Fantasy Football Daily - IDP Corner: 2022 Preseason Podcast #1

Episode Date: August 18, 2022

Justin Varnes (@downwithIDP) and Tom Simons discuss preseason storylines around the NFL for defensive players. --- 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. To another edition of the IDP Corner, my name is Justin Barnes, one of the fantasy analysts, over at FantasyPoint.com. You can follow me on Twitter at Down with IDP. and we're here to talk some IDP on the Fantasy Points Podcast Network and joining me as always, my partner at crime,

representing the West Coast, the left coast, Mr. Thomas Simons. How you doing tonight, Thomas? I'm doing well, Justin. Glad to be here and doing another podcast with you. Yes, sir. So we're going to dive in. We finally got to see some actual football getting played. And so this has really helped both Thomas and I get a much firmer grasp

on what we expect to get. out of these players heading into the regular season. We spent a lot of time this offseason trying to figure out roles. We have new defensive coordinators, scheme changes. That means a lot of shifting around. We have camp battles. We have rookies. We have veterans.

We have signings. That's a lot of stuff to put into a jar and shake it up and try to somehow figure out fantasy production. But now that we've kind of thought through what we think is going to happen, we've seen a lot of confirmation, which I think is, is a big sigh of relief for both Thomas and I that what we were hoping to see we've seen a lot of. What we're going to try to do is help you sift through that tonight because most of you are drafting, either drafting right now or drafting in the next week or so.

And there are some rankings around, you know, just general rankings that you might find on more generic sites that have some people really out of whack in our eyes. We're going to try and help you use that to your advantage when it comes to draft time. for the rest of your league mates. So I say we, yeah, I say we dive right in. Thomas, why don't you get it started? What did you see from the bills? Well, first of all, Trudevius White appears to be headed to the physically unable to perform

list, PUPU list. And that would mean that he's going to miss most likely the first four games of the season. And with him going to the PUP list, rookie Kham Ilam and Kair Elam and Christian. Benford have been in a tight battle to replace White's at the starting cornerback position. Now, it looks like the bills want to keep Teran Johnson as their nickel cornerback and not have him play the left cornerback, starting left cornerback spot. They don't want to change his role that he has on defense. So the rookie Elam and Benford look like they're going to be battling for White's position

for the first month of the season. So I've spent a lot of time this offseason. and I mentioned a few times on these podcasts about this continued move to more two safety sets, split safety roles. In other words, you've got two safeties and both of them at any point in the game, any point on any snap could be either deep or play up in the box or possibly both play deep. And that causes all sorts of chaos when it comes to your safeties. That wasn't the case several years ago, you know, three, four, five years ago.

but we are starting to move to this because these two safety sets, these split safeties have been effective in slowing down some of these high-powered offenses. So we're seeing more and more of them. That means we have fewer options at the top of the safety list in terms of consistent production because they're going to be closer to the action more often than not. So I'm going to rattle off a list of players who I feel are, I feel confident about drafting them based on their more heavily tilted tackle roles. Now, some of these don't play a box safety role,

but however their defense is set up, their job is to get to the ball usually quicker than other people. So this is going to be a short list, and there are plenty of other safeties. I'm happy to draft, but if you want somebody who can just lock in and assume that you're going to get fairly consistent production, it's just going to be these guys in my eyes.

Derwin James, Jeremy Chin, J. Ron Curse, Jamal Adams, assuming health and all that stuff with him, Cameron Curl, Jonathan Abram, and Tracy Walker. For me, that's the list. Now, there's a lower tier of, like, later round picks that I think could have a similarly consistent, but less productive season. And those would be Vaughn, Rayshon Jenkins, and Brandon Jones. All of these players play a fairly consistent safety position, which means their production could be more reliable than a lot of these two safety sets we see around the NFL. And this is a much shorter list than it was, say, three, four, five years ago. Yeah. And one note on one of the players you mentioned, and that was Derwin James. The Chargers just signed him to a four-year contract extension for $76.4 million,

which makes him something like 19.13 million a year average and makes him the highest paid safety in the NFL. Now, I'm going to move along to the defensive line and the interior for the Philadelphia Eagles. Jordan Davis was taken in the draft by the Eagles and the hopes that he could help them with their run defense. This guy, this kid is a beast. He's six-foot. He's six-foot. six inches, 335 pounds. Now, he may not start, granted, Fletcher Cox may be the starter, but I'm guaranteeing you, and especially in Dynasty Leagues, he will play an integral part of this Eagles run defense. He's a monster that just eats up space inside the defensive line. Keep an eye on this going forward because there could be a point in time that he unseats Cox

as a starter or shares as many snaps. And one of the things that they have already said about Davis is, you know, his role at the University of Georgia was absolutely more of a two-gapping, you know, two-down player, just kind of there on run defense. This system will use him as two-gapping, but also this kind of gap and a half system where they do want him to attack more. And I would not be surprised. I'm with you, Thomas, in a couple of years, if Jordan Davis isn't a, you know, less, You know, it's hard to say three-down player with defensive linemen anymore. But let's put it this way. If he gets near the 60% snap count, I think he could be an impactful player.

And he can certainly do more than Georgia had him do. And it'll be fun to watch that. But yeah, he's got a lot of players around him that, you know, they're going to also work in. Now, keep in mind, although, you know, this is Jonathan Gannon's second year here. One of the things the Eagles defensive line has been built on over the last couple years is what they call the alpha and the beta lines. In other words, they have two exact copies of their lines and they just rotate them and keep everybody fresh. So, you know, is Jordan Davis basically the beta to Cox's alpha or is that flipped? One thing I really do like about Davis being there being a space eater is I think that he will actually positively impact Javon,

Hargrave next to him. Hargrave had a really good season last year. He got a little unlucky toward the end of the year, or he would have had even better, better numbers. Playing next to Davis, I think is going to help Hargrave be more of a fantasy factor this year. And another guy that's similar in that sort of setting is Grady Jarrett. He's another defensive tackle, but I think we're going to see more of what we saw last year with Grady Jarrett, which is that his numbers fell within Dean Pease's two gap system, and I believe that's going to continue to happen. So I'd rather take Hargrave over Grady Jarrett, and I'm seeing those two flipped in lots of cases. I'm going to move along to another rookie linebacker Quay Walker for the Green Bay Packers.

I paid close attention to him in the Packers' preseason game number one against the 49ers. And Walker wore the green dot. Now, granted, Devondre Campbell is the one that is expected to wear the green dot in the regular season, and he didn't play in preseason week one. But still, this is a really good sign for the rookie Walker, who did fairly well in that game against San Francisco. Now, Walker is going to be expected to at least line up and start next to Campbell during the season, and he could actually fill the gap that the package.

have and have wanted to fill next to Campbell and maybe even down the road he could end up turning into the linebacker that they really wanted at that position. Let's stick with Green Bay while we're talking about defensive tackles. I want to bring up Kenny Clark. Kenny Clark got incredibly unlucky last season. So T.J. Watt, massive production, historic production, 22 sacks. Watt had 22 sacks and 64 pressures and 64 pressures is a really high number. Clark also had, I think he had 62 pressures. So pretty much the same amount of pressures as T.J. Watt, but he only ended up with three sacks.

He had a ton of hurries, more hurries than Watt had, which basically means he got unlucky and just missed having a much more productive season. He's actually thriving in this new defensive scheme that he's been in the last couple of years. So I'm expecting to see him bounce back up to, you know, before last year, you know, I think he had three or four sacks last year. Before that, we thought of him more as like a, you know, six sack guy. I think he's going to bounce back into that range. And I would not be surprised if out of nowhere he ends up putting eight or nine, maybe even 10 sacks this year. He really does fit this scheme well. Just got unlucky last year.

You know, in regards to Walker, I like where you're going with this, especially with the fact that the Packers brought in Geron Reed out of Kansas, former Seahawk and Kansas City Chief, to help on their defensive line. They also drafted Devante Wyatt, who will also be part of the rotation in their lineup. Clark is going to benefit from these new faces on the defense. Yeah, they still have Dean Lowry, but with Reed and Wyatt on the other side of the line, Clark and Lowry on his other, you know, to the left will be Lowry and to the right will be Reed and Wyatt. It's going to be a nice little bump for Kenny Clark,

and those misses, those opportunities that he failed to garner, last year that you mentioned could turn into valuable fantasy points this year. Now, I'm going to stay with the notion of the green dot. The green dot and the projected green dots in 2020 are as follows. Foyah Ola Khan and Christian Kirk say linebackers for Jacksonville and for Houston. They're going to be probably the projected. green dot wearers for their respective teams. Also, another handful of names.

J. Ron Kierce, you had mentioned, for Dallas. Alex Anzalone on Detroit is the projected green dot wearer for the lions. Anthony Walker for Cleveland and T.J. Edwards for Philly and David Long for Tennessee. Now, it doesn't mean these guys are guaranteed fantasy football beasts or valuable points or be production, big production winners. But it does mean that when you wear the green dot, most of the time you're going to be on the field at least 80% of the time or more. So it's notable that these players are possibly going to wear the green dot. And obviously during the preseason, for example, we mentioned Quay Walker wearing the green dot early in the Green Bay game. But it was Devondre Campbell who normally wears it and he didn't dress.

So you might see some of the starters starting this week. This is one of those weeks where they will probably try and get their starters at least the first quarter, maybe into the second quarter. So it's going to be interesting to see, but keep an eye on those players that early in the games in the next two weeks that wear the green dot. Speaking of green dot wearing Detroit live backers, so Alex Anzolone, like you said, is projected there. And it looks like that he will have that role. A player to watch is a six-round rookie Malcolm Rodriguez. I love him as a late-round flyer. And we'd mentioned him a little bit earlier on one of our podcasts,

because when you're looking for some of these younger players to be these sleepers that might move up into a role, you're looking for the players who are starting, possibly having big enough weaknesses that the team would say, you know what, let's take a shot at a younger player. And the Detroit linebacking situation is a perfect example of that. I don't think the Lions think that Alex Anzolone is the answer for them as a three-down linebacker, right?

It's something Thomas and I've talked a lot about. And the guy next to him, Jared Davis, you know, he was let go by the lions, picked up by the Jets. So the Jets, you know, lasted a half a year with them and kicked him back to the Lions. So there really is an opportunity here. I believe that Rodriguez has a fairly good shot at replacing Davis as the secondary linebacker. And I wouldn't be surprised if eventually he doesn't move into that three-down roll. So if you can wait it out and draft him as a late round flyer,

this is something I was talking to one of our Discord members about earlier today about Malcolm Rodriguez. If you can wait it out, grab him as a late round stash because he is. the type of player. There are very few of these that could all of a sudden wake up with a three-down roll that nobody else saw coming and he's going to put up 120 tackles. Now, the only thing I would say that makes us a little riskier than normal is because he is on hard knocks, because the lines are the hard knocks team this year, that instantly raises basically everyone's ADP I've noticed. So it might be hard to wait to the very, very end, but I do like Rodriguez as a late round stash. Give it a couple of weeks.

Let's see what happens. I also would not be surprised if by the end of the preseason, he's not a starter and maybe a three-down player. So I got a good look at the Atlanta Falcons this past weekend. Wow. They are bad. We both have talked about how the Falcons offense is going to be a poor offense this year, and consequently their defense is going to spend a lot of time on the field.

Now, as a defensive team, a DST, the Falcons, even though they'll spend a lot of time on the field, they're going to give up a lot of points and they're going to give up a lot of yardage. So you've got to be careful because they're going to probably be ranked in the bottom five for defensive teams. Yet individually, you're going to find that when you're on the field a ton, it usually helps the individual players as long as they get snaps. It doesn't mean that, okay, so instead of having a thousand defensive snaps in the year, they get 1,400, doesn't mean that a Grady Jarrett or a Dion Jones is going to get a 10% increase in the snap count. But in some cases, they will. So you're going to have to be paying attention to which of these players are actually seeing a lot of snaps. And being on the field a lot will help their fantasy stats. It could also hurt them because then they get tired.

they end up making more mistakes and the team ends up bringing in somebody else to replace them and they see a loss of snap count. But it's a fine line that you walk there, but pay attention to that one. Yeah, and that's a really good point, Thomas, about these defenses being stuck on the field and, you know, their fantasy production as a defense being terrible, but individually, you know, we can really see some nice stuff. I've got an article on the FantasyPoint.com site about how, you know, Basically, I call it, tackles are for losers.

The number of teams that end up being top five in snap counts every year is usually about 80% of them are teams with losing records. These are teams that a combination of their defense being bad and their offense being bad can really rack up the snap counts. We saw that last year. Seattle's defense was on the field for almost. more than any other team. The only team that was on the field for more defensive snaps were the Minnesota Vikings. And we saw both Bobby Wagner and Jordan Brooks end up in the top three in tackles because they were in the top five for snap counts. A player who really stuck out in this sort of category is Xavier Woods. Xavier Woods played the most snaps of any IDP all year long.

and consequently he had the best fantasy production of his career playing for the Vikings because the Vikings were on the field for so much. So to me, if you're looking at a couple of players and you're trying to decide between them, kind of get a feel for, you know, just pull up their Vegas projected wind totals. And you might be surprised at how that might be a nice way to split a tie for you between two players because, you know, look, I'll give you another example. Bobby Wagner has, although he's a phenomenal player, has been on a defense that has really struggled

over the last couple years. Fred Warner, phenomenal linebacker as well. He's played basically the same percentage of his team snaps as Bobby Wagner has. But the 49ers defense, which is so good in terms of limiting yardage, they have finished in the bottom three in snaps per season for the last five years straight. So Fred Warner has been on the field for like high nine hundreds at the end of every year.

And Bobby Wagner has been on the field for 1,100 or 1,200 snaps. So Bobby Wagner is essentially playing two or three more games per year than Fred Warner has nothing to do with talent, has everything to do with the fact that if you're between Wagner and Fred Warner last year, you should have gone with Wagner based on the fact that his defense is probably going to stay on the field longer. And that's the sort of thing that'll take you from an LB 12 or 13 up to an LB 3 or 4, and that could mean a championship. Indeed.

Now, speaking of linebackers and paying attention, Bud Dupree pled guilty to a lesser charge of assault charge. A lesser assault charge. And I guess he received six months probation. Now, there's a good chance that he will most likely be suspended by the NFL, at least two or more games due to this. So if you do draft or buy Dupri in an auction, make sure you have a backup plan because there's a good chance that you might be without him to start the season.

We're going to wrap this section of it before we touch on a few injuries. I want to mention two of my favorite rookie safeties. There's been a lot of really good rookie safeties drafted this year, but there's only a handful of them for me who are right now in a position to be, I think, a reliable fantasy asset. What is Nick Cross, the safety there for the Colts? It does look like Cross is going to play that closer to the line of scrimmage, kind of glorified linebacker role for them, which is a great fit for fantasy. And the other one I really like is Chicago's Jaquan Bristker. He's playing really well now they are going to play more split safety sets but i do think brisker when push comes a shove will play closer to the to the action

and have more tackle opportunity than eddie jackson who through one preseason game has been a little bit more on the back end of the defense that brisker has um the reason kyle hamilton doesn't make that list for me uh is because i think there are too many variables in that safety room they're definitely going to have chuck clark they're definitely going to have marcus williams they will probably need all three of these safeties on the field a bunch because their linebackers don't cover well. And right now, Kyle Hamilton doesn't seem like a safety they have to put up into the box on a regular basis. My guess is that would be more of Chuck Clark. And I think Kyle Hamilton's going to be moving around a lot, which is going to be eight tackles, one game and two tackles the next. And that sort of headache, to me, for as high as Kyle Hamilton is being drafted, that's a headache I don't want.

Yeah, both of these players are getting listed and running with the number one defense is the starters. And you had mentioned with Brisker, you've got Jackson playing a deeper role, which puts Bristker closer to the box. And you had mentioned Hamilton. Hamilton is in a very crowded safety or secondary position for the Ravens, whereas Nick Cross is also running with the ones. So these two are extremely valuable. In the past, we've talked about immediate impact rookies. Well, these two could be close to being impact rookies if they maintain health and they continue to be productive and run with the ones. Let's move on to cover some injuries before we wrap this up.

Obviously, it is the least favorite topic for both Thomas and I to break some hearts about who's actually out. But what we're hoping to do here is, again, let's assuming that you're drafting here in a day or two. if we can get ahead of the news cycle here and prevent you from drafting somebody or possibly give you a little bit of good news about a player who is technically injured but might be coming back sooner. We're going to try and pass that along. So Thomas, what do you have on the injury front for us? Well, I'll start with the New England Patriots and Malcolm Butler suffered a hip injury

and he was placed on season-ending injured reserve, which means that basically he's done for the year. So Terrence Mitchell and Jalen Mills are the projected starters, and Jonathan Jones is the early leader to be the nickel cornerback. But you and I both know that this Patriots defense runs four or five defensive backs out there. They run three safeties sometimes. So it's going to be a convoluted situation, and I think there's going to be a committee going on there. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, you know, anyone who's listened to this podcast for long knows that I, I,

I really can't stand what Bill Belichick does for us for fantasy when it comes to IDP. You know, every game, every game is like wiping the chalkboard clean and starting from scratch and building the perfect defensive game plan, which means, you know, even if players have really predictable roles in terms of I'm the right cornerbacker, I'm the defensive tackle, That still does nothing for my confidence. Now, if you're going to throw in the fact that now things are a little bit more open-ended by losing Malcolm Butler, I am absolutely staying away from these cornerbacks at all cost. Quarterbacks by themselves are volatile.

Bill Belichick is volatile. You put those two things together and then add an injury. They weren't expecting. No, thank you. Well, we'll stay in the secondary and move over to the left coast, and that's the Bay Area. Jimmy Ward pulled a hamstring in practice on August 14th, and he is in jeopardy of missing the season opener. Now, if he does miss the opener,

George Odom will likely be the next man up in place of Ward. We've talked about Tala Fonga, who did okay in that first preseason game, and he's starting, he was supposed to start next to Ward, so it will most likely be Ward and Odom. I mean, Hufanga, And Odom, who starts season, game number one, should Ward not be available. And of those two, I think I'm going to want Tala Noah Hufanga. I think he has a better chance to be productive at the back end of his defense.

But this 49ers defense has not provided us a top 10 or top 20 safety in quite a while. So this is really more for your back end. But Hufanga might be a guy who is very late in drafts, who might be able to get you six to eight tackles a game, and that's something we can certainly rely on on the back end of our safeties or DBs. Indeed. Now, in Denver, Jonas Griffith had moved into a starting role

next to Josie Jewel in the middle of the defense for the Broncos. Well, he suffered an apparent dislocated elbow, and he'll be out four to six weeks, which means he's going to miss a month and a half. He could even start the season on the PUP list and be out four to six games. The Broncos went and signed Joe Schobert, but they do have Alex Singleton who will most likely start next to Jewel. Now, Singleton very likely shares snaps with Schobert depending on the offenses that they're playing and the defensive schemes that they're going to run out there. This could flip-flop both ways.

Singleton one week, Schobert the next week, and I personally don't think that it's worth taking an early gamble or risk on Schobert or Singleton. What do your thoughts on that? Well, I think it says a lot about their faith in Alex Singleton that they went and signed Joe Schobert as opposed to just assuming that they'd be okay with Singleton and Josie Jewel out there. What it also really means to me is that Jonas Griffith is someone they were really high on, was having a really good season, and he suffered a dislocated elbow. He didn't, he didn't, he didn't suffer an ACL, right? So this is an injury that a linebacker should be able to come back from and be fine. You know, this isn't some soft tissue tissue injury, some, you know, bad hamstring

pull. So what I like- Tectoral muscle tear or bicep tear or anything of that nature. It's a dislocated bone that will heal. Absolutely. And so what that means to me is I'm going to be looking to scoop up Jonas Griffith fairly late in drafts because four to six weeks, which basically started last week, I mean, there is a chance that he'll miss one or two games. That's really what we're looking at here. So, you know, you want to use this against your opponents to draft him, and you might find yourself a three-down linebacker or at least a, you know, two-down linebacker that you could use as an LB3 or four that you can get for pennies on the dollar right now.

who literally, now granted, he could not start till week six or seven. But there's also, but because he's going to be at the end of your drafts, like a Malcolm Rodriguez, you want to take shots at a surprise player who could be in a three-down role. You don't want to take shot, you don't want to be using your last couple of spots on a linebacker who you know is a 50 to 60% player and who you know is going to get you three to six. six tackles a week. That's a wasted draft pick. You want to be taking lottery ticket shots. And we already know they want Griffith playing in almost every down role there. So let's use that to our advantage latent drafts. Yeah. And you mentioned it right there that Denver wants

Griffith next to Jewel. And once he returns to health, then he will take that role. And Schobert and Singleton will once again become bench players and coming off the bench and playing like you said, 60 or 50% or less snaps. So while you may benefit the first two to three or four games of the season with a showbert or a singleton, they're going to rotate in that in those two to three, four weeks. And then when Griffith comes back, they're going to go to the bench. So it's just not a wise move, especially if you can find Griffith sitting late in your draft and you can get them knowing that in the second month of the season and beyond, he could be

valuable IDP for you. Now over it on the the East Coast, head coach Ron Rivera on the Washington commander said that he expects Chase Young defensive end to miss a little bit of the season due to being on the physically unable to perform list at the start of training camp. They put them on the PUP list before camp started and this is all related to last year's November torn ACL. So you can probably expect Young to put, um, at least miss a few games to start the season and could even start on the PUP list,

which will put them out for the first month or more. So be very leery of young. And Montez Sweat is somebody I would be paying attention to early on in your drafts, or at least early on in the season, to be productive with that beast of a defensive interior. All right. I think we have one more injury report. Is that correct? The only other one who I was going to mention was the,

the Trayvon White or Tredavius White, which I already did earlier. So I think that should wrap it up for now. Obviously, it keeps rolling in as we go. Yes, it does. Hopefully we can get signed off before another injured player shows up in the next few minutes. Quick, quick, run. All right, that's going to wrap it up for us. Remember that if you were on FantasyPoint.com,

if you're a subscriber and you're a premium subscriber, do not forget to check in on Discord. You've got an IDP draft coming in. Every day we're on there answering questions, helping everyone with their draft. You could have one IDP on your roster. You could have 11 IDPs on your roster. It won't matter to us. We're in there.

We've got the hood open and happy to help you guys get your season cranked off to a good start. Again, my name is Justin Varnes. You can follow me on Twitter at Downwith IDP. Thomas, take us out. 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.