Fantasy Football Today - James Conner to Arizona! (04/14 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: April 14, 2021

How do we feel about James Conner in Arizona? What does this mean for Chase Edmonds? And is Conner better than the Bucs RBs? We'll tell you what you need to know. 'Fantasy Football Today' is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Castbox, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Follow our FFT team on Twitter: @FFToday, @AdamAizer, @JameyEisenberg, @daverichard, @heathcummingssr, @ctowerscbs, @BenSchragg Watch FFT on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCviK78rIWXhZdFzJ1Woi7Fg/videos 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

Over the last two seasons, Kenyon Drake had 18 rushing touchdowns in 23 games with Arizona. Now it's James Conner's turn. Let's talk about it right now on Fantasy Football Today in 5. What's going on, everybody? Happy Wednesday to you. Make sure you're listening on Spotify or wherever else you listen to podcasts. Follow us, stream us, and tell your friends. Help us grow.

And Adam Azar with Jamie Isenberg here to talk about the James Conner news. All right, Jamie, how do you feel about this? You like it? Look, it was a great destination for him because Chase Edmonds, while I do think he has a chance to be a significant fantasy contributor, obviously a chance to be a contributor for the Cardinals in a bigger role, or at least hopefully gets a bigger role. This was an opening. You know, this was a chance for him to go in and potentially be the featured back.

So we'll see how healthy he is. He's coming off, I think it's toe surgery at the end of last season. That was a big part of the physical that he had to take with the Cardinals. But I just don't buy Chase Edmonds as the featured guy. You know I like Chase Edmonds. I talked him up a lot last year, and I will continue to do so. And this is a good situation for him as well because of Connor's injury history. But I do think that Connor, if he's healthy, will be the lead back for the Cardinals

because of the way that he profiles and what his history suggests as opposed to what Chase Edmonds has done so far in his career. He's really interesting. It's basically like when he's gotten work, he's been pretty good. In weeks two through eight, he's been pretty good in weeks two through eight. He left week one with an injury weeks two through eight. He looked like one of the steals of fantasy football drafts. He was a top 10 running back in that stretch. He averaged 17.3 carries per game. He was really good. He scored five touchdowns in those six games. And then after

that, Pittsburgh changed their offense. They went from about 35 passes a game to about 45 passes a game. He missed some time. He had 9.8 carries per game and was irrelevant, basically. Just was a bust for the second half of the season. And he's going to be 26 in May. It's really hard to evaluate him. It's such a small contract, Jamie.

Less than $2 million. So how should we be looking at James Conner right now? He's still in the prime of his career, but it doesn't feel that way. No, I mean, you know, he's been so banged up. You know, the year that Le'Veon Bell missed, he was great for the majority of the season. Then he got hurt, I believe it was week 13. Had an ankle injury and

limped to the finish line. 2014, battled injuries. Not 2019, battled injuries. 2020, same thing, you know, um, 2019 battled injuries, 2020, uh, same thing, you know, as,

as you alluded to. So it's a great offense. You know, that the Cardinals, like you said, uh, Kenyon Drake did a very good job running the ball last year. We wanted to,

you know, constantly to see him more involved in the passing game. So I think that's where Edmonds has a chance to be successful. Uh, but if Connor's healthy, you know, he's on a prove it deal. You know,

it's a one-year deal, same thing like they did with Drake, you know, when they tendered him last year. So it's a small contract, but I think you just have to look at almost all these contracts as small contracts, you know, unless you're a superstar caliber player. So I hope he takes advantage of it. I think he's a low end number two, high end number three running back, you know, a guy that you're going to look at probably somewhere around round five. I don't think he's somebody you're going to be aggressively targeting um just to kind of tie in the recent news and you know for those of you that listen to our podcast on

tuesday this news happened right after basically we were done recording so we talked about giovanni bernard and his impact on the bucks i'd rather have james connor and his potential if he's healthy in training camp than any of tampa bay's running backs um and i'd probably rather have James Conner and his potential if he's healthy in training camp than any of Tampa Bay's running backs. And I'd probably rather have Chase Edmonds maybe than everybody but Leonard Fournette. So Conner is going to be – I haven't adjusted my rankings yet for anybody looking, so he's going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 23 to 26. Right now I have Fournette at 23. Like I said, I'm going to bump him down.

I'm going to put Conner ahead, so that's kind of the range for me. You know what reminds me a little bit of David Johnson going to the Texans last year. People didn't really think much of him. And he just he ended up getting a lot of work. And he only played he played 12 games, but he finished as a top 18 running back. I don't know. Can you does that make sense? That comparison?

Very much. Yeah. I mean, the guy's been written off. And he had Duke Johnson there, so you didn't think he'd catch a lot of passes the same way. It's been a big part of James Conner's game, Jamie, and it's not going to happen with Chase Edmonds there. But I don't know.

I see some parallels there. Yeah, very, very similar. And look, Kenyon Drake, when he was traded to the Cardinals, not the comparison, but you saw the jumping off point. So I think for Conner, it all comes down to health. They improved their offensive line with the addition of Rodney Hudson in center. You know Kyler's going to help all of his guys make plays, and maybe the addition of A.J. Green opens up things even more for this offense. So it's going to be a high-scoring team.

He's going to have those opportunities. It's just a matter of will he be on the field to take advantage of them? So, you know, I think for people that are looking at it from a dynasty or keeper perspective, you probably missed your window to trade for James Conner. You know, if you don't think he's going to stay healthy, now's the time to probably sell James Conner, you know, just based on the track record and the time that he's missed games and the fact that he's coming off another surgery. So I don't think this is a negative for Chase Edmonds.

Again, I think that he still has a chance to be a significant contributor and maybe a little bit better than he was when Kenyon Drake was healthy. So we'll see. We'll see how it all works out for these two guys. But if you were in the Chase Edmonds camp and you were worried about the Cardinals getting a rookie who could come in and maybe take over completely. You know, this is a win for Chase Edmonds. He had 53 catches last year. He was number 30 in non-PPR,

number 25 in PPR per game. Not as good because he played all 16 games. He was 42nd in non-PPR per game. This is Chase Edmonds and 36th per game in PPR. But for, you know, he had a pretty reliable stretch where he was getting eight or more PPR fantasy points in 10 of 12 games. Eight's not good, but it's the kind of player where, you know, you got bye weeks, you got injuries, you throw them in, you get eight or more points. It's not bad.

He was reliable as a 50 catch guy last year. There weren't that many of them. All right, how about Josh Jacobs or let's go back to James Conner. Josh Jacobs or James Conner? It's a great question. I'll probably still go Jacobs just based on health, but that's, you know, they're not far apart. I'd rather have Melvin Gordon than both, you know, just given what his situation is in Denver right now. I'll take James Conner over David Johnson, you know, to go back to your comparison just because of what the situation is in Houston and how that seems like it's going to play out. So this is kind of the

range, at least for me, you know, of these guys of, um, you know, Connor, if you were telling me right now, Connor's playing 16 games or 17 games, excuse me. Um, he could be a top 15 guy. You know, he's got that type of upside in this offense. I don't know if he's a league winner anymore. Like he, you know, was expected to be after that 2018 campaign when Le'Veon set out, but, um, you know, again, landing spot matters and there's not the type of competition where he's going to suffer, you know, because of the way Chase Edmonds has shown you so far, maybe this is the year that Chase Edmonds takes that next step, but you know, it's hard to go back past that week nine game last year against Miami when he had the chance

to be the starting guy. And he had 25 carries for I think it was 78 yards. And, you know, it doesn't exactly play very well. 70 yards, 70 yards, three catch for three catches for 18 yards.

And the last thing, you know, you can wrap it up. The last thing I'll say about Chase Edmonds is, let's say you just want to take him and PPR and have that guy that can be a biweek replacement or maybe someone with upside. We've talked about a lot. We've said the injuries, but here are the numbers.

James Connor in four seasons has played 14, 13, 10, and 13 games. Now you're talking about a 17 game season. If you're giving me three or four games with Chase Edmonds as a starter, I know he was bad against the Dolphins last year, but two years ago against the Giants, he scored three touchdowns in one game. So that's still, that's, that's a really exciting opportunity for someone who's not completely useless. He's not just a handcuff. Any final thoughts, Jamie, or do we cover all the bases? Chase Edmonds is the type of guy, if you go zero RB, you want to have, you know, so if you go heavy on pass catchers, quarterback, depending on however you build your team. And you start to get into that round six-ish range of, okay, who could be a guy that I could

potentially start at times this season? As you said, and you said it perfectly, there's going to be some chances for Chase Edmonds to start if he doesn't win the job outright. And so we're just talking about what the situation is right now with the expectation of Conor being better, but Edmonds may be better, maybe the guy that they lean on, and he could be the one that if you're drafting now, you end up with a steal, depending on how your situation goes best ball all the time. That's it for fantasy football today in eight and a half.

Thanks to Jamie Eisenberg. Thanks to all of you for listening. We'll come back tomorrow with Emory Hunt on both fantasy football today in five and fantasy football today. Talking NFL draft prospects.