Fantasy Football Today - 🚨Aaron Rodgers to the Steelers! Is This Great for DK Metcalf? (06/05 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to this bonus edition of Fantasy Football Today. Adam Azer and Dave Richard breaking down the breaking news. Dave with a jacket today looks sharp. Just came from CBS Sports HQ, where I was asked to give some fantasy analysis on the big news, which is. J.K. Dobbins had dinner with the Broncos. He had steak. Oh, wow.

Starting point is 00:00:25 And a Merlot to go with it. And Dave, how did he have that cooked? No, okay. Let's get to the real news here. Yeah, this is where Jamie would make a joke about how if he was like me, he would have had it sent back. But of course you're going to send your steak back if it's garbage. No, the big news, clearly the Colts, Michael Pittman limping off practice, Anthony Richardson

Starting point is 00:00:44 with his shoulder. Is that the big news? No, the big news is Aaron Rodgers. Woo, big time. Aaron Rodgers is reportedly going to sign with the Pittsburgh Steelers. I think we've been operating all off season as if that was going to happen. So right now it's- That's why this isn't big news because we kind of figured that that was going to happen.

Starting point is 00:01:01 It's not, but you know, we have new audience members, right? We're into June. Not everybody's been listening since February, um, or March or whenever. So let's talk about it. I look, let's get this out of the way. He's a super flex quarterback and that's it for now. Right. Yes. Okay. Agreed. I think, I think there's 20 other quarterbacks. I'd rather have, but he does, he does play at the jets in week one. Do you think he'll crack your top 20? There's going to be 24 other quarterbacks I'd rather start in week one than Aaron Rodgers taking on the Jets.

Starting point is 00:01:31 It is a poetic revenge game. He also plays the Packers this year if he does in fact sign with the Steelers. It's not official yet. But all right. So biggest impact with this Rodgers signing is for who? I would guess it's going to be DK Metcalf, but I mean, cause the targets would have been terrible if they were coming from Mason Rudolph or somebody else that the Steelers picked up off the scrap heap. And he will probably be the first Steelers player taken in fantasy drafts, followed closely by Caleb Johnson.

Starting point is 00:02:08 I don't think there's going to be many other Steelers players that we're going to be real excited to take. There might be like one more, two more, if you include the DST and a one QB draft that actually get picked. Robert Leonard Rogers had the second most past attempts in football last year. He played every game, but the Jets were fourth or fifth in past attempts overall. Do you think Arthur Smith gets away from his run heavy tendencies now that he has a more seasoned quarterback? He really, he did have Matt Ryan. I think they threw the ball decent about that year. I'll check You did have Matt Ryan. I think they threw the ball decent about that year. I'll check. 60.9% of the time, which is, I would agree decent.

Starting point is 00:02:48 Yeah. That's not so bad. You'll take 60%, especially from somebody like Arthur Smith. But that's the career high pass rate for Smith as a play caller six years into his NFL play calling career. I'm going to guess that the Steelers fall under that mark. I'm gonna guess that Rogers actually is gonna like not having to throw the ball 34, 35 times per game.

Starting point is 00:03:14 And that the Steelers with their rookie running back and improved offensive line, they try and win games, you know, the, the Steeler way, which has typically been running the ball, dominating defenses up front, and then leaning on the pass when needed. I say this a lot. The thing I liked the most about Aaron Rodgers,

Starting point is 00:03:37 do you see that? I didn't see anything. What happened? You notice anything about me, about my shot? Hey, your hair looks nice today. Yeah, my background fell off the wall again. So it's just a big- Maybe time for a new background.

Starting point is 00:03:51 You know what? It could be time for thumb tacks. Maybe I should just stop with the tape. What have you been using? It's been a four-year-old draft board. Scotch tape. What have you been using? Scotch tape, just a lot of Scotch tape.

Starting point is 00:04:03 Oh my gosh. I don't want to put holes in the wall, you know? You're supposed to be a professional here. Look at this. This is state of the art museum glass behind me right here. Well, yeah, you have a very good background. Anyway, Aaron Rodgers, he finds one target and he just goes there over and over and over again first six games of the season Garrett Wilson was on pace for 190 targets then they traded for Devante Adams last 11 games of the season Devante Adams was on pace for 176 targets he averaged 10 targets per game while sharing the field with Garrett Wilson

Starting point is 00:04:40 I even think if you look at Alan Lazard for half of the season and then Christian Watson got healthy and he started getting those targets and they're not just targets they're red zone, green zone, end zone targets. Aaron Rodgers is going to throw the ball to DK Metcalf. I'm gonna say DK Metcalf I don't know his highest target share of his career. Target share it's always tough to look at that because what you miss a game it hurts your target share but I think he's gonna have a I think you could have a career high in target share this year. I don't know if it's going to be a career high in targets, but he's going to get a lot

Starting point is 00:05:08 of them and he's going to get the most important ones. And I really like this for DK Metcalf. When I said this a few months ago, I don't think people were really on board. I don't know how you feel about it, but I think it was really good for him. I believe DK Metcalf has had more than seven targets per game for five straight seasons and has been over 15 PPR points once. You know, look, usually before last year, last year was a disappointing year, but usually he was always finishing around wide receiver 22 or something like that.

Starting point is 00:05:40 Right. So I think you draft them, you try to draft them a little bit lower than that. Try and take them as like one of the best wide receiver threes in fantasy because I think you're right. The targets should be there for them. I don't think the Steelers will throw the ball a crazy amount of the time, but still you're going to see a large share going to DK Metcalf. And Metcalf was on his way. I think he averaged like 15.1 PPR points per game before he got hurt last year. Remember when he got hurt, he got carted and it looked like that was like the end of the season. He came back. He wasn't the same guy. I don't necessarily want to judge him for that. I think 14 PPR points is a real fair expectation for him. And that's right about what Garrett Wilson averaged playing with Aaron Rodgers all year last year, with

Starting point is 00:06:27 most of that time being the number two target getter. And Garrett Wilson finishes inside the top 24. So I've got Metcalf 25th in my receiver rankings. And I think that that's a fair spot to put him at. And I think you're looking at like round, late round five, early round six, somewhere in that range. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, uh, would you like DK Metcalf or George Pickens?

Starting point is 00:06:49 Uh, I believe I have Metcalf over Pickens. Travis Hunter or DK Metcalf. Believe I've Hunter over Metcalf. Okay. Uh, Jerry, Judy or Metcalf. Judy over Metcalf. I want to give you a couple of interesting stats. Yeah, go for it.

Starting point is 00:07:04 And then let's finish up. We'll just talk about Friar Muth and anyone else just to get it out of the way. Okay. So the first one is one you probably could have predicted. The last time Aaron Rogers averaged over 20 fantasy points per game was 2021. And it's only been two years because we shouldn't count 2023 against him. He didn't play that much. But it's been a while since he's been good for fantasy. Here's the one that surprised me. This is a team stat. The Jets last year saw the lowest rate of eight men in the box, 12.4% of their running back runs. That tells me that defenses still worry about getting beat by Aaron Rodgers and to a degree, his best receivers. Jett's had

Starting point is 00:07:50 some good receivers last year, so it's not like the defenses were like, I think that they were worried about getting beat by Aaron Rodgers, but also the receivers played a role to it. I wonder if that's going to replicate this year and that teams playing the Steelers are still going to be concerned about Rogers beating them on longer throws. And that could open things up for the run game. And you know that Arthur Smith loves to run the ball. They've got a fresh running back in Caleb Johnson. Johnson's going to be in that same range for me, maybe a little bit later than DK Metcalf, at least in full PPR. than DK Metcalf, at least in full PPR. But round six I'd pick with Aaron Rodgers under center and the team will still run the ball a lot. I'm kind of intrigued. I want to see where that could go.

Starting point is 00:08:33 I still think Kale Johnson's going to be the 1A and Jaylen Warren will be the 1B, but Johnson might end up getting maybe one or two more touchdowns than we could have projected. If certainly way more if it were Mason Rudolph, but I think he he's I think he could get to seven or eight as a rookie. Did you know that Aaron Rodgers has been top 10 in running back target rate in four of his last five seasons? That's great. That neato. Yeah. Yeah. So in our consensus rankings, we have Caleb Johnson, 25th at running back, just after David Montgomery and Quinshawn Judkins ahead of Aaron Jones. And then Jalen Warren is 30th in our consensus PPR rankings. So got a question here from Mike, Adam, do you think I could use this to gaslight my league mates into letting Caleb Johnson fall to 202 in a 12 team league.

Starting point is 00:09:26 So that would be in a dynasty draft. Well, I'm going to tell you this. I'm doing a super flex dynasty draft right now. We're at 201 and Caleb Johnson is still on the board. I do believe he's going to select it at 201. There's only been two quarterbacks taken Warden Dart. So that surprises me. I would have expected Caleb Johnson to be picked already. Yeah, Judkins went eighth and then after that it was Matthew So that surprises me. I would have expected Caleb Johnson to be picked already. Yeah. Judkins went eighth.

Starting point is 00:09:48 And then after that, it was Matthew Golden, Colson Loveland, Emeka Abouka, and Jackson Dart. So I mean, when you, when you line up Judkins versus Johnson, and you think about which, which team's going to score more points just in a vacuum, you'll lean toward the Steelers. And you think about the play callers, both of them love to run the football. I know Judkins is good. He's going to split just like Caleb Johnson will. I think you can make the case that Caleb Johnson's the better fantasy pick. Absolutely, you can make that case. So, all right, any other takeaways like Freymuth or Roman Wilson, anything like that? Fremuth was always in the streamer, tight end category. I don't think anybody's drafting Fremuth as like a blue chip. Let's wait three or four weeks and see what happens.

Starting point is 00:10:33 If you like the matchup against the Jets, the Jets are changing their safeties. And obviously there's a big scheme change with their new coach coming in. Maybe that's an okay matchup for Pat Fremuth. Obviously that's contingent on the Steelers not adding anybody else. Our NFL insider at CBS Sports, Jonathan Jones, believes that they are trying to add somebody else. And it could be Janu. That would obviously change things quite a bit. It could be another receiver somewhere else that we're not thinking about. That would obviously hurt Pat Friar Muth. He's a late round pick.

Starting point is 00:11:06 Roman Wilson's a good route runner and he's got good hands. So I wonder if Aaron Rodgers takes a liking to him, provided that, you know, Roman is like able to run routes and he's healthy and all that. And I think he has been. Maybe put him on your radar with a late round pick in full PPR, but that's a, it's a big maybe. And again, it's contingent on the Steelers standing pat and not making any more moves. Well, it's interesting that the jets and Steelers traded quarterbacks basically, at least for, you know, it's the first six games for the Steelers. Yeah. And we talked about it, man. Like Roger's efficiency just overall wasn't as good as Fields was in six games last year.

Starting point is 00:11:45 In fact, Rogers was closer to Fields in 2023 than Fields in 2024. The obvious difference being touchdown rate. Rogers threw. He had 28 touchdowns last year. Seven of them came against the Dolphins and Jaguars late in the year. All right. Well, we get to see them in action week one on CBS. All right. For Dave Richard, I see them in action week one on CBS.

Starting point is 00:12:05 All right, for Dave Richard, I am Adam Azer. Thanks so much for watching this bonus podcast and listening to this bonus podcast. We'll talk to you on Monday. Have a great weekend, everybody. See ya.

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Fantasy Football Today - 🚨Aaron Rodgers to the Steelers! Is This Great for DK Metcalf? (06/05 Fantasy Football Podcast)

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