Fantasy Football Today - Big Injuries (McCaffrey, Deebo, Cook) and Five Big Topics (11/29 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

Christian McCaffrey is out for the season and D'Andre Swift, Dalvin Cook and Deebo Samuel are beat up too. We'll help you sort through the injuries and then recap Browns-Ravens (10:30). What a Fantasy dud that game was! ... We begin our Five Big Topics with the state of the QB position (21:00). It's getting ugly for QBs, but can we predict who will thrive down the stretch? ... We talk Myles Gaskin and some waiver wire RBs (32:30), try to figure out the Packers backfield (38:40), react to all of the Jalen Hurts hate (44:40) and discuss how trustworthy David Montgomery is going forward (51:00) ... Email us at [e-mail] Get some FFT merch here: https://store.cbssports.com/collections/shop-by-podcast/fantasy-football-today Follow our FFT team on Twitter: @FFToday, @AdamAizer, @JameyEisenberg, @daverichard, @heathcummingssr, @ctowerscbs, @BenSchragg Watch FFT on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/fantasyfootballtoday Join our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/FantasyFootballToday/ Sign up for the FFT newsletter https://www.cbssports.com/newsletter You can listen to Fantasy Football Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast." To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ 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

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Touchdown. Oh, he's done it again. Now here's some combination of Adam, Dave, Jamie, Heath, and Beck. Christian McCaffrey out for the season, for the second season in a row. We're going to be saying that, although I guess we get a little bit more clarity here in 2021 rather than just waiting for him to come back like we did last season. But Chuba Hubbard is available in about 40% of CBS leagues. We'll talk about him. We'll talk about Alexander Madison and his opportunity. Don't forget DeAndre Swift got hurt. That was way back on Thursday.

It was a terrible week, and the number three wide receiver in fantasy, Debo Samuel, is also going to miss some time. Anything else, Chris? Did I miss anything? Wouldn't Debo Samuel also be probably a top 10 running back? So, you know, another top 10 running back out. Yeah, I don't think we have to worry about the running back eligibility.

Number three. Oh, really? Yeah, hopefully he's got a short-term injury, but he is going to miss a little bit of time, apparently. Yeah, yeah, it's bad. There's no way around it. Everything that we're seeing right now, the injuries that we're seeing around the league,

it was bad. I mean, you didn't even mention, and this has kind of gone under the radar, but Aaron Rodgers said after last night's game that he is considering having surgery on his toe during the bye week. And obviously, the way they've talked about it doesn't sound like it would cause him to miss time.

But anytime you're talking about surgery, there's risk there. Is he a heel Elliot? I don't know if you mentioned him. Nope. And they're on down, but he may not play in week 13. Let's see. Darren Waller had a knee strain on Thursday.

Jalen Hurts was a little hobbled by an injury late in Sunday's loss. Pat Frymuth was evaluated for a concussion after Sunday's game. So, yeah, a lot of injuries in week 12. Yeah, and quarterback's been kind of stinky lately. That's one of the things we're going to talk about. Chris has broken it down very nicely over the last five weeks, what we've seen at the quarterback position. But a guy that, hey, could be, if he got the opportunity,

could be fantasy relevant, Taysom Hill. He's got, I don't know if he has plantar fasciitis or something similar to plantar fasciitis, but he's got a serious foot issue going on, and we may not see him start for a little while. I was hoping that this would finally be the week for Taysom Hill to take over the job, but I think that foot's going to probably prevent that. So, all right, let's talk about the news here.

I don't think it's too complicated with Minnesota. Cook is not out for the season officially, but in the meantime, you have to get Alexander Madison if he's available. He's 78% rostered. He's obviously going to be a must-start player. What do you think about the 49er situation? We'll get to Chuba Hubbard in just a second. 49er situation, if Debo misses, let's say he misses two games,

Seattle and Cincinnati, both on the road. What does this mean for Jimmy Garoppolo, who's actually been a top-10 quarterback over the last five weeks, and Kittle and Ayuk? Well, one, I think that Garoppolo being a top 10 quarterback might highlight some of the issues at quarterback that we're going to talk about a little later. But the thing is, I don't know how much impact it's going to have on Brandon Iuke or George Kittle, because with how much they've been using him as a running back, there have been plenty of opportunities for both Iuke and Kittle.

I believe Iuke is 12th in the NFL in route share over the last, I believe it was four weeks. So he's been playing right around 95% of the pass routes. George Kittle has been being used similarly. And so I don't know if, I mean, I guess there's less competition for targets, uh, with Debo out, but I think both of those guys, you know, generally we'll keep on rolling. Kittle is going to be a top three to five tight end for me. And I, you, I still don't trust him as a top 24 wide receiver moving forward,

but, um, you know, definitely someone who's going to be hard to get away from. I think it's a pretty big deal because you could see a scenario where there's a game for Ayuk where he gets three targets because Debo got 10. Sure. And I think Kittle and Ayuk are going to dominate target share now. And then you also, for Elijah Mitchell, this is good news, I think,

just because you don't have to worry about Debo getting eight carries and scoring a rushing touchdown. But at the same time, he is obviously one of the best, surprising to me, one of the best wide receivers in football. This offense is not going to be as good without him, I wouldn't think. No, that's a real concern here, for sure.

Yeah, I think the impact for the offense as a whole is greater than the impact for Iyuk and Kittle in any given game, I guess would be the way to put it. By the way, just in from Ian Rappaport, Aaron Rodgers does not plan to have surgery on his toe at this time. That's per Rappaport and Tom Pelissero. At this time is key.

The hope is during the bye it will heal and improve. Okay, let's go to the Christian McCaffrey news here. He's out for the season. And Chuba Hubbard, in the five games that McCaffrey missed, he was, I just want to get the exact numbers here. I think he was the number. I believe he averaged 12.9 PPR points per game in those games. Yeah, he was number about 18th in in both formats non-ppr and full

ppr why on earth can't i find oh because it's in a different section uh chuba hubbard yeah he was 18th in in non he was 19th in full ppr but still obviously worth using he scored double digit non-ppr and full ppr points in three or five games he had two games with four to five catches and three games with one to two catches. So that was always kind of unpredictable, his role there. Now Heath kind of mentioned this on yesterday's show and Dave that he, I think they don't think that Hubbard,

well, he for sure said he doesn't think Hubbard is going to be as good as he was. I think, I think he said he won't have the same type of role because they like Abdullah a bit. So, yeah, I mean, they've been, they mean, Abdullah has four or more targets

in four of the last five games. He played two-thirds of the snaps yesterday after McCaffrey left the game. Now, obviously, that was a weird situation because they were chasing points most of the game, but I kind of agree with Heath. I don't think Hubbard is going to be a must-start fantasy running back moving forward. I think he's a must-add, though. Would you agree with that. I don't think Hubbard is going to be a must-start fantasy running back

moving forward. I think he's a must-add, though. Would you agree with that, even with a bye this week? You know, it depends. I think I might rather, I would rather, how many must-add running backs can there be? Well, I'd rather have him than any Jets or Texans running back. I think

that's probably fair. I would rather have Jamal Williams. Oh yeah, 100%. Obviously, Alexander Madison is. I'd rather have Jamal Williams for as long as Swift is out, but McCaffrey's out for the season. Swift, I don't even know if he's going to miss a game. Right, we don't know if Swift's

going to miss a game. If you need somebody for week 13, but if you're looking rest of season, would you rather have have him i guess you'd rather have him than deontay foreman and don trail hellyard but it's close i just yeah abdullah they seem to really like him in the passing game if he's going to have that role it's going to make it really really hard and then here's the other thing oh wow i just oh i i hope you're going where did you just see it yeah i just incredibly difficult his his uh schedule is yeah i just talked myself out of tuba hubbard it's over it's over i believe it's buffalo tampa bay and new orleans yep that's and that's the fantasy playoff team yeah so i'm not sure who it is in week 14. I didn't Atlanta Atlanta. So that's fine.

But then 15 through 17 Buffalo, Tampa Bay, New Orleans, you're looking at a guy who may not have much of a passing game role, at least based on, you know, what we've seen over the last few weeks and especially yesterday. Yeah.

Hubbard may just be like a. Like, who would you rather have rest of season? Damien Harris or Chuba Hubbard? I was going to ask you that. I think given that schedule, I think I'd go Hubbard. But

I think... Yeah, I think it's close, and I'm not super excited about Damian Harris as the reason he's the player that I picked okay Cam Newton by the way expected to start in week 13 but PJ Walker could play and Sam Darnold's on

his way back as well so they are off that's week 14 I'm sorry they're off in week 13 and they'll be back in week 14 to face the Falcons and then we'll just see how it plays out with Ezekiel on Thursday at New Orleans but you got the best run defense in football and an ineffective running back with splitting work. I think if you have Tony Pollard and Zeke, you know, you're obviously hoping I think you're hoping for Zeke to at least sit one game.

And that's my that would be my expectation at this point, based on what we've heard. You know, I don't know if he he really doesn't have a history of like just sitting out right like he when he's been i guess last season it was like that lingering calf injury that that he finally missed a game with but i don't know if it was like a an acute injury rather than something that had been lingering um he plays he plays a lot yeah that's generally he he he generally does play and he doesn't really play like a limited role when he plays. So that's the frustrating thing is if you're looking at week 13 on Thursday night, if he plays, it's probably not going to just be like Aaron Jones yesterday

where he only got 11 touches. He's probably going to still have a significant role. All right, let's go to Baltimore 16 and Cleveland 10. And Zeke will probably be better than Nick Chubb was yesterday. Eight carries for 16 yards, two catches for 23 yards. And Nick Chubb already has four games this year with fewer than 12 PPR fantasy points. Last season, he had two.

Not counting the game he left with an injury after six carries. with fewer than 12 PPR fantasy points. Last season, he had two. Two games. Not counting the game he left with an injury after six carries. He had only two games with fewer than 12 PPR fantasy points. And really, this is shocking. Not shocking, but this is kind of cool. His 16-game pace, I'm going to compare last year's 16-game pace to this year's. 268 carries last year, 267 this year. 1,489 rushing yards last year, 1,554 this year,

but 17 touchdowns. That was his 16-game pace last year, 11 this year. So it's like clockwork. When he scores, he has a huge game. When he doesn't, he's fine. Yeah, I mean, that's the hard thing with a player like this who doesn't catch passes is you're dependent on big plays and touchdowns, basically. And he's a great big play player. And so you look at week 11, he had 22.9 PPR points, which is a great game.

But partially that was because he got a receiving touchdown. If it wasn't for that game, it would have been a really good game. It would have been 16.4, but that's the thing is that when you're talking about him, it's like he's likely to be a high-end or maybe mid-range RB2 most weeks. And then...

I don't know if I agree with that. Do you think it's too high or too low? No, I think he's likely to be an RB1 most weeks. He was RB8 per game going into last night's game. I don't know what he is right now. So what I'm saying is more like low-end RB1, high-end RB2. And the question is... In full PPR, yeah.

Yeah, in full PPR. If he gets into the end zone, he's a high-end RB1. If he doesn't, it's more like that RB2 range. Yep. But it's like a high floor every week. The problem is that offense is awful right now. And they just lost Jack Conklin for this season. Yeah, they've

scored 14 or fewer points, I believe, in four of their last five, I believe. They had the one big game against Cincinnati, and even that one, I think the defense set them up with a couple of short fields. Chris Collinsworth said it many times on last night's broadcast they don't have any wide receivers that can really get open yeah baker mayfield looks awful he's beat up um and yeah they might not have their left tackle this is

every basically everything went right for the cleveland browns in a lot of ways last season obviously not every single thing but i don't. Their offensive line only lost a few games total last season among the starters. And that hasn't been the case this season. And you're starting to see that an offense built around the run needs a lot of things to go right to be really good in today's NFL. And to be fair to them, they thought Beckham, they thought they'd have a little bit of both, right? But Beckham hasn't panned out and Mayfield's playing through everything.

So if we're just looking at the Brown side of things, you're still going to start Chubb. What about Kareem Hunt and Jarvis Landry going forward? Landry with 111 yards, his best game. He still has not caught

a touchdown this year. He scored a couple of rushing touchdowns, I believe. But anyway, I mean, this is what we were hoping for from Jarvis Landry. It was a season high in pass attempts, by the way, for Baker Mayfield at 37.

But do you think Hunt and Landry are good starts going forward? I think Hunt is. I think Hunt's still in the RB2 discussion. Landry, he's going to be more like a wide receiver three, and there's not a lot of good ones of those right now, unfortunately. So it's going to be tough to go away from him, but I don't exactly have high expectations for him. I think he'll probably rank in the 25 to 30 range most weeks. On the Ravens side of the ball, Lamar Jackson's going to be part of a bigger discussion

we have later about quarterbacks, but he has now scored 16 points at Miami and 10 fantasy points against Cleveland in his last two games. And he has now had, his last two games have been his lowest in terms of yards per attempt on the season. He's also the first quarterback to win a game

with four interceptions in the last 41 instances of a quarter, well, 42, I guess. 41 straight quarterbacks who threw four interceptions in the last 41 instances of a quarter. Well, 42, I guess 41 straight quarterbacks who threw four interceptions lost until Lamar Jackson last night. Um, I did a lot of fantasy relevant players actually on the Ravens. Did anything change for you going forward in terms of going into the game? Lamar Jackson was a must start.

Marquise Brown, Marcus, Mark, Mark Andrews, bus starts Devante Freeman on the, you know, on the edge. Did anything change for you after last night? No, must starts. Devontae Freeman on the edge. Did anything change for you after last night?

No, not really, because I don't expect this offense to be that bad moving forward. Marquise Brown is the really frustrating one because he's basically fallen off a cliff since Rashad Bateman became active. I think he's played five games with Rashad Bateman. He's had two really good ones and three pretty bad ones. But overall, I think he's averaging.

What's that? Who are you talking about? Marquise Brown. Oh, sorry. I got a DeAndre Swift update, so I lost track there. Go ahead. I'll give you the update after. Yeah.

So Marquise Brown, he's on pace. He's averaging 64 yards per game over the last five games. That, I believe believe coincides directly with rashad bateman making his no sorry that's uh yeah bateman's played six games okay so that's going back to week six yeah he's averaging 63 but he has fewer than 50 51 yards or fewer in three of those five yeah but it is the same because brown missed the game right right right yeah um so you were right so brown's had two big games three pretty mediocre ones the problem is he's getting a ton of targets i think it's 54 targets over those four games

that's like something like a 176 target pace over 16 games i think is what it was and the the issue is that he's averaging six yards per target 5.9 yards per target over the last five games if you told me marquise brown was going to keep getting 11 targets per game i think he'd be a top six yards per target, 5.9 yards per target over the last five games. If you told me Marquise Brown was going to keep getting 11 targets per game, I think he'd be a top 10 wide receiver moving forward. And the question, I guess, is, is Rashad Bateman the reason Marquise Brown is averaging 5.9 yards per target over the past five games? It's the assumption is no. It's the offense is changing right now. And this is, I think, part of what you're going to talk is no. It's the offense is changing right now.

And this is, I think it's part of what you're going to talk about later. It's the ADOT. I mean, ADOT, his last three games have been season lows. And so he's turned into this sort of like PPR machine where he's getting a bunch of catches, but no big plays. Earlier in the year, I mean, you can just close your eyes and picture in your head all the times Lamar Jackson was throwing the ball deep to Marquise Brown. Yeah, Mar Jackson's not throwing the ball deep anymore. Not lately. And maybe that changes. Maybe it's fluky, but either way, it's

fine for Brown. Yeah. In PPR. But yeah, I mean, turn him loose and I would say he's a buy just because, you know, remember we saw stretch almost in the exact same stretch of the season last year. I think it was weeks eight through 11 where he had, gosh, honestly, he had like 90 yards over a four game stretch or something like that. It was really bad.

And then he finished the season out really strong. It was 534 yards over the final eight games, including the playoffs. So I think with Brown, you just, you trust the role and you trust that the production is going to be there. Um, so he's still probably going to be a top 15 wide receiver for me moving forward. Yeah.

I mean, I'd still, I still trust them more than say chase Claypool. Yes, for sure. Now Waddle versus Marquise Brown is tough. I think I'd probably still go Marquise Brown. I would still go Brown.

Yeah. Uh, by the way, Deandre Swift, it seems very unlikely to play. Dan Campbell says that it's hard to say that you'd see him play Sunday. That makes sense. I mean, it's a shoulder sprain. It's not like a, you know, when they, when it got reported that like he avoided a serious injury, my assumption was still like, okay, he avoided a serious injury, but that doesn't mean he's going to play. So that's, that's where I'm at. Comment from Sam Lamar. Hasn't been that bad until the last two weeks. Chris, could it be the offensive line? And my gosh, the Browns were all over him yesterday.

So that was definitely an issue. Yeah. I mean, that's a good point. Yeah. And I mean cleveland's got a really good defensive line there's not a lot of often there's not a lot of teams that can pressure the quarterback with a guy like miles garrett um yeah so i don't know it could be that issue i i can't say i've looked that deeply into like i haven't watched the film to to say that but i do think it's it's sort of tied into a larger trend. Like we're going to talk about. Yeah. And so two weeks ago, or I guess three weeks ago for Lamar Jackson, since he missed a game, the dolphins blitzed him consistently. They zero blitzed him. They basically brought

everyone had no safeties. The Browns don't do that. Collinsworth had mentioned that they had done that type of blitz eight times all season. So they're not that type of team. They get pressure with their front four with Clowney and Garrett. So it was a different strategy, but the same effect. He was under pressure a lot. And that might, I mean, look, you can't sit Lamar Jackson with the state of the quarterback position, but maybe if you're thinking from a DFS

standpoint, you might want to consider the opponent and if they can put some pressure on. All right, we're going to move forward here. I want to tell you about something that's going on until the end of the day. 25% off all products in the CBS Sports Store, including FFT merch. Go to store.cbssports.com, store.cbssports.com, or click the link in the episode description.

You can get an FFT hoodie, you can have a beer in an FFT pint, or you can work out in FFT joggers. Go to store.cbssports.com. You can also shop by podcast there. And yeah, you've got some great FFT stuff and 25% off everything in the CBS Sports Store today. So enjoy Cyber Monday. Some other news items. Mike McCarthy is not going to coach on Thursday. He has COVID. Cliff Kingsbury hopeful that Kyler Murray and DeAndre Hopkins will play this week.

Teddy Bridgewater should be fine. And Tampa Bay getting Carlton Davis back this week, starting cornerback, most likely anyway. But Jamel Dean, another starting cornerback, is going to be questionable. And that's pretty much it. Dan Arnold is out four to six weeks for the Jaguars.

Let's get to the five big topics and Jacob Gibbs. Here we go. What's up, Jacob? What's up, Adam? I am sporting my FFT in five joggers right now. There you go. All right. Store.cbssports.com, everybody.

Get yourself some joggers. Okay. So, Chris, break down what you've seen, what you're noticing from the quarterbacks over the last five weeks of the season it's fascinating stuff yeah so i wrote about this in a piece on cbs fantasy this morning and and basically what you're seeing is fantasy well passing production in general across the league has really taken a massive dive over the past five weeks in particular. Just to sum it up, on average, passing yards per game have dropped from 246.6 per

game to 220.4. Completion percentage down 66% to 64%. Yards per attempt down from 7.44 to 6.91 touchdown rate from 0.4.8 to 4.0 interception rate down up 2.2 to 2.7 passer rating 94.9 to 86.5 um and what you're seeing is teams are throwing the ball down the field a lot less average intended air yards per pass attempt attempts fallen from 8.1 to 7.4. The rate of total passes that have gone at least 21 air yards down the field has dropped from 11.2% to 9.4%. So what, what it looks like, at least in the numbers, I can't say like, I haven't gone through all 32 teams and watched every pass play and charted it and, you know, Sid seeing what the defense is doing. But what it seems is that teams are being less aggressive, throwing the ball down the field. And despite that, we're not seeing either an increase in efficiency

or fewer negative plays. We're still seeing more interceptions. And it kind of looks like on a macro scale we're seeing what happened to you know patrick mahomes in the middle part of the season what we've seen a little bit from josh allen at times this season which is teams taking away the deep ball and the opposing off the the offense is not being able to make them pay with passes underneath. It's a really interesting trend. These are significant changes to happen during the middle of the season. Last season, we did see some

changes in offensive production as the season went on. Things started out really, really hot and got progressively slightly worse, but this is a much bigger drop than what we saw last season. Jacob, what's your reaction to this? I really don't know what to think of it. I think it's mostly, if I had to guess, just something that was bound to happen because of the really hot start.

I think Tom Brady is the one who exemplifies it perfectly. All those touchdowns were coming early in the year, and we just see stuff like that balance out um where they had four or five rushing touchdowns yesterday right um yeah i haven't thought about it much i did look over the past five years and just kind of compare what we have during that time to what we've seen you know and the splits that chris gave and it's definitely way down i i'm i'm really curious to hear what you guys think about it because i really don't have much of a takeaway. It's hard to know what to think about it, Chris.

I do think that we know in specific cases, like the Chiefs and the Bills a little bit. I think maybe the Bills went slightly overstated, but that teams are certainly trying their best to take away the deep ball and having some pretty good success with it. So it's forced these quarterbacks to, yeah, throw underneath a lot more, throw short a lot more.

Yeah, like one, the problem is like right now, look, this is a question that much, much smarter people than me certainly will be trying to figure out. Maybe it's just, maybe it's just noise. You know, maybe it's just that the way bye weeks and injuries and things like that have stacked up and it's all just it's a weird five week stretch because it does overlap with some of the bigger bye weeks and maybe that's part of it.

But if I had to make a hypothesis you know one thing that i think would make sense is that teams are you know given the the historic passing numbers we saw last season and the incredible production that we saw from offenses early in this season it wouldn't shock me if teams were starting to adjust their defensive philosophies to focus first on taking away big plays in the passing game, which generally isn't how teams defend, you know, because big plays in the passing game are relatively rare events. Teams will focus on trying to take away other things first. And so maybe that's what we're seeing. But all in all, when you're talking about the impact for fantasy, my assumption would be that this would be better for running quarterbacks, that it would make running quarterbacks more effective.

If everybody's passing numbers are taking a hit, you would think that the running quarterbacks would be relatively more valuable for fantasy. But that wasn't necessarily the case. Certainly this week, Lamar Jackson, Jalen Hurts, and Cam Newton. I don't know if they combined for 20 points this week. I don't think they did. Yeah, I think they did. Because Cam got you five or six or something. I can tell you the top quarterbacks from weeks 8 to 12.

Three of the four were Aaron Rodgers, Matt Stafford, and who was the fourth one? And they combined for two rushing yards between them, I believe. Josh Allen was number one. Oh, was it Wentz? Let me find the exact stats. Well, I was going to give you over the last five weeks this whole stretch, who's the top quarterbacks. Justin Herbert is number one. I to give you over the last five weeks this whole stretch. Who's the top quarterbacks? Justin Herbert is number one.

I'll give you four points. It's a pretty similar list, but in four-point leagues, Justin Herbert is your number one quarterback over the last five weeks, and that's with him really not playing that well. He had two huge games, two bad games, and then yesterday, he cobbled together 23 points and really struggled. Josh Allen is two. Rodgers is three.

This is per game. Rodgers three. Lamar Jackson.. This is per game, per game. Rodgers three, Lamar Jackson, Prescott, Cousins, Brady, Stafford, Garoppolo, Hurts, Heineke, Mahomes. That's four point per passing touchdown. Six point per passing touchdown leads your top 12 quarterbacks over the last five weeks per game. Herbert, Rodgers, Allen, Cousins, Brady, Stafford. I mean, just think about that. Has Herbert played well? No, he's really struggled lately. Has Stafford played well?

He's thrown a pick six in three straight games. He's the number six quarterback over the last five weeks. Lamar Jackson, Dak Prescott, Mahomes, Garoppolo, Wentz, and Heineke. Heineke's showing up in the top 12 in both lists, four- and six-point passing touchdown leagues. And there has not been anyone, I don't think, that's been good for even four out of five games. Maybe, you know,

Rogers, maybe Rod, well, Rogers missed one game and stunk against the Seahawks. So, and then he wasn't even that good against Arizona. So it's really just been because Adams was out. So I think for Rogers,

it's really just been the last two weeks. Yeah. All right. So let me, let me spin it forward here, guys. People are really struggling right now with quarterback. They're furious. They're pissed off at their starting quarterbacks, fantasy managers I'm talking about here. Which quarterbacks are you concerned about? Which must-start quarterbacks are you concerned about going forward jacob you can start um i guess i'm a little bit concerned about what we've seen from stafford we've talked about russell wilson at length uh last week he definitely would make the list um no one else really stands out to me i'm a little bit concerned what we've seen with the chargers just the low a dot um and just some of the weird stuff they've been doing with their offense.

But something like Jalen Hurts, who we'll get to more later, I'm not worried about. Is there anyone I'm missing? I feel like those are the only guys. Stafford and Herbert definitely come to mind because Herbert, I think, look, he tore up the Steelers. They were a shell of themselves.

But every time I watch Herbert, other than that Steelers game, he's completely... And even in that game, he's under duress all the time. His line stinks, but he ran for 90 yards against the Steelers. He was under pressure a lot yesterday, I thought anyway.

And so... Yeah, I mean, he's been below a 60% completion percentage in three of the last five. And, you know, if you're throwing a bunch of deep passes, that's fine, but that really hasn't been

the approach that they've had. So it's been, it's been a little, it's been weird to see. Cause you would think fewer throws to Mike Williams, fewer of those downfield throws. Okay. Maybe you're trading some,

you know, some efficiency or some big plays for some efficiency, but that hasn't really been the case for him. And Stafford's not playing well. I think that is very obvious. You don't have to have seen every play to know it. He's not playing well. He's obviously hurt.

He was really just throwing behind receivers and out of sync yesterday. I think it was arm, elbow, back, and hand, I think were the injuries he's dealing with. Maybe a knee in there somewhere as well uh we got that report prior to the game um yeah he's beat up and and look maybe that's a a quite an explanation for some of the league-wide trends we're seeing as a whole you know maybe maybe that's part of it but it's um i i think you have to be concerned about stafford and not just because of that but also they're playing without robert woods um we don't know what the impact of that's going to be on their offense and and just generally speaking

this is a very thin team you know the the rams are not a team that can really afford a lot of injuries like that's just the nature of their team it's something we saw with the falcons during the you know higher end days of matt ryan's careers when everybody was healthy and clicking things were pretty good but um when you build a team that way you know you're you're very volatile and so maybe that's something that we're seeing with the rams as well right at the end of the day though if you've got a stud quarterback who's been struggling it's not like those are the only quarterbacks who are seeing struggles, right? I mean, you're not going to trust streamers over Matthew Stafford for the most part. We might want to consider on a week-to-week basis, but I don't know that there's much we can do.

And I would like to wrap this subject up unless you have one final thought. Good? All right. I will take a break. I mean, that's it. The bottom line is it's very interesting. I don't know what you're going to do about it. You might not win your league because of your starting quarterback anymore.

You might not need to have a little bit more depth on your roster. All right. Let's take a break here. When we come back, we'll talk about some waiver wire running backs. We'll talk about the Packers backfield and what that split's going to look like. Jalen Hurts, David Montgomery. That's coming up after this quick break on fantasy football today. Did you know 66% of utility damage is caused by not requesting a locate?

Don't let your project become part of this statistic. A quick locate request can save you from unexpected downtime, financial penalties, and keep you safe. Don't let avoidable damage cost you time and money. Click before you dig. Ensure your next project is safe. Visit OntarioOneCall.ca. And we're back. Our second big topic is from Adrian. Trust your running backs like Aaron Jones, Miles Gaskin, Damian Harris, et cetera,

or go to the waiver wire for Dontrell Hilliard, Deontay Foreman, Matt Breida, etc.? So, Jacob, what do you think about just the waiver wire running backs compared to the guys you've been starting going forward? Yeah, I wouldn't drop any of the trio that you named for any of the waiver wire trio. Of the two groups, I think Foreman is the first that you named for any of the, you know, waiver wire trio of the two groups. I think Foreman is the first that I would add.

I know it's, you know, really exciting what we've seen from Hilliard, but I do expect Jeremy McNichols to be back and possibly cut into his role. Whereas Foreman seems like he's clearly the guy in early downs and they've been really committed to the run. With AJ Brown, you know, out on the air and Julio possibly coming back,

I just would expect him to continue to try to lean on the run game, and he's the guy who seems to have the early down roll. But even with that said, I don't think I would drop Aaron Jones or Harris for sure. Maybe Gaskin, just because there are a lot of obstacles for him to continue to be fantasy relative. He has to avoid. He's still not getting passing down work. That's mostly going to Patrick Laird. And then Phillip Lindsey, they immediately gave quite a few carries.

He barely played, didn't run a single route, but when he was on the field, they were getting the ball intentionally. Malcolm Brown could be back. So there's just a lot there. But, I mean, the fantasy schedule is decent for Gaskin if he's able to retain the role. So even him, he's not someone I'd really like to drop unless it's a waiver-wide running back.

It's not about dropping. I think it's more about sitting. Yeah. Aaron Jones is tough because A.J. Dillon is so clearly a big part of the offense. And this one actually stunned me. Between weeks 10 and 12, Jones was out in week 11, but between weeks 10 and 12, AJ Dillon has 13 snaps inside of the 10-yard line, only four for Aaron Jones.

That's pretty shocking. I actually looked into this a little bit. I don't really count yesterday. I don't think that's Aaron Jones. I don't know how you feel about that, but that's clearly just a limited Aaron Jones. Okay. So week 11 was no Aaron Jones.

Yeah. And then I don't exactly have the split for week 10, but Jones left that game late in the third quarter, right around the beginning of the fourth quarter. And I did see that I was just looking at them in short yardage. I saw that Dylan had four carries on second or third down from one to two or three yards to gain in the fourth quarter alone. So I just,

I feel like that's, that might not be clear. I, you know what? I don't want to get too into this because that's our next topic. Okay. But we'll go further in. It's still,

there's a lot there. To go back to, to go back to miles gaskin the big issue for me with him is like like jacob said if he if he keeps the role i think he's going to be a useful fantasy option he might just be a must start guy moving forward the problem is and look yards per carry is not a perfect stat but he's averaging 2.8 yards per carry over the past five games. He's averaging 13.2 receiving yards per game in that stretch. He just happens to have four touchdowns, so he's been better for fantasy. But I think you're kind of looking at a Mike Davis situation

where if anyone could step up and give them something better, he would probably be losing playing time. The thing with Philip Lindsay yesterday, I did look into this. They had four running backs play at least 18% of the snaps yesterday. I believe the Dolphins did, but they were up big in the second half. And Lindsay, I think 11 of his 15 snaps came in the second half. So not necessarily sure how much to take away from that. Although, look, we've seen Lindsey play at a Pro Bowl level.

If he can show flashes of that, it wouldn't be shocking at all if Myles Gaskin started to lose work very quickly because he's been so ineffective for so much of the season. They just haven't had another guy come up and take the job like the Falcons did with Patterson. Yeah, I don't think I'm sitting Gaskin for Hilliard or Foreman. Well, first of all, it's not really a worthwhile conversation for

that particular comparison because Titans are on a bye this week and then Dolphins are on a bye the following week. So you won't have to make that decision. But just in general, I think this is a really damn good running back waiver wire week because obviously you have Madison in shallower leagues.

He's 78% rostered. You have Chuba Hubbard, who you could pick up at least for week 14 against Atlanta. He's 62% rostered, I think. You have Jamal Williams, who is around 60% rostered. Now, if they're not available for you, I certainly think Hilliard and Foreman are worth picking up. I don't know.

Again, if you're in a deep league, they're not going to be available. I think Breida's worth picking up. I even think Kadri Olesen is worth picking up. I don't know. Again, if you're in a deep league, they're not going to be available. I think Breida's worth picking up. I even think Kadri Olesen is worth picking up. I have very low expectations, but Mike Davis is... I could see him just replacing Mike Davis and being a guy who can give you 10 fantasy points or something in a decent week.

Did you mention Tevin Coleman? No. Tevin Coleman's another guy. He had 16 carries yesterday. It's not... These aren't... outside of Madison, these aren't guys who are probably going to win you your leagues. In a deeper league, Phillip Lindsey's probably worth adding, too.

These aren't guys who are going to win you your leagues, but they're all at least looking somewhat fantasy relevant. But no, as far as the specific question, I wouldn't be looking to sit Aaron Jones, Myles Gask, and Damian Harris for them. Harris is pretty interesting. Yes. It depends on the specifics and the matchups

because Harris, like a lot of these guys, is going to need a touchdown to really have a good game. All right, Jacob, what do you think about the Packers' backfield? That's our next topic. What do you do with the Green Bay backfield? This is from Henry Wood and everyone else in the world. What do you do here with them? Yeah, I would start by saying that Jones played 65% of the snaps

in the first half this week. I think they kind of limited his work in the second half because the game was a little bit out of hand, and he was obviously banged up coming in. They've got the bye coming up so um in terms of what the role would look like going forward we really don't know but i do think he's you know the 1a um i am interested to hear your short yardage um stats but just real quick you mentioned week 10 um in that game it was dylan who was getting the red zone work as well um even before the second

half was same thing where they're up early and jones got a little bit banged up in the first half dylan out snapped him um eight to three in the red zone and out touched him the red zone as well um same thing we saw yesterday out touched him sixth one the red zone played 71 of the snaps in the red zone aj dylan was um so i i think we have seen them kind of move towards that at least in the red zone and on the 10 yard line um in terms of the like short yardage snaps I you had specific stats on that as well right I just looked Aaron Jones has had 15 or 16 carries with one to two one to three yards to gain and he has converted a first down on all but two of them. He has been incredible in those short-yarded situations.

Dylan, he's got double. He's got something like 33 carries. But it's amazing, almost all of them have been in the last three weeks. No, about half of them. So he's gotten so many of those short-yardage carries in the last three weeks, or about, no, about half of them. So he's gotten so many of those short yardage carries in the last few weeks. So it was probably fairly even before the injury to Aaron Jones.

And he's converted a lot of them too. I don't have the exact stat, but I went and I watched all of them and he's just, he's exactly what you think. I mean, he's a bowling ball. He's so hard to tackle. He's perfect for that role. The only problem is Aaron Jones

is one of the best running backs in football. He's proven that for two and a half years. He's great in that role. He's great in the passing game. He's amazing. So I think right now, based on the comments I've seen, and sometimes I take five comments and I think the whole world feels this way, but I think people are riding the dylan momentum right now and i think they're counting out aaron jones a little bit but i believe that he's built up the equity with the packers and i think he'll be the better running back as long as he's healthy i can't guarantee that he's healthy but i literally like also literal equity they made a huge investment in him this offseason so i don't think he's just going to go away um

he's their guy to to a certain extent there is a little bit of the giovante williams melvin gordon thing where it's just like we keep we want the young exciting guy to just take over um i don't think it's going to be as much of an even split as gordon and williams i think jones is going to be a 1a and you know the one thing that I will take out from the last uh from two of the last three games the one Jones didn't play and obviously excluded Jones still ran 45 routes to 28 for um Dylan so I know Dylan's been good in the passing game but I would still expect Aaron Jones to be a more valuable part of the passing game than A.J. Dillon moving forward. I do think you can look at it and say,

well, maybe Aaron Jones probably isn't a top six running back anymore. Maybe he's not a top 12 running back anymore. Maybe they're both in the RB2 range. Maybe Dillon's a lower-end RB2 and Jones is a higher end RB2. But it also does mean that this offense really needs to focus on the running backs in the red zone for both of them to have that kind of value. If they go with what we saw more of in 2020 where Aaron Rodgers was scoring a majority of the touchdowns

close to the end zone, it could be really tough for Jones and Dillon to both be fantasy viable starters. Yeah, I'll give you the numbers. So weeks one through three, A.J. Dillon was barely involved. He had five carries per game, one to two catches. Weeks four through nine, before the Aaron Jones injury, Aaron Jones had 75 carries and 23 catches. And A.J. Dillon had 61 carries and 10 catches.

They both averaged 4.8 or 4.9 yards per carry. Jones was, believe it or not, not even a top 20 running back per game. For that stretch, that six-game stretch, he was 16th in non-PPR, he was 12th in full PPR. A.J. Dillon was stretch, he was 16th in non-PPR. He was 12th in full PPR. A.J. Dillon was outside the top 30 in that six-game stretch. But the reason why for Jones is he had only two touchdowns, and Dillon had only one.

So that's unusual for Aaron Jones. He was still getting about 100 total yards most of the weeks and still getting a lot of catches, averaging four per game. But an unusually low number of touchdowns. So I guess what I'm saying is you do have a sample of him being very involved in the passing game, four catches per game, out carrying A.J.

Dillon, but not scoring. Scoring twice in six games. And that made him overall number 12 in PPR, but 23rd per game. And D Dylan was even worse. Presumably Dylan would score more touchdowns than he did in that stretch where he only had one, but,

uh, it was ugly, but I think a little, probably a little fluky. Just, you would not expect those two to combine for, for three touchdowns in six games. All right,

Jacob, any final thoughts there? Are you good? Um, I just would say that, like, although he didn't have a ton of touchdowns during that time stretch he just gave, like, Aaron Jones was clearly the guy in the red zone.

He had the fourth highest snap rate among running backs in the red zone up until week nine, and the second highest from inside the 10. He was, like, clearly clear with their guy. And while it didn't result in a ton of touchdowns, if he has lost that role, that does clearly impact his fantasy value, and I think he would

probably be outside of the top 12, like we mentioned. All right. Sorry, Jacob, I know you wanted to talk about Jalen Hurts. Everybody wants to talk about, everybody in America wants to talk about Jalen Hurts. So, Rodrigo asks, what should we do about Jalen Hurts? Six points at the Giants yesterday,

and since they changed their offense and went super run heavy, which they didn't even do yesterday, which was stupid, he has scored 11, 8, 22, 29, and 6 fantasy points in six-point-per-passing touchdown leagues. Jacob, what do we do with Jalen Hurts? I think don't overreact. Keep starting him and just be glad that you have one of the most consistent fantasy quarterbacks there is.

I know that is frustrating to hear after the game he just gave you. But he's finished as a top-12 quarterback in 10 of 12 games. No one else even has more than eight top-12 finishes. He's been top six in six different weeks. Only Josh Allen and Tom Brady have that many top-six finishes. So he's given you consistency and he's given you a lot of upside. His fantasy playoff schedule is cake. And he's rushing more than ever before.

39 rushing attempts across the past three games and double digit rushing attempts. And I five was past seven. So yeah, what do you do with Jim hurts? I think you just keep starting him and keep enjoying what he's been giving you and keep winning. Probably.

I don't know. It's possibly gets benched, but as long as he's on the field he's going to be really fantasy relevant with a rush I'd be stunned if he got benched like maybe this ankle thing is is a you know more of a concern and it limits him in practice this week or something but I would be shocked if they benched Jalen Hurts for for Gardner Minshew and I think you know a big part of why he's got the three subpar games over the last five since this stretch where they changed how their offense works, he only has three touchdowns in those five games as a passer.

And only three rushing touchdowns, actually, and all of those came in one game. Generally speaking, if you told me Jalen Hurts was going to have 109 pass attempts and 56 rush attempts over a five-game stretch, my assumption would probably be that you'd probably see 10 touchdowns total over a five game stretch rather than six. You know, he has a 2.7% passing touchdown rate right now over the past five games. Even with the changes in their approach, you would expect him to have a higher passing touchdown rate. And you could argue that he should have an even higher passing touchdown rate in this type of offense than you would expect

in a more traditional type of offense, because that's something we've seen from Lamar Jackson, where they run so much between the twenties that the times they do pass should in theory be more valuable or more likely to result in touchdowns and so i i just think there's been a bit of bad luck when it comes to his touchdown rates both as a runner and a passer and if that regresses he's going to be i mean he's probably a top six quarterback you know no worse than what eight it's not like there's a lot of guys doing really well right now anyway. Right. Yeah. So the only thing, Jacob, that I wouldn't agree with from what you were saying about his consistency is I really split up Jalen Hurts' season into two parts, the first seven games and the last five games, because they just completely changed their

offense. And in those last five games, he's been very inconsistent. He's had three total duds. Now, in this last game, his wide receivers dropped two touchdowns. Ward dropped one, and Rager actually probably dropped two, but they were both on the same drive. This could have been a fine game for him, even though he played very poorly. I think there's pretty much consensus on that. He played poorly through three interceptions, just wasn't very good. But still, he can play poorly and still backdoor his way into a good game.

Want to give you guys one more stat. Since I do separate the two seasons, basically, first seven games and last five games, if you just look at passing yards and rushing yards, in the first seven games, he was averaging 15 fantasy points on yards. In the last five games, he's averaging 15 fantasy points on yards. In the last five games, he's averaging 12.4.

So he is averaging two and a half fewer fantasy points per game on yardage alone in these last five games. So he has to do better with touchdowns. That's not good. No, I think that's fair. And I was surprised at those numbers too, but he was running so much beforehand.

Yeah, it's not like his rushing production has gotten a lot better. Yeah. Speaking of rushing dependent quarterbacks, did we get on the Taysom Hill news? Yeah, sorry. So somebody in the chat pointed out, I forgot to bring it up,

Taysom Hill is taking first team reps. I thought the news came out about the foot this morning. I thought that that would preclude him from starting, but no, he looks like he's going to start this week. That is awesome. This could really help people. It could. The thing is, if the foot limits him as a rusher at all,

this is going to be a disaster because I don't think he is. I think he's a significant step down from Trevor Simeon as a passer, and I don't think Trevor Simeon's any good. So any chance this offense has to be at all effective is going to be dependent to a very very large extent on his rushing ability so you know we'll see um it's worrisome for Alvin Kamara though it's really really concerning because they haven't been using him in the passing game as much this season

in general the pass volume has not been there now with with Taysom Hill, more likely to take off and scramble than dump it off to a running back if he's pressured. And the fact that Kamara's been playing before this knee injury, when Mark Ingram was healthy, he'd been playing like 65% of the snaps instead of 80% of the snaps. I think Kamara is still an RB1, but I'm concerned about him moving forward. Certainly not one of the handful of elite running backs, although Hill could conceivably make him more efficient as a runner, at least, you know, in introducing read option contents

and stuff like that that could create more running room for Kamara. I think that last year he threw about 33%, introducing read option contents and stuff like that that could create more running room for Kamara. I think that last year he threw about 33%, almost a third of his passes went to Michael Thomas. So I'm hopeful that they just have no choice but to throw to Kamara. And that won't be quite the same as it was last year. But you're right. I would love to see them use him more,

even more like the Falcons use Cordero Patterson. Sure. Because line him up at wide receiver 20 times a game in addition to using him as a running back. They do use him as a wide receiver, but it's not quite to that extent. Last topic here is from Chris. Are we trusting David Montgomery going forward? Montgomery has played six games, and he has only two games this year

with more than seven non-PPR fantasy points or 10 PPR fantasy points I actually think he's played seven games this year and he caught three balls last week but he had only nine catches in six games before week 12 so um are we trusting David Montgomery going forward Jacob I think so um I mean all the underlying data was still really good for him last week. He played 84% of the snaps, had 20 of 24 RB touches. He ran a route on 74% of Chicago's drawbacks. And I did want to highlight his lack of targets. He's dead last in target per route run rate among 32 qualified running backs on the year, which is surprising he has only been targeted on 10 percent of his routes down from 17.5 last year um and there's no clear reason why he's being targeted so much

less especially with you know alan robinson not you know drawing targets the way he did last year so if anything i would expect him to be targeted more and everything else is there the routes are there the you know early down touches are there and he's playing almost all the snaps so i definitely be trusting him i i think a lot of it is justin fields um i i looked it up last week i think he has a 16 or 17 percent target share uh for running backs so far this season it might actually be even lower than that um but even dalton hasn't really thrown to the running backs all that much. I'm looking at it now. I think it's 15 out of 109 targets have gone to running backs

from Andy Dalton, which is – that's actually shocking because I would expect that more from Fields than Dalton. Dalton, you would think, would be dumping it off. My point is that I'm not surprised that his rate is lower, that he's drawn fewer targets than he did last year. It's just like an unbelievably low rate. It's like J.K. Dobbins, Gus Edwards,

Derrick Henry, those type of guys. That's the only people who are targeted at like 9 or 10%. And that just doesn't seem sustainable, even with fields. I trust him. I don't trust him. I start him even with Fields. I trust him. I don't trust him. I start him, but I don't trust him. Yeah, I'll start Jamal Williams ahead of him.

What does the word mean? I'll start Jamal Williams ahead of him this week and I'll say that without knowing the matchups. Let me get the matchups. Yeah, I think that makes sense, but that's mostly just like, I feel like Jamal Williams is almost a lock to get like six targets yes deandre swift is out and so that that alone is going to make it hard to to go away

from him he might be a top 12 running back uh just based on that but i'm i'm certainly not looking at montgomery as someone that i'm likely to sit in in leagues, really. Because I do think, moving forward, I mean, we saw it last year when Tariq Cohen went down. It's just, it's the workload. Eventually, the workload is going to turn into fantasy points. If you're getting 17 carries a game and you're playing nearly all of the passing routes, it's going to turn into production at some point.

And I'm not going to be able to go away from a guy with that kind of role. Okay. Well, that was a good show. A lot of stuff. Comprehensive show today. All right. And more news coming in, man. More news coming in.

Oh, so Eagles right guard Jack Driscoll is going on IR. But that might miss the rest of the season. But Jalen Hurts has a sore ankle. That's more important. And he says they'll know more on Wednesday about Jalen Hurts, so he's not a lock, I'd say, for this week. Jordan Howard and Miles Sanders are heading in the right direction. Jason Kelsey also headed in the right direction.

This is Nick Sirianni. He must be having a press conference right now. And I just got an email on my phone, something about a casserole to that I could buy for on Cyber Monday. Okay, so I got to do some shopping. Don't forget your casserole. Yeah, and don't forget to go to store.cbssports.com. And thanks to Jacob and to Chris and all of you for watching and listening. Have a great day.

Enjoy Monday Night Football. We'll talk to you tomorrow on Fantasy Football. See ya.