Fantasy Football Today - 🚨 Matt Ryan to the Colts! (03/21 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

Matt Ryan is unlikely to be Fantasy relevant in 1-QB leagues, but let's focus on Kyle Pitts and Michael Pittman. Does this trade knock Pitts out of the Top 5 at TE? Does Pittman get a boost? 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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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. We've got another trade, ladies and gentlemen, and we've got another bonus podcast for you. Matt Ryan is going to the Indianapolis Colts. Adam and Heath here with a bonus podcast on fantasy football today. We'll talk about the fantasy impact. You know, football wasn't always this fun in the offseason.

I just looked, assuming this is right, on NFL.com. They have a trade tracker that goes back a long ways. And 10 years ago, March 2012, there were seven trades. This is the 16th so far of March 2022. And we didn't used to get this, Heath. This really changes things. I think it's another great way that fantasy football has changed the NFL. We're clearly having an impact on the way these people behave.

They're like, oh man, what can we do to get more bonus podcasts? All right, so let's talk about this here. Who's the biggest winner or loser? Who's impacted the most by Matt Ryan going to the Colts? And the rumor is that Marcus Mariota could be going to the Falcons. What's your big takeaway? I mean, if it's Mariota, that will be kind of interesting. But for the most part, I think the biggest loser is probably Kyle Pitts.

Like, it was like a week ago, and I thought Kyle Pitts might be the redraft tight end one. You were talking about how we were one transaction away from him being a second round pick. I don't know if he is a top five tight end this year. I feel the exact same. Well, I feel like he's a top five tight end because I just see such a separation personally between him and say Hawkinson or Goddard, whoever it would be, or Gronk.

Gronk you could say maybe if he's back with the Bucs. But I definitely, I mean, my prediction that he would end up being a second round pick right now, no way. If it's Baker Mayfield, maybe, but no, I mean, we agree this is a loss for him. Right. And I don't know how many touchdowns, I can't do the math easily in my head. Kyle Pitts would have needed to score last year to score as many fantasy points per game as TJ Hawkinson did. But it was more than one more touchdown.

Yeah, that's a negative. I think it's a positive for Michael Pittman. It gives some stability to Jonathan Taylor. Everybody's taking him number one overall anyway. But with a terrible quarterback, you might have had some concerns about Taylor not living up to that. It's better for the Colts, I think, than it is for anybody for fantasy purposes. Ryan was QB 31 in my projections on the Falcons.

I moved him over to the Colts, made some adjustments. He's now QB 27. So not a huge move there. Probably not somebody you want to draft except for in a two-quarterback league. I would expect it to be a run-heavy offense the colts but it becomes really interesting like what what are the falcons going to do they have essentially no wide receivers their running backs are mike davis damian williams and cordero patterson and now they don't have a quarterback either well let's stay on the colts for one

second here because i want to talk about pitman I feel like we'll forget about Pittman but things could have been a lot worse for Michael Pittman in theory right I'm getting a pocket passer who could maybe heavily target Michael Pittman this is how much how much better is it are you moving him up I moved him I think I had him 22 or 23 and now he's 19 or 20 um so it was a slight bump up it's the joke that I made on Twitter was that his targets go up, his catches go up, his yards go up, but he's probably only going to score three touchdowns now. What did he score last? He's number one.

He's the number one wide receiver for Matt Ryan. The Falcons, by the way, they weren't on a pass-heavy offense, but they were 19th in pass attempts, and the Colts were 27th. The Falcons threw 52 more passes than the Indianapolis Colts. Very, very run-heavy offense that Matt Ryan's going to. Did you mention where he finished last year? He was, what, 30th, QB 30?

I believe he was tied for 29 with Terod Taylor at 15.3 fantasy points per game. Just absolutely miserable. And it's not fair to him, but I don't know that this situation is any better at all for his fantasy production um i think kyle pitts is probably a better number one than michael pitman is or at least as good as michael pitman and they don't really have any behind everybody behind pitman right now paris campbell's their number two wide receiver i guess you could argue that

maybe the colts defense would be significantly better than the falcons defense and maybe that would force more pass attempts, something like that. But there's really no appeal for Matt Ryan. I understand that. Would you rather have Michael Pittman or Alan Robinson? Pittman for sure. Pittman's a top-20 wide receiver for me. I would take him over D.K. Metcalf.

Oh, wow. Okay, I didn't realize how high you were on him. Would you rather have Michael Pittman or Mike Evans in full PPR? I will still go with Evans in full PPR. All right. So Kyle Pitts, is he going to fall to fifth in your tight end rankings? He's current. I'll probably rank him fifth just so we don't have to argue Hawkinson versus Pitts. But right now in the projections, I actually have Hawkinson ahead of Pitts. Pitts is sixth. I mean, it's really crazy to be comparing third-year Hawkinson to rookie-year Pitts when Pitts just had the best tight end season ever. How do you rank Hawkinson ahead of Kyle Pitts?

Who is Kyle Pitts' quarterback right now? How much worse is he going to be than Jared Goff? Matt Ryan was worse than Jared Goff last year for fantasy purposes. Was he? I don't know. I would assume. What are the outs? I can't imagine that the Falcons are going to trade for a quarterback.

So I think you can rule out them getting Baker or Jimmy Garoppolo. They're clearly in a tank situation. So they're going to sign Marcus Mariota or they're going to play a rookie. Or maybe they'll go spend. I don't think they have the money tank situation. Jameis. They're going to sign Marcus Mariota or they're going to play a rookie or maybe they'll go spend. I don't think they have the money to go get Jameis. I guess they could have maneuvered the money to get Watson. So. Right. Yeah.

I mean, they take a huge cap hit with this. If Jameis was there, then I would say that Kyle Pitts is probably third or fourth at tight end again, right back where he was. I'm just assuming that it's either Marcus Mariota or worse. Okay. Okay. Not all bonus podcasts need to be 15 minutes. So I think we can wrap this one up here. Not the sexiest trade, but definitely something to talk about. And I will say one last thing. Like we, we just argued this morning about Cordero Patterson. And I think this is a downgrade for him as well because a lot of his value comes in pass catching, and he's probably not going to be as efficient catching passes as he was.

And you know what? Actually, if you want to give me one minute here, this might be a time to revisit that conversation I had with Jamie of how would you rank Kyle Pitts if he were on just a terrible offense? Because when they still have Matt Ryan, and obviously they have draft capital, and they'll add somebody, a wide receiver maybe, something like that,

Jamie's like, well, I don't think they're going to have a terrible offense. And that's totally understandable. I do think they are going to have a terrible offense. I mean, they might have one of the very worst. Okay, in the last five seasons, bottom five offenses have produced three top 12 running backs, none higher than seven in full PPR, two top seven wide receivers, three top seven tight ends, but none higher than tight end five.

And the standouts on bottom five offenses in the last five seasons were Jarvis Landry, who had 112 catches in 2017, Robinson in 2019 and James Robinson I would say had the best year of any player on a bad terrible offense really but we have not seen a tight end in the last five years finish higher than fifth in full PPR on a bottom five offense then again we haven't seen a lot of tight ends like Kyle Pitts and I would again if you're in dynasty I would I'd be go make an offer tight ends like Kyle Pitts. And I would, again, if you're in Dynasty, I'd go make an offer for Kyle Pitts because I'm still optimistic for the long term. I'm just not sure it's going to pay off this year.

Okay. Well, that is Heath. I am Adam. And we'll be talking about this probably for the next five months or so. And get you ready for your drafts. Thanks, everybody. We'll talk to you tomorrow on Fantasy Football Today.