Fantasy Football Daily - Week 7 Injury Roundup Podcast

Episode Date: October 22, 2022

Graham Barfield (@GrahamBarfield) and Dr. Edwin Porras (@FBInjuryDoc) discuss recent injury updates, possible GTDs, return to play timelines, and more ahead of Week 7. --- 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 to the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by FantasyPoint.com. Top level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. Yo, welcome back to the Fantasy Points podcast. I'm Graham Barfield. I'm one of the co-owners here at the best site in fantasy football, FantasyPoint.com, best site in the universe. I'm joined as I am every week.

Edwin Porras, we're talking through some week seven injuries. Obviously, we just had a huge trade last night. Chris McCaffrey, Edwin, going to the San Francisco 49ers. And I can't believe this is like an act, like a take that needs to be said. But based on my timeline, based on everything I have heard, this is an upgrade, guys. I really have no idea why people are twisting this into a bad. thing for McCaffrey. They're saying he's going to lose touches. The 49ers are like top, they've been top six and running back carries for five straight years. They have not had

a passing down back, worthy of getting targets. Why would you throw the ball to your running backs? Why would you throw the ball to Jeff Wilson when you have Debo Samuel, at Brandon, I, you have George Kittle? I think Christian McCaffrey, Edmund, will be just fine in earning targets. First and foremost, how are you doing, my friend? And how are we feeling about it? How are we feeling about McCaffrey in San Francisco. What a wild trait. That kind of boosted up that game last night, but I'm sure you were listening to on you. I actually didn't even get to watch some of it. I had some plans that I had to attend to, but I was on and off keeping up with the highlights. I definitely saw Kyler yelling at his coach. Kyler, of course, sharing every fantasy football

manager's sentiments over the last, you know, two to three years for fake sharp Cliff Kingsbury. and I thought it was interesting. You know, D'Andre Hopkins was looking pretty fly, looking pretty sly in that little role of his. I mean, I know that he hasn't looked great. He hasn't looked like his prime version, but he's still good. I think, I mean, I just have a lot of takes, but obviously the CMC news was huge. And here's the thing that I wonder just from a football perspective, an NFL football perspective, is how did everybody in San Francisco look around and say to themselves, I think our quarterback

Resolution will be solved by trading for a top running back. Like, I don't get it, man. And I know I'm not going to actually, I'm not actually on the hill that that Kyle Shanahan's not sharp. But I do think that he is, it seems like he's married to his system. You know, the old adage that, you know, you think of Tommy and Joe, not X's nose when it comes to crunch time or whatever. He's like the exact opposite of that, it seems.

Like, if it doesn't fit his system, like he's not, he's not going for it. And I think that he thinks that he can out system. You know, he can use his system to get out of this quarterback problem they have. I don't know, man. I'm doing well. I'm obviously ready to talk football, though. I kind of want your take on the CMC stuff. Yeah, so two things.

I guess the first thing being like with Shanahan, I think it's funny that everybody kind of gives him grief with Jimmy Garoppel. It's like they almost won a Super Bowl. You guys, it feels like COVID kind of like broke everybody's brains to a point where our memories stopped working. before then. They almost won that Super Bowl against the Chiefs. And oh, by the way, they almost went to the Super Bowl last year. They beat the Packers in Lambeau with Jimmy G. I know that you're ribbing Shannon. Sure, okay, trading all those picks, I don't know if I would have done that. To be honest, and I've been a long time Christian McAfree stand dating back to when he was at Stanford. He was one of the first running backs that I've truly fell in love doing yards

credit. That being said, yeah, I mean, Christian McCaffrey is like a perfect thing. I mean, you know, Shanahan runs a ton of zone, but guess what? He will adapt. They also run a bunch of man stuff. McCaffrey's also always been a better man runner, gap runner, than zone. And that's been true since he was at Stanford. Stanford ran a lot of man concepts for him. But that being said, man, I mean, Chris McCaffrey's still an all-time great running back.

And he's going to the coach who has been probably the best run game coordinator, at least not, if not the, if not the, if not the, best the top running game coordinator in the game for quite some time. And Edwin, to your second point on the quarterback situation, yeah, of course. I mean, Jimmy Garoppel is very limited. They tried to, you know, they tried with Lance correctly, uh, moved up in the draft for a quarterback with an extremely high ceiling. But unfortunately, we still have no idea who trail lands hits. That's the bottom line. Didn't play last year because for whatever reason, they feel like he wasn't, they felt, they felt like he wasn't ready. Then this year obviously got hurt. They tried, you know, what,

I mean, Edwin, realistically, what would we have them do? I mean, I mean, there's no quarterbacks available to trade, and it's, you know, the 49ers are at the top of their division right now at three and three. You know, they're very, very likely to make a good run in the NFC this year. They have no chance at getting Bryce Young or CJA Stroud, whomever next year. You know, so, you know, I kind of get it. They're stuck in this quarterback purgatory with Garoppelow. They've tried, and unfortunately with Lance, he's just, you know, they've just ran bad. But I love this trade, man.

And if you look at it, you look at it, final thought here, I won't, we'll get started on injuries. With McCaffrey, you know, the Niners play, the Chiefs this week. I think McAfry is going to play and play like 10, 15 snaps. Then they play the Rams next week. Then they have their buy. So we're probably looking at a situation here until week 10, where McCaffrey's not a full-time player in this offense yet.

But, I mean, their playoff schedule is sexy there. They get the Niners, they get Washington, and they get Vegas. in the fantasy championship game in week 17. That's three teams right there. We're not running away from at all from a matchup perspective. And Seattle and the Vegas game should be higher scoring. And then I think if anybody's panicking on McCaffrey in your league, like this is the time to buy,

especially if you're already, you know, 5 and 1, 4 and 2. Yeah, I don't know if anybody's panicking in any of the leagues that I'm in, but that certainly could be happening from a health perspective. I think that you could create a narrative in your head that says, well, damn, it seems like the Carolina Panthers medical team finally figured out how to keep him healthy over the last several years from a soft tissue perspective even. And they had a system and a plan. And obviously McAfri was a part of it.

So he should know some of it. But you do wonder now he has, you don't love the cross country flight. You don't love what that does for a times. for his circadian cycles. You don't love the potentially, you know, altered, altered nervous system activity, we'll call it. That's coming from this flight. I kind of want him to sit.

Obviously, that's not going to say, I'm not going to say, you know, trade Chris McCaffrey away. I'm not going to say, you know, bench Christian McCaffrey. I just, as just a PT and as a fantasy manager, I kind of just want him to wait a week to play, but it sounds like we're going to get him. We're going to see at least a little bit of them. Yeah, rap sheet said something.

and along the lines of like, you know, they're going to put them in a red zone package. And I get it. But I think they're going to be smart. You know, 10 snaps for fantasy this week, guys, I'm just not playing them. I've gotten McCaffrey in quite a few spots. And I am looking elsewhere. But, yeah, man, it's just been bizarre. Like, the Twitter reaction last night was, like, really negative.

And then this morning it's been kind of negative. And maybe I shouldn't have said panicking. But just it's been bizarre to see the reaction. And I guess it's just moreover, just Twitter in general, like, you know, I think all of our collective hive mind here on Twitter, it just made us think that running backs don't matter and everybody's kind of like hyper-tuned to just blow up at all the picks that the Niners gave up.

And sure, we can talk about that. But I think just for Fantasy, there's a lot to be excited about. Edwin, a lot to be excited about here in week seven for Fantasy. I actually really like the sleep, even though there's four great teams out on by. Obviously, we have no bills, we have no Vikings. We have no Eagles. and I'm sure there's a lot of a lot of skanky-ass teams looking out there. I've got quite a few.

But I actually really like this slate of NFL games. So why don't we talk through some of the injury notes? We'll get started this week with Dak Prescott's much-awaited return. Edwin, the Cooper Rush discourse has finally died. Dallas beatwriters had nothing to complain about for a few weeks there because Dallas is winning games that no one expected him to win. So they just made up this narrative that like Dak Prescott should get a bench for Cooper Rush and then Cooper Rush shit his pants in prime time against the Eagles. Big shock.

DAC is back. Amazing game here. This Lions game is fantastic. I guess my only question, Edwin, and my only concern is I'm usually very, very cautious with players, especially quarterbacks coming off, long injury layoffs when it comes to like thumb and hand injuries. What should we be expecting this week for DAC? Yeah, I think that you can expect not a lot of air yards. And if we do see some air yards out of DAC, they're probably not going to be the most accurate area yards that we've seen him throw. This is, I think the disconnect, and I've talked about this before, is the disconnect in the fantasy community when it comes to injured players analyzing performance versus returning. And this is like, you could consider this what we would call in

baseball rehab game. This is going to be, I know that he's in there. He's fully going to play. He's going to play every snap. He's going to be the starter. But I mean, by all intents and purposes, if he does well, then the Cowboys are happy. Right. And that's going to be a moving target. what's considered well for Dak Prescott. I'm not entirely certain because, I mean, this was a huge procedure. It was much bigger than I actually thought. He had like seven screws and a plate put into his thumb.

I anticipated a much smaller procedure. And that does mess with your ability, not just to grip, like his grip strength is obviously probably there by now, but it's the feel of the ball, right? It's called proprioception, that ability to feel where you're squeezing and that ability to really put

the specific type of spin in English that you want on the ball to put it in the spots that you want it. That's going to be a work in progress. The bottom line is there's metal in his hand. So again, I don't know they might draw up a lot more maybe like design runs. I think if he's going to rack up any passing yards, it's going to be a lot of yak. I think we might see a lot more continue to see a lot more of, you know, jet sweeps to CD Lamb. We're going to see probably a lot of Zeke, but I just wouldn't anticipate a ton of air yards from DAC this year, or I'm sorry, this week, unless the Cowboys really need to air it out. And they actually might have to.

Yeah. Is there a comparable injury here? You say it was a little more involved, the surgery itself was a little more involved than you expected. Is there a comparable injury for quarterbacks in terms of just like what DAC is dealing with here? I can't think of any off the top of my head. It was a fracture. And this is like, it's kind of an interesting injury. Assuming we know what it is. This is a lot of baseball players get this. But I think it was even more. severe than that than most baseball players because he needed like I said he needed surgery procedure to really fix it so I can't think of any I mean Drew Breeze comes in mind but that was just a UCL thing and his thumb yeah I can't really think of any I mean even Carson Wentz who broke his finger Russell Wilson's was a totally different issue so I can't think of any any precedent I can't think of any any guys that had the specifics injury that Dax had yeah gotcha I was just curious um all right well I mean yeah I kind of expected deck you know he's going to be a little limited this

right now. I think we have in QB9 in our projections, QB8 somewhere in that range. That's all, you know, a lot of that's matchup base lines have been, you know, the best shootout team and fantasy football this year. And even dating back to late last year, these Lions games have just been white hot. Last 10 games, lines that are 7 and 3 towards the over. And those games have combined for like well over 60 points. So I'm in on deck this week. And season long, I'm not expecting like a 25 point ceiling. Edwin, to your point, I also, you know, I agree that they're probably not going to be throwing super deep down field, but that being said, the matchup is fantastic.

We'll keep it in this game. Go to the lion's side here. It looks like D'Andre Swift is going to be back this week. He's been limited in practice this week. Edwin, you know, he dealt with an ankle injury, hurt his shoulder, then, you know, they obviously shut him down. Lines are very sharp with their guys that are injured. You and I've been on this for the whole season. but Swift should be back this week,

and I'm on Ross St. Brown got back to full practice, so he is full go on the line side. Really, my main question for you, man, is Swift. I am optimistic on Swift, but I am also a little nervous for his rest of season prospects. I actually just tweeted out a second ago. I had it ready to roll, and I was going to send it to you. I think I found the play that he hurt his ankle on,

and it was in week one. it was a very um it was sort of a an eversion sprain and he heard it on a sweep to the right you the thing about these specific injuries is like it's an aversion slash high ankle mechanism those take forever to heal uh obviously he's been playing on it but you would have hoped after the by that he would come off the injury report with at least the ankle but you still see him listed in week seven ankle slash shoulder you know i don't know if that's anything we should read too much into, but you just wish that this would have resolved by now, like I said. Unfortunately, he's also got the shoulder. That one I couldn't find. I looked through every

one of his touches. When the initial injury happened, I couldn't find it. We are going to assume it's an AC joint recurrence because he had an AC injury last year. And just because of that, because of all those things, he's going to be playing the rest of the year banged up. I think that we probably won't start to see him really come to life again. At least I would think from a clinical perspective, you know, I wouldn't really feel comfortable having, you know, actively targeting him until I see that he's out of the, out of the woods. And I wouldn't expect that to happen until, you know, another two, three weeks that he's hopefully off the injury report at that point. Yeah. I mean, the upside man is just phenomenal with Swift. I mean, if you look back at his last 12, 13 healthy games,

I mean, he's been basically a top five, top four running back by fantasy points per game. The problem, obviously, has been the availability. So we are, Edwin, we are putting together a prayer circle tonight for DeAndre Swift's health. That's right. You were formally invited to help lead this prayer circle. Is there alcohol allowed in this prayer circle? Oh, of course. Okay.

This is a non-denominational. This is a non-denominational. Okay. I'm there. I'm there. Okay, cool. I'm glad. I will text you details after the game.

I'm going to bring, or after the podcast here, I'm going to bring some pizza. Sticking with the Cowboys side in this game real quick, I should ask you about Dolton Schultz, too. Dude, I was shocked. I have no clue what Dallas does sometimes with these guys that are hurt. Anyway, Schultz popped up on Saturday last week. They said he had a setback or something. tweaked in his knee i'm not sure that he didn't play uh and then wednesday this week he comes back

and he's full practice uh he's clearly still hurt right i mean like what what is going on with colts here in his name you know if i had all the answers graham i'm going on this podcast with you i'd be somewhere on a very very expensive we talked about yeah Costa rica i'd be somewhere i don't know man i watched the film of him running into a defender that that would you would assume based on the hit that he just wasn't healthy to begin with. And then you get last week that he, he tweaked it in the walkthrough. But then he's allegedly practicing in full. To be 100% honest with you, I don't really know what to make of this.

It's a PCL issue. Those do take a long time to get back on track. Sometimes they don't get back on track. You saw that with Ezekiel Elliott last year. And so this is just another scenario where the, Dallas medical staff is managing this. And they're getting pressure from front office. I don't want to put this blame on them.

They're handling it in a very, in a very interesting way, I'll put it that way. For me, like, I'm not going to start Schultz pretty much anywhere except that league that you forced me into. You held a gun to my head and you said you will join this league. You will pay me. You will pay me to be in this league. I'm now own six gram.

You're happy. You'll be happy to here. I'm going to start him in that league because I just, I just need a win. I mean, you said you recommend Schultz. Good, fine, as long as I can get a W, man. So I'm going to start them in those types of leagues. But if you're cruising and you don't need to start Dalton Schultz,

you've been getting by with streaming somebody else. I mean, you're just at risk to take a zero. So I don't know, it totally depends on your style. I need to wait and see it for Schultz. Yeah, I'm with you, dude. I've got Schultz in a few spots. And most of them I'm benching them as well. I'm playing them over guys like Hayden Hurst.

I mean, those guys are just too. catches 20 yards, praying for a touchdown. Maybe Schultz is 100%. Maybe, you know, Dallas, like, he just felt a very small tweak. It's definitely concerning that he was in a walkthrough and he got hurt or tweaked it. We really, truly don't know. Bottom line is he's full practice. And, I mean, he's right in that bucket, man.

I talk about it every week. There's a bucket of six to seven players where we're projecting for like three and a half catches and 33 and a half yards. He's in that bucket. You know, you're just hoping. that you catch him on the week where he catches six balls for 70. And I think Schultz will be fine after the buy. And, you know, he's probably a decent by-low in general, but, you know, all of this injury concern.

Like we've been talking about is a problem. Let's talk through Jonathan Taylor here. I was a little surprised J.T. didn't play last week. Maybe the Colts were just being cautious. I read a few tweets from beatwriters. They didn't make it seem like he had a setback by any means, but they were definitely surprised because he got rolled out on Saturday last week, Edwin. It looked like he was ramping up to play.

He was limited practice all last week, but alas, did not play. Everything points to JT. playing this week. But, you know, as we know, these ankle injuries are very finicky. Yeah. So it was really interesting to see that he was ruled out. I was actually at the world's saddest place on Earth, Disney, when I saw the tweet come through. And I had to stop what I was doing and, you know, retweet, give a little commentary and then move on with the worst trip on earth.

And I shouldn't say that. It was a very nice gesture by my wife's, my wife's family to have us there. They invited us. So it was nice. I just joke. It was hot. It was crowded.

I don't know how anybody, maybe this is a hot take. I don't know why any adult enjoys being in Disney unless you're trying to give your kids a nice little experience there. But alas, I digress. So what it looks like here is he, because he,

so Ian Rapoport where it keeps calling it a high ankle sprain. Well, I see Graham, and I'm not saying he's wrong. what I saw was a right ankle injury that was a lateral sprain. And then what I saw was the Colts medical staff working on his right ankle. And so I'm not entirely certain where the high ankle sprain situation is coming from. I'm pretty sure it was a lateral sprain.

But you're talking about a guy who hasn't missed time since like middle school. And so he probably quite literally is the most in tune individual with his body. And if he didn't feel quite right, his quite right is very different from somebody like Julio Jones is quite right. So like he is going to say when he doesn't feel like he can go out there and perform. And they value him so highly the Colts do that they said, okay, cool, we're not going to, we're not going to throw you out there. Then like if we don't have to, then we're not going to do it. And a lot of this also comes down to game planning. And I said the same thing with Melvin Gordon when the weird stuff went down with Mel Gordon. If a guy is limited and they're doing rehab stuff

off to the side, that also impacts how the coaching staff is approaching a game plan. Every day after game day, coaches, managers, they have a meeting with 18. and anybody involved in the medical staff, and they're like, all right, what do we got? What are we looking at? And then from there, they make their game plan. Just because a guy is better and on the mend at the end of the week doesn't mean that he was involved heavily in a game plan. And so some of that stuff also needs to include in your analysis as an injury analyst.

It's just if they're a really good player, like if Taylor would have played, he probably would have been just as involved as we're used to him being. But any other middling guy probably wouldn't be that involved. So my guess is that he just wasn't 100%. He wasn't ready to go. And the coach himself was like, all right, let's just lay off and give it another week. Yeah. No, that means.

Why Jonathan Taylor, by the way? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. For what it's worth. I mean, this, this, I think everybody was too quick to say Matt Ryan's dust. I mean, clearly not. Yeah, I would never. I would never say that.

I would never ask the question via text message. I would never apply it. So, yeah, I can't believe people would ever do that, Graham. I know. You know, people. No, I love you, Edwin, but in all seriousness, I think this, this team, I saw it from a multitude of angles. People say the cults are dead. Like, yeah, they got shut out by the Jaguars week, too, because Michael Pittman was like, you know, got hurt on Thursday. You know,

it screwed up their entire game plan. Like, they've been a little slow out of the gates here because JT's not been right. Yeah, I think this is JT week. And I'm expecting, pretty much a full workload for him as well. Edwin, let's talk through a buck. bunch of receivers here. We've got a lot of receiver injury news. We'll start with Jalen Waddle in the Sunday night game. Here at his shoulder in week six, it seemed like, it seemed like after the game, he might miss a game or two last week, but then he's been practicing and it's seeming like he's ramping up. Mike McDaniels kind of been cautiously optimistic, I would say, this week. And when it seems like there's a pretty good chance Waddle should be active on Sunday. Yeah, this was really,

weird. Like you said, you know, in the post-game presser, he literally hinted at Waddle missing one to two games. You watch the injury and it looked like an injury that would cause him to miss one to two games. Lo and behold, he's limited in practice all week. I will say that you probably can't bench Jalen Waddle, maybe in some more shallow leagues you can, but I will say that based on the specific injury that he sustained, which was either, you know, for the moral story, it was a very similar injury to T. Higgins for last year. And T. Higgins ended up needing surgery at the end of the season. So don't sleep on the volatility that this injury is going to bring Jalen Waddle. I'm looking elsewhere for Waddle because I don't think that targets have even been that,

you know, that close between Hill and Waddle. I'd have to double check that, right? Maybe you can check me on that. But I just think that given the injury and given everything we know, he's going to be boom, bust and he's going to be labeled highly volatile by me for the rest of the season. Yeah. Wow. I mean, dang, I did not know the injury would be that severe. I mean, Higgins played through it. And I guess, you know, Waddle is obviously going to play through it, too. For what it's worth, I mean, he has not been healthy all year. He's been on the injury report since August. He had like an undisclosed thing in August, and I think it was just the growing issue that he was dealing with in the first couple weeks, but regardless, Waddle's been

playing through some pain. Tirek, man, like, it's really tough to say because, you know, Waddle obviously had the humongous game against Baltimore and then just really hasn't done too much either because of the quarterback situation or because he's he's been nicked up. So I'll be interested to see how much he plays, but it does seem like he's going to go. And when in that game, I mean, Steelers are really banged up in the secondary. They're going to get some guys back this week. But, man, I think Waddle is still a pretty strong top 20 option in that game. Our weekly Keenan Allen discussion, let's have it.

At this point, man, I really don't know what else to say. You know, like he's been dealing with this freaking hammy for weeks, and it just seems like he can't get it right. And I think you retweeted something or if you didn't, I'm sorry to whoever did. And I saw it. But anyway, it's basically like he just can't get up to full speed. It just doesn't seem like he's comfortable. Man, at this point, I mean, I think you've just been right.

and he's highly volatile. This coming week, I mean, this is a great spot against Seattle. If you were, if you were 100% healthy, you know, we'd be going to Keenan as like a back-end wide receiver one. But Edwin, this is just an ongoing thing that he seems like he can't get right. Yeah, it doesn't seem like he can get right. And I do think I'm looking for the specific tweet that I think you're referencing because I think I know what you're saying. He basically said it's one of those things where he can get up to full speed,

but he is basically, it sounds like he's just straight line running right now. and he hasn't tested the ability to cut and go. Brandon Staley obviously just said you can expect, you know, him back in practice this week. That's all he said. So it seems like the chargers are, are legitimately playing this on a day-to-day basis with him. So there were two weeks in a row where Kaine and Allen went DnP, DMP, LP,

and then he went DMP, DMP, LP again. So that happened two weeks. And then finally they just went, you know, they just shut them down. And they're like, no, let's just wait and give this. more time. So that was all. Last week, they finally fired him up this week. Yeah, if he plays, he's going to be boom bust. I think that, again, in that league where I'm 0 and 6 and I just need something, I will start him because I have him there. If, again, you probably don't, you definitely

shouldn't play him in cash. And even in tournaments, it's probably a low EV move if he's active. But I think that after the buy, we're looking at a much more healthy Keenan Allen. And so we'll see what what the Charters decided to do. If he plays, he'll probably be limited anyway. Yeah, man, that's the thing, man. You know, that's the risk you take. The spot is fantastic, but, you know, any given play, you could tweak it and they just shut him down again.

We'll keep him moving forward here. Rashad Baton, you know, you know, I need to have the talk here. Oh, no, the talk. I'll let you bring up potential beer bet here. But Rashad Baton is still doing with his foot injury. not sure if he's going to play. I actually just saw a tweet come across my timeline where Battenham was like jokingly saying it's up to Coach Harbaugh.

If he plays this week and he feels good, it does seem like Edwin that that Batten's going to be back this week, right? It seems like it. He's been limited all week. I saw a video of him. Again, these are limited videos. You can't know everything from them. But he looked like he was going decent speed and he made a cut and he went and he looked good.

The average among skill players from 2018 till now for. foot issues is about 3.6 weeks. And he's sitting right about at that right now. He's missed about three weeks. This is something that I think is being a little bit maybe I want to call it overlooked. And this is the conversation that we were having. He's only a little more volatile, I would say, moving forward. There have only been nine recurrences of these foot issues since 2018. And seven of them were among tight ends, the bigger body guys. I don't necessarily think that he'll have a recurrence. And I do think that he can still bring some juice to this offense.

He tweeted LOL, just three letters LOL, when the team signed to Sean Jackson. I thought that was, I thought that was kind of interesting. So maybe he's really looking, you know, to get back out there and show what he's worth. You do bring up valid points, Graham. I went back and looked at the fantasy points data. So weeks one, two, and three, right? He ran a route on 74%, 71% and 74% of the teams passing downs, respectively. Not elite numbers.

They're good numbers, right? But they're not elite numbers. You want him running routes more frequently. But again, for a guy that is, you know, if you're trying to replace a Marquis Brown, if you're trying to replace biweek guys and you need somebody out there over the next couple of weeks like I do, if you're 0 and 6 like I am, like I keep bringing up, I think that that Rashad Bateman's a perfect guy to target at this point. That's my, my old two things here.

First, we know Bateman's a ball. Like every single time he's gotten on the field, man. Like he's commanding targets and doing something awesome. That being said, I just think the Ravens want to rotate the receivers. I can't explain why. You know, why Greg Roman wants to rotate that this has been what he's been doing all year. Even with Baton and Althe's last two weeks, to Marcus Robinson and Devin Duvernan, have both been around a 70% route shared.

It makes sense. I mean, just look at how this team is built. Mark Andrews is the top target. They want to get Isaiah likely on the field. This is a lot of 12 personnel. They play Patrick Ricard quite a bit. You know, this is a team that can play 12 and 21 personnel, and I just don't think they want to have three receivers on the field all the time.

The other thing you got to keep him on to do is Lamar is, you know, Lamar is Lamar. He's a running back still on the run place. So, you know, he's somebody you have to defend when, they're doing the read option stuff as well. And, you know, ideally you would want a second tight end or a fullback on the field when he's running. So you have an extra blocker as opposed to a receiver.

So all of that being sad, man, I just don't think schematically that much is going to change here for Bateman as much as I would love for him to be in every down, like 95% Rauch share player. I just don't know if that's in the card this year, especially since he's dealing with this foot injury. Edwin, one other note on the Ravens, actually two other notes. We need to talk through J.K. Dobbins. The first note is Mark Andrews is good to go.

His knee issue, they're just playing it super safe with him on Wednesday and Thursday, just letting him rest. He got back maybe yesterday. All these days are ready to go. But anyway, he's good to go. It is today. He got back today. Okay, cool.

I got to ask you about J.K. Dobbins, man. This is ugly. Last week, Ken and Drake ran wild on the Giants defense. Giants run defense had been really bad going end of the game. And, you know, I was leaving the window open for Dobbins. But, you know, I think I mentioned to you and I mentioned in Discord and pretty much everywhere I could write it. Like, Dobbins compared to where I saw him in college at Ohio State, like he's 60% if that. I think that's being kind. And last week we saw it, man, they just shut him down. Like, he's clearly not right. He's

been in the injury port all week with knee injury. He is not going to play. Like, I'm just going to go a call it. He's not going to roll out yet, but I will be stunned if the Ravens put him out there. Gus Edwards, though, should be activated. This is his last chance before the third. Raven's playing Thursday next week. So you have to be activated the 53 man either this weekend or next. Greg Roman basically said on Wednesday or Thursday that he looks great. Everything's kind of trending to where they expected.

So Edwards, correct me if I'm wrong, Edwin, he's like 10, 11. He's 12 months removed right now. He's well over 12 months. Yeah. No, I think that he is at this. 12 months. Yeah. He's, I don't know what it is with the, so a J.K. Dobbins's injury was super serious.

So that one makes sense to me. Maybe Gus Edwards's was as well, but the reports are that he just like, it was a non-contact injury. You don't typically expect a ton of damage, although I guess it can happen sort of like what we saw with Jamonte Williams. But yeah, this guy, these guys should be back. We don't know a lot of details about Gus Edwards's injury. They maybe, like you said, we're just playing it safe.

but at this point, he's probably a better fantasy football asset than Mr. J.K. Dobbins, sir. We always put some respect on his name. That way he doesn't come for us in the Twitter streets. We are quite literally terrified of Mr. J.K. Dobbins, sir. But I'm sure that he'll make a bounce back and be fantastic, but we do put some respect on his name. Here's the deal on Mr. J.K. Dobbins. Here's what I said about him in the preseason. He had a big procedure.

This could lead to inflammation to the knee, decreased performance, even fewer games played. Further, considering Dobbins had a tired leg not shortly after coming off the pup, it's difficult seeing him beating expectations in the first half of the season. Further, there's a chance Dobbins misses time due to knee complications. So this is about this is J.K. Dobbins's is rehab year. Next year, he's going to come back. He's going to bounce back. I do think that he'll have some juice left, but this was a very serious knee injury. It was highly complicated, highly complex. Everything you hear about it was the turf that made him tighten up. No, this probably happened two weeks in a row. he just isn't ready, his body isn't ready, and that has nothing to do with him.

Biological tissue healing and interarticular knee procedures are super complicated, and they just take some time. I think we're going to see a totally new rejuvenated J.K. Davenzance next year, and I'll be willing to pound the table for him in the coming summer, and you'll get tired of it, and everybody will get tired of it. But this is just not the year for J.K. Dobbins, unfortunately. I'm willing to get whatever I can back for him. I know at this point, it doesn't seem like it could be much.

but I'm just not willing to move forward with any J.K. Dobbins on, and I only have him on one team, and it's one of our injury prone league. So I'm not really looking to acquire him at all. I don't think he's a place to buy low at all. Yep. Yeah. No, you were absolutely right about Dobbins. Unfortunately for him, honestly. I mean, Dobbins is such a good talent.

I will never. As much as I do love John Harbaugh, and I think he's a great coach, and he pushes a lot of conversations forward. That being said, I will never forgive him for putting Dobbins out there in the fruit season last year. That was just ridiculous. Yeah, man, I think it's curtains for dollars this season, too, man. I wouldn't be surprised if they shut them down completely in the coming weeks. Edwin, let's talk through a few more injury notes.

The main one I want to talk through is I stutter through this final list here. Darren Waller, he's not going to play this week with a hamstring injury. Edwin, I think this is the same injury he had. And I think you mentioned this a couple weeks ago when we first. spoke about it. This is this, this is probably the same injury he had. Wait, actually, I just saw a tweet. Perfect time. Thank you, tweet deck. Raiders are hopeful that Darren Waller plays this week, which is surprising. Let's talk through it. Yeah, I'm not entirely certain. He hasn't practiced all week. He is 30 years old, I think, at this point. He's had recurring hamstring soft tissue issues. He's

been on the injury report with like a back issue. He wasn't practicing and this is after the by week. these typically take anywhere between one and three weeks to recover from. And when you get older, it only gets worse, especially when it's a recurrence. Turns out that the injury he had when he was, you know, bartering his contract in the offseason was legitimate. And I just don't know if we're going to see Darren Waller this week. I think that that sounds like a team that's hopeful that's just sort of putting up a front. I'm not totally certain we see him. And if we do see him, I'm not willing to start him.

I would rather get one of those guys who gets, you know, three catches and falls for 30 yards than risk a goose egg in the tight-the-tight-end position. Yeah, man, that's, like I said, there's six guys every week where you can get your, your three catches and 30 and zero yak yards. Full quote here. Josh McDaniel says, Hunter Renfro will practice today, so I guess his hip issue is minor, not so sure of Darren Waller. So that was McDaniel's words, and not so sure.

No, he remains hopeful. Yeah, he's not going to play. No, I know. Yeah, it's going to be a multi-week issue, man, and I think, Waller's Waller was not somebody I was drafting at all. I just thought the cost was all wrong with Adams back. I messed up and didn't draft Andrews at all,

but I definitely was right about Waller. Unfortunately, he just ran bad with injuries this season. All right, a couple more injury notes. Damien Harris got back to full practice on Thursday, Edwin, with coming off his hamstring injury. He's missed the last two games. Remander Stevenson has been fantastic without Harris.

He's been a Belcow, true Belcow, 90% snap share, and looks fantastic. I think Stevenson has done more than enough to take over as like at least a 1A in this backfield, even with Dame Harris. Healthy. That being said, it seems like Harris has a legitimate chance at playing. We truly never know with the Patriots, but man, I mean, they're a huge favorites against Chicago. They should get Mac Jones back.

Would not be surprised if they gave Dan Harris another week to get right here. Um, what's your read on, on Harris and his return timeline with this hamstring injury? Yeah, I don't really have a read honestly because, um, the reports initially were like you said, that he was going to miss multiple weeks. And then now he has been on the practice report and he's been practicing. Allegedly, we don't really know what that means, right? That's a very subjective term. I don't even see them, uh, on the on our little sheet here, our practice reports.

I'm not entirely sure why, but I'll try to find it. Uh, but yeah, he's been limited. and we know that the Patriots like to play games, which is probably honestly the insider that was giving Pelliserro information was probably playing games with him as well. We do see that Damien Harris was a full participant yesterday, and typically that means that the guys are going to go.

I don't think as many games as the Patriots play, I don't think that you can really skirt a full participation. You can't really skirt the rules of limited. It's much harder to skirt the rules of full. So he probably was there. He was probably playing. Here's the thing that I worry about, though, with him is like the continued recurrence, if this was a recurrence in the first place, like he's definitely at a higher risk of re-injury.

But the other thing is from the backfield perspective, Graham. I mean, we've seen the Patriots just suck the life out of fantasy managers when we think we know what's going to happen. And then, like, I can very easily see these splits going right back to where they were before the injury. I don't know what you think. Sure. I'm just thinking, man. I mean, you know, Harris has been their goal line back. That's for sure.

That being said, I mean, Stevenson, in terms of efficiency last year and this year, has been better in terms of yak, in terms of mistackless tackles forced. And Belichick has always been a guy who never plays, you know, even some of his old favorites. Like, he's a merit-based coach. If you play well enough, like, you stay on the field. You don't care where you're drafted, like, none of that. So that's my thinking on Stevenson. but you're right.

I mean, this will definitely be a split. I just more so, man, it'll be like 6040 maybe instead of the true 50-50 or 55-45. But maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part. I was all over Harris last year, for what it's worth. This year I was all over Stevenson. So maybe I'm just trying to go to Super 2 on Patriots backs and call it quits because the previous eight years of when I was over eight. I think most people were.

I think a lot of people were. Yeah, except for that one blunt year. I think I can't remember it was 20, Oh, when he scored 69 touchdowns? Yeah, yeah. Actually, I think it was 68. It was one short of a very nice one. Ah, okay.

That's what it was. All right, everyone last question here, before we get out of here, final thing to discuss. I've got to ask you about Hollywood Brown. Just a total bummer of an injury last week. There were multiple reports, kind of conflicting reports after the game. I'll let you handle the timeline aspect,

but what are we looking at here for Hollywood and what type of injury was this? Because I never really saw any decent reporting about it. It seemed like there's a bunch of different things. Yeah. So it was reportedly, according to, I believe it was Rapsheet, Ian Rappaport. It was a non-surgical fracture. So it is a Liz Frank.

We would assume this is a Liz Frank injury. Any type of mid-foot injury is labeled a Liz Frank. And the difference between a surgical one and a non-surgical one is when the bones are in place or not in place. I talked about this this week on the injury prone podcast. If you want to listen to a deeper description and get a little more into the weeds with it, but basically it's a small enough and nice and neat enough fracture. They're just going to give it time to heal. And so this is going to be, and you heard Cliff Kingsbury say yesterday, he's going to be out about a month. I would anticipate he's going to be back before seven weeks just because they have to activate him anyway.

I don't know if they'll end up shutting him down in a worst case scenario world. I suppose that's possible. But I do think that we see him back in, you know, five to six weeks. And lo and behold, the data that we have from 2018 for foot injuries, the long version of this injury that isn't surgical is somewhere between, you know, that four or five week mark, maybe six, seven at the most. And so I think at the absolute latest we see Hollywood Brown is back after their by in week 13. But I think he has a chance even for week 12. But yeah, I guess the the guy of the week that I want to talk about is probably him. I would say if you are cruising, if you have one loss, no losses,

or if you think your team's really good underperforming, I would target Hollywood Brown. I think he's going to be back, and I think that he's going to have some juice to add to this offense. I do think that he's a target guy, especially if you, like I said, if you're cruising. So I would go for it. That's just me because I think he's been so good.

Yeah, I think he's a phenomenal biop dynasty dude. I think that much is sure. I mean, for better or worse, the Cardinals are tied to Cliff and Kyler. I will say last night, Cliff actually showed up in a game where we expected the Cardinals to do well because the Saints defense was just decimated by injury. So round of applause for Cliff Kingsbury actually taking advantage of a bad defense. Did you see Kyler yelling at him? Can we talk about that?

Yeah. I mean, that was, he was just telling him to calm the fuck down. I guess Cliff was pissed because they were running the play clock beforehand. Oh, is that what it was? Yeah. That seemed like, because that seemed like three years of repressed anger to me, Grandma. I don't know. Now, that still could be the case.

That absolutely still could be the case. He could be absolutely sick of Cliff. But yeah, he was just, I think he was just telling me like, yo, calm down. We still got this. Like, it's funny because, like, in general, it should be the opposite way. Like, the players fired up and the coach is the one that's trying to calm the player down. But anyway, that's Cliff Kingsbury for you. He got his bag through 2007.

I'm not sure why. Some sort of dirt. Talk about failing your way up the, up the chain, huh? Bro, I wish. Not been running that high in life. Have you seen the movie? I'm pretty sure what's it called Ted? Yeah.

Okay, the part where, you know, he was having, we'll call them relations with his girlfriend and the produce department. And his boss goes, you're promoted. That's what. That's kind of this of parallel that I think of with Cliff Kingsbury. Losing record at your alma mater, they basically ask you to leave and then you get an NFL job. Anyway, that's it. That's all I got on Cliff Kingsbury.

Yeah. He's been gifted Patrick Mahomes and Kyler Murray and he does not have a 500. Good job, buddy. Yeah. Wild. Yeah. It's always funny to see you gets the opportunities and who doesn't. Out here in Denver and I still can't.

Oof. You're going to go to one. one of those games anytime soon? Oh, they're playing the Jets. I could go for like 20 bucks this weekend. It's going to be nice. They paying people to show up there. It's been gorgeous in Denver here. Oh, dude, I believe it. It's like 70 and perfect. All the leaves are changing. It's, it's been money, man. So, I mean, I guess I could go and sit for like free basically. I think, honestly, any season ticket holder to the Broncos, they should pay you to go to the game this weekend. They really should. Get your investment back. Yeah, I think they should. Edwin, this has been great,

man. Week 7, Injury Roundup podcast in the books. Edwin and I will be back next week as always. Guys, if you can, I'm sure you guys hear this on every podcast you listen to. Please do, though. Give us a review, a five-star review on iTunes. It really does help with the algorithm. Go listen to Edwin's podcast as well, the Injury Prome podcast. Make sure you subscribe and rate and review his show as well. Edwin is always frequently posting as he does. And make sure you check out the injury insights. the fantasy points.com. It's the best injury news that you could possibly find on the interwebs. Edwin is constantly updating things in real time because he is a legend. And that's why we love. For Edwin, I'm Graham. We'll catch you guys next week.

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