a ton of money on the dude from Atlanta. Yeah, draft Devin Lorde in the first round. Aluiccan, right?

Yeah, Aluqon. Then they draft Chad Moon in the third round. I mean, it's crazy. Caleb on Chase on is kind of an edge linebacker hybrid. They definitely love them some linebackers. They do. It's just a weird observation on our part, but I'm curious to see why they're building their defense that way.

I mean, they have a lot to figure out with how they're building that team in general. But we've spent too much time on the Jaguars. The commanders. Yeah. Again, I don't know. Even like is how big of an upgrade is Carson Wentz over Heineke? If it is even an upgrade. Or Fitzpatrick, too.

Right. yeah yeah that's about it i don't even know it's just that's just another game that's just bleh for me i kind of just want to see like how well-rounded the team looks you know they've put a lot of resources into the d-line see how those guys play i don't think um chase young's playing right now how long's he out for uh did this just a week to week thing at this point. Keep going. I'll look at that. Yeah, yeah. So that D-line, they put a lot of resources there.

I kind of want to see how, you know, those guys come together. The O line, too, it's like, you know, Ron Rivera has decided to bring in all of his O-Linman from Carolina because he's got Trey Turner and Andrew Norwell holding down the guard spots for him this year, which is kind of funny to me. Chase Young can come back after week four. Okay, so he got pumped. Yep. Gotcha.

But yeah, that's it. I mean, boring game. We can move on. The last game in the 1 o'clock site that I'd like to talk about, and this is a pretty good game to talk about is Pittsburgh, Cincinnati. Yeah. There's at least some excitement there. Pittsburgh has a ton of offensive weapons, bad O-line. Since he's got a ton of offensive weapons, possibly better O-line, everyone thinks Cincinnati is probably a Super Bowl contender.

I don't necessarily agree. But especially if you're a fantasy guy, a lot of people in this game to care about. Yeah. A ton. Yeah. Yeah, for this one, I, like you said, how does that new offensive line in Cincinnati, how does it hold up? Because they were bad last year.

And like you said, they should be better, but better than bad doesn't necessarily mean good. So, like, how do they hold up against a good test in Pittsburgh? with T.J. Watt, like, that's going to be, I mean, that's a tough opening matchup for that offensive line. An offensive line group that has only, has had just training camp and preseason to gel together. So, like, how do they hold up against that? What is the Jamar Chase, Chase usage look like? Because I think that they're going to have, they're going to have to move them around more. Like, they did kind of sort of at the end of the season last year. And just you know, how do they, how does that offense, how explosive does that offense look?

because on paper, they should be right back there and better than what they were last year. On the defensive side for Cincinnati, what does it look like with bringing the entire band back? They didn't really make any, any like notable improvements. And so is their bet on continuity? worth it? Is it going to hold up? Is it going to be a team that can be middle to upper third of the league? Those are the big things for Cincinnati. Pittsburgh, their defense is, I imagine their defense is going to be right back like it has been every single year for a while. I think they'll be good. I think they'll be pretty good. Their past threshold will be all right. Yeah. I mean, when do you have T.J. Watt?

The secondary, though, man. I think it's rough. I mean, just going through the projected starters this week. Akello, Witherspin. Nah. Cam Sutton, pretty good corner. I'm okay with that. Arthur Mallett, heat, nope.

Not very good. Minka Fitzpatrick, in my opinion, this might be a hot take for something. I think he's one of the most overrated players in the NFL. Wow, that is a hot take. He's constantly out of position. That is a hot take. He doesn't really. do anything very, very well.

He's just kind of mad at a bunch of things. Terrell Edmund's also not very good. So this secondary, like the Bengals have a chance here to just shred the secondary. If they can keep T.J. Watt off the quarterback, which is kind of a big if, but. And then on the offensive side for Pittsburgh, it's what does Matt Canada's offense look like when you can actually utilize what he wants to utilize? Because it's going to look, I think it's going to look completely different than what it did of Ben Rothlisberger last year.

That's a question I have. We saw Rothsburger drop back more than any quarterback in the NFL. And then we also saw him throw the ball faster than any quarterback in the NFL. Not velocity guys. We're talking time to throw. I think it was at like 2.22 seconds.

It was insane. From the snap to throw. Comically fast. Comically fast. Tribisky, as we know, doesn't necessarily like doing that. He's had moments where he does, but he likes to break plays down and, and uses legs.

Yeah. He's kind of weird with it. I want to see what Trubisky does here, because I don't think the O lines improved to the point where they can change that. The offensive line looked bad in the preseason. Right. So that TTT still needs to be pretty high, but Trubisky can also do more with his legs. Rathesberger was a sitting dutch.

Yeah. So that ball had to be out. What is Trubisky able to do, you know, once the play? starts to break down. You know, he's not very good, but he's got a second chance here. And again, I'm curious to see what he does with the weapons. Yeah. Again, another quarterback that has all the weapons around him.

They are not devoid of talent on that offense. I'm worried about, I'm worried, interested to see what's up with Najee Harris. How does that foot look? How does he look? Are they just going to pound him into the back of his lineman? because, again, I think they had one of the worst yards before contact last year. Najee Harris, if he wasn't Najee Harris, any other regular run-of-the-mill running back would have gotten beaten up last year. Yeah.

But Najee Harris is a good, a good yak guy. So yards after contact. And so, you know, if he's injured, does that limit that offense in a way? He's not even listed on the injury report, right? I don't think so. But if you're a betting guy, if you like prop bets, I think on draft kings I saw yesterday, over four and a half receptions for Najee was plus 180 or something like that. Specifics might not be there.

All I know is I liked the bet. Yeah. I think Najee is a candidate to get the ball checked down to him a million times, especially this game. So I like that. Smash it. Nagea should be a great play in fantasy too because I don't think the Bengals defense is super scary and they're going to try to keep the heat off Trabisky.

He could touch the ball 30 times easily. And it's not a defensive line that's on Cincinnati side. It's not a defensive line that scares you really. No. They're decent, but they're not crazy. Again, it's like their defense. They're middle of the road and how does that play out for them? They took a bet on continuity when they had the opportunity to make plays in free agency

and they didn't. So again, I'm interested to see how that plays out for them. For sure. All right, let's move on. We're into the 4 o'clock games. There's really only one dud of a 4 o'clock game, and then the rest, the rest of the games on the Slate are, I would say, worth talking about for sure. So let's go quickly. Two thoughts, Giant Titans. Giants Titans, I don't even know if I have any thoughts. on it. It's in Tennessee. What does Tennessee's past catchers look like? And this, yeah, like, I honestly don't even know where to go with this.

Derek Henry Revival game is what I'm looking at. Yeah. I think he's going to, you know, bulldoze the Giants. How does Daible, how does Daible evolve that Giants offense if he does? Because Daible is a good mind on offense, but that's kind of a tough, it's a tough offense, tough quarterback, not a lot there. So, you know, how does Daibol look as a head coach? Is he the guy for them?

Right. Yeah, this is, this game sucks, to be honest. I mean, I'm really curious to see where this Titans team is at, and this isn't really going to be a good game to take a full audit. So we're not able to make a valuation of, we're going to have to wait a week. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, this, because the Titans have the, like, well, it's one of the, those things where we'll see how good of a coach Vrabel is, like, yeah, because this is a team that

could either finish really, really bad, or they could be okay if the right. They get Buffalo next week. Yeah, and that'll be a good test. We can talk more about the Titans next week. Yeah. All right, moving into the good games, the premium games of the week. Let's go to Arizona for the chiefs at Arizona. This should be fun nonetheless.

It could still end up being kind of a blowout, but Kyler is at least fun to watch. Yeah. But this is a fun game. It is a fun game. I think the big matchup is the Chiefs offense and the Arizona Cardinals defense. I think the Arizona Cardinals defense overperformed last year. I think we talked about it last episode. And it's a different Chiefs offense this year.

It's going to be a different Chiefs offense. Chiefs offense. And so how does Patrick Mahomes utilize the weapons that he has? Because Patrick Mahomes is going to make plays. It's going to happen no matter what. It's just, what is the, what does this target distribution look like? Do we see a receiver emerge as someone that he has a lot of, you know, a lot of trust with? And yeah, how does the Cardinals defense defend that because they have a bad secondary. They have a bad secondary. And that's a bad group of corners, really.

It's scary to think about what Mahomes will be able to do to just pick these guys apart. Yep. Yeah, I agree. So it's interesting because, like, you mentioned the way teams were playing the chiefs last year with, I mean, they're doing a ton of split safety looks, kind of just forcing the chiefs to be patient because that wasn't their MMO. They were not a patient team. They were not a, you know, matriculate the ball downfield to be cliche type of team. They lived on those big plays for a while. They really pushed the boundaries of Mahomes' capabilities last year.

Early in the year, he looked absolutely broken to me, and they kind of slowly figured it out. I do think that maybe early season struggles last year was preparing Mahomes for life without Tyree Kill. Because it's not going to come early. It's not going to come easy, I mean. They're going to have to be patient. They're going to have to play matchups. They get a nice game to start with because I think the Cardinals can probably score points.

Yeah. So they're going to force the Chiefs to also score points. So they can't be super conservative. They can't be super reserved. I do know Reed wants to get back to the basics, a little bit more 12 personnel, a little bit more 21 personnel. That's great. But they're going to have to score some points here. I think this is a good test for them because I think the chief should be able to score at will against the Cardinals defense.

Yeah. So I'm just really looking forward to seeing how they dissect that. They're not going to face a ton of pressure, I don't think. I mean, as long as you block J.J. Watt, like who on this Cardinals team is getting after? That's what I was racking my brain for too is it's like where is the pressure coming for Arizona. And the chief's offensive line is solid. And so I imagine that they'll hold it. I imagine they will hold up pretty well for Mahomes.

I know a lot of people are very interested to see what the running back usage, at least fantasy people are interested to see what the running back usage looks like in Kansas City. I have no idea. I'm racking my brain. I don't think anybody knows. But the big, like you said, I really am excited to see, I'm excited to see Mahomes without Tyreek Hill. I think, obviously Mahomes is incredible.

He's the best quarterback in the league. And that's, I don't, that's not a hot league. But, you know, I think that it'll allow him to kind of open up his arsenal a little bit more. And you'll get to see him, you'll get to see some pretty fun throws. Yeah. For sure. That running back group is interesting because, like, I think Ronald Jones, he's probably the fourth guy in the depth start, maybe third. Right.

He has utility, though, because he has a definitive skill set, and that's that he's an absolute hammer. Derek McKinnon, again, like, maybe not the true starter, but he's got legitimate utility because he's a great pass catcher, very agile. He has legit speed to the edge. They liked him later in the year last year, too. They relied on him a ton of last year. Isaiah Pachecho, the rookie, I know preseason hype has always gets carried away, but I do think there is something to that. I think he's a legitimate baller. Yeah.

He's got some issue. choose with reading blocks at this point. Yeah, his vision. Yeah. Athleticism is there, though. I think he's got a chance to be a pretty good player. And then CEH, who I've been, you know, I'm kind of an avid CEH hater. I thought when they took him in the first round, that was one of the worst first round picks. Yeah. I can remember. Yeah. So I definitely was not a fan of that pick. And I think the writing's on the wall for other guys to get touches. Actually, if they came out of this game, and McKinnon and Ronald Jones led the team in touches, I would not shock me one bit.

But I still feel like they like CEH. They're going to give them another opportunity to succeed. Yeah. We'll see. For me, though, looking at Patrick Mahomes, the development I want to see post-Tiree Kill World is can he play within the pocket? Can he play? Can he do his offensive line favors?

There were so many times last year, Steve, where, you know, we chart pressure on every play. we chart O-line versus D-line. Yep. He bailed from clean pockets more than anybody I can remember. A lot. It was constant, constantly bailing from clean pockets. He would drop past his drop point.

So basically giving defensive ends, Eddressers free run at him because the tackles, he's dropping past where the tackles are designed to block two. Right. That happens all the time. Baker Mayfield is also notorious for doing that. Mahomes was doing it a ton last year. And then three, he's just not processing information quickly.

So not only is he doing these weird. things in the pocket in creating pressure for himself. He's not processing what he's seeing fast enough. He's getting the ball out late. Now, he cleaned that up as the season went on for sure. Yes, he did. But I want to see the next evolution of that. Like, can Mahomes just run this offense?

Can they win a game without relying on him to make this crazy heroic plays? Like, can you just keep them on schedule, routinely make the right throw, routinely hit a spot and let the ball rip? Can he do that? Is he capable of it? And he is, for sure. I just want to see him do it. Like if Mahomes plays like Josh Allen did last night where, like we kind of touched on earlier, where he's not forcing things, he just takes the easy ones when they're there and then jumps on his opportunities when he can.

Like, that'd be huge. And I think that we could see that. Honestly, like we've seen that before in quarterbacks that lose a star, wide receiver. And it forces them to kind of open their eyes to everyone available instead of like, okay, play breaks down, where's my guy? Yep. And then on the opposite side, what are you looking for for Arizona offense versus Kansas City defense?

Man, so Kyler ironically kind of struggles with some of the same things Mahomes does. You know, he's got a pretty slow trigger. He sometimes bales from clean pockets, tries to do too much with his legs. I want to see him play within structure a little bit better. Ironically, I think his numbers when he gets out of structure actually fall apart because he's not super great playing out of structure, even though he wants to play out of structure all the time. So that's interesting to me.

I want to see him play within structure better and stay within that structure. And then once he gets out of structure, I want him just to be really smart with the ball. Yeah. But I'm interested to see him with Hollywood because I think there's a trust level there that he only has with D.Hop and D.Hop's obviously gone for six weeks. So, you know, what's that relationship going to look like? And maybe we're in a situation where when D.Hop comes back, now they're just,

they're locked and loaded and ready to go because, you know, let's face it. I think D.Hop's a very good receiver still. And Brown, because of the relationship they have, he's probably going to be more productive than Christian Kirk was there. Yeah. They still have A.J. Green. They still have, well, sounds like Ron Dill is going to be out for a little while. There's a concern for Rondale Moore.

Yeah. Antoine Wesley actually flashed in spots last year. I thought that was interesting. So they have depth at receiver. They have depth at tight end. They have a decent running back, decent O line. The offense should be fine. It's the second there I'm kind of worried about.

So anyways, moving on. Go ahead. Did I hear something about Zach Ertz potentially being banged up going into week one? Yeah, he's got a calf strain or something. You don't really want to mess with those either. No. They can turn ugly fast. Moving on, let's go Green Bay, Minnesota.

Divisional game. I kind of think Minnesota is in a rebuild. You definitely have higher expectations for them than I do. What are you looking at for this game? This is a huge opening. This is going to make or break, and we'll see what happens. like what this Minnesota offense looks like because Green Bay's we've talked about it before.

Green Bay's defense is a rock solid unit, front to back, just a lot of, a lot of weapons, a lot of guys that can make plays. Extreme length at linebacker, a great secondary group, not necessarily the deepest, but their starting five is one of if not the best. and what does it like how and again it's a good test for the the opening of the this Minnesota Vikings offense and utilizing starting to utilize Justin Jefferson in more unique ways with McConnell's their head coach right yes okay I just want to make sure but yeah what's like what does the offense look like do how do they use Justin Jefferson

Kurt Cousins is consistent. But, you know, he generally kind of struggles against some of the, you know, better defenses. But this, I mean, Minnesota Green Bay has always been kind of a fireworks game every, for the past couple of years. And so I could see Minnesota opening up and having a good offensive game. I messaged it to you last night while we were watching the Bill's Rams game. I mentioned how the Rams would not stop running the ball in first down. And we talked about how that's kind of a McVeigh tree thing. And so does Minnesota?

That goes deeper than McVeigh, but yeah. Does definitely continue to them? But yeah, how does that, does McConnell fall into that trap? Right. But I just want to see how explosive this offense is because I think it has, it has an opportunity to be a big play explosive offense. I mean, everybody, nobody really even talks about Adam Thielen. Adam Thielen has like, he's one of the top guys in receiving touchdowns over the last two seasons.

He's not an afterthought. And I don't think that we've seen enough of a drop off from him to say that he's not going to be a factor. Yeah. And Dalvin Cook is still good. He is still good. Real quick. I want to talk about this. Kevin McConnell was a third round pick by the New England Patriots.

And what is crazy about that is obviously, it was in 2008 in the height of Tom Brady's, you know, success. Yep. I think they were just coming off a Super Bowl loss, actually, when they drafted him. But Bill Belichick has been obsessed with tight ends his entire career. Yep. He drafted a quarterback with these measurements. Check this out. Kevin McConnell coming out with 6'5, 230, with 34 and a half inch arms.

He ran the 40-yard dash at the combine in 4.6 seconds. That's a big boy moving pretty fast. 10-yard split was sub-16. Wow. His 20-yard shuttle, the pro shuttle, was 438. Again, very fast. His three cone was seven. 7.01, actually, to be exact.

This was an athletic freak. And Bill never thought to put this guy at tight end. It blows my mind. They drafted him in the third round, and he was basically cut a year later. I don't know if you made it the whole year in New England, is rookie season. But, yeah, that's crazy.

Those are crazy measurements for a guy who's 6-5-2-30. For a quarterback. Yeah, that's crazy. I mean, even for a tight end. Those are all elite numbers. Right. Elite numbers. I would have put the guy at tight end and see what he could do.

Instead, he, you know, bounced around the league for a while for three or four years and then went into coaching because he had kind of a noodle for an arm. Anyways, Kevin McConnell, coming from the McVeigh tree, these guys, they run the ball. I don't know what it is. It's not just McVeigh, I mentioned. It goes even beforehand. Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVeigh, Zach Taylor, Matt LaFleur. All of these guys have crazy early down run tendencies.

I think I mentioned to you yesterday, LaFleur kind of figured it out a little bit, but was that Nathaniel Hackett that figured it out or was that LaFleur? I'm wondering where they're going this year, the Packers. But still, McConnell, is he going to fall into that same trap? And I really hope not.

I know they've talked about they're going to play a ton more 11 personnel. Well, that doesn't mean anything to me because McVeigh runs 11 personnel more than anybody. Yeah, they ran it. They ran 83% of their snaps last year. Right. Zach Taylor, same thing. And they still have these crazy early down run tendencies. Delvin Cook is good, but I would still be looking to maximize, you know, Jefferson, and Thielen and KJ and Irv Smith Jr., who's probably not best suited blocking for Delvin Cook,

but better suited running routes and catching passes. Yeah. Yeah, that's really where I want to see this Vikings offense. Packers, on the other hand, they're going into a post-devanti Adams world. Yep. We mentioned how, you know, Hackett's now gone in Denver. If LaFleur reverts back, he's got excuses to revert back to that run-heavy approach because he doesn't have the Vante Adams.

That's concerning to me. I hope Rogers steers steers him clear of that. As much, and I love Aaron Jones. I think AJ Dillon's got utility in the league. Good, good one-two punch there. I still would not revert to a super early down run-heavy approach. Don't make things predictable for your defense. It's a really simple concept, but you still see a lot of coaches screw that up.

Yeah. And it's not a dangerous Minnesota defense, really. Not super dangerous at all. So, yeah, what is, who does Rogers gel with early? especially with Lazzard looking to be questionable. Yeah, that's not good. And so like who... I mean, it could be good for the brand because if Christian Watson hits the field,

he's going to tear it up because that's just who he is. Everybody's talking about a potential Sammy Watkins week one breakout, followed by Sammy Watkins Week 2 break down. And then probably six weeks of nothingness and then I are. But yeah, that's the biggest thing. is the post-evante Adams world. Who does Aaron Rogers trust? Where does he look to when he needs to make a play on third down?

This offensive line has a potential to be an elite unit, which is why I think, which is why I think especially in week one that we're going to see Green Bay run the ball a lot. I think it's going to be a lot of running the ball, a lot of play action off of it. and moving their offense like that. From a fantasy perspective, I love it because I have a ton of Aaron Jones shares in both

redraft and dynasty. Yeah. So that makes me happy. But I still want coaches to do the right thing. I'm also excited to see Aaron Jones's usage. I have to like touched on a couple, like on both podcasts, but I'm excited to see his usage in this offense without Devante Adams. Yeah, yeah.

I agree. Okay. Let's move on. We're going to go. Raiders charges. This is a game. We've talked about that division, how stacked it is. Yeah.

It's going to be a melee. It's going to be a play. It's going to be a bloodbath all season. And this is a game. Sorry, go ahead, finish out. No, you're good. Week one, you're getting Raiders Chargers. The two, I would say, more exciting teams because of what they've kind of gone through,

the pieces they've added this off season. Obviously, Denver's up there, too. but like getting these guys this game week one is exciting to me i'm very pumped about this and a game with it's a different coaching staff on the raider side but a game that have for the players has probably a little bit of bad blood coming off the week 18 overtime will they tie or why is brandon staley calling a timeout just and herbert going nuclear on third and fourth down to save that game um this is going to be A car do it back to them.

Yeah. This is going to be a real litmus test for the Raiders. I think the charge works. We're expecting to see the chargers be the chargers. We want to see the step forward on defense with like health and like a couple new additions. We want to see their offense take that next step and be more efficient on first and second down. So they're not relying on third third down savior Justin Herbert. but for me, this, like, this game kind of revolves around the Raiders a little bit.

Just because on paper, the charges are stacked on both sides. The Raiders are stacked on offense. They look really good on offense on paper. Like, they're, they have an amazing top three past catching options within Renfro, Waller, and Devante Adams. But, you know, can they, how does Derek Carlin? look is like is this going to be a team that can you know put up points on offense are they going to what does josh mcdaniels josh mcdaniel do with this offense does he kind of

create a little bit of his own offense does he refer back does he just do what he didn't um in new england and then on the defensive side for the raiders can they keep can they keep their offense in it. Can they give their offense enough chances to stay in the game? Because they're stacked up front. Chandler Jones and Max Crosby is an insane combo on the edge for this team. Both group of pass rushers in this game are. Yeah. And that, but like, questions in the secondary for the Raiders. It's not, you know, it was a decent unit last year that was bolstered by a great pass rush. And, but this is, you know, this is a test. that, I mean, they got picked apart at the end of the game in that week 18 matchup.

So I'm really excited to see what the Raiders look like. I'm excited to see what the Chargers look like, but it's one of those things where I'm already starting to kind of just take it for granted. But I think this is a, this is going to be a fun, explosive matchup. That we could, I mean, we could see. It for sure could be. We could see fireworks early and often. I just hope.

Josh McDaniels doesn't. I can see this going really weird for the Raiders. So, like, especially knowing where McDaniels comes from and his pedigree. He's going to look at the Chargers defense. He's going to see a good secondary. He's going to see a good pass rush. I could see him just saying, we're going to try to reduce the amount of plays that get running this game.

And we're going to run the ball and throw the ball quickly. A lot of quick throws and a lot of runs. It's what they did in New England to mitigate pressure. I could see them doing it again. And Jacobs could see the ball a ton. You know, screen pass galore. Renfro and Adam's going to catch a lot of short balls. I could really see them trying to do that and reduce,

you know, try to reduce the amount of plays that have to get played, which I think in theory they think would keep them in the game longer. No one would want to see that, though. Everyone wants to see them open this thing up and just come out, swing in. It's a very questionable. I really hope they do. It's a really questionable offensive line. Well, and that's the thing, right?

So, like, if they had a ton of confidence in their old line, yeah, maybe they come out swinging. I just, I'm not sure they do. I think McDaniels is going to want to utilize play action quite a bit. Anytime they're throwing the ball downfield, it's going to be off play action. I can't see them. You know, they're going to use the run game to set that up. I don't think they're going to trust this line to block Bosa and Khalil Mack. And it's just.

it's really tough. And it's, I mean, if you look at the stats, you can see, like, you can see why McDaniel would probably lock into the run game. The Chargers gave up, you know, they were one of the worst rushing defenses. They gave up the most first down rushes. They gave up the fourth most yards after contact on rushing. Like, they were a bad, bad unit that got picked apart. And it's a, it's a huge reason why they lost a lot of their games because teams were

able to convert on third down with their run. game and they were able to keep their offense, keep their offense on task by developing that run game throughout the game. And so that's a, that's a question for the Chargers is what is the middle of that defense do this year? Yeah, they have weapons. They have Bosa and Mack on the outside, but the interior defensive line, they did add Sebastian Joseph Day, who hopefully should shore up the interior of that. He played with Staley. Right. In L.A. Thaley knows what he can do. Right. But I don't know that he's enough, though.

I think Sebastian Joseph Day benefited greatly from playing next to Aaron Donald for being honest. Right, right. And so I can see McDaniel locking in and saying, all right, look at this run defense. We can do this all day. I mean, that's a Bill Belichick type thing to do. Yes, sir. All right, we got two games to go. Let's hit the Monday night game because I don't, you know, not a super-execkel.

exciting game. Maybe one just worth mentioning because Russ is getting, you know, he gets to go back to Seattle, game one. Right. It's almost like the NFL does this intentionally. I feel like it's crazy just how magically the schedule lines up, you know? It's just, it's always like that. But so Russ goes back to Seattle week one on Monday night football. I kind of, I expect this game to for sure be a blowout. And I expect Russ to absolutely freaking wayways to to the Seattle Seahawks. Yeah, he should. Like, they're bad. It should not be a close game.

Denver should be good. Yeah, I, again, it's the new quarterbacks in different places type of thing. How does he gel with his receivers? Does Jerry Judy start to break out? Cortland Sutton is now. Does it even matter, though, to really destroy Seattle? Does it matter for this game? How well they, like Denver's a really, they're really, they're,

a really good roster. Yeah. People thought they'd be very good last year, but for whatever reason, Fangio, you know, attached his wagon to some subpar quarterback. Yeah. I'm not really sure why he did that, especially at his age, only shot he ever got to coach a team and he's going to roll in with what, Bridgewater and Lock? Yeah.

It's not the greatest choice ever, but even if Russ is like 70% of the Russ we know, and even if there is communication issues with the receiver. I still think they'll freaking just tear apart the Seahawks. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see. I think having to hack it with Russ is exciting. But I think the big thing is it's not, it's looking forward to what this team will be going for like going forward throughout the season.

Because like you said, the Seattle team as a whole is not good, is not good. The questionable quarterback situation, defense is me their receivers are solid but that's about it but it's really really for me it's what does russ look like does he look like the 70% of what he has been or does he get back to a little bit of his former self and how does he like how is he how is he going to age because i think r like russ has lost that magician you know, spin three times, get out of the pocket, launch a ball deep, and, like, you know,

in creating those type of plays, it's going to be a lot of him, again, I mean, similar to Patrick Mahomes, of just operating within the offense, taking what's there. I think he's naturally better at it than Mahomes, though. I think he is too, but he's older. How much zip does his arm have left? Does he care more in Denver? He's unlimited. Yeah, let's ride.

So for me, like Russ is one of the most accurate passers I've ever seen. The things he can do with ball placement is nothing short of incredible. It's actually pretty remarkable. I mean, just even all the different law, it's like, it's almost like he, his arm is like bag of golf clubs. It's like if he needs a three iron, he can pull out a three iron and zip a ball. If he needs a lob wedge a ball in, he can do it. If he needs a pitching wedge, it doesn't matter. It's like, that's one thing I've always appreciated about Russ.

I think he's one of the most accurate passers we've ever seen. And I don't think he's taking a mass step down with receivers. No, no, I don't think so. I'm kind of excited to see that. Sir T, I'm excited to see Sir Rian on the Denver's defense. just Denver's defense as a whole. I think they have good talent, and I think they're going to cause issues for the Seattle offense

with Gino Smith rocking out a quarterback. He's not bringing a lot of excitement to that. They're another team that's just playing to see where their talent is on their team and who they start. to think about building around. Yeah. Yep. Well, the big game of the week, in my opinion, is the Sunday night football game.

It's Tampa Bay and Tampa Tom versus the Dallas Cowboys. Both of these teams have faced some preseason slash training camp attrition, specifically on the offensive line. I think both these teams have a good amount of talent. it's just how much do their limitations will they end up limiting the team in the long term? Yeah. That's the big question for me. I'm not convinced Brady's interior offensive line is going to be as bad as people are saying it's going to be.

They drafted these guys to play. It's not like, you know, Luke Godkey was a second round pick. Robert Hainsey was a guy I liked coming out. They have, you know, Pro Bowl caliber, right guard, and Jack Mason who still can play. I don't think it's going to be as bad as people think, or I should say I'm not buying into the fact that it's for sure going to be that bad. Brady naturally, you know, has got a pretty quick TTT as it is. I think they'll work the play action game to get the ball down field and they're going to run it a good amount with Fournette. I'm not too worried about the Buccaneers offense, not nearly as much as everybody else is.

But I am, however, very worried about the Cowboys offense. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Tom Brady's never lost to the Cowboys. That definitely matters for this. It means something. But yeah, the Cowboys offense is the huge question mark going into this game. It's a team that I think that going into this year, everyone was excited about.

And then it's like the more and more you looked at their offense, the more you kind of realize like oh wow they they're short they're short on talent like it's going to be relying on cd lamb a lot in dalton shultz and after that good luck you know just yeah when's gallop coming back they need him so bad is he is he back i don't think he's back i think he's working to be back but I don't think he's like back. They did not pop him though, right? No. Which means, let me see here.

Wow, he's practicing. Yeah, he's been, yeah, I know he's been practicing, but I'd be so, I feel like they'd be so dumb of them to put him out. The point being they didn't pup him and he's an LPN practice, which he's probably not going to play this week, but they're going to get him back probably sooner than they thought. Now, the question is, will he actually be 100% or is it going to take him time to get back into it? Right.

So, but they desperately need him. I've heard Jalen Tolbert just isn't ready. That pass catching is an issue. And if, listen, if they're going to have to play CD Lamb on the outside, too, because they don't really have a dedicated slot at the moment. Yeah. That's not good. I don't, I think CD's a much better slot receiver than he is outside guy.

Not saying he can't get it done on the outside. I just, I want him taking advantage of certain. mismatches in the slot. I would prefer Gallup and eventually toll-bearer outside. But man, Dax, Dax's going to, I mean, McCarthy's been saying he wants Dac to use his legs more this season. Yeah. He's going to have to.

I mean, the offensive line is in a rough situation. Tyler Smith, first round pick, he's going to fill out left tackle. They drafted him to play guard, and he's moving out to left tackle. He's a freak athlete, really, really athletic dude, but he's so technically unrefined. I think like a guy like Shaq Barrett should tear him apart. Yeah. In his first game ever. It's a huge step down from Tyron Smith.

A lot. Yeah. That goes without saying. They still have, you know, Biotish at center. Zach Martin at right guard. These guys can play a little bit. Connor McGovern is a replacement level player. He's not terrible, but he's not going to, you know, move the needle.

Point being they don't have, interior-wise, they're pretty sound. It's those tackles. Is Terrence Steel and Tyler Smith really going to get it done for you this year? I'd be pretty worried about that. I also don't trust McCarthy. And I'm Kellynne Moore. Yeah, true. Kellen Moore, I don't know, like, I don't really know.

Like, I feel like McCarthy has too much influence there. Are they going to, are they going to continue to try to hang their hat on running the ball? Jerry Jones doubled down on the Cowboys need to run the ball. he's still somehow still stuck in the 1990s way of thinking, which makes no sense because how do you look at what Dak Prescott has done in the past game and not see that the offense moves and revolves around that? But just I hope that they don't rely on running the ball too much. I hope that they utilize Tony Pollard.

Everybody's talking about wanting to. see more of him this year. Hopefully they utilize him. I think that they, you know, with, with their lack of weapons at receiver, you could see Tony Pollard lining up at receiver a little bit more this week. Yeah, the slot for sure. Yeah, kind of seeing him used in different ways. But this.

He actually did a decent amount of that at Memphis. Yeah. Wasn't he a receiver at Memphis? Not really. He was kind of, their whole offense, they have all these hybrid players. Yeah. over the years they've had, you know, Pollard and Antonio Gibson. Right.

Kenneth Gainwell. All these guys are like, they're almost like wingbacks, like in a traditional wingty offense is kind of how I look at it. But Pollard was definitely more of a true running back than say Gibson was, but he still played some slot there. So he can do it too. He's got the movement skills. You can see the route running ability on tape.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. If you have to put CD outside, then. I would only do it to get Pollard in the game. Yeah. So that's the concession I'd make. Put CD outside if it allows you to play Pollard on the slot,

I think that would be really fun. And I think it's still decent. People, especially in the fantasy community, they crap on him all the time. I know he's not a guy, you know, that's going to get a, at this point where he's not going to get a ton more than his block for him. Right. But really smart player, good vision, can kind of do all the little things as well.

definitely overpaid though so but we don't but we don't need to pound them into the ground when you have a quarterback like deck prescott yeah and a backup like pollard right shoot give the man 10 carries a game right and and then you know the buck's defense is they're pretty well brought over from last year yep they you know there is like great linebacking group Winfield to stun their corners are solid. They're going to cause fits. They're going to cause fits rushing the passer with Shack Barrett. And I think that they're going to force Dak Prescott to make the right read

because they do play well together. But on the defensive side for the Cowboys, this was a defense that was turnover lucky, very, very big on. creating opportunity off of turnovers. That, as we all know, does not carry over very often into the next year. It's not super sticky for sure. And so what, like, what does this defense look like?

We touched on it before. Do they continue to try to pull Micah Parsons back and do an offball linebacker look just for whatever reason, like let him come off the edge? Trayvon dig. That would be highly frustrating to me if they do that. Trayvon Diggs is, he's got a, it's a big matchup this week. He's going to be against Mike Evans quite a bit. Yeah, I just like, I'm interested to see what this Cowboys defense can do if they're not constantly creating turnovers like they were last year.

And maybe they do. Who knows? You know, that can happen. But I believe that they're not going to finish as like the number one defense. For sure. Like they kind of like they did last year. They're going to have to hold up a little bit more. But excited to see the development of Michael, Micah Parsons, the dude's an absolute monster.

Yep. Yep. For me, too, it's just this game like Tom Brady, the greatest ever. This kind of feels like the end. It was we thought maybe last year was the end. he teased us for a moment. So I'm just, I'm going to take in every, every game of time we get. And he's fortunate to get a Sunday night football game, week one of him.

So I'm excited. And he's got a stable of weapons again. Yeah. I mean, what does Julio Jones look like? He has Russell Gage. Mike Evans is still there. Like Godwin's better than all three of the guys you mentioned. I know.

And I don't think he's 100% yet, but he'll, they've talked about him getting a little bit of run in week one. They added Rashad White in the backfield to kind of integrate into the pass offense a little bit more. I don't think Leonard Fordett sees 97, 96 passing targets this year, but that's still something. Leonard Fortinette is usable in both the run and the past game. Yeah, Bremen Brady, again, he's set up for success.

He's got a lot of weapons. And as we, like, as we know, give him weapons and he's going to, he's going to penalize defenses. Yep. Well, dude, that's the whole slate. We made it. We made it. An under an hour and a half. That's pretty good.

I was for a second there, I thought we were going to hit, we were going to get too deep. But I think we, we kept the pace up pretty well. Yes, for sure. So fans, please give us some feedback. Listeners, maybe you're not fans. just listen. Give us feedback. Hopefully we, one of the reasons we want to do another pod this week was we quickly wanted redemption on the audio issues we've been having.

Yeah. We think we haven't figured out. So please let us know. If you ever have crazy takes you see on the internet and you want us to talk about them, please send them to us. The show is called Take Talk for a reason. We want to spend a lot of time talking about that. The other thing, too, is we've been, Steve and I've kind of been floating up.

the idea of maybe doing two episodes a week and making this a consistent thing and doing a Wednesday week review show. I know for fantasy players, that's not super attractive because waiver wires probably already happened, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, we can still get into some fantasy talk, but also just good if you want to talk ball with us, you know. And then maybe doing like a late Friday kind of preview show where we're looking at the week ahead. It's just too much to talk about, I think on one pod because we like to, you know, babble. And we, the thing is we just always want to take it further than surface level is the thing. So it's not easy to talk about X's and O's quickly if you're talking about every single game.

So that's the dig. Let us know if you'd be interested in two episodes a week because that is the direction I think we're headed. Although I still would have to get that approved by the bosses. The big wigs. The big wigs at fantasy points. Maybe they don't want to give us that much. opportunity, but we'll see. And we do, you know, we want to hopefully integrate another one of our guys, Chris, who is a big DFS guy. Yeah, Chris, for sure. We're going to have a ton of guests,

actually. I've got a couple already lined up that are going to be awesome, some, some cool voices in the industry that also know a ton about football. So, yep, um, real quick, because it is TikTok. Did you, any crazy take you saw you want to talk about real quick? I didn't really have much. I also didn't necessarily plan on doing a pod today, so I didn't really think about it. Right. I did see. I didn't think if there was anything from last night that I wanted to hit.

I did see one floating around that made me laugh. It was just a random tweet that started to kind of get a little bit of burn is the, someone tweeting that Mitch Trubisky made Alan Robinson, which. And then he's the best quarterback Alan Robinson. Robinson is played with. Wait, they said this unironically? Uniron. Oh, no, 100% seriously.

Like, I was scrolling through the replies and they were 100%. Like, the best part was, the best part was people retorting with Blake Bordles. Saying no, it was Blake Bordels that made Alan Robinson. No, it was Mitch Trubiskey that made Alan Robinson. I'll throw it out there. It was Christian Hackenberg. Listen, if you're, if your lists of guys that may be made a wide receiver is Hackenberg, Blake Bortles, and Mitch Trubisky.

I'm going to go on a limb and say that receiver made himself. Yeah. Or maybe it was, maybe it was the other way around that Alan Robinson made them look not completely anemic. Facts. But that was just one that I saw this morning that made me laugh because I've never seen, I've never seen the internet so fervently argue between Blake Bortles and Mitch Trubisky in the year 2022.

Yeah. The only other one I can think of too is, can we just put the Cam Acres thing to rest for now? Like I've been tired by the Cam Acres talk all stinking offseason. The guy is coming off an Achilles injury. Nobody seems to remember that. I know medical has changed, but there's still not a singular example of a running back

returning to form from an Achilles injury. I don't care if the staff has said he doesn't have any setbacks. He looks like the same guy. It doesn't mean it's true. People lie all the time, especially coaching staffs and front offices. Nobody in the NFL has ever lied. What are you talking about? Right.

And this isn't a slight against Cammakers at all. So I was a huge fan of his. I'm just saying the fantasy community has been gassing the guy up, talking about how his ADP is, you know, way too low, blah, blah, blah. And you know, we know McVeigh, I mean, Chris, our partner data here, he reminded me yesterday that McVeigh doesn't like committees. He wants to go with the Belcow. We kind of saw that last night with Henderson.

Now, Henderson doesn't look 100% to me either. But we know Aker's is in rough shape with the Achilles. He might not ever return to form. We have to start to accept that. We know Kyron Williams. I think the quote I used today is that he's been washed up since the day he decided to play football, which is probably a little mean. but I've never been a fan of his game.

So I think you're probably going to get a heavy dose of Henderson for most of the season. So let's put the Camakers thing to rest, fellas, and ladies. Yeah. It's, all right. I've seen enough Cammakers talk for at least four or five weeks. Let's wait until he actually, like, plays more than five snaps. Exactly. Before we start trying to dissect what he's going to.

going to be if you overdrafted him tough you know everybody makes a bad play in fantasy it just happens that camakers seems to be the early leader for what the hell was this yes yes all right well that's all we got we will be back wednesday of next week we're going to break down everything that happened in week one and we're going to go deep as always deep we appreciate all the And I'm Brett Whitefield, and this is my co-host, Stephen O'Rourke, and we are out. 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.