Fantasy Football Daily - Week 9 Injury Roundup Podcast

Episode Date: November 5, 2022

Graham Barfield (@GrahamBarfield) and Dr. Edwin Porras (@FBInjuryDoc) discuss recent injury updates, possible GTDs, return to play timelines, and more ahead of Week 9. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This Black Friday, you've got a whole month to catch all the exclusive offers waiting for you. See your local Nissan dealer or nissan.ca for details. Conditions apply. It's time for the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by FantasyPoints.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. It feels good to be back.

I'm Graham Barfield. I'm one of the co-owners here at FantasyPoints.com. And it is a fantastic Friday, Denver, you're in Denver, Colorado. We just got our first snow this past week. Got some snow last night, Edwin. So it's feeling like winter again, feeling good outside. And it's feeling good to be talking to you again. And we had to take the week off last week.

You were doing some traveling because you have an actual job. Me, I'm just literally sitting in my sweatpants and a T-shirt talking about nonsense. And I'm just glad to be talking about with one of my pals here in Edwin, what's going on, man? Oh, dude, don't even start with me. You had the ultimate life hack. We've said this before. You just started a company. And you're like, I just want to talk about D-Gen shit with my friends.

That's the ultimate. That's some king shit, man. That's like the ultimate move to make. So you definitely have a, and then you get to, you're basically saying all the things you get to do as your job, right? I think you're just stuck on everybody now. You get to sit in sweatpants. Like, I mean, I guess I'm in sweatpants a lot, too. No, by the, I'm not complaining.

I'm just saying, you have an actual professional job. Sure. I am I'm definitely not a pro. I get to poke people with needles after another course. So that was fun. I was sore as hell on Monday, man. Like you get, we get our entire upper quarter right.

We did forearms, biceps, shoulders, neck. Learning to throw needles into people is, is fun. But when you have it done on yourself all weekend, it gets a little tiring.

But then I get to come home to Florida and you say, you talk about winter. Man, it has been the same shit here since I feel Like it cooled off after August, right? So, I don't know, like September. They like dropped, but then it's just been the same. It's just been like there aren't seasons here.

There are just plateaus of how effing hot it is outside. I'm tired of it. I got to say I'm tired of it. You thought you'd move to Florida, eh? Now, you, it only took you four months to figure out what everybody's known about Florida for forever, man. It's a swamp. My folks just moved down to Orlando.

You know this, but my folks just moved back down to Orlando. My mom and my mom and dad and my brother, they lived in Atlanta for a while, which there's some season change there. My mom calls me out this past week and goes, Graham, it is so fucking hot down. She's like, I can't take it anymore. She's got a foreign accent. That's hilarious.

No, no, no. She's got a North Carolina summer. Ah, okay, okay. She's from, we're from the sticks in North Carolina. But yeah, man, I feel you. I feel you. You're going to be out here in Colorado in about a month, though. So you guys will get some cold weather in your life.

For sure. That's what we're looking for, ready for it. Good to see you too. Yes, sir. That would be exciting. By the way, so when you go, when you go to needle camp, that's what we'll call it. Needle camp. When you go to needle camp, I thought you would be the dude doing jabbing.

You're not jabber? So it's complicated, right? So moral story, we, some states require you to take continuing education to start needling. Some of it is really lack. Some of it isn't. Florida's really strict for some reason. So I have to sit through, as a Florida physical therapist licensed in Florida, I have to sit through two continuing education courses that add up to 50 direct contact hours.

And so that's basically just with other people who also have to do that, who have to take these courses. And so we have to practice, like, we get to watch it, right? But we also have to practice on each other. And that's what we do on the weekend. Gotcha. Jesus, man. I mean, I'm not squeamish, but I mean, anybody were.

I mean, that's like they're freaking worse. My partner was really good about it. It wasn't until the third day that my partner was like, I am deathly afraid of needles. I was like, oh, you've been hiding it pretty good. She didn't go hiding it. Jesus, man. Well, good for them for powering through it. Speaking of power and through, let's power through another podcast. We've actually got a bunch of, well, not actually not a bunch, but just a bunch of kind of

kind of like lingering situations, not a ton of real injury news that we're waiting on. Edwin, literally as we were coming on here, we finally got word that Jonathan Taylor is going to be out this week with this ankle injury he's been dealing with for a few weeks now. You've been all over it. I'll let you kind of explain a little bit more about what's going on with JT and why you think it's a similar injury to Sequin. But I do need to say, I just saw a quote from Frank Reich, who said there's no injured return yet for J.C.

That's not a consideration. He's week to week. But I think at this point, man, I mean, Colts are turning. They've obviously already turned to San Ellinger. They might be punting on this season. And I said this in Snap Pack this week. And I think you said this in injury insights that this is like trending towards the Colts just tanking and if Taylor's not right like they could certainly shut them down yeah man this entire

situation is just a headache right so essentially jonathan taylor suffered this lateral ankle sprain i know there's some there were some reports initially and i accidentally i don't know what i was doing i saw the injury and i called it a high ankle i must have had high ankle on the brain that was after uh Zach is it kefer i think kefer is his last name yeah after he put that out i think i had that on the brain but yeah i tweeted out that he had high ankle but he didn't so i went back redacted that. It was a lateral ankle spring to the right side. So he got stepped on his foot roll to the outside. And it's a painful injury. The dude's never been injured. So this is the first time he's dealing with something like this. MRIs were negative. Tests were negative. But as we know in

the orthopedic community, even though your test can be negative, it doesn't necessarily correlate with your symptoms. And obviously he's still having symptoms. He was out two weeks and then came back in week eight, re-agravated it again in week eight. Now he's going to boot out in week nine. This is a nightmare. I don't want to say that they're just going to hit the ejection. button the Colts because when it comes to like athletes, they, they are always pushing to play. Athletes almost never. I want to say almost never, Graham, as rehab professional, athletes are almost never content with you saying, well, you know, the season's a lost cause. Like, athletes want to go out there to compete. And so for that reason, I don't think that he'll ever get

shut down. I think a possibility is that by tomorrow, they might say, okay, well, you let us put you on IR. You can come back in a month. and finish out the season. I think that's a possibility. I don't think that's out of the question, right? I don't have any insider. I don't know anybody that has said that or that hasn't been reported, but I would not be shocked. Otherwise, I think we just might be looking at this, like what I said, you know, the Sequin situation where Sequin had the lateral ankle spring and then just sort of was downhill from there. So this is a mess of a situation. I was trying to get out from under it. And the one team that I have him on before I assumed that he was going to be ruled out. And now he's

been rolled out. So if you're listening to this now, as soon as it was released, maybe your league mates haven't heard it. Go put out something for JT. Maybe don't consider, I would say, don't put an offer out for something that's going to be low bar, right? You still want to try to get a top 10 asset back. Like, don't waste that asset, but it's really hard because I don't know how the public's viewing JT right now. Yeah, man, I think, I think everybody's going to come around to you this weekend. You know, what's interesting is like the Colts are three, four, and one, right? I mean, they're still technically in it for the division. Titans of 1-5 straight, they're now 5 and 2,

and then obviously the Texans and Jags. My poor Jags, Womp, we're all dead. But bottom line is, I mean, realistically the Colts are out of it, but I wonder if they're still looking at this thinking we can compete. I do say, I will say, so when Taylor first got injured, he missed that one week,

and it seemed like he was going to come back, what was it, week six, that one? Yeah, yeah. And then on Saturday, he got ruled out. And I remember a bunch of Colts beats being like, wow, this is bizarre. Like he looks normal to practice. And I wonder if he had a setback then. And that's just kind of what is what is, we don't know this.

This is pure speculation. I mean, this is literally just speculation for me, nonstop eating and sleeping and breathing NFL news. But I do wonder if that played a part here. Yeah, yeah, that's definitely a possibility. These ankle sprains are really a mother effort to get past. And I know people constantly are saying like the high ankle is a season killer, but lateral ankle springs can be just as bad. I think that the high ankles just stand out because they're not as common.

But definitely lateral ankle springs can be season killers. And yeah, man, I'm trying to move them. I need your advice. I don't know what to do. I put out literally nine offers this week in the one league I have Jonathan Taylor. And there was a savvy manager who texted me back and was like, just going to make sure that he can practice today. And I was like, all right, too, shit, you're following injury insights. Yeah, I mean, I think there's like, I think at this point, you're taking like a quarter on the dollar for JT.

Yeah. I think that's really what it is. I mean, that's, I really can't think of you getting too much more than a quarter. By the way, I'm, I'm old enough to remember when Twitter doctors told me that ankle sprains don't hurt when Max Jones. I was like, well, old enough to remember. I had literally no feeling in his foot last week by his own admission. But ankle sprains don't hurt. No, they don't.

Last one, last one, last thing on JT versus Christian McCaffrey. I mean, I know how old you are, Graham. I'm old enough to remember. And again, this is not to victory lap. The fact that this man in his career is currently on hold because of an ankle sprain. We are not victory laping the fact that J.T. is on eyes right now. He's injured. That's not what I'm trying to say.

What I'm trying to say is I'm old enough to remember when people said, take J.T. He's the safe pick. Christian McCaffrey is going to get injured. But here we are, eight weeks into the season. It's a totally opposite script of what we thought it was going to be. Again, I say that not as a victory lap. I say that because nothing is guaranteed when it comes to health. You don't know as much as you think you know that myself included when it comes to projecting injuries.

You know what? You say you want injury, take a victory lap on an injury. You know what? I am. And when I'm making a T-shirts saying we call the Christian McCaffrey non-injury. We call the non-injury. I see what you did there. Yeah, injury prone is a lie.

I'll tell you that much. I'm making T-shirts. I swear to God, I'm doing it tonight. I'll get drunk and I swear to God, I'm going to make his T-shirts. I'm doing this. All right, let's keep him moving. What hell is going on with Michael Thomas, man? He's got, I mean, this poor guy, like, I don't want to dump on him too much because

Twitter hates him and then all the Saints fans want him cut tomorrow. But, man, I mean, what happened with this toe injury? Did we ever get worried that it was on the same foot that he injured? and had all the problems with. Oh, man. I feel like we have to recant this just to keep it straight in our head. So in 2020, Michael Thomas got rolled up on. He had a high ankle sprain with an abulsion fracture of, I believe it was,

I don't, I don't, I actually don't know if it was the red or left. I'm not going to lie. So it was one of those. So he had an abulsion fracture, a high ankle sprain. Like those types of fractures are really common in those injuries when they're severe. Okay, fine. So he tried to play on it. I don't think he, you know, the saints recommended that he have surgery.

He said, no, I don't want to have surgery. And then they were like, they convinced him to have surgery, but then he disappeared. And so it was like June. Michael Thomas comes back to OTAs or whatever it is. And they're like, yo, you should have had surgery. He didn't have surgery. So then he decided, they decided like, okay, let's go ahead and do it now. He's rehabbing, has another separate injury while he's training and rehabbing.

that injury, we don't know what it was, but we know that it was, according to Ian Rappaport, on the opposite and separate side, so it wasn't a related injury. Comes into the season this year, finally healthy, right, comes off the pub. He averages 20 points per game in weeks one and two, 17 and weeks one through three,

looking like he didn't miss a beat, dislocated his second toe. So when it comes to second toe dislocations, I'm going to be honest, I haven't seen a ton of them, maybe other docs out there have. What you worry about with any fracture slash dislocation is that they often occur together.

Like he could have had some fracture in the toe. And because it's the second toe, what probably happened, I can, and again, I'm only speculating here, they probably said to Michael Thomas, his team and the med staff said, well, it's your second toe. Do you think if we buddy tape it with the other toes, the toes next to it, and you don't have, and we rehab it for a while, maybe we can reduce the pain enough and you can finish the season. We'll give you this metal plate. Maybe you can play through it with the metal plate similar to.

what you see in turf toe. And ultimately, they just, it just, they said, Dennis Allen said it didn't respond the way they wanted it to. So, I mean, that's going to happen. When you have a fracture in a dislocation, a lot of tissues are disrupted, a lot of damage is done. And ultimately, he's just going to have to have it, um, uh, repaired now. So yeah, man, we're out another season on Michael Thomas. Uh, I had to, I mean, it's a very decent, very fair question to ask, you know, what is the correlation here? Because he's had three, at this point three foot slash ankle. injuries. And, you know, aside from something big, something like his bone density or something to that nature, I don't know what to make of it. I don't know how to predict or project it moving forward.

Last off season, I was like, hey, if he's your wide receiver three or flex, that's fine. Moving forward, I think that, you know, I'll probably view him in a similar light. Maybe just if he falls to me, I'll draft him after, you know, filling my starting spots out. But this has been a mess and you feel bad for the guy because, I mean, most of this is out of his control. Yeah, I think with the case with Thomas is like we're trending towards uncharted territory. And, you know, we don't know. I guess it was the same foot. But at this point, you know, these are all, man, just brutal injuries. You know, I don't really know where we go from here. I think the Saints right now they owe him through 2023, so he'll be back for next year.

But man, I mean, obviously they drive to Chris Olavay. I've got to think they're going to go out and try to find some more. help this off season. And at this point, you know, if you're a Michael Thomas holder in dynasty, I'm not really sure what to tell you. I mean, if you want to bail for, you know, we were just talking about a quarter on the dollar for JT. I mean, I think for Thomas, it'd be like 10 cents on the dollar for what you probably drafted as, but I don't blame you. I mean, he's going to be 30 going into the next year, right? I mean, he's missed the last three years. There's just really no way we can, like, project him to be a big part of the Saints plans. Moving forward is as unfortunate as that is. I mean, it looked like Michael Thomas was like legitimately on a Hall of Fame career trajectory,

and it's just like it's all falling apart from, unfortunately. Speaking of all falling apart, Edwin, is this, we've got to talk to this DeAndre Swift situation. This week is all about just like these lingering injuries because we really, like I said, we really have a lot of concrete news. DeAndre Swift, he's told us he's not 100%. I asked you earlier this week and you said you think he's dealing with the high ankle sprain. We obviously know about the shoulder injury. But I think you're the only person I've seen say it's a high ankle, not obviously putting on the spot or anything. But, I mean, what are we looking at with Swift?

Like, you know, I think he's told us this week. He's going to be one of those things where he's going to be probably not 100% all the year. That being said, I mean, is there any chance that he can somehow get back to the normal role? Because it just feels like we're going to be in this kind of holding period for the rest of. of at least this month. Yeah, man, DeAndrstoy Taz was in this purgatory. He had a initially, he had an ankle injury. What happened was he was in the middle of running.

He was on a run. He planted his foot. And from the inside of his foot, a defender sort of, like, made his foot cave into that eversion position. And so even though it wasn't, it was really quick. It happened really fast. And so even though it wasn't like your classic mechanism of high ankle, it sort of looked like an eversion, high ankle mechanism type of injury.

What we know about those is that they linger. They just linger forever. So that's one thing. Then you move on to week four, I think it was, week three or four. And he, you know, he lands on his side. It looks like it could be an AC sprain and or the very similar injury that T. Higgins had last year, where he sort of messed up his labrum. And so we would have assumed at that point, like, okay, maybe he really needs surgery

because they came out and said, this injury is, you know, doesn't need. need surgery, but it's still pretty bad. That's really essentially what the reports were. And it's like, nobody asked if he was going to need surgery. Like, that's kind of, right? It was kind of sketchy that you would even bring that up in the first place. And so obviously, we know that that shoulder injury is, is severe. And so if he needs his labor and repaired, or if he needs, you know, his AC, like, if the AC sprain is super severe, like, that's not going to go away on its own, especially not when you're, you know, two months into the season and you're still full practice and you're, you're, coach is saying, you know, I don't think that he's 100%. And then just today, I, you know,

I sent that out in the Discord. There was an interview that the athletic published with DeAndre Swift himself, who said, like, I might not be 100% this year. And athletes are never the ones to say that. Athletes are always like, yeah, I'm fine. I'm doing great. Like, they might be sitting at 80%. They're going to tell you they're 100%. So it is a little nerve-wracking to hear Swift himself admit that he's not going to be 100% this year. I would assume, like, if I had to predict something based on speculation, The season will end. Swift will get through it. He might see like 80% of his volume from last year. He's going to miss practice reps.

He's going to have some explosive plays and be dynamic, but he might miss another game or two. And ultimately, I think we might see him get, you know, that shoulder repaired. And if he re-injures it, I really can't see them shutting him down. So I do think that D'Andre Swift, obviously he's so good, man. But I tweeted it this morning. I've switched my mindset from viewing Dandre Swift as like this locked in RB1 with, you know,

RB1 overall upside. And I'm now viewing him as like, he's an RB2 and I'll be lucky if he finishes the season because he does have some upside. Yeah, I think that's where we're out, man. It's unfortunate. I did not see the quote about them even like broaching the subject of surgery with the shoulder.

So maybe that's, maybe that's bothering him more at this point than the ankle. But who really knows? Yeah, man, at this point, you know, I'm not really sure what to tell people. I think in general, you know, running back is really bad this week. Just going and doing rankings and going through our projections this week, man. Like, it's brutal.

I mean, we've got Deonté Foreman as a low-end RB1. I mean, we've got Antonio Gibson sitting like RB15, RV-16 with no J.E. McKissick. It's really tough up there. So I can't sit here and tell you with a straight face to sit. DeAndre Swift this week, obviously, the downside of all this is he can get 10 to 12 touches out of and have 50 yards and not score and be basically worthless this week. So, you know, that's the catch 22. I do think it just locks in Jamal Williams, obviously, for more of the goal line role and more early down work.

So you can keep going back to him as like a flex RB2 play. But with Swift, man, I mean, we're kind of right there. You know, we have Williams and Swift right back to back on our projections this week, right around RB20. And, yeah, I mean, that's really at this point. All you can really do is, like you said, he's an RB2 with upside. I think the ceiling is gone for him. I think I'm just more so concerned for all the women of Detroit who might now be impregnated by Jamal Williams' touchdown dance moves.

My eight-year-old cousin is still tragically, tragically harmed from that tragic touchdown celebration. As bad as taunting, the children that have seen taunting? Oh, my goodness. A.J. Brown pointed at a guy, and three people died. in Oklahoma. It's very sad. Nobody's talking about these Oklahoma people who died because of AJ Brown's point.

That's right. Exactly. Yeah, it's just a sad situation. You know, game where, you know, 280 pound men run at full speed at each other and car crash into each other, but can't point at one another. One more thing on that, too. I know I keep saying, sorry, I know you want to keep moving Graham, and you just bring up all these things. Somebody, I don't remember who it was. I wish I could remember.

It might have been like JJ Zacharyson on a podcast. It's like these, like you said, these 200, 300 pound men are slamming into each other at high speeds, something they've been training to do their whole entire life. And then, you know, something like with Devante Adams happens where it's literally seconds after they lose a, you know, a game. And you just shove a guy, right? It was like instinct, right? It's like they're supposed to go from turn off all of your higher brainpower and be more like primal and just like go run based off of instinct to, oh, like now I have. to like snap back into reality. But like, let him show a little emotion.

That's what that's my take. That's all I got to say. Yeah. I mean, that got, we don't know. That guy could have said something to Adams. We really don't know. I don't know. He flopped like James Hardin.

Let's be honest about that. So you're watching that. That's hilarious because he had clearly been watching some James Hardin. All right. We'll keep him moving here. I got to ask you again about a murky situation. Jamar Chay should be on IR, right? Like, I'm just going to come out and ask you.

You should be on. I think Jemar Chase in a safe world, in an ideal world, is out for at least a month. Okay. Now, I said this on insights. If they were to put, if the Bengals were to put Jamar Chase on IR, the soonest they could get him back is week 13, because by weeks don't count towards IR stints. Right. And so they are playing it like, well, at the end of that third week, right? or at the end of that third week, maybe Jamar's ready and we can play him.

But if he's on an hour, we wouldn't be able to. So they're trying to play the sort of, they're trying to play the long game here. I think he's going to come back and he's going to perform and do well. He won't be 100% the rest of the year. But I mean, I would take a 90% Jamar Chase over whatever, like an 80%, I don't know, Danny Amindola or 100% Danny Amindola or something like that. I know he's not a league anymore. But you know what I'm trying to say here.

I would take Jamar Chase in most instances. Like, I would trade away Mike Williams to get Jamar Chase. I would trade away Marquise Brown to get Jamar Chase. Like, I would, at this point, nobody would take it. I mean, I'd love to trade away JT for Jamar Chase. Like, I would do all of those. I would make all those moves. I think Jamar Chase is going to be, he's going to be close to peak form when he gets back.

Okay. So we're looking good on everything with his injury timeline. What's the typical timeline for an injury of his sort? He's got the torn labrum and his hip, obviously. And then he's got, I think they said, heroin fractured, right? Yeah. So these are tough to manage.

If you look at the textbook, it'll tell you at least four to six weeks. And that makes sense based off of a fracture that is probably what's called an abulsion fracture. Those muscles in his hip are strong, powerful muscles. And what happened is that some of the muscle chipped, you know, the muscle chipped a part of a small part of the bone. And some of that was near his labrum. And it probably chipped some of the labrum off.

You have a bunch of powerful muscles. in your hip. And so you just need to let that bone heal. The wild card a little bit is the labrum. Labrums can be kind of finicky. You do worry about Jamar Chase moving forward in the future with like labrum issues. So I don't want to say he comes without any risk. But if his, if his hip stays snappy, poppy, cracky, and doesn't really quite feel right, then he might have some issues down the road. But you would assume that the Bengals would take care of that in the off season. So he does come with a little bit of risk. But yeah, man, I think the four to six weeks is really optimistic.

But I think if they were in the real world, they would wait six, eight weeks, but they're probably going to bring them back around week five or so, week five, you know, week five or six of the injury. Yeah, well, what's complicating all of this is, I mean, they're right in the middle of a fight for the AFC North with the Ravens. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, they're four and four, Ravens are five and three. And then, you know, you mix in, you know, there's three teams in the AFCEs with five wins right now.

So, I mean, they're not only in the mix with the Ravens, but they're right there in the AFC wildcard hunt. So, yeah, I think we'll see Chase again this year. I'm right there with you. I am very worried about what kind of form he'll be in when he gets back, especially if they do rush him back. I'm a little less inclined to buy right now. But, I mean, obviously when Chase is out there, he's a freak.

And he is built different, dude. I mean, he clearly played through that. Well, yeah, that's what I was going to say. He played through it initially. And it just wouldn't have been smart for him to continue to do that. No. No, absolutely not. But yeah, he's clearly built different.

Keenan Allen, though, might not be built different. He's 30 years old, poor guy. He's got this hamstring injury who, I mean, man, he's been dealing with this all year. It's just one of these things, man, where he just hasn't been able to get right. I think at this point the Chargers would have IR at him if they knew that he just could not get it right. He came back at one in their game before the buy, only ended up playing a few snaps in the first half. and in that second half didn't play at all because I guess he tweaked it or just didn't feel right. Then he comes out of the buy this week and doesn't practice at all.

I don't really know where we go from here. The Chargers keep saying he's week to week. They can keep saying that as long as they want. The bottom line is I have no clue when Keenan's coming back. I mean, at this point, man, I think you have no, if you drafted him, you still have no other choice but to hold him and put him in your IR spot, that this is not somebody I'd be trading for it. No, and I knew that when I traded for him in our staff league, which, by the way, I'm still 0 and 8. I'm going to see how far I can go without a win in this league. I'm just absolutely awful.

So I traded for him when the initial injury occurred. Or no, I guess it would have been like in the middle of it. It would have been like week four of the injury. Because I just knew that, okay, my team's bad. I need to bring on some, I need to bring on some risk, right? And I think that's how you should generally view your teams is if you know your teams on the bubble or not that great, gotten lucky and you need to accept some variance and some volatility to go after the soft tissue guys. I think that's one way to do it. And it backfired on me. Haven't gotten a point from Allen since I made that trade. Probably won't get a point from him this week. And this happens, man. I don't know if you remember Julio Jones last year in Atlanta. That's essentially what happened.

Like the frustrating thing for these guys is when these hamstrings don't tweak and when they don't freak out on them, they can still ball, man. Like Julio was ball in that year, but he just couldn't say on the field because the hamstring wouldn't let him. It wouldn't let him go. And so I don't think that Keenan Allen's toast per se, I think he still is going to be struggling with this the rest of the season here. But I do think that based on his skill set and how he gets open and how he, you know, is productive, I think that he can be a decent buy candidate in 2023. I don't know if he's going to hit a ceiling or anything like that. But yeah, I think Keenan Allen's a guy you just got to hold on tight, maybe give it another couple of weeks and see what you get from potentially in the fantasy playoffs.

Yeah, I mean, that's all you can really do at this point. On that note, Josh Palmer dealt with an ankle injure, I believe it was, in weeks four and five. He ended up trying to play through it a little bit. Really didn't play that well. Snaps were cut. Only got a few targets. But in the games, week two and three, before he got hurt, he had four for 30 and one against the Chiefs, and then six for 99 on nine targets in the next game.

And then their game in week six, he had nine for 57 as a starter. So Josh Palmer is at least sitting well right now with no Big Mike, no Kenan. By the way, with Big Mike, Staley basically came out and said that he's going to miss four weeks minimum. That was last week. So we're in the week three. The earliest, I think we could see, Mike Williams at this point, is week 11, week 12. I know that aligns with everything that you put together too. I just wanted to note that.

But, yeah, Mike Williams is out for at least. a couple more games here. So Josh Palmer's sitting on. I really like Gerald Everett this week and two, Edwin. I think if you got him, you picked him up late, got him off waivers. He is, you know, you know what tight-in's been this year. So he's a top five, top six play this week against Atlanta. We'll keep it going.

Moving forward here and talk about Monday night. Mark Andrews and Gus Edwards are both questionable for the game of Monday night, Edwin. So we're going to be waiting through the weekend to see what's going on with them. Andrews has a shoulder injury along with a knee. he had been he's missed a bunch of practice the last students with his knee injury and the shoulder he hurt in their Thursday night game and I'll let you kind of get into the specifics of that and also Gus Edwards picked up a hamstring injury it looked like he borderline hyper extended his knee on that Thursday night game I'm not sure if it was the same knee he ended up having to

have surgically repaired so where do we stand on Andrews and where do we stand on Edwards for Monday night yeah so this is going to be kind of a tough call obviously Andrews is the bigger one here. And what we know based on the video is it looked like an AC sprain. By all accounts, he's got a decent shot to play, depending on how the Ravens want to play this. I would call the Ravens semi-aggressive in the way that they manage their injuries. I think that the situation with the division right now will force their hand.

I do think considering the average return for tight ends is 10 days or nine days for this. and it'll be around 11 days. Like he is right on the border, right? Like he's right there at that mesh mark. So I would definitely, I can see him be in a game time decision and I can see him playing because he's, you know, battled through this before. He's going to have a whole 11 days to get through since the injury. So I would be optimistic on Andrews, but again, I think it's sort of a toss-up.

So in terms of Gus Edwards, they did report Ian Rappcourt said, this is he might not miss more than a week i do think i can only assume but i do think that was the same knee that edwards had the hamstring on that would make sense considering that the hamstring is also damaged when he had that that injury that he had last last year during practice so it would make sense so gus edwards i wouldn't necessarily anticipate playing i do think that andrews has a chance and we don't you know we don't we saw last week right we don't need andrews to practice all week for him to come out and play. So it's tough. I think that if you are in a close matchup and you just need one of those guys who falls forward for 38 yards, then, you know, pick one of those guys up and do it.

But if you're in a position where you're like, man, I just, I just need a swing for the fences. I think you wait on Andrews because I do think he's got a chance as of today. Yeah, I'm with you. I think if you've got Andrews, you're most likely waiting. Maybe you've had a chance this week to pick up Isaiah Whiteley as like a handcuffed tight-in situation. and if you're sharp enough to do that, obviously just hold it out. But I mean, I don't know, man. Robert Tunian, I guess would be my favorite guy this weekend. And even that feels a little gross.

Great matchup lines have given up a bunch of production to tight ends. I think Tanya would probably be the only guy. I'd be comfortable, like just picking up straight up off the Waver wire and playing over Andrews. We do get word on like Saturday or Sunday. Other than that, man, I'm just waiting because after tight end 11, tight end 12 in our rankings, which is Tanya, Knox, Gassiki. I, in Hearst, Hittnerst too, I put him in that group after Batman. I don't feel good about anybody.

Like literally no one. Abolish the tight end position. I'm playing in the league this year where it's only flexes. You have a single quarterback league and then like, I think six or seven flexes. Dude, if every league were like that, oh, God, I would love that. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think that's kind of the way we're trending in fantasy in general. Like your more standard league is going to be, instead of the one flex spot and two receivers,

you're going to see three receivers and two flex spots, along with a tight end, just to kind of like, I mean, everyone has to play. I still think everybody should have to play a tight end, but I think just adding more positions will take away some of that variability. Because, I mean, really, it's Kelsey at the top. Andrews and then, you know, I guess Goddard has kind of thrown his hat in there, but he's still not even close to Andrews and Kelsey at this point when healthy. So, yeah, man, it's just, it's a brutal position. We have freaking Tassum Hill at Tideon 6. I mean, like, if you had told me, Edwin, in week nine, that in our projections, we'd have Tason Hill as like a top eight tight end. I would tell you that every single tight end, like, lost of them.

It's unbelievable. Nope, most of them fully healthy. Oh, dude. That's the other thing. That's the other thing. I mean, we've lost Irv. And Logan Thomas died this year, which was kind of predictable. We've lost in Joku.

But in general, I mean, it's been a pretty healthy year. I mean, Kittles stayed relatively healthy. he had that injury, obviously early on the year. But anyway, I'll digress. Tied into such a wasteland at this point, there's not even worth talking about. Two injury situations I want to ask you about for next week, and then we'll get out of here.

First one being Debo Samuel. He has a hamstring injury. I think he picked it up in that Rams game. Not the Rams game. They played the Rams last week. Who did they play the week before? I can't even remember at this point. Good question.

I don't remember. I can't even remember this point. But he picked up an injury. Oh, it was against the Chiefs. They got... Chiefs, Chiefs. Yeah, they got boat race in that game. He got hurt.

I think in that game, didn't practice all last week. Obviously, they had the lead up to the bias, so they're just like, screw it, one is giving you a week off. But Edwin, man, we've seen so many guys this year with these lingering hamstring injuries. It's not just Keenan. It's John Dotson. There's been a bunch of dudes this year who have these lingering hammies, and you've been on top of this.

This is, you know, hamstrings are typically a much longer recovery window for receivers compared to any other position. and hopefully, hopefully we're crossing our fingers here that Debo can come out of the, out of the buy and not miss any practice. Have you seen anything in your injuries sleuthing over the last couple of, a couple of days here that we suggest that Debo is going to miss another game? I haven't seen anything. It's always really hard when the team is heading into a buy to know exactly what's going on.

So that's something that I'm, that I'll keep an eye out for. but in terms of averages, you would assume if this was a Damien Harris type injury that, you know, a hamstring injury, that you would see Debo Samuel after the buy. I think that's totally reasonable. But again, if it's not, you know, we're going to know right away on the practice reports. Like if he comes out after the buy and he's still DNP on Wednesday, that's something to keep an eye on. And that's that that gives us a clue that it's a little bit more severe. But yeah, man, I think that Debo has a chance. He has a history of these soft tissue things.

They don't tend to linger for him. So hopefully he can push through it and get to where he needs to be. But one to three weeks is typically what we're looking at. And usually the average is like 1.4 or something like that. So he should be beyond that by the time of the biweek hits. So I think we should be able to see him unless it's more severe. Okay. Good.

Yeah. We're just crossing fingers there with Debo. You know, we've been talking about bylaws the whole pot. I think Debo would be the one guy that's hurt. that I would actually try to buy right now because I'm with you. I think it's a fairly minor injury based on everything I've read too. All right. Zicchio Alliot, he's dealing with his knee injury.

And I mean, Tony Pollard looks amazing, but the running back coach, or maybe it wasn't a running back coach. One other coaches came on said that, like, Tony Pollard is a type of guy that we don't want to give more than like 25 or 30 snaps. We've seen when we do that, and his effectiveness starts to win. And I think that actually makes a lot of sense. You know, I think in general, the Cowboys get a lot of. of shit for rushing Michael Gallup back. They mishandle the Paul and Schultz situations. They've mishandle a lot of injuries. But I think the usage with Pollard makes a lot of sense, actually.

Like, he's not one of these players where you want to give Belkow touches to. They want to keep him effective. And I think it makes sense for him to split with Zeke. The problem I have is when Gerra Jones comes out and says that, we live and die with Zeke. What? Like, get out of here. Zeke has not been Zeke for three years. He looks good. He looks better than he has in three years. but Tony Pollard's got to be heavily involved. Bottom line is, Evan, what's the situation with Zeke? And do you think he'll come back for next week? Yeah, so that's a good question.

I really don't know because these are really vague injuries. These can last up to two to three weeks. If he re-injured the PCL that he injured last year, which by all accounts, that's what we think is going on here, then this is going to be a problem yet again like it was in 20. I think he's got a chance to come back after the buy. But again, I don't know how effective he's going to be rest of season because Zeke doesn't miss time, man.

Like this has been this, this is the first year, you know, because of injury that he hasn't just not been effective, like actually missed time. And so it's going to be a really difficult thing. Like I just don't know what to do with any Zeke that I had. And I tried to say this off season, you know, it was difficult because I was trying to convey the fact that I didn't think Zeeke was washed. And I think a lot of his lack of production was from that PCL. But then, you know, he's got Tony Pollard nipping at his heels. And so it was almost like, I think in hindsight, Zique was a fade because of a specific situation and the context behind

his lack of production in 2021. But I don't think that Zeek is washed necessarily. So now we're moving forward with this like two to three week injury. And I think that depending on how Dallas wants to swing it, And based on his history, I would assume Zeeq is back after the buy, just everything, given everything we know. Yeah, I was fading Zieg not because of the injury. I was with you. I didn't think he was washed at all. And I think he's proven everybody right that he's not washed. He's looked great this year, to be honest with you.

I mean, this is the best he's looked in a couple years. I was fading him just because I didn't think his role would be very good. I think, you know, I thought Pollard would be more involved than he has been. You know, I got a lot of stuff wrong this year. But I think the Zique thing was one of the things I certainly got right, with that being seven. though, I think Zika is going to be a thorn in the side of Pollard all year. I mean, you know, I think it makes sense for the Cowboys to kind of, I wouldn't say limit Pollard. They're not limiting him. It's more so they're just trying to keep him effective, trying to

keep him healthy. And they realize that he's their best back and he's their best chance out of, you know, an explosive run game in the playoffs, which they desperately need. So I think it makes some sense. Edwin, really quick injury notes. We really don't need to discuss any of these guys. We're really just waiting on news for all these guys here. But I do want to touch on three things here. Ryan Tannahill has an ankle injury. He did not practice on Thursday. My gut tells me he's going to try to go. And if he does, you noted an injury insights that he's not going to be able to move basically back there. So we'll see a lot of Derek Henry, regardless of it's Tannehill under center on Sunday night or Malik Willis again. I was looking for news on Cordill-Patterson this morning,

saw a Falcons B, his name is slipping my mind right now, but Falcons B basically said no news on C-Pat yet. Patterson came out and said he was at 90% this week coming off a knee scope, pretty minor procedure, but he's 31. Obviously a 31-year-old coming off in knee injury is never good. But it looks like Patterson will play this weekend, but really, again, we're waiting on news for that one. And as we were coming on, Chuba Hubbard was actually ruled out Edwin with an ankle injury. So it'll be the Deonté Foreman show once again for the Panthers. Panthers are big seven-point favorites against the Bengals.

but this Bengals defense has really beat up. DJ Reader, I think, might be back this week. Their stud defensive tackle, but they have really not been good on the ground since losing Reader, and they're down a couple corners here. So Panthers could definitely keep this game close this week. Edwin, this has been great now. I appreciate your time, as always.

As always, check out the injury insights on fantasy points.com. Go to the site, hit the research and news button. Scroll to the right. You'll see injury insights and injury reports. That's where you can get all. of Edwin's takes. Also subscribe to the injury-prone podcast. That's Edwin's show, where he goes into a lot more detail than we do here. It's just kind of this overview, late-week overview, to kind of carry you through the weekend and help your teams for the future. Edwin,

thanks, man. I appreciate your time. I'm Graham. We'll catch you guys next week for the week 10. We're getting in the double digits next week, Edwin, week 10, injury roundup podcast next week. We'll catch you next. 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.