Fantasy Football Today - 09/16: Injury Insight, Advanced Stats and More (Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: September 16, 2019

Dr. David Chao (@ProFootballDoc) joins us to talk about Ben Roethlisberger's future and Drew Brees' timeline. Can Brees be the same old Brees when he comes back? And Dr. Chao talks about injuries to the PHI WRs and some key RBs. Then Will Brinson hops on the show (12:00)! Adam and Will disagree on Juju Smith-Schuster's value. Would you rather have Juju or Gurley rest of season? Finally, we're joined by Chris Towers (22:40) with a look at snap counts, Dak Prescott's play action passing, Marquise Brown's routes and more. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Fantasy Football Today from CBS Sports. Here we go! Email us at fantasyfootballatcbsi.com. Here we go! It's time to dominate your fantasy league. Let's go! Now, here's some combination of Adam, Dave, Jamie, and Heath. Welcome to the Monday special edition of Fantasy Football Today.

I'm Adam Azer. Hope you all had a great Sunday. Hope you enjoyed the Sunday night show. If you haven't heard it, please go back and listen. We did all the fantasy analysis. But today we have our trio of guests. We have Dr. David Chow at ProFootballDoc on Twitter. We have Will Brinson and we have Chris Towers. The injuries are so big.

We're going to lead with Dr. Chow today. Hey, good afternoon, doctor. How you doing? I'm doing fine. How about you? I'm doing all right. I mean, I feel bad for the Steelers, you know, the guys who have Juju Smith-Schuster and Ben Roethlisberger and the Michael Thomas, Drew Brees owners and all that. But, you know, we know Roethlisberger's out for the season. And I was watching some baseball the other day and I saw a pitcher on the Blue Jays, Terrence UCL, you know, while pitching,

and it was really sad. He went down. And then when I saw Roethlisberger on Sunday, I have no idea. We don't know what the injury is, right, as of now? Well, they say he needs surgery, and his season is done. And yesterday, even in-game, I said the worry is for that dreaded ulnar collateral ligament, the way he was acting,

and especially with the information that it was hurting him before Sunday. It sort of put the picture all together. Yeah, and that's what it reminded me of, a pitcher sort of going down, and it just felt bad. So he is out for the year. Obviously, we know seasonal redraft leagues, you cut them, but for the Ben Roethlisberger dynasty owners, do you think this is, I know you don't know that much. I don't want to put you on the spot,

but what do you think the long-term outlook is right now? If you have any information about Roethlisberger? Well, the long-term outlet is he's done for the year period and a discussion and we'll have no chance of coming back. In terms of for next season, there is reason to believe that he could be ready for next season, but there is no guarantee that he will be ready for next season. Without getting too technical,

in some ways throwing a football is easier than throwing a baseball, and in some ways it's harder. And in some ways, it's harder. And I'll give you a quick explanation. Obviously, we have one big example of Jake Delome tearing his omiclonal ligament and having surgery in 2007. And really none that I know of in between, at least not at this NFL level. But even from 2017 to now, we've got dozens of examples of major league baseball pitchers. The torque is different on your elbow. What makes pitching harder is that you're pitching

from a mound. So you're kind of going downhill and most pitches are closer to 90, 95% effort. Whereas football is easier because you're not making max velocity throws the majority of the time. There's a lot more touch passing. What makes football harder to recover from an omiclod ligament is that it's not static. Pitching, the mound is static. It's not moving. You have your feet set under you, et cetera, and no one's running at you. For football, obviously, your feet aren't set. You can't always step into throws. You have to change your arm angle. Even halfway through a throw as a safety or a DB jumps the route,

you sort of change where you put the ball, and that puts extra pressure. So that's what Big Ben is going to need to negotiate and remains to be seen right now if he'll make it right at the beginning of the season. What do you think about the Drew Brees diagnosis? Do you think six weeks is a realistic timeline for him? I do. That's what I posted yesterday. In some ways, surgery is good news. I understand that Sean Payton has now said it's not final and the whole deal, but I think it is fait accompli that he's going to have surgery because it actually cuts his timeline.

Without surgery, it could easily go 12 weeks or longer and sometimes in a cast. With surgery, the over-under is about six weeks and it's realistic. My guess is the Saints will manage their roster spots and keep them off of injured reserve in case he can come back earlier than missing eight games, which I think he has a reasonable chance of. That injury is fairly reliable and predictable how it will do in the recovery, and six weeks is a good timeline. It's a fast timeline, but this is the NFL. This is Drew Brees. This is the Saints' good medical staff.

So I think that's what everyone is probably going to target. And you think he comes back and he is Drew Brees. This is the Saints kid medical staff. So I think that's what everyone is probably going to target. And you think he comes back and he's Drew Brees? Well, I mean, I think some could argue that Drew Brees, like everyone is human and maybe getting a little bit older, but beyond that, uh, he still should, this is a minor deal. The recovery from this type of ligament surgery in the thumb is very, very, I don't want to say routine, like it's easy, but it usually follows pattern. There's few things to complicate it. And therefore, I think he will be fine. I'm not a fantasy expert, as we discussed, but if you think Drew Brees is valuable and you already have him on your team

and you can find a way to keep him and play with your roster, I think he's going to come back and be fine later on this season. All right, Dr. Chow, let's talk about some running backs here. James Conner reportedly does not have a serious knee injury, and LaShawn McCoy is going to get an MRI on his ankle. What do you think about these two guys, Conner and McCoy? Well, on James Conner, the injury to his left knee, which is not the previous MCL and surgery knee that he had, it looked like a hyperextension injury. By video, there's no major structural

damage. So this isn't going to be a long-term thing. But on MRI, the worry is, is there a bone bruise? If there is, there could be a week or two, no more than four weeks that he might miss, but it won't be long-term. So a little bit to be determined. At this point, I think he's probably in the two to three week range. As far as LaShawn McCoy, I tried to go look at video. I probably have to wait for the all 22 to get different angles. He was just in a pile and you couldn't even see what was happening to his ankle on the play on his last carry of the game. So that's a little harder for me to say where he's at and what he has. So we'll have to follow carry of the game. So that's a little harder for me to say where he's at and what he has. So we'll have to follow along in the news.

You can tell me if this is a stupid question. I have no, I ask stupid questions all the time and I get called out on it. So it's fine. What exactly is a bone bruise? Do you want a stupid answer or a real one? No, just kidding. There are different types of bone bruises. Think about it this way. There is the bone bruise that let's say you hit your tibia or shin, and it's just really painful. You just hit the side of the bone and it's really painful. And there are bone bruises that involve the surface or just beneath the surface of the knee joint. So direct blows cause contusions, bone bruises that are just essentially a pain tolerance thing. But indirect blows when knees or a joint are jammed together, that's something you want to wait to heal.

It's almost like an elephant stomping on the grass, the grass being the articular cartilage, the bone underneath being like the dirt. When an elephant stomps on the grass and you continue to play football on the grass, that grass might die out. So there's sort of a temporary keep off the grass sign to let the grass recover. In this case, it's the articular cartilage surfaces. So if it's a bone bruise from the joint being jammed together, that is a bigger deal than if it's from a direct blow type bruise. Okay. Sounds painful. That's all I know. Probably more than you asked for there.

Now I've got to think about elephants stomping on me. It was a painful night for the Philadelphia Eagles. Alshon Jeffrey, a calf injury. Deshaun Jackson, a groin injury. So rough Sunday night football for them. Any info on Jackson and Alshon? Yeah, and you can throw Dallas Goddard into the mix, right? He re-aggravated, it seems like, that calf injury from week one preseason.

All three of them were questionable and did not return. They seemed to me to be just emergency players. And that was probably smart because you don't want to turn a muscle injury, an early season muscle injury, that lingers. So don't have any detailed information on them. But given that a calf injury can linger, and for Deshaun Jackson, a speedster and cutting, but growing is very important. I would expect a short absence for these guys this week coming up. If, if I were a betting man,

I'd say at least two out of the three don't play. Oh, okay. If not, if not three out of three, they have Detroit this week. That'll be an interesting game. Okay.

Yeah. And obviously whence boy, Nelson Aguilar is going to be a hot topic on the Waver Wire show tomorrow. Despite dropping what probably would have been the game-tying touchdown, he ended up with eight catches, 107 yards, and a touchdown. And just wondering if you had a chance to watch Joe Mixon, and I wonder how much the ankle affected him, but it is two straight terrible games for Joe Mixon so far. He had 11

carries for 17 yards for the season. He has 17 carries for 27 yards. It's not the Joe Mixon that we know and love with Buffalo on the road coming up. Yeah, I don't know if what do you think about Mixon in that ankle? Well, you know, I think he wasn't 100%. Obviously, there's a difference between playing and being 100%, and he was borderline to play, and so he did make it. But clearly, at this point, not 100%. But next week should be better. But like I said, clearly, if you have a choice the first two weeks between Joe Mixon and Dalvin Cook,

we know which one you should pick, right? Yes, I would say so. Dalvin Cook, boy, that guy is special. And Dr. Chow, thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate it. And we hope to speak to you next week. Yep. And I mentioned Dalvin Cook because as we talked about earlier, that was my sleeper. He's going to have a good year. Everyone forgot about him with his ACL and then hamstring last year. But he was my sleeper up-and-comer pick this year. I'm sure he's cutting. He's planting pretty hard on that leg and making those cuts.

And I'm sure his doctors are proud, right? Oh, yeah. Very proud. There you go. Thanks, Adam. Thank you. We'll take a quick break. And when we come back, Will Brinson from the Pick 6 podcast,

one of our NFL writers on CBSSports.com, he is here to talk about the fantasy impact of the injuries to Breeze and Roethlisberger. Kick off an exciting football season with BetMGM, an official sportsbook partner of the National Football League. Yard after yard, down after down, the sportsbook Born in Vegas gives you the chance to take action to the end zone and celebrate every highlight reel play.

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A's. Sorry. Hey, are you excited about iTunes mailbags? They're my favorite things in the entire world. I love iTunes mailbags. I really do. Because our listeners of the Pick 6 podcast ask us bizarre questions like who would survive if you were all

thrown onto a desert island in a Hunger Games-style situation? And, of course, the answer is not me. Oh, it wouldn't be me either if I got that question for this podcast. Not a chance. Well, anyway. Actually, who would survive? Would it be you?

Between you, Dave, Jamie, and Heath? Yeah. It wouldn't be me, and it wouldn't be Jamie. I would give it to Heath. Yeah, I would too. Yeah. He has a beard. Yeah.

It just shows toughness. All right, so... Dave would snack on you and then Heath would sneak up behind him and cut his throat with a hastily fashioned bamboo knife. Well, if you have any fantasy questions, you can ask them in iTunes.

What you're going to do is you're going to leave us a beautiful five-star review and help us out, help us grow our show. We'd really appreciate it. And ask us a question and we will read them throughout the week, but mostly on our Saturday mailbag. The Saturday mailbag should be starter set only, and it should not include any Thursday questions. So if you ask us a question for Saturday's mailbag, make sure you meet those criteria. And I got one more thing

to promote, but I'll do that later. Your reaction to Ben Roethlisberger being out for the season with the elbow injury. Before the show started, you and I went through the game logs, and we looked at Antonio Brown in five games over the last few seasons without Ben Roethlisberger. He had two 100-yard games. He had no touchdowns. But the first three games he played, he had less than 50 yards. So, obviously, this doesn't affect Antonio Brown, but it's a juju point.

I think it sucks. I didn't realize yesterday has Juju actually put up decent numbers with Rudolph in the second half, but a lot of them came on a flea flicker and I did not realize that. So, um, I guess if I'm drafting today, I think Juju's like a third round pick and I'm, I need to be even nervous about that all right so I said on fantasy football today on on the video version with Jamie Eisenberg and he put out a poll about this I would right now if I were the owner of Todd Gurley I would go to the Juju owner or and I or the Michael Thomas owner with the breeze injury that we'll talk about and I would offer them Todd Gurley for one of those guys and I think they'd probably say yes,

because they're paranoid that the quarterback drop off is going to be a problem for the receivers. And of course it is like Juju is not going to end up with, he's not going to end up leading the league and targets. Now I think that's highly unlikely. I think the Steelers will, I don't think Steelers are dead. I mean, like Mason Rudolph was a high pick.

He was, he was a top prospect. He was Chris surpasses number one quarterback in his draft class. I think the problem, the bigger problem, Adam for Juju is that I don't think you're going to see Mason Rudolph lock into one receiver like a J the value of Juju Smith-Schuster are Vance McDonald who saw seven targets with two touchdown catches from Mason Rudolph on Sunday in in week two in relief against the Seahawks I think that says a lot young quarterbacks like to lean on tight ends I would not be surprised at all if Vance McDonald is a viable uh you know lower end number one tight end it's over there Mark Andrews or any of the

bigger names but I think McDonald's value could still be very good. And I think James Washington is a guy that you need to pick up because Dante Moncrief's been terrible. And James Washington played college football with Mason Rudolph at Oklahoma State. He's not someone you need to pick up. You are not looking at a good offense anymore. I mean, in a deeper league maybe, but...

I disagree. You don't think this is a code red? Like, I'm making too much of it. You think, because to me, trading Todd Gurley for Juju Smith-Schuster is, is ludicrous. I would not do the trade. If I called you, it was like, here's Gurley. Do you want, do you have Juju? Of course.

Take Juju off my hands. Of course. Look, I'm not doing that. If I'm like, I mean, well, I'm doing it because I believe in it, but I understand if somebody is two and oh, and has a good receiver group, like, or if I have Stefan Diggs and I'm doing it because I believe in it, but I understand if somebody is 2-0 and has a good receiver group, or if I have Stephon Diggs and I'm petrified about the Vikings, I'm trying to fashion some package where I can get Juju back or Thomas back because the owner's freaking out.

Specifically, if I'm 0-2 or even 1-1 and I don't think my team's that good, I'm going to go buy low on Juju. How is Todd Gurley buying low? Because Todd Gurley got one goal line. Why are they going to keep feeding Todd Gurley? They gave him 19 touches. Why on earth would you trade? He's not going to get above 20.

I could understand, you know, trading David Montgomery for Juju Smith Schuster. If you wanted to do that. And even that, like I'm, I'm very nervous. So I'm not going to give up anything of value right now,

but I'm going to be, I think the most panicky about Juju Smith Schuster at this point, I can just see it going really poorly. Um, but I don't think Todd Gurley is a buy low. I think Todd, I think that's giving up too much for Juju Smith-Schuster at this point. I can just see it going really poorly. But I don't think Todd Gurley is a buy low. I think that's giving up too much for Juju. And the fact that you kind of agree that just about any Smith-Schuster

owner would make that trade means that Todd Gurley is too much to give up. You should go lower because you don't have to give that up. I'm just telling you where I value them. If we were doing a draft today, I would still take Juju above Todd Gurley. And I would still take Juju above Todd Gurley, and I would still take Michael Thomas above Todd Gurley.

That's fine. You don't have to agree with it. That's just how I feel. I'm more confident in Michael Thomas. I'm more confident in Teddy Bridgewater, and the fact that Drew Brees could miss only six games, six weeks or so. Mason Rudolph is a guy who can go vertical, man. I'm telling you, this offense is not dead. I'm not saying it's going to come out and light up the world of fire.

I'm going to hammer the Steelers plus seven if that gets to that in San Francisco next week. I think they'll have a nice game. I think Mason Rudolph will play well. I think we'll be surprised at the value of these targets. And again, I'm not saying you've got to jump all over James Washington, but if people are dropping him in your league, grab him. He's going to

replace Dante Moncrief. Moncrief sucks. All right. So, I mean, you see the difference in opinion that Will and I have on the situations. What do you think about Kamara, Connor? Let's go to the Saints. We have a Tuesday show. We'll talk so much about it

with Dave and Jamie, but we breeze out six-ish weeks, maybe more. What do you think of the Saints? Their offense is not as good, obviously. I actually think the guy who sees a bump here

is Latavius Murray. I think they're going to try and sort of, you know, when you look at what their schedule is, right, they get the Seahawks on the road in week three, tough matchup. Cowboys in week four, tough matchup. Buccaneers in week five, that could turn into a shootout. Jaguars, Bears in week six and seven. I think you're looking at four of the next five weeks,

the Saints are going to try and minimize opportunities for the other team to score, play great defense. They played great defense against the Rams on Sunday. I mean, if the refs don't bleep up the Cameron Jordan touchdown, it's 10 to three Saints at halftime. And I think that they might be able to squeak out a win. I just think they're not going to try and air it out with Teddy Bridgewater. Jared Dubin pointed out in the Pick 6 podcast on Monday, he would not be surprised at all if they maybe started to incorporate some read option stuff with Teddy Bridgewater, which could help Alvin Kamara in terms of the run game.

I would downgrade him a little bit because I think they're going to be more of a ground and pound team. Bump up Latavius Murray. Bump down Michael Thomas a little bit. And then I probably would say that the rest of the guys, Jared Cook takes a tumble down the tight end rankings. Oh, yeah. I just think the rest of those guys are going to be not unusable or anything like that,

but you're not going to be starting fringe Saints guys on your team as flex position guys, like a Traquan Smith or anything like that, hoping that they have big weeks. I just don't see those coming. Teddy Bridgewater, even when he was taking the Vikings to the playoffs, was really sort of a high floor, low ceiling game manager type. And I would expect we see the same from him, even in the Sean Payton offense. So we got a couple of minutes left for Will here. What else is on your mind? You were all about Dak Prescott a week ago. That looked pretty good. I think it's going to look good again in week three against the Dolphins. Who did I say

I would take Dak Prescott over? Aaron Rodgers or like something insane? And Lamar Jackson. I think it's going to look good again in week three against the Dolphins. Who did I say I would take Dak Prescott over? Aaron Rodgers or like something insane? And Lamar Jackson. I feel I still think those two guys, I mean, I don't know that you can't buy a lot of them. I think you did say Aaron Rodgers, didn't you? I did. I said I'd take Lamar over Aaron Rodgers. I still feel confident saying like, would you trade

Aaron Rodgers for Lamar Jackson right now? I'd rather have Aaron Rodgers. Okay. But I have been trying to get this out of the other guys, and they won't go there. I do feel like there's a chance Lamar Jackson is transcendent this year and a complete fantasy winner. Yeah. He's the first quarterback to ever pass for 250 yards and rush for 120.

That's a league winner if you have Lamar Jackson, your team, I will say this about Aaron Rogers, his next three weeks, Broncos at home, Eagles at home, Eagles defenses is dinged up. I think if you're going to buy low on Aaron Rogers, do it after week three.

And they play the Broncos who have a good defense. They're going to be at home. Vic Fangio knows how to play Aaron Rogers. They're going to be desperate. If he doesn't have a big game next week, his owner is going to be panicking. And you could probably get him for 50 cents on the dollar. And then he has Eagles, Cowboys, Lions, Raiders, Chiefs, Chargers, Panthers.

That's a nice run. I think we could see Aaron Rodgers get comfortable in that offense and really rip off some games heading into his week 11 bye. The only word of caution if you were trading for Aaron Rodgers, playoff matchups, I know it's early bears and Vikings. Yeah. And at Minnesota too. He doesn't have a great history there.

Uh, at least since Mike Zimmer came to town. All right, well, thank you for your time, my friend. Always fun. Adam,

I will talk to you next week. All right. Before we talk to Chris towers, I want to talk to you about light stream, light stream.com slash FFT. It's a fact. Refinancing your credit card balances can lower your interest rate and save you money, and you don't have to be a financial expert to do it. You just got to use Lightstream, okay? This is a credit card consolidation loan

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Terms and conditions apply and offers are subject to change without notice. Visit lightstream.com for more information. All right, everybody. Get your calculators out. We are crunching. We are crunching numbers with Chris Towers. What's up, Chris? I'm a little jealous that Heath gets The Heat Is On,

which is a much better song, much more recognizable, much better, a driving beat. And I get a kind of boring song that maybe 2% of the audience might recognize. Yeah. Well, this is from Revenge of the Nerds, in case you missed Monday's show. Last Monday's show. And Chris is here to talk numbers, alright?

Give us some fun snap counts and some cool advanced stats, if they're advanced. I don't know. I don't know what an advanced stat is in football. It's not like they make it's not like babbitt but um chris give me a quarterback stat that is really interesting to you well i think we should probably start with it's not an advanced stat it's just what teddy bridgewater and mason rudolph have done in their careers i told wouldn't i tell you not to talk about these two? And you went there anyway?

You said not to talk about Drew Brees. Oh, I guess I didn't include Roethlisberger. That's true. Fine, fine. We won't talk about it. You know, give me, because they're going to be so, we already did it with Will and we'll do it tomorrow. Give me like a different quarterback.

Dak Prescott. We talked about this a little bit last week, but the trend continued last season the Cowboys did not run a particularly high amount of play action 24.9% of Dak Prescott's pass attempts were play action passes this season it's 43.1% the highest in the NFL and he is 25 of 27 with four touchdowns on play action passes. And it makes sense. This is a team that runs the ball incredibly well.

They run block incredibly well. Take advantage of that. If you believe that the running game is so valuable, and the Cowboys clearly do, the fact that they weren't using that to their advantage to create more high-efficiency passing opportunities was crazy. And Dak Prescott has been just unbelievably good I love what we're seeing from this offense it's a little worrying that uh Michael Gallup is going to be out for two to four weeks with a knee injury but you know beyond that

what we've seen from Dak Prescott this season is really incredibly encouraging yeah I mean they are rolling right now. They've had two very favorable opponents, the Giants and the Redskins. One thing I'm trying to look up here on the fly is the time of position. Well, so they'll probably struggle in week three because that run of favorable opponents comes to an end. Right, exactly. No, the Dolphins are, I think, whatever you normally expect from a player.

Should you probably, like, multiply it by two when they play the Dolphins are, I think, whatever you normally expect from a player. Should you probably multiply it by two when they play the Dolphins? Well, tell that to Julian Edelman and Josh Gordon, right? But yes, it's as good as it gets. I'm just looking at time of possession. I know the Ravens are going to be number one. The Cowboys are fifth, 32 minutes and 50 seconds so far. Through two games, Ravens, Patriots, Lions, Eagles, Cowboys, top five in time of possession. All right, let's do some snap count stuff with the running backs here.

And this one that I wanted to point out, it's at the top of your list of maybe the most interesting ones, the Niners running backs and their snaps. And Mostert had 34, Brita had 21, and Wilson had 15. I just want to kind of make sure we're not sounding the alarm, in my opinion, because I just looked at the game log before we did the show, and Mostert had 10 of his 13 carries in the second half. Wilson got almost all of his work. He got seven of his 10 carries in the fourth quarter,

and he got one other carry in the last carry of the third quarter. So he was basically the garbage time guy, and it was a blowout pretty early in the second half. Breida got seven of his 12 carries in the first half, so I'm going to look at the snap counts there and see Breida 13 fewer than Mostert and say the score did have a lot to do with it,

and Mostert was involved early, but Breida was, in my opinion, the number one guy. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about, or would you like to talk about the 49ers? Yeah, I think the one thing that you can take away from that situation is we saw this with Matt Breida last season. Every time it looked like he was going to get

an opportunity, I mean, he left this game for a few, I think at least for a drive because they were checking him, I believe, for a concussion in the first or second quarter, and it just felt like what we saw last season, which was every time he got an opportunity, he did really well, but there was always something that came up and maybe they're just trying to be proactive about avoiding that so that, you know, they're not trying to give Matt Breida this workhorse load and then he breaks down. So maybe they're going to split the work.

But like you said, I think Breida is the back to own there for as long as Tevin Coleman's out. Tell me about Austin Eckler and the snaps. He played about 73% of the snaps this week. He played most of the snaps, or the majority of the snaps last week. He's pretty clearly the number one. I think what we're seeing is Eckler is kind of getting the Melvin Gordon workload, and Justin Jackson's getting a little bit more of an Austin Eckler workload from 2018. Obviously not coming in the same way because Eckler was heavily involved in the passing game last season,

but he's getting a lot of really high-value snaps. And I don't know. Austin Eckler might just be a top-ten running back until if Melvin Gordon comes back, if they even, you know, what are they going to do when Melvin Gordon comes back? That's such an interesting question because they're kind of seeing that they don't really need him right now. I think Eckler's got the most interesting trade value in fantasy football. Sure.

Because you have a must-start guy until Gordon's back. And whoever you trade him to is almost certainly going to know that. The question is, when Gordon does come back, do you still have a can-start guy? I think so. You did last year for a while, but I thought it was kind of fluky. I just didn't think he had enough touches. And my opinion is no.

My opinion is not really. I don't think you're going to want to start Eckler when Gordon gets back. I think he's going to be in the 12-touch range, and I just don't think that's going to be enough, you know, unless he's getting goal line work, which I can almost guarantee he won't be. Yeah, he won't get goal line work. Another thing that I do want to point out about this is, you know, Ben Gretsch, member of the podcast,

came up before the season with this concept of high-value touches, which was basically catches and touches inside of the 10-yard line. And this is basically, I think, like, something like 75% of all fantasy production comes on catches or touches inside of the 10. Austin Eckler had nine high-value touches in week two. That was, I believe, the highest number so far, and he had eight in week one.

He is getting just incredibly efficient work along with the fact that he's been the number one running back. He fumbled at the goal line. They gave him work right after that. But he did fumble at the goal line, and he also fumbled near the goal line, I'm pretty sure, in the preseason. I know he fumbled.

I think it was inside the five. So it's something to keep in mind, but right now it looks great for Eckler. And what can you tell us about the Bears running backs? So David Montgomery kind of switched roles with Mike Davis. And in week one, Mike Davis was the guy who got the majority of the snaps. He had five high-value touches in week one. David Montgomery only only had one in in week two david montgomery had six high value touches obviously got that uh i think it was a four yard touchdown run um that's what we wanted to see i haven't i think you and i were kind of on the same page with david montgomery as a prospect didn't think he was all that impressive tons of broken tackles

in college but kind of mediocre college production under five yards per carry yeah mediocre athletic profile but seemed like a guy that scouts really liked because he did make a lot of plays so far he only has three broken tackles on 26 touches that was like the stat that everyone threw out there with david montgomery as a prospect 185 broken tackles on 573 snaps the last two years in college. That was number one. Among all running backs in the NCAA, I believe Devin Singletary was number two, but he's only had three on 26 touches.

He just, I don't know. The way everyone was talking about the Bears offense after week one, it was like David Montgomery just needs to be in there and it'll fix everything. And I think that was a bit of wishful thinking because we want David Montgomery to be the guy that gets the goal line touches in the passing game work because we want him to be fantasy viable. But what we've seen so far does not, to me, suggest that he's this incredibly dynamic playmaker.

I, yeah, I did feel that way. Just, you know, watching some college highlights, looking at the numbers. It is rare. His yards per carry was bad. His 40-yard dash time was pretty high for somebody that was getting all this hype. But then when I saw him in the preseason, I heard that he's such a great route runner.

I definitely came around. I don't know if I came too far around, but I was pro David Montgomery. We could talk about the broken tackle, all that stuff, but the fact that he had 18 carries and Cohen and Davis combined for seven, that's really all I care about. Not all I care about, but that's mostly what I care about. I kept saying that David Montgomery's time was coming. I did not think it was going to be in week two, but I don't, I like, I don't see how you turn back now. He's going to be their lead running back. I would assume so. I just, I have questions about how good he's going to be.

Maybe I'm in the minority on that one. Uh, among NFL people and, and fancy people, it seems like everybody's really excited about him. I think there's a better chance. He's just a guy. Let's see. Let's do one more.

I don't quite understand why Devin Singletary didn't get nearly as much excitement as David Montgomery. I don't either. I don't either. And I really like Singletary. They were picked one spot apart. I'm excited for Singletary going forward. I think the rookie running backs could be good. We'll talk about Miles Sanders on tomorrow's show,

but let's talk about Marquise Brown. Yeah. Yeah. What do you have to say about Marquise Brown? So the Baltimore Ravens passed the ball 37 times yesterday, right? That's the number. And Marquise Brown ran 37 routes. So he was basically out there. Obviously, he was the number one wide receiver for Baltimore in week one,

but he only ran eight routes in week one on their 20-something pass attempts. There's no question that this guy's their number one. He had 13 targets, I believe. He looks electric. He has been incredibly impressive so far. And, you know, Lamar Jackson taking this apparent leap, we'll see if it's actually a leap it's only two games it's still early but he went from an incredible athlete who was developing as a passer to what we've seen so far and especially yesterday actually looks like a legitimate nfl passer like it's hard to fake at least being average when you've looked this good for two weeks. I'm pretty shocked at how good he has looked passing the ball.

I'm shocked. I'm a true believer, so I knew this was coming. You've always been very pro-Lamar Jackson. I can't believe what he's doing. It's awesome. He threw 37 passes in Week 2. He threw 20 in Week 1. Good stuff from Marquise Brown.

Good stuff from Chris Towers. Thanks, man. Thank you. I need to promote one more thing because it's your chance to win. Are you ready, Chris? How much are you going to win? $1 million. $1 million.

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Bye, Adam. Thanks to Will Brinson and Dr. David Chow. Thanks to all of you for listening. Tuesday, WaverWire, when we talk to you next.