Fantasy Football Daily - Preseason Week 3 IDP Review | IDP Corner Podcast

Episode Date: September 3, 2023

Justin Varnes (@DownWithIDP) and Tom Simons review the third week of preseason games from an individual defensive player perspective to help you in your upcoming IDP Drafts! READ DR. EDWIN PORRAS' INJURY [PRO]NE GUIDE WITH CODE INJURYPRONE25: https://injuryproneguide.myshopify.com/ Want to join a high-stakes dynasty league -- or any other high-stakes league? All new FFPC users get $25 off their first FFPC league of $35 or more, including dynasty orphans, using our affiliate link: ⁠https://myffpc.com/cms/public?affid=fantasypoints⁠ ⁠FANTASY POINTS PROJECTIONS ARE LIVE⁠ FOR ALL STANDARD AND PREMIUM SUBSCRIBERS! Interested in playing Best Ball in 2023? There's no better place than Underdog Fantasy. ⁠Use our code FANTASYPTS⁠ to sign up for a new account at Underdog, and not only will you get a 100% deposit match up to $100... but you'll get a Fantasy Points Standard subscription for only $5! ⁠https://www.fantasypoints.com/underdog --- 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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Commissions fees and expenses may apply. Read the funds or ETF's prospectus before investing. Funds and ETFs are not guaranteed. Their values change and past performance may not be repeated. It's time to 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. Welcome to another edition of the IDP Corner.

My name is Justin Varns. You can follow me on Twitter at Down with IDP. If you're listening to the sound of this and thinking that it's somewhere between one and 14 billion times worse than normal, then that lets you know that I'm indeed on the road and do not have all my podcast stuff handy. I'll give you my Venmo at the end of this,

and anyway, I want to purchase some extra on-the-road gear for me. But I tell you, who does have a wonderful voice and a beautiful sounding microphone and headphone set up while he's cozy at home is Mr. Thomas Simons. How are you doing today, Thomas? Hello. reverberating with a voice that just won't go away. I'm doing well, Justin.

All right. Well, we're going to dive in. So we've got all of our preseason action has concluded. We got some tidbits from preseason week three, but it really is harder than ever before to use the preseason to solidify a whole bunch of stuff. There are a few that we're going to mention. But, Thomas, wouldn't you agree? This is a different beast now when it comes to figuring this stuff out.

Well, you know, unlike in the past, preseason is no longer a viable gauge for fantasy production and or fantasy values because 90% in preseason week three, 90% of the starters didn't play. So you're not really getting a true look at team defensive schemes. You're getting slight looks at it. you're seeing the schemes, but you're seeing them with second and third and pretty much practice squad players. So it's really hard to gauge anything truly from the preseason games like we used to in the past when there were four preseason games you knew. Okay, preseason three, we're going to be looking at starters for at least a half. Well, not so true anymore. So you have to take it with a grain of salt and you have to kind of dig deeper into, you know,

the local news reporters and stuff giving you information regarding the teams. But, you know, I'm going to start with some moves that happened. You know, in the past, there was usually a lot of eye-opening cuts that happen around this time of year. And veterans, I get axed and you're like, wow, I didn't see that one coming. But there weren't that many this year as there have been in the past. Now, there was a few, for example, Houston released veteran Christian. and Kirtsey and cornerback Desmond King.

Now, the Steelers immediately snapped up King and Kierksie signed with the Bill's practice squad. It's good to note that with King, he'll probably see nickel and maybe dime snaps on the field to start with.

He might even be involved in their return game. But with Kierkesy, it's an interesting situation because going to the practice squad, you think, oh, well, he has no value. But the Bills put Baylon Specter on injured reserve recently. And because they did that, they're getting really thin at the linebacker position. So Kierxie could actually get activated as early as week one. You just keep an eye on that.

And that might be a stash for you because Kierxie does have some value if he makes the roster. Yeah, and I've got some notes on the Bills linebacker rotation that will certainly be affected by this signing. I think it's a great signing by the Bills. And, yeah, Thomas, I agreed that, you know, when you first get picked up by a team, immediately go into the practice squad isn't some, like, terrible demotion. Right. Right. Right.

Particularly for a veteran like Kersi, there's a great chance that, you know, number one, these could just be simply roster moves. The other thing is sometimes it takes a player, maybe it's two or three practices, maybe it's a couple of weeks to get to the point where the coaches, feel comfortable that they know the scheme and the calls well enough to go out there and not give up a big play because they weren't familiar with the scheme and stuff. So, Kirksey's a veteran. I'm with you.

I think he'll be on the active roster sooner rather than later. And as we'll get to later in the podcast, that's going to be important. And you also have to remember that each team has three what they call evaluation practice squad elevations. So these elevations, you can do it three times before the player has to officially join the roster, the 53-man roster. So Kirksey could get activated the first two weeks. And then on the third week, if they do it, then he has to join the 53-man roster or they have to release him. So that's something to also keep in mind, too.

If they put them on the roster for week one and then they put them back to practice squad, well, they can do that at least three times before they have to either leave them on the roster. or get rid of. I want to talk a little bit about Julian Blackman. To me, this is the guy that no one is drafting that I think is going to surprise a lot of people. He looks like he's dead set on being the strong safety for the Colts defense. This is a great role, as we've talked many times before, there are fewer and fewer teams who play a pretty strict single high safety setup where a single safety, a one of the safety,

he's primarily plays in the box or plays near the line of scrimmage while the other plays deep. Gus Bradley, the defensive coordinator there, has been rocking that scheme for quite a number of years. He's one of the last of that Seattle tree to kind of hold to his guns to that. And it looks like that's going to, that is going to continue. So there's Julian Blackburn who's going to play a lot of box snaps on the Colts defense. We don't know exactly what's going to happen with Jonathan Taylor, but you have to assume that if Taylor is not playing. for the Colts, and we know he's not playing, at least for a while for the Colts,

then that's going to likely make them a worse team. And if that happens, that means the defense is going to be on the field for more snaps. So Julian Blackman is somebody who could end up, he actually could end up being a DB1 by the end of the season. And like that, he's practically free for Weybor. So if you've got your draft coming up this weekend, and hopefully you do, because this is, in my opinion, the best time to do the draft, which is after all the preseason stuff. stuff is done. There's a good chance that you can get Julian Blackton late. He's going to be one of those guys that everybody is going to not see coming when he shows up with 7, 8, 9 tackles

a game. You know, you bring up a great valid point about the Colts being one of the rare or few teams that have that true safety, strong safety position. You know, there are quite a few teams that are going to utilize the two linebacker scheme for most of their games. Now, we've already talked about Cincinnati in past podcast. Now, we're going to add to the list teams like that will run a two linebacker scheme are the Bills, Dallas, and Washington.

Now, there's a whole bunch of other teams like San Francisco and Indianapolis who will run nickel and dime packages frequently. And the third linebacker comes off the field and is off the field as much as they are on the field.

So this is an interesting point that you bring up with Blackman in that, you know, he's going under the radar and he's going to see a lot of snaps on the field. You know, he will be playing with Rodney Thomas and Nick Cross, but Blackman is definitely a sleeper role. And there's a lot of players out there that you're going to find that are going to have, you know, value that you didn't think they would have because of these schemes. You'd mention these two linebacker sets, and one of them, was the bills. We were just talking about how Buffalo added Christian Kirsey to their practice squad.

There's been a lot of competition for the second linebacker or the secondary linebacker, as I call them, spot in Buffalo next to Matt Milano. And after all the deaths as starting to settle, and this is one of those little tea leaves that we got to kind of read through preseason week three, was it does look like Tyrell Dotson is set to be that secondary linebacker for Matt Milano. If he holds that position and somebody like Kerksey doesn't end up splitting the role with him or possibly taking it over, Dotson, just based on volume alone, is actually a pretty high floor

LB4 for me. So he has to, I definitely think week one, I would not be surprised to see Dotson out there for a ton of snaps, watching what happens with Kerksey. will affect this greatly. But in terms of a dart throw toward the end of your drafts, to me, Dotson's a great one to have because if he holds this role, as it looks like right now, he will. I mean, he could be playing 900 snaps on the Bill's defense. And for your LB4, that's going to have a ton of value, particularly when we talk about floor.

He might not be making a ton of big plays. But somebody to rack up six to nine tackles a game and have those occasional 10 to 14 tackle games when all the, when everything goes right and it's more Dotson as opposed to Milano, you're going to enjoy all that. Just watch what's going to happen with Kirtsey. You know, you mentioned the Dotson and the bills, him winning the Mike position, which forces Terrell Bernard over to the Sam position, especially with Spector going to IR. The bills outside of their starters, which is going to be Milano and then Dotson and Bernard, and then when they go into two linebacker sets, it will probably be Milano and most likely Dotson,

but to be seen. They could rotate Dotson and Bernard in that second linebacker spot in the diamond nickel packages. But they only have Tyler, Matikavich, and rookie Dorian Williams for linebacker depth, along with Kirksey on the practice squad. So keep an eye, I mean, really, really keep a close eye on that one because that's going to be interesting and has been all summer long. Now, I'm going to jump over to go ahead. No, I was going to agree with you. And just the fact that you brought up Terrell Bernard, that's somebody we want to keep an eye as well.

It does look like Dodson has that primary role. But don't just draft Dodson and expect that to not change. You're right. It's not only Kirksey we're worried about, you know, just because dots, and has it for now doesn't mean Bernard's clearly out of picture. He has to prove himself and he has to continually perform in order to hold that job down. It's not a secure position. Now, speaking of not secure, the Rams went and cut their projected starting cornerback, Robert Rochelle.

Now, they're going to go with Kobe Durant and Darian Kendrick as they're starting cornerbacks. Now, these two only have four years NFL experience combined between them. So I sense a very long, hard season for the Rams defense with guys like Ernest Jones and Jordan Fuller being the best fantasy options on this team. But Aaron Donald maybe, yeah, I mean, he's Aaron Donald. But the rest of these guys could be in for a very long, hard, unproductive fantasy season. Let's talk. I want to talk a little bit about the linebacker situation in Tennessee. Aziz Al-Shayr, to me, he's undervalued so far in drafts.

He's getting drafted either LB4, LB5 sometimes in some drafts I've been in. Every year he's been in the NFL, he's improved, particularly over the last three. He's only been, I think this is his fourth year or heading into his fifth year of the league. But he's mainly been a backup, but that's because he's been a backup on San Francisco to guys like Fred Warner. So that's bound to happen. He now gets a full-time role with Tennessee. I think he's going to see a ton of snaps this season. So to me, he's a great later-round draft pick.

I think he's going to end up being a solid LB2, and for some reason there are a lot of people ignoring him right now. You know, somebody else on there as well as rookie Jake Gibbons. He's going to be – looks like he's going to start next to El Shire, as he may have beaten out Moni Rice for the other. inside linebacker position. So you're getting two decent, possibly fancy, serviceable inside linebackers on Tennessee that are going under the radar. Now, I'm going to jump over to Seattle, a local area here, and Seattle's not going to push Jamal Adams into a early season play. They've

already ruled him out for the season opener against the Rams. And I wouldn't be surprised if they take two games, maybe three, to take a look at. at, especially if they win, if they keep winning, they've got Julian Love and quandary digs, and they've been using Kobe Bryant at the safety position, and they're loaded at cornerbacks, so they could be playing dying packages, you know, with three or four, even four cornerbacks, because they could go with, I'll mention it later on. Well, actually, I'll mention it now. Devin Weatherspoon, who is their rookie cornerback, is also most likely not going to play in the

first game, but they still have Rick Wollin at the starting. cornerback. And it looks like Trey Brown won the other outside cornerback spot with Michael Jackson winning the slot. So they could be using Kobe Bryant as well at cornerback. They could use Bryant as a third safety. I mean, Bryant can play either or if they go three cornerbacks and two safeties. And let's say they decide to go one linebacker. They could bring in Bryant and he could play both cornerback and safety depending on the offensive situation they're facing. I want to talk about Anthony Walker Jr., the Browns linebacker. He's been a little banged up.

He is their veteran presence there. He is expected to be ready for week one. And that's good because without Walker in preseason week three, the Browns played a pretty ugly rotation of several linebackers. To me, that's an indication that they don't trust really anyone with a full-time role. But Walker, Walker is also named one of the team captain. this was supposed to be his role last season, but then early on he got injured. Now, I'm not a, I'm still not a huge fan of drafting Walker, particularly early on,

but to me he's the only Browns linebacker I trust. It was, it was concerning, you know, granted, we don't know exactly why they were rotating so much, but, but it seemed like they were still mixing and matching their linebackers without Walker there in week three. and that there are enough solid linebackers out there that makes me just nervous to pick up anybody like J.O.K. or any of those guys. So if I'm going to take a shot at any of them, it's going to be Walker. It just looks to me like he's got to be the guy who'll be out there for the most sense. It's pretty sad when you have eight linebackers and we can only trust Walker. Speaking of linebackers, the Eagles cut Nick Morrow and with Miles Jack retiring and Morrow gone,

veteran linebacker, Zach Cunningham, will likely start at the Will linebacker spot. Or worst case scenario, he'll split snaps with second-year linebacker Christian Ellis. So Cunningham is another one who's like El Shire flying under the radar and could be a nice late round draft deal. Let's talk quickly about the Phillies. I'm still in baseball mode. We're still in baseball mode. We'll continue with it. Yeah.

But the Phillies. The Phillies. Other sports team, their brothers, if you will, the Eagles. You know, we've seen, you were just talking about Zach Cunningham, you know, there and how they cut Nick Morrow and Miles Jack. to me that all that traffic getting cleared behind the Kobe Dean makes me feel that much more confident about his every down chances cutting him hasn't been able to hold down a full-time role for the past several teams and his new team is in their Super Bowl window so I don't think he's necessarily going to have that long of a leash but you have a seeing morrow you seeing morrow cut

knowing that in we talked about this way earlier this preseason morrow's presence there to me had a little bit more to do with, you know, scheme familiarity now that Jonathan Ganon is gone, you know, somebody to kind of hold that together. Him getting cut was a big sign for me. Miles Jack retiring, sometimes when I see players like that retiring who have a fringy chance of making the team, I wonder sometimes how much of it is where they bring him into the office and they're like, look, Miles, as of right now, I'm not sure we've got a roster spot for you.

and Miles is like, you know what, I'd rather just retire. I don't want to get cut again or whatever. Like if I can't make this team. So, you know, I don't think it was a surprise that he got retired. This is just conjecture, obviously, on my part. But if they didn't feel like they needed Miles Jack or they didn't need Nick Burrow, that makes me all the more comfortable having Nikobe Dean on my roster once we hit week one. You know, when you consider the fact that they have Hassan Redick as their edge rusher,

and he'll play the Sam Lange. backer spot. And he's backed up by Patrick Johnson and rookie Nolan Smith. Other than that, they only have Dean Cunningham and Ellis as their other linebackers. So Dean really isn't, doesn't have anybody pushing him, especially with Cunningham and Ellis trying to battle for the will spot. So it's going to be interesting. I think you're right about Dean being probably a reliable source now because of the fact that they've pretty much cleared the way for him. and they're probably confident enough in him to go with them. Now, the Steelers, speaking of another veteran linebacker who got added late and is a backup,

but couldn't be moved around. The Steelers have signed Kwan Alexander not too long ago, and he beat out Nick Koukowski for the backup role to Cole Holcomb, who's a starting inside linebacker. Now, Holcomb has a history of injuries, so Alexander is a serviceable linebacker, should either Holcomb or other inside linebacker, Alandon Roberts, who is also injury prone, if either one of those two get injured, then Alexander can give you some serviceable games down the road.

We're going to close out our player portion of this. I want to talk a little bit about what's going on in Pittsburgh. Remember that when it comes to their safety roles, you know, we spent a little time talking about Philly, And now we're over, you know, we're staying in Pennsylvania. You spent some time talking about their linebackers. I want to stay there and talk about what's going on with their safeties and what we saw in preseason week three.

So there's been a battle now that Terrell Edmonds is no longer the safety next to Minka Fitzpatrick. They've got Demonte KZ, who they brought in from Atlanta and Keanu Neal. It's been a little bit of a journeyman. It was the Falcons and Cowboys and then the Bucks. And now he's out in Pittsburgh. The two of them have kind of been going back and forth on this second safety spot. In preseason week three, they split the snaps almost equally, which is a big red flag that unlike a lot of teams where either a player sat when all the starters sat or played when all the starters played, that seems to me like a position that at least before preseason week three, the Steelers weren't completely confident that they knew who that. was going to be. Now, if we, I tried to look and see if we had any sort of leanings either way.

And what I came up with was, number one, Neil played more early snaps. And that's a big one for, like, he started with the starters. And then he, then in the second series, they started to rotate with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, he got the first crack at it. Also, if you look at their special team snaps, you see that KZ played several more special team snaps than Neil does. That's another sign that they're considering needing KZ on special teams. And if so, he's likely not going to play a ton of snaps as their start. But you really can't draft either of these guys right now. But that is one to watch.

If you were at the end of your draft and you wanted to take a shot of either one, it would be Keanu. And the last thing I want to say is that all three of these guys, it looks like what they were doing is they were all rotating, including Minket Fitzpatrick. They were all rotating whether they were playing deep or whether they were playing up near the box. So to me, this is a good sign that Fitzpatrick will be kind of roaming all over the field, and that's where he has most of his fantasy value. And so this kind of weakness in this second safety role, I think actually more than anything is going to help Fitzpatrick stay a reliable fantasy option for us.

You know, it brings us closer to the end of this podcast, but if you take a look at some of the injuries that are out there, we obviously have another five or six days before the true Wednesday practice starts to kick in and then players either have to play Wednesday, practice Wednesday, Thursday or Friday to actually be eligible to play or in coach's mind. I'm going to trust that you're eligible to play. So we have another week before the injuries we have to be worrisome, but there's some out there. I mean, Shaquille Leonard came back to practice recently, even though he's wearing the non-contact jersey. You know, there's a handful of players that you're really going to have to keep an eye on. I know that we've talked in the past about how it's hard when you're in early in the week

or early in the preseason, you don't really know whether or not some of these injuries are bothersome. But somebody like Jaquan Brisker, they have an undisclosed injury, and they're talking about, well, we're going to know more about this on Wednesday, September 6th, which is the first weekday practice in preparation for their opener. So you've got players that are out there that you have to be a little concerned with, but give it a few days before you go ahead and, you know, another one is Hassan Redick. He has a torn ligament in his right thumb, but they expect him to be playing week one without any kind of a decline in his performance and production. So keep an eye out for the injuries as the week progresses.

And then when we get to our next podcast, we're going to have a better handle on who's questionable and who's in and who's out. Yeah, and you know, you, you started this podcast off talking about how there were any really significant, you know, or major cuts. We had a few, but, you know, every year, right, it seems to be some, somebody who was a top 10 or 20 player, all of a sudden gets cut. You know, nobody's not coming. Now you just mentioned those injuries. And now is a great time to mention that we also didn't see any major IDPs hitting pup, you know. So missing the first four games of the season, some of these players, like Shaq Leonard and Anthony Walker and some of these guys.

So good news there that somebody, if you've already drafted some of these players, that there weren't any major ones who had been coming back from an injury that were immediately going to be missing the first four games in the season. Right. I mean, Von Miller did land on the pub and he's out the first four games. But that was something that we kind of saw coming. And you're right. There's very few landed on injured reserve and, I mean, Damarian Williams on Baltimore. Baltimore's cornerback situation is kind of shaky because Marlon Humphrey may miss the opening, the opener.

Rock Yassin has been injured all summer long, and now Damarian Williams has been put on IR. So they went so far as to sign veteran Kevin Seymour, and they only have Jalen Armour. Davis and Arthur Mallet as their backups. And these two may not even be ready for the start of the season. So they're going to have to go with three cornerbacks. And that's kind of a shaky deal. Brandon Stevens may end up coming from the safety spot over to cornerback to help them out with the lack of depth. Well, the next time you and I talk, we will have had one football game.

So we will be back on our regular schedule, what we normally do in C.E. is we get together after 30th, literally as soon as Thursday that football's over, we both run into our little podcast area. So hop on. Literally run. And then complain about the game before we actually hit record. But so we're going to start that next week. Next week is September 7th. And we're going to have our opening night of football and Thursday night. Our podcasts usually drop Friday morning or Friday afternoon as we preview each week going forward. So, enough preseason talk, enough training camp talk, enough draft talk. We're going to talk actual matchups with actual players for your actual fake fantasy.

That's it. All right. I think that's going to do it for us. We'll see you guys next week. If you are a fantasy points premium subscriber, please remember to reach out to us on Discord. That's a great opportunity, particularly if you've got a draft coming up this weekend. I still have multiple drafts. Thomas, you got any drafts this weekend?

Yeah, actually, I do. I'm in the middle of two. One of them is an IDP draft, and we're finishing it up. And then there's one that I have not on the weekend, but on Tuesday, which is one of my bigger drafts. So, yeah, I do have one coming up out of my seven leagues. Nice. Well, good luck.

Good luck to everybody else who is drafting this week. Have a safe Labor Day, and we will see you guys on the seventh. Thomas, want to 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 fantasy points.com.