Fantasy Football Daily - Week 4 Injury Roundup Podcast

Episode Date: October 1, 2022

Graham Barfield (@GrahamBarfield) and Dr. Edwin Porras (@FBInjuryDoc) look at practice reports, injury designations, return to play timelines, and more ahead of Week 4. --- 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. Fantasy Points podcast. I am Graham Barfield. I'm a co-owner here at FantasyPoint.com, and I'm joined by my guy Edwin Porras. once again, our resident injury expert. Here to talk through some injury news, but Edwin, you thought you moved to Florida.

You've become a full-blown Florida, man. You earn your stripes this weekend with your first hurricane. Obviously, you know, sending good vibes, thoughts, prayers to everybody in the affected areas. I mean, I know there's a lot of older neighborhoods through there in the Fort Myers and Riverside Beach area. everyone, you and your wife got out. You guys are in Miami. You're holed up in a hotel. I texted you last night.

And I was like, dude, there's no sweat. If you can't do, don't want to do the podcast this week, but you're here and you're, you're doing all right. That's what matters most. You guys are safe. But, Edwin, how's it going? No, I mean, yeah, I appreciate you checking in on me basically the entire time throughout the hurricane end. I just want to clarify, we are doing really well. We're safe. We weren't hurt,

injured in any way. I know a lot of people were, and it is really unfortunate. I know that the Red Cross is, you know, helping a lot of people in the area right now. There are a lot of different donations and efforts. Obviously, you could literally probably just Google it and find different ways to help and donate to the area that we were in. We were never in an evacuation zone, but we did wake up yesterday. Well, it didn't wake up. It was really two, this, yesterday was going on the 16th hour, ish of no self-service, no running water, no power.

And we weren't even in an evax zone. So we just said, hey, like, we got to get some work done. We got to keep our sanity. We got to keep our pets. We have pets, you know, away from the floor to heat, Florida humidity. So we packed up, went east. But all things considered, we're doing really well. Just the stress of travel is, it's really the worst that we have to deal with.

And, you know, obviously, eventually we'll try to find out when we get power back. But all things consider, man, we're doing really well. Really appreciate just everything we get to do, like, you know, not to get too serious, obviously, but I get to record a podcast with one of my good friends about fantasy football, about NFL football. And a lot of people don't get to do that today. A lot of people are in a higher stress situation, so just keep them in your thoughts and prayers out there. As we talk football, try to keep a sense of normalcy. Obviously, you're here to listen to us. about fantasy football and maybe you are one of those people that's affected and you're just trying

to find a bit of an escape and we'll try to give that to you today but i'm excited as ever to be here with you today graham yeah i love you bro um yeah man it's always uh it's always anytime that i'm going through something i'm always like shit i still get i still have the coolest job in the world like i get to come on and talk to my friends uh like yourself about about fantasy so uh love that perspective love that you have that perspective um but yeah man anybody that's been dealing with this. Shout out to Darren Mansor. I know he's in the area. One of our guys on staff, he does all of our DFS ownership projections. He's been in the same situation that you're in, no power, no internet. So, you know, a lot of folks trying to reach

family down there. So again, good vibes. Said to everybody in the Southern Gulf Coast area. But, Edwin, we got to talk some ball. And there's a lot to get to this week. Last week, man, was like kind of a weird, like kind of choppy injury report. We got a lot of guys back. This week we're losing a lot of key players. We're going to talk through the first one here. Afraid to God that we're not losing our guy, Christian McCaffrey, here. He's dealing with a quad strain of some sorts. Did not practice Wednesday or Thursday.

I saw a tweet from Ian Rappaport that they're just kind of like playing it safe. He should be good to go. But obviously, Edwin, anytime CMCs on the injury report, you know, our butthole is to tighten the little. Yeah, man. And here's the thing. I understand. It's an emotional response. Some of the roto blobs blurbs have been super aggressive, which I find a little interesting. They're just like, he might have been a first round bus. It's like, well, easy. Let's at least get to week four CPP. He might be active. He might be fine. Now, here's what we need to know about Chris McCaffrey. His quad tightness, quite injury, didn't impact him in week three.

We know he came off the field. He didn't say anything until after the game. So that is a plus that he was able to finish the game. Not always necessarily a sign of anything, but he was able to finish the game. The other thing we need to look at is his history. If we assume this is the same quad that happened in 2020, that quad injury was a strain from when he was rehabbing, trying to get back from the ankle shoulder injuries in 2020. So a soft tissue injury is not necessarily surprising.

At the beginning of the season, that was one of the things that I said. if there's anything that we should monitor for Christian McCaffrey, it would be a soft tissue strain, the quad or the hamstring. And as it turns out, here we are dealing with some quad tightness, some quad irritation. But big picture, the Panthers are doing everything they possibly can't. He's down to playing about 80% of the snaps. In 2019, he played, Graham, did he played, I tweeted this the other day. In 2019, Christian McCaffrey played 99 to 100% of the snaps eight times.

Eight times, eight games. They were giving him wide receiver usage. Like, you only see receivers play every snap like that. And that's even rare. It was unbelievable. So they're managing his snaps. He did say in an interview with Dracina Anderson this offseason, he's going to start listening to his body.

He said he's going to start taking practice days. So there is one side of the second say, oh, you know, he's just taking the day he's listening to his body. Maybe they're being extra cautious and he's going to be totally fine on Sunday. The flip side is, yeah, there's a little bit of concern here that he's going to strain the quad or maybe overuse it, overdo it. But what you needed about quads specifically is this is a data set from 2017 to 2019. There were 46 players who accounted for 90 instances of isolated quad, quote quad injury. Fifty-four percent of them missed no games. 67% of them miss no games or missed one game.

So as long as McAfrey doesn't recur, as long as he doesn't try to play and push through something, then this could just end up being a Michael Pittman type situation, which is what you really hope for. Honestly, like if he's ailing this week and he's just not feeling it, the hope is that they just shut him down this week and then he's back in week five. You can't sit Christian McCaffrey. I know that offense has been bad too, Graham, and maybe you can get into that a little bit. But you can't sit Chris McCaffrey if he's active, so you're just going to have to. the washer reports, just take a deep breath. Don't panic.

The quads are 100% more resilient than the hamstrings are. Big picture, big reason is because there are three hamstring muscles or four quad muscles. They tend to do fine as long as you take care of them. So you cannot say Chris McAfri if he's active. So he's got about a 50% chance of being active this week. Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's just going to come down to being a game time call. A couple of things here.

If McAford does say guys, don't mess around with Deonté Foreman and the Chuba Hubbard. Like that's going to be some sort of gross rotation. I've seen some people on Twitter suggesting go pick up Deont de Form and just don't even play those guys. Like I guarantee you probably have someone on your bench either receiver or back. You can move around to put in your flex spot over McCaffer. You can make that work. Secondly, yeah, man, this offense has been awful. It's not just, you know, obviously Matt Ruhlin bin McAdoo, not exactly forming the best brain trust.

But Baker Mayfield has regressed to a point, man, right? I think he's like unsalvageable. like the mechanics are terrible he's floating balls to wide open receivers like it's it's really really bad and that's maybe a long-term discussion about the panthers and mcalfrey as a whole but i thought mcalfrey has looked fantastic normal burst normal agility uh it's just he's been dragged down by this offense and baker as a whole um but i'm with you if mcalfrey plays this week i'm playing him and i'm just crossing my fingers and praying that he uh gets a goal line plunge. Edwin, this is hilarious, by the way. The Panthers have been so bad this year.

They've been so bad this year. But they opened as two-point favorites over Cliff and the fake sharp cardinals. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. The public's hammering Arizona. And I get it. Arizona's actually been a really good cover team on the road. Matt Rule is three in 10 against the spread as a favorite in his career, maybe three and nine. I pulled the stat yesterday. I think it's 3.9. But still, yeah, going to be a lot of hilariousness in that game. Hopefully we get McCaffrey as the big ticket. I got to talk through some saints here. This is going to take a minute at one. Michael Thomas is to be determined with the toe injury.

I don't think he's going to play this week. James Winston is out with his multiple fractures in his back. He has like three, four, five fractures in his back. It's unbelievable he's been playing through that pain. and Alvin Camara is still dealing with his rib injury. He's been limited to practice all week, full expectation that he's going to be back and ready to go once again. So Edwin, the big concern, obviously, is Michael Thomas with this toe injury. I think I read somewhere where it's on his opposite foot from the ankle, correct? Yes, I don't think that it's the same foot. And we actually have some information indicating, even though it's on the injury report as foot,

if you had an injury insights, it's actually listed as a toe, because that's initially what Ian Rappaport reported about it, is that it's a toe issue. So we can actually operate, I think it makes sense to operate under the assumption this is a toe injury. So probably like a turf toe situation. Okay. So if it's a turf toe situation, and then you're just kind of put in your your kind of like looking glass injury hat on, how long do we expect Thomas to kind of be dealing with this injury here. Right. So this could go a couple different ways.

And just for the record, Ari Mirov, my sports update on Twitter, he did confirm Michael Thomas will be out on Sunday for fact. So that just so we're clear on that end. So this could go a couple of different ways. The first way is Michael Thomas misses one game like Chase Claypool did in 2021 last year.

He sort of never, you know, he recovered from it. It wasn't that big of a deal. The other way, and that would be, you know, considered like a grade one. The other direction, which we don't necessarily anticipate this being, I don't think this is the case, could be like a Devante Adams from 2019, where Devante Adams missed four games and five weeks. I don't think that's the case. If we look at

the big data, the big injury data, hashtag big injury data, you look at the median return to play in NFL, so the midpoint is 28 days. 50% of the population returns, you know, before 28 days, and the other 50% returns after 28 days. But if you look at NCAA data and those athletes, the mean, so the average return to play is about 10 days. So with all that in mind, hoping, assuming that this is not a big issue, we hope to see Michael Thomas back next week. Okay.

Yeah. I guess, you know, the thing is, you know, they're obviously traveling to London this weekend. Maybe they're just like playing a safe and saying, hey, James is going to sit. let's sit Michael Thomas too. Yeah, that's the hope. And, you know, obviously anything with Michael Thomas' foot, ankle related is going to raise some alarm bells.

But, yeah, I'm with you. It doesn't seem like it's overly serious. The little bit that I was reading from Nick Underhill, Great Saints Beat reporter made it seem like it wasn't overly serious. So I'm with you. I don't think it's going to be a super long-term injury. And they're just playing a safe here. one injury that I this is why I love talking to you because there's nothing there's been nothing really concrete is David Montgomery you posted in our discord the mechanism of his injury

I mean it looked like a multi-week injury everything that you said was indicating as such he's not practicing this week he's not going to play it'll be Khalil Herbert as the starter belkow against the Giants with Tristan Ebner backing him up but Edwin how long can we expect David Montgomery out with this knee injury that we're not really seeing a whole lot of reporting on. No, yeah, this is not a great situation. So Eberflus is not starting off on the Edwin Terresto meter. He's not starting off very high. He obviously is calling it a day-to-day thing.

And then at some point, it was reported that he said it was only an ankle or only an ankle injury, but he is on the injury report with ankle slash knee. Like you said, he didn't practice Wednesday or Thursday. If you watched the video, it was pretty nasty. He got rolled up on. The mechanism actually reminded me of, you know, throwback all the way to 2020 when Michael Thomas got rolled up on, on that initial high ankle issue.

That's what it reminded me of. So it does look like a high ankle. If we get a high ankle, it does, this could go a couple different ways. The first way is obviously the mandatory two to four weeks. I don't want to call it mandatory, but the typical two to four weeks. two to four weeks that you see in skill players who average at least nine PPR points per game. The thing with high ankles, Graham, and I've talked about this before, unless Shepter specifically reports that it's going to be four to six weeks. Typically, the data indicates in skill players

it's going to be a little shorter than that. So it could end up being two to four weeks. I have seen, I remember one particular instance, it was, I think it was 2020. Josh Jacobs came back from a high ankle in one week. So it's definitely doable. They haven't thrown them on IR yet, but you're definitely going to want to keep up with that on Saturday because sometimes teams will make last minute moves and throw guys on IR on Saturday. But I don't necessarily anticipate David Montgomery being active this week. Yeah. Yeah, he's not, Montgomery's not going to play. So if you have them, you definitely need to make other plans.

By the way, Edwin, I've got to ask you, you mentioned your trustometer, right? Let's play zero on the trust meter is Pete Carroll. Yeah. Who's a 10? Who's a 9? Okay, there's probably no tens, but who do you trust the most? Who's like an 8 or 9? Oh, man, that's a really good question.

And I want to answer it. Hold on. Let me go through the Rolodex here. I know that, you know what? You know what's funny? Maybe this is like a correct by inclusion or like answer by exclusion. Because I don't trust Zach Taylor. I don't trust Harbaugh.

I don't trust Pete Carroll. I don't trust Cliff Kingsbury. You know who I kind of trust? strangely enough, Dan Campbell. Dan Campbell from, what's that? He's a real one. From the beginning, Dan, with the Andres Swift, for example, he's like, yeah, he's not playing. And then that's exactly what we're seeing.

And he did that last year with a couple of guys, too. So I think the answer right off the top of my head would be Dan Campbell. Well, Dan Campbell, I think won a lot of people over on Hard Knocks this past year. I'm with you. I mean, I've loved Dan Campbell since day one. I love the binding e-caps thing. I love that he didn't give a shit what the media thought. I love this.

By the way, anybody that knows me, I'm a Jags fan. I'm also a lines fan now, just because I want so badly now to have two teams that just get their hearts broken in the most cruel ways possible. But no, I love the lines. I love Dan Campbell, and you're right. He's one of the few. He was also like, he came straight out and said, by the way, good transition here. We'll talk through some lines. He came out and said, yeah, DeAndr Swift doesn't play.

He was also like, man, I'm not sure about Amon Ra. So Amon Ra, he heard his ankle in that game, came back, caught a ball, hit my over. He knew he knew he had to come back out on the field and hit my 69 and a half over. And then he left. Played through the whole game, but now he's not going to play this week. Edwin, I mean, again, it's one of those things where outside of Campbell, we haven't seen too much information about it. what do you have on Amon Ra and his injury time?

Yeah, if you go to my Twitter at the injury doc, I posted a quick little brief video of Amonra St. Brown's injury mechanism, and it does look like it was a high ankle. I can't guarantee that. Obviously, the video isn't great even for me. I have to sort of zoom in and really use my eyeballs there to watch it, but it looks like he suffered a high ankle sprain. So there's a lot of nice little data we've compiled over at Fantasy

points.com with the high ankle. It is not an ankle injury you want to tricle with. It's not an injury that I typically am like. So here, for example, I think this will say it the best. There's in one league I've been targeting and sending a bunch of offers and we've been in negotiations going back and forth. I've backed off my negotiations for a Monre Saint Brown because it's kind of making me nervous. But he's out officially in week four. The good news is since 2016, there have been eight pass catchers averaging at least nine PPR points per game who suffered a high ankle sprain. The mode, so the most frequently amount of this time was just one game. If you zoom out, big picture, skill players averaging nine points a game

again. Their first week back, so that would be hopefully across our fingers next week for Montrose St. Brown's. There's a 25% production dip. So that's not great necessarily either. So yeah, this is not a guy that you necessarily want to target right now. Obviously, he was off to a super red hot start. You love to see it. You love to see that it played through it. But the hope is that this isn't any more severe than it has to be or any more severe, you know, like a Michael Thomas, for example, which does tend to be the outlier. That doesn't happen all the time. But these high ankle sprains, they do tend to linger. He's a hold for me. I don't necessarily think I want to target him anymore if you were targeting him before, but the hope is we get him back next week.

Right. Well, continuing our love fest for Dan Campbell on the lines, they typically, they seem to be, over the last couple years, they've been pretty conservative. I would say with a lot of these injury timelines and we kind of heard whispers that they were thinking about holding out d'Andre swift through their buy their buy is in week six so man maybe they have the same idea in mind with bomb on raw giving him one or two weeks here to get right giving him the buy so really three to come back in week seven with you know again that's just total speculation from for me i have no inside information nothing on twitter about that but that's just you know kind of where we're at with the lines and how their schedule has has fallen here.

So we'll see. Maybe this is just a one-week thing for Ombara, but it definitely seems like it's going to be a multi-week thing for Swift. We'll keep it moving here. Evan, we'll talk through our normal weekly Bucks receiver update. We need to have like a drop for this at this point for our Bucks receiver update. Maybe I'll whip something up. But Chris Godwin, limited in practice on Wednesday.

came back Thursday, did not practice with his hamstring injury. You never wanted to DA up in obviously a midweek, kind of red flag designation like that. Julio Jones is still limited. He has a slight PCL tear, was the reporting. He has been limited all week. Obviously, they're going to get Mike Evans back, which is huge for Brady. You know, a couple games that Mike Evans is missed. Brady's had just massive splits.

So at least they're going to get Evans back, but Edwin, we're still waiting on Godwin and Julio. We're still waiting on Godwin, Julio. this was anticipated with Godwin specifically. We do have some reports saying that Julio will be active this week. So that's good news on that. And he does have a PCL, and that does match up with the amount of time we typically see with PCL springs, which is typically one to three weeks.

And Julio's an older guy. So his hamstrings can be impacted by this because we know that he has a high hamstring recurrence rate. So he's another guy that season long, I'm not necessarily targeting at this point. If I have him, he's just a hold, understand that he's highly volatile at this point. PCL helps to protect the knee joint in a very similar way that the hamstrings do. They work together. And if he's going to, you know, if there's something going on at this point with the PCL,

then that could turn on the hamstrings a little bit more. We don't know. So he's just a little more volatile to start with. But we should expect to see Julio back this week. The other guy, Chris Godwin, of course, he's approaching that nine-month mark that gave him yesterday off his hamstring and just a little bit of breast. I think that next week might be the first time we see Godwin back in action. So hopefully that does happen.

All of my teams where he's on the IR are really hoping for that. I need some backup in one specifically. And yeah, man, I think that this buck's offense is going to kind of, you know, it's kind of reminds me of, is in 20, what was the year they won the Super Bowl, 2020. They, when they got just absolutely railroaded by the chiefs in like week four or five or whatever it was, and then they come back and beat the Chiefs and railroad the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. That has like, I kind of get those vibes on the Bucks. I think the second half of the Bucks offense is going to look totally different than it has in the first half.

I don't know. You tell me. Yeah, dude, I'm buying Bucks. I've been writing up Fournet as one of the best bylaws and stat pack for a couple weeks now. The other big injury news for them this week, man, is Donovan Smith. Their left tackle, he's been sitting out with his elbow. He's missed the last two weeks. He's been limited in practice, both Wednesday and Thursday.

If they get him back this week, man, you know, I know the Bucks have had a lot of, you know, issues with their interior offensive line, especially with run blocking this year. But getting their left tackle back, getting Brady back, you know, kind of his guy on the left side there will be huge. I think that's just as big as the Godwin return is, is getting Gondon Smith back. So, yeah, I'm buying Bucks, man, buying Bucks heavy. they are dead last in drives to reach the red zone like worse than the Texans worse than the that is going to regress like big time to the means so we're certainly buying bucks man um a couple of injury news nuggets that literally just happened while we're on the

air when I love when this happens Dalvin cook is fully off the injury report he's going to play with the brave uh the last time you play with the brace he dunked on everybody dropped like 225 scrimmage yards scored twice. He was like 2% owned with DFS that week. I remember it well because no one wanted a plan coming off a separate shoulder. Edwin, I can't even count how many times this dude is dislocated his shoulder. It's dislocation, right? Not separation.

So it is a dislocation slash subluxation. I don't know if it went back in on its own, but yes, the separation would be something, for example, that Christian McCaffrey suffered in 2020. That's called the separation. That's the AC joint. The dislocation subluxation is the entire ball and socket joint separating. So when it goes back in on its own, it's called subluxation. When you need help getting back in, we consider that a dislocation.

And he's had both. I mean, Dalvin Cook has had these injuries dating back to high school. The thing about that is he can continue to have these recurrences basically until he retires. I mean, he's had the surgery, wants to repair it. We know that the initial one was in 2019 around the playoff time. he went down for a few weeks. Then it happened again last year. Like you said, he wore the sling, continued to play.

In 2022, here we are again happening. You know, this is just going to continue to happen. It's kind of the point that I'm trying to make. And it's just not a good, it's not, he's another guy that I'm not targeting. I don't want any part of. I'm willing to live with Dalvin Cook putting up 20, 25 points, knowing that at any point they could shut him down. I know that the Vikings haven't chosen to do that.

But, man, if you watch the last two dislocations of last year and this year, they were on extremely benign plays. Like it was a totally benign situation, what happened. And if it can happen with that, like, there is a chance that this just continues to happen on benign situations. And they could just throw their hands up. And I said this before, it could be rolling out, coming out while he was rolling at bed.

And they just throw their hands up and say, dude, I can't live like this. I can't play like this. But it's just a highly volatile situation. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. The flip side of all this is like he's played through this, like you said for the last couple of years. And he's played at a very, very high level.

with the injury. So I'm dialing up Dowell Cook this week, especially here. You know, these London games have been weird. I actually went back and looked. The last 16 London games, either at Wembley or at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, those 16 games have averaged for 41.5 points. They've been below the closing total by four points on average in that span. Now we've got no Janus. We've got no Michael Thomas. That Viking Saints game is looking pretty gross over in London. am going to go play dalvin cook. Vikings were two and a half point favorites on Thursday. That's since moved to three and a half to four now. I expect it to probably close around four and a half five in favor of the biking. So this is a really good spot for Dalcook to kind of get right after

a really slow start ironically, even though he's dealing with this injury. The other bit of injury news that we just got Edwin is Mack Jones is practicing today. What, what, what? dealing with his high ankle injury he was an obvious pain coming off the field which by the way all the donkeys on Twitter shitting on Mack Jones for screaming in pain like you clearly never hurt your ankle

or your ankle. It's clearly as out of here like you guys are sitting on your fucking sofa as they say over like give me a break like you guys have clearly never rolled your ankle even rolled your ankle playing basketball as they say over at a ETR

establish a run. There's a bunch of spreadsheet virgins that have never done anything to anything athletic, any physical feet. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's always, it's always interesting to watch the reaction from injuries. So that's the thing too is like, it should point out the fact that video by itself is not diagnostic. We see, we've seen that with a lot of different guys this year. And, you know, the video looked bad and it looked gross. And, and, you know, the thing is, it's kind of, it is a little confusing because he did go get a second. opinion. There was mentioned of surgery, but he's not even in a boot. So, sorry, Edwin, real quick. When someone, when, when a player gets a second opinion on a high ankle, that typically means

they're like going to miss a ton of time. Like, that's just, I mean, right? That's the, by the way, I have no data to back that up. No, no. Medically speaking, medically speaking, if you get a second opinion, you, you don't like the first opinion. Like, that's a, you, you, you, you, you, you, Like their first call. Yeah. But yeah, I guess he's out there. I don't know if he's actually officially being called, you know, a limited participant. You do see these reports sometimes that come out of camp where the, oh, we see Mack Jones out here, but then the official practice report comes out there at their DMP.

I wouldn't anticipate that Mack Jones is out there this week, at least not for now. But it does seem like, again, at least from now, he's avoided the IR, which is always good news. We've seen this specific injury in quarterbacks before. Again, 2019 Matt Ryan. He ended up missing one game and then they had their biweek. he was back. So this could be a shorter, shorter recovery for Mack Jones than we think, but again, we're going to have to watch the IR coming up. The Patriots,

going back to my trustometer, the Patriots don't rank very highly. They're the league leader and the least amount of trust by me. So we'll see what they do come Saturday night. Yeah, Bill Belichick is, I mean, he's always been playing, playing his cards close to the, close to his chest. listen, I just saw something from, it was Mike Yardy over at NFL Network. He said that Mac never got out behind QB netting and barely moved at all. He's not going to play.

Like, this is just a show. That's kind of what I thought too. He's not going to play. I do think this puts Mac on track. Mac on track, nice. There you go. I think this puts him on track, though, for like week five. Yeah, I think it's possible.

I don't want to slam dunk that, but I do think it's possible, especially, here's the thing. We'll back up. I think it's possible he plays, but I say it all the time. Playing doesn't mean that you're going to perform. He's already a super statue guy, so I'm not necessarily anticipating that he's going to have the best mobility, even if he is back.

Just I'm not betting on Mac Jones for the rest of the season, to be honest. He's super statue. Did you not see his gritty? I did miss the gritty. One of the worst gritty's I've ever seen, this should be illegal. I think it is illegal in a lot of states, but yeah. It was, look, I mean, I'm a corny white guy.

I'm a corny as hot. You obviously didn't see what's his name, the dolphins tied in, Gisikis. That was just that. They put him on Come on, man, before the ESPN Monday night game. So that's how bad that was for Gassiki. I will say Max was better than Gassikis, for sure. I've lost my place here. We are almost through.

We'll talk through Keenan Allen here. I think that's really the last big injury note. Sorry, I'm going through my notes here. You're good. Gabe Davis probably, you should hit on. Yeah, well, Gabe got, well, let's talk through Gabe, actually, real quick, because I saw something this morning from Sean McDermott, basically saying he didn't, you know, Gabe didn't have a setback per se,

but he had like, you know, he kind of just reagravated it. Maybe they were just playing it safe yesterday. But Gabe said he's on his schedule to go, Edwin, this is like the third or fourth time. Gabe Davis has been on the injury report with an ankle injury since 2020, 2020-ish. Man, I mean, you know, he played every snap last week. That's the good news.

He was out there leading the bills in Rout Share once again. Only got six targets. I say only because Alan threw it like 60 times in that game. But man, you know, where are we out with Gabe Davis? Because I feel like he's one of those guys who, you know, he obviously needs to, he's not a big separator. You know, he's not a Stefan Diggs level separator. He's a big body. Like he's got juice.

He can get deep down feel. But he's someone who needs to be at 100% to be able to go. And we've seen Gabe kind of struggle through these ankle injuries so far in his career. No, yeah, that's not fortunate for him. He had another reaggravation. Actually happened last week, too, man. So it's kind of frustrating to watch it happen. You kind of wish that as a PT at least, I just watch that.

And I just kind of wish they shut him down for a couple weeks and let him get right. But he had another setback. McDermott did say that. that they were, that he was, you know, he said something like good to go or on track for Sunday. So whatever that means, when it comes to DFS, when it comes to like any type of prop pets, anything like that, like I am not, I am not in on Gabe Davis until I see that he's actually healthy. You just don't like this up and down. And if he goes off or whatever, seven receptions and 100 yards and touchdown, like I'm willing to play that process because I don't think it's likely to happen. like he can't even run routes and practice at full speed so yeah man this is not a good situation

for Gabe uh yeah bad news for your boy uh gave out Gabe Davis over 49 and a half on Wednesday night when it first came out thinking oh he's you know he played last week he's going to get through this um yeah not great uh definitely wouldn't take it now uh so with you on that um and for what it's worth guys like if if you've got Gabe like I do on a bunch of season long teams uh I'm just playing it till Sunday. Like, I'm waiting until Sunday. If he, if we get news from like, you know, Schefter, Rafsheet or, uh, one of the bills beats that he's like, you know, full go 100%, then I'm going to play him because this game has so much upside. Ravens bills has the highest total on the board at 52.2.5. It's, it's one of the fastest pace

games, uh, of the week. And, you know, the bill's run defense has been really, really good this year. So I expect Lamar, uh, to continue to have to just chuck it in that game, which will elevate the pace even more. So I love the game, love the game. Love game environment. But I'm just kind of waiting until Sunday on Gabe. I'm not making any calls when it comes to that. Edwin, when you got to talk through Keenan Island here, he was limited on Wednesday, did not practice on Thursday, which you don't love to see, especially with a veteran,

dealing with a hamstring injury. We'll see today on what his involvement is. But, I mean, God, it's probably not looking good for Keenan. Yeah, so Keenan was able, make a slight correction, Graham. was limited on Wednesday officially limited on Thursday officially but then we got this weird tweet that he quote left with the trainer if that wasn't planned sometimes they're planned if they're limited that's obviously part of the deal is like all right you did some individual stuff now let's go off we're going to go off the side and do your treatment now that might be what they were doing I don't

know for a fact but they did say that he left with a trainer if it was unplanned that's not good we're going to see what his participation is today on Friday this is not good man yeah he's 30 years old He was in my injury in my injury tiers for receivers. He was near the bottom of the yellow light tier because of his age, because of his history of hamstring strains. It's exactly what's sort of coming to fruition here. You don't love to see that, but at least that they're taking the time, it seems, to get him right.

I think back half of the season, he could be just fine. But yeah, for now, it's not looking good for him. It's not looking good for his return. Even if he does play, he's highly volatile, so not looking great for Keenan Allen. Yeah, I was off Keenan. mainly because of your injury tiers, you know, him being 29 going into his age 30 season. So I was like, man, I love Justin Herbert this year. I love this Chargers passing offense.

So maybe this is the year Mike Williams becomes more consistent. Nope. Biggest roller coaster season start for Mike Williams basically of his career so far. So, yeah. How double edge of a sword can it be to have one catch, but that one catch be a touchdown? Like that, that is literal personification of Mike Williams. It did bail me out in a few spots. It's not going to lie.

Last week was a really low, low-scoring week. So that did bail me out on a few spots. I'm with you. He is, dude, it's insane. He's always been this way. But, man, I mean, it's just like he can get game planned out so quickly. It's bizarre. All right, a couple more things we need to get through here.

Hunter Renfro is still not practicing coming off. He's still in concussion protocol. he is now on pace, I think, to miss two straight games here. Man, you know, this is a much longer discussion about the NFL's concussion protocol, but it's rare to see a player in it for two weeks, basically, what is he at now, 10 full days, 11 full days, something like that. So it's not looking good for Renfro this week, which means we're going back to Matt Collins, if you need Matt Collins this week.

Yeah, man, it's super unfortunate for Hunter Renfro. He does have a history of concoct. back in 2020. He had concussion in week seven, in week 16. And here we are again. It was kind of on a weird, we talked about a little bit last week. He, he didn't, I mean, he finished the game, is what I'm saying. So he may have developed symptoms after the fact. We don't know at this point when he is going to be back. These concussion protocols are, they're not linear in nature. So if you wake up on the third day that you've been doing great, but then you have a setback, you basically start all. over. We don't know when refor is going to be back, but yeah, man, I mean, Hall of Famer Mac

Hollins, if he's out there under waiver wire, you might want to start him. I might want to start him in the injury prone league. Man, I'm struggling in that league. My second running back is J.K. Dobbins, my third receiver, I think. What's that? You're struggling? I have Trelland. I had Traylands. I have Mack Jones and Marcus Mariotto. Those are my three quarterbacks. I've already lost two. I will say I'm three in O flex. Anyway, nobody wants to talk about that. Well, I know and agree and dog walked like I deserve. I'm about to be, Dalton Del Don's about to just absolutely take me to the cleaners here. We'll see how it goes.

But yeah, Matt Collins. If you want Matt Collins, I think you got him for another week. Yeah, Mac look great, man, for sure last week. But yeah, you can dial up, you know, Mac, probably a little bit of a boost for Waller who's seen his targets dip with Devante Adams there. Edwin, last one we're going to talk through here is Dalton, Schultz dealing with a PCL injury himself, did not play last week. Cowboys wisely did not play Schultz gave him some time off.

You know, this is going to be a multi-week thing for Schultz regardless of the time off. But what are we looking at for Schultz and does he have a chance to play this week? Yeah, I think that Schultz has it. He did go back to practice and so that's always a good sign. He was spotted on the practice field with kind of a big clunky, race that helps to make the player feel as though their knee is a little bit more stable. And so what you look at with these PCL strains, and we mentioned it with Julio a little bit earlier before, is that typically if it's worse than a grade two, then it'll be eight plus

weeks. We can assume at this point that's not the case for Schultz just because he's already back to practicing. So this is anywhere between a two to four week injury based on a big sample from NCAA football players. And I wouldn't be surprised if we see Schultz out there at this point. It's definitely possible. The thing about Schultz is that, you know, this is kind of a tenuous situation.

You want to be careful. You don't want to put them out there too quickly. I think week five would be the safest just based on his limited participation and the brace. But, you know, you know how Jerry works in Jerry World. It's a totally different world than the rest of us. So if Schultz is out there, he's definitely volatile. But this is possible. You know, we have seen guys like, geez, I forgot his name, Andre Ellington.

he missed just about three weeks. So this is definitely possible for Schultz to be back out there this week. But I think week five is probably the safest. Gotcha. Yeah. For what it's worth, guys, if you have Schultz, I'm playing it safe. You know, I'm trying to find streamers, which is, if you've been playing Waiver Wires this year, man, this is the worst waiver wire season, at least weeks through four that I can remember

it a long time. It's just like a perfect storm. There's like no quarterbacks because Lance got hurt. There's been no running backs or receivers, really. So a lot of those like conditional type running back stashes are all gone. It's been a rough stretch, especially at tight end. We're just kind of chasing touchdowns once again at the position. But if you've got a decent second option, just, you know, top 16, top 17 guy by our projections, just play him over Schultz.

Play it safe. You know, if he does go this week, he could be on a limited snap count. I had Schultz in a few leagues, played Hayden Hurst over him last night, got lucky with the touchdown. but that's just what I'm doing in my leagues with Schult. Edwin, this has been fantastic, man. Thank you again for braving the storm, braving the conditions, and coming on and talking to us from a hotel in Miami. Stay safe this weekend, man.

Hopefully you guys can head back home anytime soon here. Yeah, we'll see how it goes through the weekend. I'll probably watch a little bit of football here through the weekend. Try to catch some vibes here in Miami, and see what it's about. But Graham, this is fun, man. I told you to let me have this one thing and you let me have it, so I appreciate it.

By the way, you guys should maybe go down to the Hard Rock in Miami. They've got a cool setup there for the games on Sunday. Or you guys could go Saturday and catch college football teams too, so just an idea. The world is our oyster. Yeah, go do it, man. Get the Hard Rock.

I've heard it's really cool. They kind of renovated it. I got a couple buddies that have gone down there. So go check it out. But guys, thanks for really. listening. I'm Graham for Edwin. This has been the week four injury roundup podcast. We will catch you guys next Friday, same time, same place. 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.