Fantasy Football Daily - Top 10 Bold Predictions for Week 3 and the rest of the 2025 Season
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Top 10 bold predictions for week three of the fantasy football season and a couple of season long predictions as well.
Theo Greminger, Fantasy Football Daily, rejoined by Dave Kluge of football guys.
Dave, we don't have time to waste.
It's week three.
We got to get after it.
Drop your first bold prediction right here.
I don't know how bold this one is to anybody who's been paying attention to the Chicago Bears over the last couple of weeks.
But Dak Prescott going up against Chicago, I think he's going to be the top score in
quarterback this week.
Brian Schottinheimer offense.
I think a lot of people expected it to be very run heavy, but they've been throwing
the ball around.
And they've got three talented pass catchers in C.
Lam, George Pickens, and Jake Ferguson.
We've seen this has been a sieve of a defense in Chicago.
Now they're dealing with injuries on top of that.
Jalen Johnson isn't expected to play this week.
We saw J.J.
McCarthy and Jared Gough both absolutely shred the bears through the first two weeks.
Both of them actually became the NFC offensive player of the week.
So if I really want to, you know, build on to this.
this top scoring quarterback.
I'll also say that he's going to be the NFC player of the week as well.
I think we've seen enough from the Bears defense through these first two weeks that you just
fire up any quarterback playing against them.
Yeah, I love this one.
And we're sort of, we talked about it all in, like, the preseason and Dak Prescott,
we knew this was going to be a pass happy team.
The first game, the Dallas offense sort of stuck in the mud at times, that Philadelphia
matchup, a really difficult one.
DAC had a chance to win that, Dave.
A couple of big notable drops of the end.
But George Pickens really came on, very emotional player,
had a really, really fun second half against the Giants,
made some plays in overtime.
And then you've got Jake Ferguson playing on such a high level.
And then, of course, C.D. Lamb,
Javante Williams playing a very high level.
I think this is a great prediction.
It's sort of this could be a week where DAC gives you a QB1 overall performance.
And yeah, Jared Goff, man.
Jared Goff completely ripped up those bears.
Bears, like you said, McCarthy in the fourth quarter.
I'm with it. And I think Dak Prescott, we saw it in 2023 where it was like a little bit of a slow start and then a ramp up.
This might be the ramp up week where DAC has like 400 passing.
You know, this could be just an insane amount of passing yards, not trying to put a whole number on it.
But I think this is a multiple passing touchdown game and a game that Dallas really puts up a number.
Bears are in big, big trouble.
Love the way you started out with that one.
So I'm going to stay at the quarterback position.
you went bold.
I'm going to go even bolder.
And I'm going to keep building on this one.
This is a very layered bold prediction.
Justin Herbert and the L.A. Chargers win this week.
Big, big matchup coming up for Herbert.
Herbert starts the year off with two AFC West games, wins them both, defeats Kansas City and Brazil,
completely handles the Vegas Raiders on Monday night football.
Now the Denver Broncos, a difficult matchup, but Herbert is going to answer the call.
Justin Herbert is going to have three passing touchdowns once again.
He has five passing touchdowns through two games.
I think that this passing game in L.A. is absolutely working.
We love to sort of beat up on Greg Roman,
call him sort of an antiquated offensive coordinator.
Ravens fans really at the end were ready to get the guy out of town.
But there's been some self-scouting this offseason.
We've seen the passing game working.
And I think Herbert, it's not just the start of the year.
I think this is all season long.
and I think it's the Chargers all season long, where I think Justin Herbert is going to be the NFL
MVP this season. I think he's going to set a career high in passing touchdowns with 40 passing
touchdowns. I think that L.A. is going to win 13 games this year. And I think they're going to do that
on really dominating a strong AFC West. In the preseason, we looked at Kansas City, we looked at
Denver a lot. I think Kansas that the that the LA Chargers are only going to lose one single
AFC West game. I think they'll either lose at Denver or at Kansas City or excuse me,
I think they'll lose probably at Kansas City later in the year. But I think this is Justin Herbert's season.
Justin Herbert wins the NFL MVP. The Chargers win a bunch of games. And it's Harbaugh.
We saw Harbaugh do this in San Francisco. We saw Harbaugh do this at Stanford, where it usually takes
him like a little while to go and then he takes the team to another level. Of course,
Michigan, it took a little bit longer. But once they reached the pinnacle, they won the national
title. Year two in L.A. Harbaugh, Herbert, everybody eats. Justin Herbert, your NFL MVP.
Yeah, this is music to my ears. And this is kind of what I was saying this entire preseason,
Justin Herbert, my most drafted quarterback. I've got him on over a third of my fantasy teams this year.
And this is one of the first years that we've seen come into the year healthy. Like he always
picks up some sort of preseason injury that seems to just just bleed into the regular season.
And we know he's got rushing upside.
And we know that's a big tenant of the Greg Roman offense as well.
And I think it's kind of foolish to say that like because Greg Roman did this with Alex
Smith and with an early career Lamar Jackson, that's just who he is.
I'm happy that he was able to do this self-scouting as you call it and see that they can change
this offense up a little bit.
When I look at what Ladd McConkey, Keenan Allen and Quentin Johnson bring to the table,
their complementary skill sets, how they work off of each other, how they work
in different areas of the field, their strengths and their weaknesses.
I think they are the strongest wide receiver trio in the league.
Steve has a good offensive line.
They've got a good run game.
And I think Justin Herbert is just one of the most talented and underrated quarterbacks in football.
So I love this one.
And I hope that he can throw for 40 touchdowns because there would be a very lucrative 20, 25 season for me.
Yeah.
And Dave, a lot of those Justin Herbert shares you have, especially in best ball, it was three
quarterback builds.
Herbert was such an affordable player at ADP.
LA looks like one of the breakout offenses.
Another thing with LA has been they have de-emphasized passing to the tight end position
and the running back position.
Like you said, they're hyper-targeting the big three wide receivers.
That's not even counting Trey Harris, who is not quite as going to live up to the hype of
the preseason, but as a wide receiver four does a lot of really, really strong things.
You already seen him make some flashy plays this year.
So, yeah, I think this is the best wide receiver trio that Herbert's ever played.
played with. And your next bowl prediction actually features an LA wide receiver.
Yeah, I've got Keenan Allen as a wide receiver one going into week three. That means, you know,
top 12 wide receiver, of course. I think Pat Sertan is going to stick to Ladd McConkey. And what we've
seen is that Keenan Allen just looks good. Like he's got old man game. He had to really change
the way that he played football after that ACL tear early in his season. And he has become such a
good route runner, just so good at immediately getting open off the line of scrimmage. And then he also has
this just unconscious connection with Justin Herbert.
And we saw that last week on that nice little touchdown catch where, you know,
it was kind of off script, he was scramble a little bit.
And Keenan Allen just knew where to be and Justin Herbert was able to fit it into a tight window.
I was really excited when Keenan Allen came back to the charges because we've seen him have
his best years there, obviously, and 1,200 plus years, just a couple of weeks ago.
Or I'm sorry, a couple of years ago.
So now I think with Ladman Kanky drawn tough coverage in this game,
we're going to see Keenan Allen just build off of the first two weeks that he's had.
Right now he is tied with McConkey for the most targets on the team.
He's second in receiving yards behind only Quentin Johnson.
And more than anything else, it just comes down to his play style.
And I know he's 33 years old, and that's why he was such a bargain in drafts this year.
But he's a guy who wins with technical abilities and ball tracking and being able to get those ball skills on contested catches.
He's not a guy that I worry about because he lost a step.
He still looked good last year in Chicago, pulling the highest target share of any wide receiver in that Chicago offense,
which was a very, very tough and competitive wide receiver group.
And it wouldn't surprise me if this year he ends up emerging as the target leader again.
Yeah.
And right now over on Fantasy Points data, Keenan Allen, all of the metrics look just fantastic for him to hold up.
He's got a 26.2% target share.
Ladd McConkey sitting there at 23%, Quentin Johnston at 23% as well.
Curious, like Keenan Allen, is this a by low candidate?
Well, not really a buy low, a high candidate.
it for you in redraft.
For me, Keenan Allen, I don't think the market's fully there on just how valuable his
role is.
And people are a little bit scared of the fact that he's an older player that sort of sat on
the market.
Some are looking at it as saying, like, I don't want to pay for this.
This is not going to hold up.
But could it potentially hold up in Keenan Allen giving us sort of an out of nowhere mid,
wide receiver two season?
Yeah, absolutely.
That wouldn't surprise me one bit.
Like I said, this guy just had 1,200 plus yards two years ago in this offense.
and I know there's a little bit steeper touch competition now,
but I think the offense as a whole is so much better.
And I don't want to go off on too much of a tangent here,
talking about the markets and ADPs and stuff like that.
But I think had Keenan Allen been signed with the Chargers in April,
you probably would have been a fifth or sixth round pick.
But what happened is there was this uncertainty about where he was going to sign.
And you saw it.
Theo, you know, you do drafts all offseason.
He was a 14th round pick and a 15th, 16th,
and just kept falling until you were getting him in round 18 of drafts.
And then when he signed with the Chargers,
he moved up in ADP a little bit, but I don't think he moved to where he should have
because ADP does get somewhat entrenched at a certain point.
And I tweeted about it, you know, a couple of months before the season kicked off where I said,
this doesn't make any sense that we've got Mike Evans going in round three,
we've got Stefan Diggs going in round five, we've got Cooper Cup going in round seven.
Why is Keenan Allen falling to round 12?
He's got the same age concerns, but I'd argue that he's in a better situation.
ADP just never reacted to the signing the way that he should have.
So I was aggressively targeting him in drafts this year.
I don't know if anybody's trading him away now.
But yeah, I think finishing as a back end wide receiver too, well within his range of outcomes.
And anybody who's able to get him in round 10, 11, 12 of their drafts, he is now a plug-in-play option going forward.
Yeah, yeah, I love it.
And I think even if you're a dynasty manager, like Dave said, it was we're willing to trust some of these other older wide receivers,
but we're not willing to trust Keenan Allen.
The last time he was attached to Justin Herbert, he averaged 20 points per game.
really, really, this is a player that I think we can really believe in.
As long as he holds up, he's going to produce for us in fantasy.
Justin Herbert, Keenan Allen, Ladd-McConkie, go pack your bags.
The chargers are going to score a lot of points this year.
We're going to take a quick break.
We come back.
I've got a running back prediction and a running back that I think finishes as the RB1 overall on the week in week three.
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All right. Welcome back.
Fantasy Football Daily, Theo Greminger with Dave Kluge of Football Guys.
Dave, you're doing so much over at football.
guys, let everybody know what you have going on.
What's a week look like for you?
Where can people find your work?
What do you want to promote, man?
You see what you're looking at right now?
Me just sitting in front of my computer,
this is what a week looks like for me in season.
I mean, it's the best time of year.
Like, we've got so much to do here.
But I'm doing nine shows a week over at football guys.
I'm writing three articles a week as well.
I'm doing rest of season rankings.
I'm doing weekly rankings.
I'm doing projections.
So saying super, super busy.
In addition to that, you know,
you can find me doing different guest spots with you and other friends around
the industry, but wouldn't have it any other way, man.
This is the best time of year. Everything that I'm producing, though, you can find it over
at football guys.com. I've got the fantasy show with Alfredo Brown. I've got the Dynasty show
with Jeff Bell. I've got my solo show as well, so staying very, very busy.
Yeah, and a big shout out to the work you guys do over there. Sigmund Blum's obviously come on
a bunch of pods with Scott and I. You came on with Scott and I. We've had Alfredo on.
I've got Matt Waldman coming on in October, and I had Bob Harris on recently on Dynasty
Life. So you guys are doing really, really strong work over there.
and look forward to potting with you more this season as well.
I'm going to make sure we're going to try to push that nine show a week level up,
maybe get it to 10 on multiple weeks this year.
Why not?
Why not?
Who needs sleep, Dave?
Who needs it?
And I prefaced it before we took a break,
but this first running back prediction for us here is Bucky Irving.
This is Bucky Irving week.
If you're playing DFS, get Bucky Irving into your lineups.
If you have Bucky Irving this week, have a ton of
confidence. We saw it on that final drive where the Buccaneers go into Houston, get that win.
Baker Mayfield, just unbelievable from him at the end of the game. I think this was a real,
like, this was a real moment. I called it a program win to steal a college football term,
but Josh Grizzard, the offensive coordinator, we've seen now two close games for Tampa Bay.
I think this week, they take it to the New York Jets. Jets are going to be without Justin Fields.
This is going to be a difficult game for New York against a very confident and very strong Tampa Bay team.
And I think we're going to really see Bucky Irving featured this game.
Bucky Irving's been very, very solid.
This is not like an out of nowhere, you know, prediction here.
Bucky has put up a 14.5 point week.
He's put up an 18 point week last week against Houston.
I think we see 25 PPR points out of them this week.
I think we see a hundred yards on the ground.
and I think we also see 50 plus through the air.
And I think Bucky Irving scores two touchdowns.
This is going to be a very big game for Bucky, looking forward to it a lot.
I have a bunch of Bucky rocking.
What's your thoughts on Bucky what you've seen so far this year?
Yeah, I think that you are spot on that, you know, he has looked much better than I think people expected and very much so a workhorse.
We saw, you know, the Rashad White got a little bit involved in the second half of last week.
And I think a lot of that had to do with, you know, I don't know.
exactly what the coaching tendencies are in Tampa Bay, but he, like, sacrificed himself for that
loose ball fumble. And I think that they kind of rewarded him with some extra touches down the
stretch. But Bucky has looked fantastic, picking up right where he left off. It's kind of tough because,
like, the efficiency metrics aren't great. It's just the eye test. He passes with flying colors,
his ability to evade defenders to continue moving through tight pockets. I mean, he is just such a good
player. And I think another thing, too, is that we do have to kind of change what we're looking at a
little bit. And I think going into the season, a lot of people were getting scared off by this Jets
defense, but we've seen through the first two weeks. This Jets defense is atrocious. And I think
we've seen now two games where they haven't looked good. And we can follow that trend going
into week three. And even when I opened up the show talked about Dak Prescott, that's another
one where there are high hopes for the Chicago offense. There's a lot of good playmakers there.
People were excited about Dennis Allen, but it just hasn't shown up through the first couple of weeks.
So this is another one where when I see teams playing against the Jets, I get really excited about
the running backs there. And even while I'm with you, I think, fuck, you could have 150 yards and two
touchdowns. I'm even looking at Rashad White as a potential flex play here because I think they're
really going to be able to run up the score on them. Yeah, I think that's a great, great point.
The Jets defense, we had enthusiasm for them heading into the season. I think that that was
sort of, we overblew expectations. Another team to sort of circle as a potential running back
funnel. This one, we don't know yet, but Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh for two consecutive weeks,
Brees Hall. We saw Kenneth Walker. We saw Braylon Allen score that touchdown.
So I think Pittsburgh, we're not used to do it, but this one might be another one.
So we learn more in the early portion of the year than a lot of the stuff that we've been pushing
all summer. You need to be able to adjust your priors and take the data, not overreact to it,
but you need to react to it very, very well when you get this much football being played.
And when we get to like week five, we even know even more. We're still learning a little bit,
Dave, but we certainly have had a nice sample size in two weeks.
You have an awesome, awesome, awesome bold prediction coming up.
One that I was talking about during the summer, and I'm glad to see you are pushing it.
Push the Tetaroa McMillan propaganda as hard as you can.
Teteroa McMillan to the moon.
Dude, he looks awesome.
Like he looks unbelievable.
And my bold prediction is that he's going to finish the years, a top 10 wide receiver,
which shouldn't sound that bold because this guy was drafted eighth overall.
And we know that he's a great prospect.
but I think that people are still kind of asleep at the wheel with Tetero-McMillan.
And we get so just go-go-gag-a when it comes to touchdowns, right?
Like, Ibukha is the one scoring touchdowns.
And Igbuka to the moon, everybody's super excited about him.
And they should be.
He's a very good player.
But I think that because Tetero-Mick-Millan has yet to find the end zone,
people don't realize how good of a season he's putting together so far.
He's eighth in receiving yards.
He's 11th in targets.
And a lot of that, sure, came from a 55 pass-attempt game last week with Bryce Young.
but I don't know what else I can say about him.
Like he has been, we're seeing the volume, we're seeing the targets,
we're seeing the receiving yards.
But I went back and I watched the film just to see if there was anything else
jumping out to me.
And what I'm seeing is a guy who plays just like Mike Evans did in that 2023,
Dave Canals offense.
He's running the deep crossers.
He's getting the boundary shots.
He's getting the end zone fades.
We saw a really bad throw from Bryce Young last week where Tederoa McMillan beat his man.
He was going into the corner of the end zone.
And Bryce Young just short-armed it, unfortunately.
But the more I dive into this and the more I watch him, he is just a special, special player.
He had another catch that didn't count because he got a foot out of bounds.
But he was just draped by a defender, able to come down with a one-handed catch.
He's doing special things almost every time the ball comes his way.
He's pulling a lot of targets.
There's very little touch competition here.
I think he's got all of the makings to finish the years, a top 10 wide receiver.
Yeah, I love it.
And McMillan, he's already there.
I mean, the targets right now, he's at 19 targets in two weeks.
He had 100 yards receiving last week.
This is one where they're going to keep leaning into him
and he's going to be the offensive focal point for this team.
And Dave, this is a trend for us.
We've now had four out of the last five seasons
with at least one rookie wide receiver finishing as a top six score in PPR formats.
Pukina Kua, Jamar Chase, Justin Jefferson.
And then last year we had two of them, Malik Neighbors and Brian Thomas Jr.
So this is just continuing the trend.
players are coming in being put in this alpha role, and they took them in the top 10 overall picks.
Like Carolina, this is working out absolutely perfectly for them with McMillan.
Also, this is a team that's 0 and 2.
They need to lean into their best offensive weapon.
It's not Chuba Hubbard.
It's Tetero and McMillan.
There's no telling how high that he could run.
You say top 10.
I mean, if you say top 10, at the end of the day, that could end up being a top five
scorer.
So go ahead.
If you can still manage to trade for Tetero and McMillan in any.
any format, go ahead and push the chips in because those 20 plus point scoring weeks are on the way.
I'm going to keep it going at the wide receiver position.
I'm going to go with a young wide receiver, but I'm going to go with a third year wide receiver.
And it's Jackson Smith and Jigba.
JSN last year took a huge step forward, had 100 receptions, finished as a low end wide receiver
one in a lot of formats.
But what was interesting was he was a sub 25% target share player.
And we also had this sort of fear in the marketplace where despite D.K. Metcalf being traded to Pittsburgh, despite Tyler Lockett finally moving on from Seattle, despite JSN's huge age 22 breakout season, there was a lot of people out there saying it's a capped upside player. He is very slot dependent. We're a little bit worried about him. And there were people taking shots on other wide receivers inside a round three. JSN was.
easily the best wide receiver you could have selected in round three.
That's very evident.
So far he's giving you really round one type production at the wide receiver spot.
And I think this is going to continue throughout the year.
Jackson Smith and Jigba is going to have his first wide receiver scoring season.
I think that next year he's going to be drafted much more highly than he was this year.
And all the metrics are just flying off the page when it comes to JSN.
he has a 41% target share, a 60% air yard share.
JSN also is just flying off the page on Fantasy Points data when it comes to a first read rate.
He is at a 51.2% first read rate, Malik Neighbors is only at 46%.
JSN is simply just dominating usage.
And he's showing that he doesn't have to be in the slot all the time.
They're moving him around the offense, but his slot rate is down to 30.8%.
So he's still getting those easy button target looks out of the slot,
but he's getting a chance to show what he can do on the outside.
JSN is going to have a special season, a top five season.
He could be one of the players when we look at at the end of the year and we say,
what was the perfect draft?
Taking JSN inside of round three might end up being the best pick you could have made in this range.
And you know, I do the fantasy pros expert consensus rankings and I was checking.
There wasn't a person in the industry that was higher on J.S.
coming into this year than me.
I had it as my wide receiver seven in drafts.
And I was telling my audience, like, don't wait for him in round three.
Just take him in the middle of round two.
And like don't play the waiting game and hope he comes back to you.
And my big thing, more than anything else, was just the history of wide receiver ones in
Clint Kubiak offenses.
We saw it A. Justin Jefferson to his big breakout in year two.
And then he went to San Francisco where Brandon Ayuk had the best.
best year of his career. If you look last year in New Orleans, there was a lot of injuries,
so we didn't see one guy really do it, but early in the year was Rashid Shihed later in the
year. They were able to pick up Barquezvold, a scantling off the street, drop him into a role
where he had 250 yards and three touchdowns in his first couple of games there. And that was my
excitement for JSN. Everything that Clint Kubiak does is to set up big plays for the wide receiver
one. When they're running the ball, it is just to pull the defense in. And right now we're seeing that
elite efficiency. He is number one in the league in target.
and he's number three in yards per route run with 4.2 yards per route run.
You look at that route tree or his route chart and it is just deep vertical routes where
he's getting across the middle, able to catch the ball with space where he can make plays
after the catch.
This is such a talented player.
And I think that people forget the level of prospect he was, broke his wrist in his
rookie season, missed some of the preseason, missed the start of the year, or didn't miss
the start of the year, but just wasn't fully up to speed.
Then he was behind D.K. Metcalf last year.
But now the stars of a line for him to be the primary.
weapon on this offense. Clint Kubiak is doing everything he can to scheme up looks for him.
I don't see anything changing here. I've already bumped him up a little bit in my rest of season
rankings from my wide receiver five to my wide receiver six. I don't think you can buy him in
trades right now. But for anybody that got him in round three, I don't know if there's a better pick
you could have made. Yeah, I think he's still attainable as a player in dynasty if you're
willing to move a premium premium asset because some people don't necessarily believe in him
in the same level as some of the guys that were ranked as top five wide receivers in dynasty in the preseason.
But I agree with you.
The manager that drafted him in redraft, you're not going to be able to get JSN.
Like there's not really a trade out there.
There's a lot of managers who had an opportunity to select him over guys like we saw, I mean,
we saw Tyree Kill enthusiasm this summer.
We saw Garrett Wilson enthusiasm this summer.
And JSN sort of just chilled in that range of the draft.
I think there's a lot of managers kicking themselves.
that could be really one of the picks that propels fantasy managers to fantasy championships.
We've going to take one more break.
We come back.
Dave's going to talk about a running back who is about to break out in a major way and has a pathway for multi-week viability right after this.
All right, welcome back, Fantasy Football Daily.
Always talking about the breaking news here on this channel.
Aaron Jones headed to the injured reserves.
Jordan Mason, there was a ton of enthusiasm for him in late draft.
He sort of was going side by side with Jones, despite Jones having this big season last year.
Now the Jordan Mason managers know they have a player that's going to be starting their lineup.
But what should they expect scoring-wise, Dave?
I think he's a plug-in-play RB1 until Aaron Jones comes back.
He has looked so good through the first couple of weeks in the system.
And it's just a different type of offense.
So much what he did in San Francisco were these wide zone runs.
And that's not something that he does better or does well.
He's so much better between the tackles.
and that's what they're giving him.
And, you know, I went back and watched all of his film,
and he is just patient, smart, strong.
He's got great footwork, finds the creases,
even when they're really skinny.
He does all the things that you want to see from an inside runner.
And the metrics back it up as well.
You know, yards after contact for attempt.
I don't think there's one metric that really, like,
encompasses talent for a running back.
But this is the one that I like best.
I think that it's, you know,
can you generate yards after a defender gets a hand on you?
And right now he's eighth in the league in yards after contact for a tent with 2.5.
You look at this upcoming schedule as well.
It could not have come at a better time.
Just two cake matchups against the Bengals who have just been awful on defense.
And the Steelers, who we talked about, are very much so a run funnel through these first
couple of weeks.
It does get a little bit tougher.
He's got the Browns and Eagles after that.
We're also looking at Krisha Derisaw should be back.
There are talks that maybe he would have been back in week two.
So we're hoping that he can be back in week three.
But there's, you know, almost 100% possibility that he'll be back for the Browns and Eagles game.
He just looks good.
He is a young player on a good offense with absolutely no touch competition right now.
I'm firing up as an RB one the next two weeks.
And even with these tough matchups after that, I still think you could look at him as a volume-based high-end RB2.
Yeah, and I think he might play well enough that Jones's role is going to be very limited when he comes back.
Jordan Mason, last year, Dave, we saw this where three out of the first four weeks of the season,
he was a top 10 weekly score at the running back position, of course, with Christian McCaffrey missing time.
I think he could emulate that a very, very hard runner, and he's a runner that's capable of explosive plays.
He was one of the NFL leaders last year, despite having a sort of a limited season in terms of a lot of front-loaded production.
He was still one of the NFL leaders in runs over 20 yards last year.
And a lot of people will get into my mentions when I talk about Mason and say, the guy can't catch passes.
I don't think that's the case.
I think that he'll be an opportunistic pass catcher for Carson Wentz.
I'm not saying he's going to go out there and light it up.
I'm not saying he's going to go Bucky Irving on you,
but I'm saying he could get two or three catches to just add to his scoring total
and in PPR formats, just providing an even safer floor.
I love Mason, love your call on Mason.
And actually, when we were talking to the pre-show,
a little annoyed about this one because I wanted to include Mason as one of my predictions.
But there was just a great call on your part when it came to Jordan Mason.
I'll keep this thing going.
We talked about wide receivers.
from a lot of these predictions.
And the wide receiver position is always a very exciting one.
And I talked about JSN, year three wide receiver.
We mentioned Quentin Johnson earlier in the show.
I guess we'll keep this class of 2023 wide receiver class discussion going a little bit more.
And I'm going to talk about Zay Flowers.
And when the schedule came out, we had this game sort of circled in ink where week three,
we knew it was going to be Detroit.
against Baltimore, a huge, huge, huge matchup,
not only for NFL fans, but also for fantasy managers.
We saw last week the two teams just scoring at will.
Detroit with an absolute beatdown of the Chicago Bears,
Baltimore with a complete beatdown of Cleveland,
and now they're on this massive collision course.
And I think that the story of the game is going to end up being Zay Flowers,
who much like JSN is off to this red hot start.
and we often talk about we need to be able to take the information given to us early in the year and use it.
And one big change we've seen with Baltimore is the tight end position.
Mark Andrews has two catches in two weeks.
And on the flip side, Zay Flowers has a 39.6 percent target share.
Absolutely crazy.
He's going to need to maintain a very high target share to continue putting up wide receiver one numbers.
But I think he can do that.
Really, really an explosive player.
Every time Zay Flowers has the ball in his hands, good things happen.
Really high production player to start the year out.
I think that this continues.
I think Zay Flowers puts up a top six scoring week against Detroit.
I think this is going to be a very, very high scoring game.
I'm looking to use Zay Flowers in DFS.
And if I have Zay Flowers, I'm feeling completely confident about him on my fantasy teams.
he is averaging he's averaging 21 fantasy points per game but the expected fantasy points on fantasy
points data are at 18 points per game so this is a player that's pretty much in line with his
ex-exfp a very good sign of play of the good things to come and when we compare him to some of the
other top scorers pukinakua is at 16.1 points in xfp jimar chase at 19.6 jsn at 18.1
and he got Zaype Flowers at 18.
XFP is a great metric for what we can expect every single week.
Zay Flowers is right there putting up wide receiver one numbers.
I think he puts up a big one this week against Detroit.
Yeah, you know, I talked about JSNB, number one in the league in target chair,
number four in yards per route run.
Safe Flowers is right at his heels.
He's number two in target chair and actually has a few extra yards per route run
where he's third with 4.5.
and just the career for Zay Flowers, I think it's interesting,
but this should have kind of been expected because what we saw in college,
Zay Flowers was very much so a downfield guy,
like just catching balls behind defenses,
using his speed.
When he came into the league,
we saw this very weird usage where he was getting everything near the line of scrimmage,
manufactured touches, allowing him to create with the ball in his hands,
second half of his rookie season.
Then we saw him in this downfield role,
and it didn't really make a whole lot of sense.
And then in year two, we saw both of those things come together.
He started playing all over the first.
field, you know, inside, outside, downfield, upfield, across the middle, just kind of doing a little bit of
everything. But the ball was getting spread pretty thin with Mark Andrews and Rashad Bateman and
everyone else there. And now in year three, we're seeing the same usage where he's all over the
field, but we're seeing it consolidated down to him as the focal point as these other guys are
aging out a little bit. So yeah, this is just a classic year three breakout here. I am 100% buying
the hype. I move Zayflowers way up in my rest of season rankings. I'm looking at it as a top 18 wide
receiver going forward. And again, you know, we talk about trying to buy some of these guys in redraft.
I don't know who's selling Zay flowers right now, but it's just kind of a, hey, if you drafted
him, congratulations, enjoy this. He could easily be a top 10 receiver for the rest of the year.
Yeah, I think the way that you manipulate the market is some of these wide receivers that were
drafted well ahead of Zay. You heat check the Zay manager and say, would you be interested in maybe
Tyree Khill Plus for your Zay Flowers and see if the manager says, listen, I drafted Zay in round
six, I'm going to cash out now, get this guy who's drafted in round three. You never know the way
these managers view these guys. And a lot of people have redraft ADP take lock, Dave. So even if a guy
gets off to a red hot start, they'd say, you know, I get it. Zays scored really well,
but I got that guy at the beginning of round seven, the end of round six. I have a chance to sort
of tear up here. And I don't think he's going away at all. I like your like your call on top 18 wide
receiver. I think that's sort of about the floor. Unless we see Andrews sort of really turn things
around, which I don't think it's going to happen. I also think Isaiah likely might be a way to
buy low on the tight end position maybe changing in Baltimore this year. So really, really a tilting
couple of weeks for Mark Andrews managers and a very, very, very hot start for Zay Flowers managers.
Dave, keep us going. I'm on Long Island. There's a big game this Sunday night. The Giants nearly had
Dallas beat, Kansas City O and two coming into MetLife, a tilting game for Kansas City Chiefs
managers.
You have a take on a Kansas City wide receiver.
Go for it.
Yeah, and this, I didn't even know I had to talk about this, but again, you know, I do my
rankings for the Fantasy Pros expert consensus rankings contest.
And when I plug them in this morning, it tells you about any major outliers.
And I got a flag saying, are you sure you're this low on Marquise Brown?
Because I've got him outside of my top 50 receivers, not even somebody that I'm thinking
about starting. I'm seeing that his consensus
ranking is still wide receiver 32,
which means he's being played as a
wide receiver 3 and a flex player in a lot
of matchups. And I am just saying to
bench Marquise Brown. I know what we saw
in week 1, 16 targets got a lot of people excited,
but I wrote about that last week saying
that it just felt like Fugazi. Like, that's not
something that we could expect to see going forward.
They had a game plan to attack
a weak linebacking core for the Los Angeles
chargers with these short little
dink and dunk passes. And when Xavier
Worthy was knocked out of the game, they had to
kind of stick with this game plan, but change it and they just drop Marquis Brown into this role.
This is not what Marquise Brown does.
He is a small thin player who I don't think has ever broken a tackle in his life.
So trying to get the ball to him at the line of scrimmage and allowing him to create after the catch.
As you saw in that week one game, there was an abysmal showing where he wasn't able to do anything after the catch with a week to regroup.
They changed up the game plan.
We saw Travis Kelsey more involved.
He said Tyquon Thornton more involved.
and Hollywood Brown went back to being an afterthought in the offense.
So now I still see people that must be holding out of that hope from week one saying,
hey, maybe he can do it again in week three.
And I'm just not buying it.
He is a third, fourth option on this team.
Tyquan Thornton is the one who piques my interest.
He's only seen nine targets so far this season,
but they are coming 31 yards downfield on average.
He is being unleashed as a downfield weapon.
Like we haven't seen anybody else in Kansas City since Tyreek Hill.
So if I'm at that spot where I'm dealing with some injuries, maybe I lost Jaden Reed, I lost a running back that I was playing in my flex spot.
I wouldn't go after Hollywood Brown as the guy that I'm starting in this offense.
I'm swinging for the ceiling.
And I think Taekwan Thornton's ceiling, his ability after the catch and his speed, make him such a better option because of the high ceiling.
Yeah, the Hollywood Brown, it's going to go down as one of the most random 16 target performances we've ever seen in fantasy football.
we're going to sort of use it as a week one cautionary tale.
I'm totally with you.
The fantasy managers who dropped a ton of fab on Hollywood Brown in week one,
that's a really, really tough one because I think that you obviously paid for a lot of the week one usage.
And I was sort of with it where Hollywood Brown was a guy that I thought we could have had some usage from last week.
Very, very disappointing.
Now with the potential Xavier Worthy plays this week.
And again, we're recording this before Thursday night's game.
So we don't necessarily know any late Xavier worthy news, but it sounds like he's trending towards maybe playing.
I think that your Taekwon Thornton call is an interesting one because that ADOT is insane.
We saw Tyquan Thornton have a touchdown catch last week.
And I think the Giants offense is playing well enough that they're going to put pressure on Kansas City.
This is not going to be a walk in the park.
I know the number is pretty big.
It's like a six point line for KC.
But I think Giants are going to give them everything they can handle, especially at
home and met life. So yeah, I think sit Hollywood Brown no matter what, keep an eye on Xavier worthy.
And I like your call as sort of a dark throw flex option using Taekuan Thornton with that elite
speed and Mahomes willing to take shots to him downfield, like that one a lot. Talking about
week three, this is quarterback chaos week. And I'm going to give you a quarterback bailout bold
prediction. People are going to like this one because a lot of people listening to this are in
desperation mode. We have Justin Fields out. We have Brock Purdy on the IR. We have Joe Burrow.
effectively, his fantasy season is done, might play at the end. It sounds like 12 weeks for Burrow.
Absolute nightmare. J.J. McCarthy out for a few weeks. It just, it's, it's terrible. Jaden Daniels
trending towards not playing an absolute mess for managers in fantasy at the quarterback position.
and we're going to have a wild, wild week in week three.
You're going to have Marcus Marriota, you're going to have Mac Jones and Jake Browning,
all finishing as top 15 scores at the quarterback position.
Marcus Marriota will finish inside of the top 10.
He's probably the best streaming option for Washington as a home favorite against Vegas.
But Browning is going to have a solid game on the road in Minnesota, difficult environment for Cincinnati.
But I think Browning is going to shine.
Mack Jones coming off of a very, very strong performance.
Faces a defense who's been turning people over in Arizona.
But I think Mack Jones has another strong performance this week.
All three of these backup quarterbacks put up top 15 weeks.
And I'll give a little bit of bonus here.
Jake Browning is going to end up being a QB1 for the rest of the season.
We saw it in 2023.
Jake Browning took over for Joe Burrow.
He had four wins.
and he had five top 10 weekly QB finishes.
The skill position players are there.
The game flow environment is there.
And they are going to attempt to run a very similar offense with Browning that they do burrow.
This is a team where there's a certain trust factor in Browning.
Browning's also a lunatic.
He'll put it in there, Dave.
He will throw interceptions and it's a yolo guy.
He's going to throw yolo balls down the field.
He's going to force it in Jamar Chase.
I think that they'll use chase.
Brown a little bit more in the screen game. T. Higgins is still there, of course.
So Jake Browning, a QB the rest of the way. Marcus Marriota, your streamer to use this week,
but Jake Browning, Mack Jones, also top 15 scores in week three. Yeah, you know, I'm in a lot of
super flex leagues and I was so bummed when I checked waivers this morning and I didn't get
any Jake Browning because, you know, I was bidding six, seven, a hundred out of a thousand
FAB budget and everybody that got him was bidding a thousand.
Like people were just dumping it on Jake Browning and I kind of wish I had.
What we saw from this guy at the end of 2023, seven game sample.
Like we're not just extrapolating a one or two game sample here.
Like played almost half a season and was pacing for over 4,500 yards and nearly 30 touchdowns.
This reminds me so much of when Kirk Cousins got banged up a few years ago and
Nick Mullen's had to step in and everybody was terrified and Justin Jefferson was
still just a locked and loaded elite option.
Nick Mollins was throwing the ball.
enough that he was able to rack up fantasy points himself.
I do like Marietta as a streamer this week, but I think Jake Browning, like, he's a guy
looking at his rest of season value.
I've got him inside my top 15 already.
When you're throwing the ball with Jamar Chase and T. Higgins, I don't understand what
there isn't to like.
And the one last thing I want to add some context here because I've heard so many people talking
about Jamar Chase's splits with Jake Browning from a couple of years ago, and they're
not looking at the context there.
In the second game, he played with Jake Browning, 149 yards and a touchdown on 12 targets.
and I think we'll see a lot of those games.
But then he got hurt.
And in the game that he got hurt, he didn't score many points.
And then he was inactive the next week.
And then he was limited with his snaps in the two weeks after that.
So I think a lot of people are looking at these raw splits and are terrified about
Jumar Chase when the reality is,
Jumar Chase should still be a top three wide receiver rest of season.
He is a guy that I don't think you're going to be able to pry away for cheap by any means.
But if there are any managers out there that are panicking a little bit,
I'm sending offers for Jemar Chase wherever I can.
Yeah, and I have a message for the,
the people that are somewhat fading Jamar Chase
rest of the way because of Jake Browning.
Go outside, nerd.
Get out of here.
I don't want to hear about Jamar Chase fading.
No, no, that's not happening here.
Jamar Chase is a next level player.
He can still finish as the wide receiver one overall with Jake Browning.
I mean, what's going on with people, Dave?
I mean, we're fading Jamar Chase now.
If you find a fantasy manager willing to sell you,
Jamar Chase, go and pay whatever they want.
This is a opportunity for you to get a guy who's capable of
putting 40 pointers up on the board.
Very few players in the last 20 years have had the spike week ability of Jamar Chase.
That goes down slightly, slightly without Joe Burrow.
I'd even argue that with Browning, T. Higgins takes a little bit more of a knock.
A lot of times we see the backups just naturally hyper-targeting the number one option.
It's just a, the more comfortable you are, the more starting experience,
the more willing you are to sort of spread things out.
Jake Browning is going to target Jamar Chase at least 12 times almost every single game.
I think that the target ceiling just went up for Jamar Chase really into Jake Browning,
like where you have him ranked for the rest of the year.
We drop top 10 bold predictions, but this has been so sizzling hot that we've got to drop two
hot bold predictions to end the show, bonus bold prediction from Dave Kluge.
I'm buying high on Tucker Kraft.
I think that he is going to be a top three tight end rest of season.
And it's going to be hard to buy him right now coming off of a primetime
game where he really blew up. But man, this is another one where I went back and watched the tape.
And I know, like, Tucker Kraft is a raw player. And there are some legitimate concerns about him,
like his ability to run routes and his ability to win man coverage and things of that nature.
But the way Matt LaFleure schemes him up, it does not matter. And there's one thing that I think
Tucker Kraft does better than almost any tight end in the league. And that is selling the play action.
So often you see these tight ends on play action, just kind of throw a forearm and then run their route.
Tucker Kraft fully engages his blocker every single time.
Like he gets up underneath the pads and then throws him to the side.
And you see on these throws where you wonder like,
how is Tucker Kraft wide open in the flat with 20 yards in front of him,
game after game after game.
It's because of how well he sells that play action.
And they run this play over and over again where they have Josh Jacobs just
pulling defenses in.
Tucker Kraft is such a good blocker that you kind of get this George Kittle type of
treatment where he might not be running a ton of routes,
but he's so good as a blocker,
the defenses have to play him honestly there, that when he does release out to the flat,
he's wide open on that play that we saw, the big 57-yard catch that he had,
another beautiful play design where they're not asking Tucker Kraft to go out there and beat a guy
and man coverage.
They saw zone defense.
They're in 13 personnel.
Savion Williams is the lone wide receiver out there.
And what they did is put him in motion and send him on a deep vertical route.
Tucker Kraft just kind of trailed behind him.
So as soon as the defense starts moving in Savion's direction, Tucker craft is wide open,
35 yards down field where he can catch the ball with the full head of steam.
There are little things that you can nitpick here and there,
but he is just in the perfect offensive environment to maximize his skill set.
I think Brock Bowers, Trey McBride, we've got to put those guys ahead of Tucker Craft.
But after that, it's Tucker Craft, Tyler Warren.
Those are the guys for me that are major difference makers.
And if you don't have one of those four guys, you're hoping that George Kittle can come back from IR.
You're hoping some of these other veterans can rewind the clock.
And that's a lot of hope that I don't want to have.
I'm moving mountains to try to get Tucker Kraft right now because he's going to be a beast for the rest of the season.
I completely agree with you.
I have some bags packed with Tucker Kraft.
I wish I had even more.
Craft looks awesome.
He looks like Kittle out there.
The explosiveness, the yak, and the play design, LaFleur just schemes things.
I love that you talked about that.
Like he's oftentimes very, very open.
And when you add in the yak ability, then you add the fact that Jaden Reed is going to miss a lot of time here.
I think they have to self-scout Tucker Kraft into.
I think him leading Green Bay in targets was a good argument to make in the preseason.
I know I made it.
I know Sigmund Bloom made.
I know you were into Tucker Kraft.
But I think now it's a Green Bay needs to have self-scouting and they need to get the ball in Tucker Craft's hands as much as possible.
They're a run-heavy team.
And I think that also benefits Kraft.
You talk about the heavy personnel.
Great points from you, Dave.
I'll give one more little bonus prediction to end it here.
We talked about I haven't seen this much fear in the.
the market after the first two weeks when it comes to a player than what we're seeing with
Brian Thomas Jr. Brian Thomas Jr. an absolutely horrendous start. And there's a lot of like
Jacksonville Jaguars fans. There's a lot of fantasy football managers that are just on like they're
completely completely tilted when it comes to BTJ. I don't think BTJ is going to come out here and
put up a 30 point week. But I think Brian Thomas Jr. scores 18 points in week three. finishes as a top 10
wide receiver. And I think he finds the end zone this week against the Houston Texans.
We saw Igbuka score that touchdown. We saw them connect with Mike Evans. We saw Igbuka in the
fourth quarter, nearly connect on a long one. Brian Thomas Jr. was targeted 12 times last week.
There's a lot of pressure on Liam Cohen to get this thing going. And there's a lot of pressure
on Trevor Lawrence to get this thing going. Some very poor balls we saw to BTJ. I think they'll get
them started early in the first quarter with a couple of screen passes. We've seen Parker Washington.
We've seen Travis Hunter with those sort of looks. I think they'll get a couple of easy button looks for
BTJ. I think you'll look up. It'll be the end of the first quarter. BTJ will have three
catches and you'll say, okay, we're on to something. BTJ is going to have by far his best game
of the season. It's still going to be a tilting start to the year for BTJ managers. But I think
week three in a big divisional matchup against Houston, he delivers and Jacksonville delivers for him
usage was. Yeah, last year was so frustrated, or last week, I'm sorry, it was so
frustrating to watch. I didn't like the role that they put Brian Thomas Jr. in. Like, that is
not what he does. He is not a catching a ball through traffic across the middle of the field.
He's a guy who wins outside the numbers. Like you said, the screen passes that'll allow him to use
his straight line speed. And I do have faith in Liam Cohen, despite the slow start for the
Jaguars. You've talked about self-scouting multiple times on today's show. And I've got to imagine that
Liam Cohen goes back, watches the tape and says, no, this isn't how we need to be using
Brian Thomas Jr.
And what he did, a lot of the looks that Brian Thomas Jr.
was getting were the same looks that we saw Travis Hunter getting in week one.
So with Travis Hunter being a bigger part of the defensive game plan in week two,
I think that they thought they could just drop Brian Thomas Jr.
into that role instead.
I want to see him play more outside the numbers,
him using his speed to get behind defenses,
and let Travis Hunter do that across the middle of the field through traffic sort
of stuff where he's best.
I think last week was just horrific game planning.
And I hope Liam Cohen has the wherewithal to change that going into week
three. And I think a little bit of a silver lining for BTJ managers is that this is going to be a functional offense. He's in a better offense than he was last year where he was like the main show in town. There's a lot of things working for Jacksonville. But for Jacksonville to be a playoff team to be an AFC South contender, they've got to get BTJ going. This is a player that is was so talented. We heard Liam Cohen talking about him at like basically his introductory press conference. It starts in which.
week three. Dave, this was so much fun today. Wish we could do it. We could drop 50 bold predictions,
but you're a busy man out there. Let everybody know once again what you got going on over at
Football Guys. Yeah, you can follow me on Twitter at Dave Klugey. I share all my content there.
Everything's over at Football Guys, the Football Guys Fantasy Football Show, the Football Guys
Dynasty show, the launchpad, and then the articles that I'm writing every single week,
all exclusively at Football Guys.com. Make sure you check out everything Dave does. It's absolute fire,
dropping continual high-end fantasy content all season long.
Love podcasting with Dave.
Make sure you stick with us right here on Fantasy Football Daily and Fantasy Points YouTube.
Dropping a Waver Wire show every single week with Joe Dolan and Tom Brawley.
Dropping my StartSit show with Graham Barfield.
Dropping my own takeaways to come out every single Monday where I drop my takeaways, instant reactions,
and breaking fantasy news, and then guest shows like the one with Dave today.
next week I'm going to be joined by Jacob Gibbs and Ryan Heath.
Have some other big guest plan for the month of October.
We're going to help you crush your fantasy leagues this season.
We'll see you soon.
