Fantasy Football Daily - IDP Corner: 2022 Cut Day Reactions

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

Justin Varnes (@downwithIDP) and Tom Simons react to defensive cuts and roster moves around the league during cut week. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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from numbers to the film room, with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. Welcome to another edition of the IDP Corner. My name is Justin Barnes, one of the fantasy analysts over at FantasyPoint.com. I work on the IDP side of things as well as my partner, Thomas Simons. How you doing today, Thomas? Oh, my head is swimming in transactions. Aren't we all? Yes, indeed.

As Thomas is foreshadowing here, we're recording this basically right after a cut day. There's been a lot of trades, a lot of roster cuts. What does that all mean for the IDP landscape? We're going to go through and pick out what we think are the most significant moves. Some are pretty obvious and then some are just going to be situations to maybe monitor a little more closely. But, Thomas, I think if you're ready, let's dive on end. Who do you have? Just before we get off and rolling on the individual players, it's something we should footnote to everybody is that this is an ever-changing landscape that players may get cut now, but they may end up on somebody else's team in the next day or so.

So there are a lot of these players who will get cut and be brought back onto practice squads. There are a lot of these players who get cut and move to another team. So it's a fluid situation and just keep that in mind as this could, what we're talking about now on Wednesday could turn around and completely change by the time it gets posted on Thursday or Friday. So just bear that in mind. I'm going to start with, in Carolina. A surprise cut was Justin Burris, their safety.

This obviously means that they're going to go with Xavier Woods and Jeremy Chin as their strong safety and their free safety with chin playing in the box more frequently. Now, they're going to want to use a cover two a lot in Carolina this year. So you could see Sam Franklin or Sean Chandler coming in as the third safety and playing deep with sometimes it's Woods, sometimes it's chin. but I think they want to use chin more so in the box. What do you think? Well, that's what we have been expecting, and that's what we have heard. The only thing that Thomas makes you and I, you know,

worry a little bit there is that so far, you know, during preseason, well, preseason is over now, but during the preseason, chin did play a lot more snaps deep as opposed to playing up. And now that he has a new safety partner in Xavier Woods, you know, there is a chance that they, you know, looking at their safety room, they've decided that their best defense is having chin play deep. I'm with you. I still think it's going to be a split safety set. So, but it probably means that Woods has more value than we were originally thinking. Now, remember, Woods played more snaps last year than any other defender. So Woods had a career year in tackle.

mainly because he had a career year in snaps. So I don't see Xavier Woods being able to repeat his season, but if he is playing a significant number of box snaps and if these two kind of trade off, what it means to me is I'm going to pull back a little bit on chin and I'm going to give Woods a little bit more weight just seeing what we've done with the preseason. But I think when all is said and done,

it's still chin is the guy you want there. Yeah, and Carolina loves to use their 5-6 dB sets a lot. So these guys are going to see the field along with Franklin and Chandler as well as their cornerbacks quite a bit. So I think they're going to do a rotational thing and it's going to be a game-by-game setup and also the particular offense that they're facing and the particular schemes. Now, we'll stay in the secondary but move over. to the AFC East with New England, they cut Terrence Mitchell.

The veteran got axed this yesterday, and this obviously means we talked about this in our last podcast that Jalen Mills and Jonathan Jones will likely start at the cornerback positions. And Miles Bryant is probably going to be the nickel back. So Mitchell is out of the picture, Mills and Jones start Bryant most likely the nickel. We got so this is a roster thing at all, but this one also just kind of came up pretty recently. We're again going to talk about the Cardinals linebackers. And it does look like where Isaiah Simmons says that he will be wearing the green dot, that's been passed around a lot this preseason. We've been trying to figure out how Nick Vigil will mess things up. Our hope.

Our hope was that the Cardinals by now would figure out what the Bengals figured out. a while back, which is that in short bursts, Nick Vigil looks great, but over the long haul, you know, he has proven at least up to this point to be a liability. So we were hoping that by the end of the preseason, they would have enough competence in Collins and Simmons to have those be the two primary backs. Now, that does not mean that Collins is going to also be the guy there. So that still leaves a little bit of a question as to whether or not it's Collins or Vigil, who plays next to Simmons a bunch. Simons, I thought I was your brother for a second.

Don't! But what it does mean to me is that they definitely did not give that to Collins or Vigil, and that says a lot about those two more than it does. We expected Simmons to be on the field the whole time. It's how it affects the other two, I think that matters. Indeed, indeed, indeed. Now, Tampa Bay made a surprising move. with, they signed Logan Ryan and then they turned around and they just cut them.

So granted, they signed them in the offseason and now Ryan is no longer with the Bucks. So that means that Mike Edwards is going to start next to Antoine Winfield. And our friend Kino Neal is going to be the third safety in this Tampa Bay Bucks defense, which means that they're probably going to use Neal more in the linebacker in the box. kind of role at times, which is kind of concerning a little bit in regards to Winfield, because Winfield was playing that role early on in his rookie season, and now we're wondering if that's going to affect his tackle numbers. What are your thoughts about Winfield and how Neal will affect his production?

Well, there's one note I want to make about Logan Ryan, and this is something, you know, you'd mentioned at the top of the program about how incredibly fluid things still are. There's this like hard cut day, you know, hard cut off there where it's like, all right, 4 p.m. We know exactly what the 53 man roster is going to look like. It's not remotely true. All sorts of things happen. There's been trades and, yeah, signings to practice squads and you name it.

The interesting thing about Logan Ryan is because they're trying to figure out what to do with their offensive lineman Ryan Jensen because of his. injury. One of the, one of the Tampa Bay beat riders, Greg Holman, suggests strongly that this is just a temporary. Yeah, because Ryan, Ryan is a vested veteran. He doesn't go to waivers. So there's a good chance they basically just told Logan Ryan, hey, listen, we're going to have to quote, quote, cut you and then bring you back. So if you're drafting today, you're in a tough position. What you want to watch is basically the next 48 hours. Does Ryan get immediately picked back up or does he not? And in fact, he did get cut. So, you know, and Ryan in the middle of this changes everything. If he's not there, you're exactly

right. Keanu Neal and Mike Edwards have, I think, larger roles here. But I would imagine, to answer your question, I would imagine that Winfield, no matter who is, I think Winfield will be farther back. think that Edwards and Neil, Neil is a player similar to Logan Ryan, who seems to do better closer to the line of scrimmage in these kind of short area situations. So I think, I think no matter how, no matter where Ryan ends up, Winfield is somebody, I think that we, that you and I both think might be getting, you know, too little of the tackle share, no matter who is in front of him. All right. I want to move on to, uh, to the Ravens. Um, Interesting thing I noticed, you know, kind of, you know, Thomas and I've been pouring over these 53-man rosters, seeing if anything sticks out.

One thing that stuck out to me is for the Ravens. Obviously, Tyos Bauer, Bowser is injured. They're hoping to get him back soon. But really, there's almost nothing behind Odafei OA and Justin Houston when it comes to outside linebacker there. So do they pick up somebody, you know, how soon does Bowser come back? Either way, we've seen this Ravens defense have multiple outside linebackers where they rotate them heavily. On paper, it doesn't look like they're going to be able to do that, which might mean Odafei OA's snaps will increase heavily. There's only so much they can get out of Justin.

He's obviously a veteran. I know they're going to try and save his legs. So if Bowser comes back and they really don't add anyone, I expect to see Houston and Bowser rotate and Odape OA OA probably get a ton of snap. So I think OA's arrow for me is pointing a little higher now that we're done with the main round of cuts. Now, speaking of linebackers and speaking of lack of depth, the Kansas City Chiefs cut Jermaine Carter, who they signed in the offseason. Now, that's not a real big surprise because he didn't fit very well into the scheme they've been using this offseason. And he didn't see much time at all in preseason as well as in practices and stuff. He didn't run with the ones.

And in fact, it was rookie Leo Chanel who's running with the ones and will start most likely. Although temper that because Chanel will most likely just be a two-down back, they'll linebacker. They'll go with Bolton and they'll go with Willie Gay. but all they have outside of those three is Darius Harris at linebacker. So here's another situation where what you just mentioned, Justin, is the fact that there are going to be a lot, a lot, when I say a lot of bodies, keep in mind, teams are going from 80 to 53.

So they're cutting 27 players pretty much each team. So you multiply that times 32, and there's a lot of players that are out there. and there's a lot of shuffling that's going to go on, a lot of practice squad signings and roster signings. So here's a situation along with Baltimore where you're going to have a team looking for linebacker depth. So I want to bring up one of the more interesting, intriguing cuts that also involved a trade.

And that is the Eagles who have been retooling their defense. We've probably the third podcast now. We've talked about how the Eagles have retooled their defense, how differently the safeties will look this year compared to last year. And part of that look seems to be that veteran Anthony Harris, who's been a very productive and a very solid player for the Vikings and for the Eagles last year, he's now on the outside looking in in this new scheme that requires your safeties to do a multitude of things. So they have actually cut Anthony Harris and they, they traded for a C.J. Gardner Johnson,

at the time, slot cornerback for the New Orleans Saints. Now, Gardner Johnson had been in contract negotiations with the Saints, and that had seemed to have stalled. Gardner Johnson was a safety out of college. And basically as the Saints found what they needed from, from him. He excels in covering the slot. But Philly also has a really good slot guy on their team, which is Avanti Maddox. So it does look like C.J. Gardner Johnson will play next to kind of rising safety there, Marcus Epps. So I'm seeing Epps and Gardner Johnson both back there. One of the big reasons I think this is important. Again, we're probably going to see this split safety set, so we're not expecting a hundred tackles from Epps or Gardner Johnson.

But to me, the biggest piece of this news is the fact that most leagues will probably have CJ Gardner Johnson listed as a cornerback. And now he's going to be most likely playing a starting safety role. One thing is for sure he's going to be on the field 100% of the snaps. So this won't be a sort of situation where he's only the quote unquote nickel safety and they'll have a nickel cornerback. I think he's going to play a ton of snaps he's going to have between. 80 to 95 tackles.

And if you can use them in a CB required league, that is huge. Yeah, and they also have Kavana Wallace as their third safety in that mix as well. So I think that Garner Johnson, they actually traded for him and they went and got him. So he's going to be an integral part in that safety room. I know I've been harping about depth, but Houston, is another team at linebacker that is they made some cuts and then they turned around and you wonder, well, what happened there with Kevin Pierre Lewis being cut? They were high on Kevin Pierre Lewis last year and he played well for them. But this year they drafted rookie Christian

Harris and it looks like Harris is going to start even though similar to, you know, most of the rookies who most likely just be a two-down linebacker to begin with, like Leo Chanel and Kansas City. But Harris is going to most likely be the strong side linebacker for Houston, and they do have some veterans in Neville Hewitt that will come off the bench and be in a rotation. But the Pierre Lewis cut was kind of a, I wouldn't say an eyebrow razor because that's not really, Pierre Lewis wasn't a monster linebacker to begin with. But when you have depth, and that just goes to show you that they had concerns in other areas on the team that they needed to address and bring in extra bodies in order to address that concern. And that being said, Pierre Lewis was on the outside looking in.

I want to talk a little bit about what happened, speaking of trades, what happened with Malik Reed. outside linebacker from the Denver Broncos, Malik Reed, got traded to Pittsburgh. And I think that has fantasy implications. And these are deep league fantasy implications, to be clear. These are LB4, LB5, edge four, edge five kind of situations. But nonetheless, it really impacts, I think, both teams. Let's start with the Denver Broncos. We have been talking about how the team has been raving about moving.

moving inside linebacker, Baron Browning to the edge, and now he's an outside linebacker, and they've been really happy with his playing. So we had mentioned a couple of podcasts ago that Browning's path for snaps was pretty crowded because he obviously not only has to rotate in with the starters, Randy Gregory and Bradley Chubb,

who both have histories of not being able to stay on the field, but they also have Malique Rieck. Reed in front of him. So he was the fourth in the rotation. So they moved Reed, which is to me a big sign that they really do feel confident that Browning is ready to step up and play a larger role. It will take Gregory or Chubb to go down with injury or to massively underperform before Browning is an actual like starter in an edge one, edge two situation. But to me, long term and dynasty, it does mean a lot for what they think of Browning and how he will fit here. Thomas, what about the other side?

What about the Pittsburgh side of this trade? Well, the Steelers, their linebacking depth is not that good. Another team that is shallow in the linebacker situation. And Alex Highsmith is dealing with some injuries. So Reed is going to be heavily involved to begin with to start the season. and if Highsmith has injuries that hinder him at all and limit his playing time. So Reed's going to slide right in on the outside like he was playing with Denver, like he was in Denver.

He'll be doing that for Pittsburgh moving forward. And I think he's going to, with a revamped linebacking core and the hope that Devin Lloyd can step it up and improve over last year's performance, you have injuries being starting to accumulate in this linebacker depth for the Steelers. T.J. Watts banged up. Highsmiths banged up. So getting Reed was critical in a sense that they added depth, a much needed depth. I'm going to close out this section with another linebacker situation, which is, you know, this isn't necessarily a surprise. cut. Especially with the fact you've been talking about this particular one person you'll mention here in most of the podcasts. And there's a reason for it. Go ahead. My love, hate relationship with

Jared Davis has been documented pretty heavily over the last several years. I was very eye on him coming out of University of Florida. He started strong in terms of production, but he needed to to grow as a player. Matt Patricia's... He went to the Jets and the Jets and Robert Sala and was like, oh, this guy's a, you know, he's a stud, blah, blah, blah, and he fizzed out there too. Yeah, that was the big one. You know, you could blame a lot of what happened to some of the defenders on the lions

on Matt Patricia. But when he went over to Robert Sala, who is, you know, somebody we've heard that the defensive players love playing for. And if Sala couldn't find a use for him, on a linebacking core that really could use some solid depth, for them to kick them, kick him back to Detroit. I mean, this guy is bouncing back and forth between two very, you know, LB needy teams and he can't stick on either one of them.

Those were massive signs. But obviously, Jared Davis got cut. So what does that mean for the rest of the Lions line backers? That means Derek Barnes and Malcolm Rodriguez, now they get a bump up. That's just one player out of the way. So now it's just Alex Anzolone, Derek Barnes, and Malcolm Rodriguez. And Alex Anzolone still, I'm still not 100% sure that by the end of the season,

Alex Anzolone is still a starting linebacker for the Lions. So definitely like Derek Barnes right now. I definitely love Malcolm Rodriguez as somebody to stash on your bench and or I like him in Dynasty. I don't know, do you see anything different from this lion's rotation? No, I think you're hitting the nail on the head with Barnes and Rodriguez. And this is something we're going to have to pay very close attention to when the season starts, watch the snap counts and see exactly how they're using ends alone. Because I totally agree.

I don't see him as the linebacker of their future. And I know that they were really, really high on Barnes last year. and Rodriguez has really stood out this preseason, this off-season pre-season training camp. So I totally agree. I think that Barnes and Rodriguez is going to be the duo that will move forward as we get later into the season and will be the ones to rely on. But again, we'll have to watch the snap counts. Yeah.

Go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say that kind of wraps up the cut section. I was going to move on to news and notes and let you – let you run that line for me. Yeah, well, there's just, you know, a handful of critical, key injuries and injury notes and one trade that I want to make a point about. Jimmy Ward, we talked about Jimmy Ward in San Francisco safety, and he, the hamstring injury that he has. In the last podcast, we mentioned that the hamstring injury might be a little more serious and that he may end up on the temporary injured reserve, and that's exactly what.

happen. They placed him on temporary IR and he'll miss the first month of the season, maybe more depending on how he rebounds from this injury. Buffalo put Tredavius White. They're starting quarterback on the physically unable to perform list, and he's out also four games. Now, we kind of knew this was coming, so they're probably going to be using a rotation at his cornerback spot, and whoever steps up and handles it the best is probably probably going to be the starter. So it's not something you should target in your drafts and or auctions right away. Cornerback Byron Jones on Miami also landed on the PUP list and is out four games. Now, two guys that came off the PUP list that are critical and our important IDPs are

Shaquille Leonard on Indianapolis. He was taken off the list and it's a good sign following his off-season back surgery because that means that he's going to be on the roster when the season starts. Now, whether or not he's going to be 100% in week one, he could be questionable going into week one. Keep that in mind that at least Leonard is off the list and will likely be playing by week two. Dion Jones in Atlanta is another one who came off the PUP list, and this is another good sign because he had shoulder surgery during the off-season. So he's going to be on the the roster to begin the season as well. And again, here's another situation where don't be surprised if you see he's listed as questionable for week one. One minor trade that

happened outside of that Philadelphia Eagles trade for Gardner Johnson, the Minnesota Vikings traded for Ross Blacklock from Houston because they turned around and cut a veteran Armand Watts. So Blacklock is most likely going to step into Watts position. Now, don't expect big numbers from Blacklock. In DT required leagues, he may be a serviceable type player, but don't expect big numbers. Yeah, it was really weird to watch that one. I mean, we talked a little bit earlier about how Anthony Harris, you know, who was a solid player, just happened to be a bad fit for some new schemes that they were trying to put together.

And that's likely what's happened here in Minnesota with Armand Watts, who I, I think he's like 26 still. I think he's a solid player. I cannot imagine Watts doesn't end up on a team here very soon. If there's any fantasy value there is the fact that, you know, there's a tiny bit of renewed hope that Blacklock, who was, I think, a former second rounder, who we were hoping would make an impact on the Texans.

Maybe this change of scenery and change of scheme might fit, Blacklock's skill set a little bit more, but, you know, we're probably still talking DT2, DT3. So, agreed, not a major impact, but it's still important because of all of a sudden, come week three, Blacklock is up on the leaderboard more than people were expecting. It might be scheme-related. So, and obviously, the other thing I was going to say about that is we talk on here so much about how important it is that you, for a defensive lineman, to be on a line. with a bunch of other talented players.

Otherwise, you get very easily double-teamed and triple-teamed, et cetera. Well, Blacklock's moving on to a really talented Vikings front line. So with Benile Hunter and his Adairius-Smith, whatever. So way more talented than probably Blacklocks played on in his time in Houston. So I wouldn't be, you know, if, again, he kind of ticks up the leaderboard a little bit more, there are a couple of signs here as to why that might happen. I'm not really, I'm moving them up a little bit. I think Thomas and I'll discuss that and probably move him up just a little bit.

But it's, that's one to keep your eye on if all of a sudden you see Blacklock up on the leaderboard. It might not be a fluke. We at least have, we would have solid reasons to believe that that raised production would have some sort of weight or foundation to it. But I still think that's a fairly long shot. especially with the fact that they're moving to a three four scheme this year and that he will play a defensive end defensive tackle type position and probably share that with Jonathan Bullard. So there's a rotation that could go on there. It's a new learning scheme for the entire team. And I totally agree.

And we may bring them up a tiny bit, but only a tiny bit. Listen, if you guys are listening to this and you're a fantasy point subscriber, I just want to tell you that Thomas and I have been living in the Discord app lately while so many of our subscribers are drafting right now and helping them with their IDP leagues. We have folks in there who are drafting really deep leagues and are still, you know, still in dynasty decisions making. and they themselves have to make cuts. And we also have people who are popping in like, hey, I just joined an IDP league. And we have to start three defensive players. What the hell do I do? So if you were a fantasy point subscriber, I urge you to hop into that discord because we

basically live in there this time of year. We want you guys completely prepped for your draft. And we'll also be there once the season starts for waiver wires. And, you know, one thing I've heard from last. year is we did get lots of like, hey, what the hell is happening with player X? You know, and we could say, oh, looks like he, you know, his position has changed or nothing at all is just bad luck, stay the course. So, you know, for all of the weeks two to three at the beginning of the seasons where

you, where overreaction kicks in, don't forget to tap on that Discord board. Thomas and I will throw you a rope. Indeed. All right, Thomas. Man, preseason's done. Next week, we're going to talk about some of our players who were excited to watch and just some last-minute thoughts about players who we think might blow up and players who might blow up in the bad way.

So we'll hit those next week, and then we'll be off and running. It'll be time for football. Thomas, anything else to say before we check out of here? One last thing. Be well and be safe. 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.