Fantasy Football Today - 🚨Julio Jones to the Titans! (06/06 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: June 6, 2021

We discuss every angle of the blockbuster trade that sends Julio Jones to the Titans. Where are we ranking Jones, Calvin Ridley, A.J. Brown, Russell Gage, Ryan Tannehill, Matt Ryan and Kyle Pitts? 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/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

All right. It is a bonus pod on a Sunday afternoon. It is the Julio Jones edition. Nothing like getting called in for a work emergency. Oh, what happened? Oh, Julio Jones got traded to the Titans. So here we are, Adam Azer with Dave Richard. It's fun, right? It's a fun job to have. I was on a bike ride. I was at a park. I'm literally half an hour from home and I get the call. Julio Jones was just traded to the Titans. I spent the entire bike ride. Ah. I was at a park. Literally half an hour from home and I get the call. Julio Jones was just traded the Titans. I spent the entire

bike ride home A, pedaling my butt off, which probably looked funny, and B, thinking about, you know, how I was going to break this down. So now it's time to

put that work into action. Put the pedal to the metal. Yeah. I still have suntan lotion all over me. Sorry, video folks watching at youtube.com

slash fantasy football today. Heath, you look great. Let's get right to it, guys. I mean, this crushes Josh Reynolds, so we could start there. Or we could start with this. First of all, the trade is Julio Jones and a sixth-round pick to Tennessee, a 2022 second-rounder and a 2023 fourth-rounder back to Atlanta. So let's rank three wide receivers. Calvin Ridley, AJ Brown, Julio Jones. Did I just rank them Heath?

Yeah, I I'm going to struggle probably between Ridley and AJ Brown. They are both top six wide receivers for me. Still Julio for me is going to be a-end number two. I think I've got him 16 right now in the projections. He was still awesome when he played last year. You have to expect, even if Tennessee is going to increase the pass volume, they're not going to throw as often as the Falcons did last year. And so it's going to be more difficult to have two top 10 wide receivers as the Falcons have in the past. 143 pass attempts was the difference between the

Falcons and the Titans last year. The old one, four, three strikes again. I have no problem putting Ridley first. I think we, he, we saw it last year in the seven games without Julio Jones. He averaged 20 PPR points per game. He had one game out of the seven below 15 PPR points. He averaged 13 non PPR points in the seven games without Julio Jones and was below 10 non PPR points. He averaged 13 non PPR points in the seven games without Julio Jones and was below 10 non PPR points once. I think he can do it. I think he's going to be a fine wide receiver. One Brown is going to be more of a low end wide receiver one for me. And Julio will be probably he'll probably end up being a top 15 fantasy receiver. I haven't ranked it yet, but he'll be somewhere between 15 and 20. You know, it's kind of funny about Calvin Ridley without Julio Jones?

A lot of catches, a lot of yards, and not a lot of touchdowns. A lot of targets, like 10 per game. But he got the Julio Jones allergic to touchdowns thing. But I do think it wasn't just that. His catch rate also was down quite a bit without Julio Jones. We should not expect Calvin Ridley to be as good for fantasy purposes on a per-target basis as he was when Julio Jones was there. We've seen that with Juju Smith-Schuster. We've seen that with other wide receivers.

Now, the tough part, the flip side of that equation, is that A.J. Brown, without Julio Jones, has been one of the most efficient wide receivers in NFL history. I don't actually believe that we can say A.J. Brown's going to get an efficiency boost because Julio Jones is on the team. I just think it makes it possible that he may not regress quite as much as we had thought before. But he's not going to get as many targets as we thought before either like when johnny and cory davis left the team we thought all right this is it aj brown's gonna you know have a shot to lead the league in targets and that that's out

the window i don't think that's going to happen but the efficiency should still be there like you said wouldn't surprise me if he had more touchdowns in julio jones this year you know that he's going to make a bunch of plays after the catch so i i prefer brown to julio pretty easily and i think everybody else why probably feels the same way why because first of all he's younger uh second of all he's shiftier i think he can do more on the field than julio and i know that sounds crazy because julio jones could pretty much do anything but i just think he's – I don't think his talent level is really that far off from current-day Julio's talent level, if not better than current-day Julio's talent level. And I think they're going to end up getting right around the same amount of targets as they got last year, which is 7.5 per game.

Julio got that in his games with Atlanta. That's what Brown got last year with Tennessee. And I bet he stays right around there. But his yak ability is very, very exciting now that he won't see double coverage. I have them both projected for eight targets a game, 137

targets apiece, which that sounds high, but it's 17 games. I think the easy answer for why you prefer A.J. Brown to Julio Jones is touchdowns. A.J. Brown scored once every 10 targets in his young NFL career, and Julio Jones has just had this whole situation with Calvin Ridley where Calvin Ridley scores all the touchdowns.

I don't think that will continue, but I do think it's going to be really interesting just to see. Obviously, Brown's got the two years connection with Ryan Tannehill. And man, is there, is there a bigger winner in this deal than Ryan Tannehill? No. Well,

maybe Derek Henry. I would think there's, you know, Tannehill's huge winner. And I don't know why Henry would be a big winner, but you know, but, but there's also Ridley,

Ridley pits, Tannehill are, are big winners. Gage lower level. I don't know about Pitts. We can come back to that. Gage, for sure. Like, where he was to where he is.

Yep. Yeah, he's maybe a number three wide receiver. Does this change how you expect Tennessee and Atlanta's offenses to function? Yeah, because that's an interesting question because the Falcons have been bottom five in pass attempts I believe five straight years. The Titans. The Titans. Who did I say? Falcons?

And two of those years were run by Arthur Smith and we just pretty much assumed because he went to Atlanta and he had Calvin Ridley and Julio Jones and he drafted Kyle Pitts that they were going to be top five in pass attempts this year. I think that might be. Maybe a little less certain because Julio Jones and he drafted Kyle Pitts that they were going to be top five and pass attempts this year. I saw it as certain. I may be a little less certain because Julio's gone, but it wouldn't surprise me.

And that's going to be just a by-product of game flow for them. Falcons defense is ugly on paper. Ooh. So I think they're going to end up having to throw, maybe they don't want to throw as much as they did last year, but they'll be over 550 pass attempts. They might be close to 600

pass attempts, even without Julio Jones there. And again, that number's a 16 number. 600 pass attempts this year might be league average. I bet it's not. I bet it's a little less, but your point is taken for sure. So, Matt Ryan,

number two quarterback now. I mean, he always was just outside of the top 12, but is Tannehill ahead of Ryan? Oh, yeah. Yeah, by like... Tannehill is to number one quarterbacks what Matt Ryan is to number two quarterbacks.

You think Matt Ryan is like 24th-ish? I've got Tannehill 10th and Ryan 21st. Interesting. But I don't think you're going to have to draft. How many people are reaching for Ryan Tannehill as the 10th quarterback off the board? How much demand is there going to be for Ryan Tannehill? I don't know if there's 10 that we reach for.

Yeah, well, but my point is that before this trade, no one was excited about drafting Ryan Tannehill, and he had given you at least 20 fantasy points in 80% of his games with the Titans. I'm not exaggerating. The actual number is 80%, 21 of 26 games. Now he's got Julio Jones. So if I'm in a draft and I whiff on those first four stud quarterbacks, maybe call it five or six stud quarterbacks.

I think my new plan is going to be to wait for Tannehill, maybe draft a second quarterback with him. I don't think I have to anymore. His first five games, I'm going to look them up. They're unbelievable. The matchups are great, and you're going to see Tannehill and the Titans get off to a good start. Burrow or Tannehill?

I think Burrow will get drafted first. Why not Burrow? I think I'd be more interested in Burrow than Tannehill. Why are you saying Burrow like that, Adam? I don't think it's as emphatic as Adam made it. Yeah, I don't think it's as emphatic. I think it's kind of close. It's not as emphatic as I made it.

I'm having fun. All right, listen, listen, listen. But because I think the Bengals are going to throw a lot more than the Titans, even with the addition of Julio Jones. But they did last year, and I don't think Joe Burrow was better for fantasy

than Ryan Tannehill. No, he definitely wasn't. They threw 40 times a game when Burrow was playing quarterback. I'm hoping for a big leap now that they've added Jamar Chase and second year. I'm just hoping for a big leap.

He might even be as good as Julio Jones that the Titans added. Yeah. Might be. No, it's a great point. I, if they were going to tell me that we're going to throw the same

amount of passes, I'd probably take Tannehill, but I still think Derek Henry wants to show there. Arizona at Seattle, Indianapolis at the jets at the Jaguars. Now the, the, the flip side of that is how many of those games could be just

Derek Henry romps. And I think you could look at the, the, the jets and the Jaguars is two games where that might be the case, but against Arizona, that's going to be a high scoring game at Seattle should be a high scoring game. Indianapolis could be a high scoring game.

You're going to see 10. I'll get off to a good start. So I don't mind one bit having him as my, um, my opening quarterback for my fantasy team to begin the year with potential for him to be my quarterback every week for the season. Okay. But then it's Jalen hurts,

Tom Brady, Burrow, as we mentioned, Ryan Tannehill. I mean, what does he factor in with this group? He's behind. I think he's right about where you listed him.

Yep. Right behind hurts. And like, I've got Brady and Rogers right now at seven and eight or six and seven. I get confused, but, and I've got hurts and Herbert right behind them. And then,

and then it's Tannehill. Yeah. Those guys are all going to go in the first nine rounds. Tannehill won't. Right. Right. That's the beauty of it. If I can get Tannehill and Stafford to be my combo platter at quarterback,

I know that Stafford schedule lightens up after week three. So I can just start Tannehill at the beginning of the year and then transition to Stafford, and I'm probably going to go undefeated in my fantasy league. That's what's going to happen. Okay, so should we not... Let me circle it back to wide receivers here. Should we not be a little bit more concerned about A.J. Brown?

This is obviously a major, major target competition that he did not have with Corey Davis and Johnnie Smith. Corey Davis and Johnnie Smith last year had 157 targets. Yeah, but Brown missed a few games, right? How many games did he miss? He missed two. He missed two games.

It's possible Julio might miss a game or two. The fact, the truth is, Brown isn't a highly targeted guy. You mentioned it, though. He's two games. It's possible Julio might miss a game or two. The fact, the truth is, Brown isn't a highly targeted guy. You mentioned it, though. He's incredibly efficient. But you've got to acknowledge, I mean, there's some downside there. If the touchdown rate goes down for him,

you know, he's not a high catch guy. He may not even be the best wide receiver on his team. I think we think he is. But Julio is still incredible. What he did last year in his healthy games was basically his best season right up there. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I

feel like there's some reason to be a little concerned here. If people are going to take him as a top seven or eight wide receiver, do you still have him ranked that way? Yeah, I do. I haven't officially changed him yet. I am not committing to ranking him as a top seven or eight fantasy receiver.

So that's going to be I am committing to him as a top 12. Like Justin Jefferson or A.J. Brown? I think I'm going to go with Jefferson. Heath? I've still got Brown higher right now. Okay. How about Michael Thomas?

I think I'm going to take Brown. Definitely Brown and non-PPR, no matter who the quarterback is. I'll take Thomas over Brown if Jameis wins the job. I'll take Brown over Thomas if Taysom wins the job. And Calvin Ridley, where are you going to end up in the rankings with Ridley?

Five or six. Probably six. Okay. How about Julio Jones? Let's look at Julio Jones or Robert Woods. I will take Woods. Woods. Alan Robinson.

I have Robinson ranked higher already. Robinson, yeah. I will probably stick with that. Amari Cooper? Cooper's pretty good with Dak. I have him back to back. I have Julio one spot higher. I think it'll be unpopular, but I think I'm going to take Cooper ahead of Julio Jones. Let's finish with Pitts and Gage. Moving Kyle Pitts up? I've already have him at six. I can think about moving him ahead of TJ Hawkinson, but for now, I think that could be a mistake

just because of the targets that I expect Hawkinson to have. What I wrote is that I'm not moving Pitts because Pitts' ranking is not really about a projection. It's about whether or not his elite profile can give us tight end production out of a rookie we've never seen before. And we don't like, we don't know. We don't know how many targets he's going to get per game.

We don't know how ready he's going to be week one. We've never seen really anyone like him and we've never seen anyone do what we're projecting him to do. Well, we could, we play the opportunity index game and say that now there's seven and a half targets per game available in Atlanta? Yeah. I would figure that a lot of that would go right into the back pocket of Kyle Pitts.

It might. Well, that's pretty good. That would be good for Kyle Pitts. No, that would be good. But he's got, like, again, how many passes are the Falcons going to throw? Is this going to be the Arthur Smith offense we've seen or a new Arthur Smith offense? It's going to be a new Arthur Smith offense.

They don't have Derek. Yeah, we don't. But so Calvin Ridley is going to get 25, 26% target share. Now we think as an elite number one, Russell Gage is going to be the slot guy that we think gets a major boost. What we saw from Arthur Smith, even though it's not going to be the same offense, was Anthony Ferkser getting almost as many targets as John O. Smith because they run multiple tight end sets and they just throw it to the guy the defense forgets.

Without Julio Jones, I don't think the defense is forgetting Kyle Pitts. Stop thinking of Kyle Pitts as a tight end. Think of him as a wide receiver that we can play as a tight end in fantasy. Because there's no way they can look at Kyle Pitts and say, that's Anthony Ferkser. They can't do that. Nobody called him that, but they run multiple tight end sets, and they just throw to the guy who's up.

Sure, but both of the tight ends that they're going to run are not going to be physical blocking guys like like folks are as the potential to be. And Johnny was a pretty good blocker too. I think that you're going to see both those guys on the move a lot. I think you're going to see the Falcons be a two tight end team for sure. Hurst and deeper leagues and in tight end premium leagues, put them on your list. He may end up with 45 catches this year.

You might have a couple of good weeks, but I think, I think pits, if you think of him more as a wide receiver, picking up six and a half to seven targets per game could be really dangerous, could be really, really good. You know that he's got a chance to be efficient. It's just a matter of how quickly he can assimilate into the offense. I talked about the schedule and how, well, the schedule's better for Tennessee.

I got to look at Atlanta's schedule real quick to see what it does for him but i can tell you that arthur smith's going to try and establish him right away to try and get that double coverage off of uh of uh really calvin ridley so it's philadelphia at tampa bay sucks that's gonna be bad for him at the giants that'll be that might be the game that pits really blows up in. Washington after that and then the Jets after that. Okay, so yes, Kyle Pitts. I think we've already seen it in our drafts. You knew I said that just to mess with you, Adam. It's not necessarily right.

It's not an easy schedule for Atlanta right off the bat. There's going to be one game. There's going to be one manager in a 12-team league. At least it's his gaga over Kyle Pitts. I swear, I wouldn't surprise me if he's in a fourth-round pick. He will be the number four tight end unquestionably in ADP. You think so? No doubt.

He's going to go really early. I will not get Kyle Pitts on a redraft team. I'm going to love getting that Mark Andrews after that. That's going to be the guy who falls. Russell Gage. Let's finish to be the guy who falls. Russell Gage. Let's finish talking about Russell Gage here. Over 70 catches last year was a PPR,

was a solid PPR receiver in the games without Julio Jones. Yeah. You know what? I think he's going to be the one that steps up, but he's not explosive. He wasn't better. He wasn't that much better. His splits were not Julio jones related to me uh seven games because i have jones playing seven healthy games i i break his season down into

seven healthy of course nine which just includes the two that he left early no he left early like six times but you're including the two games he's led less than half the game. 35% or fewer of the snaps. There were two games. Seven games with a healthy Julio Jones. 33 catches, 366 yards. Nine games without Jones or with Jones leaving early. 39 catches, 420 yards. It's pretty similar.

And it really wasn't that good of a year. 72 catches, 786 yards, four touchdowns on 110 targets for Gage. He was fine. He was number 37 overall. Gage averaged 16.6 PPR points per game in his final five, all without Julio. And look what Calvin Ridley did. Look what Calvin Ridley did at the end of the

season. Look what Matt Ryan did at the end of the season. They actually were cooking, even without Julio Jones. But it was very, very spotty. It was exactly... He won the Mohamed Sanu Waver Wire Award, which is, you go crazy for... Oh, this is it.

Mohamed Sanu, two good games, and then as soon as you pick him up, he stunk. That was what Sanu did every year with the Falcons, and that's what Gage did. But maybe, obviously, this is a different opportunity for him now without Julio for a full season. In deep leagues, Zaccheaus could be a deep league player. Don't forget about Olamide Zaccheaus,

who had a couple of blow-up games over the course of last year, and then he got hurt. I would rather draft him than Josh Reynolds now. Would you rather draft Russell Gage or a Jets wide receiver? Probably. In a PPR league, it's going to be Gage. In a non-PPR league, it might be Mims. Man, if Crowder would show up, it would be Crowder.

But it's even more and more like Crowder is not going to play for the Jets this year. And it could end up being Elijah Moore, too. We just have to wait and see what happens with Crowder. They're trying to get Crowder to take a pay cut when they've got $30 million in cap space. Crowder's going to tell him to kick rocks. He's eventually going to get cut or traded. I don't think Crowder plays for the Jets this year. Well, you know, Heath, it would be a very Crowder receiving core. It is currently, although Corey Davis has already hurt, so probably not as Crowder as it looks. All right, that's it.

We'll talk more about Matt Riley. We'll talk more about Julio Jones. Yeah, Matt Riley will be part of it on Monday's episode of Fantasy Football Today and on Fantasy Football Today in 5. Thanks so much for tuning in, everybody. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. We'll talk to you Monday.