The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Trevor Lawrence, rookies to watch & more fantasy week 1 storylines

Episode Date: September 8, 2022

Michael Beller and Brandon Funston bring you the week 1 fantasy football storylines they're watching, from Trevor Lawrence's fresh start in Jacksonville, rookies to watch for, the WR situation in Green Bay and possible pickups there & more presented by KFC.Follow Beller on Twitter: @MBellerFollow Funston on Twitter: @BrandonFunstonSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTube Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Football Show. Hello, everybody, what's up? Welcome in to Fantasy Football here on the Athletic Football Show presented by KFC, Michael Beller and Brandon Funston here with you on the day that the 22 NFL season begins. That is right, Thursday, September 8th, Bills and Rams kicking off tonight, not just week one, not just a great game, but kicking off the 2022. NFL season for us and the fantasy football season along with it. So we are very excited. Funston, we obviously know these Thursday night,

week one games are going to be great games. We know that about the 2033 matchup is going to be awesome, whatever the hell it ends up being. But Bill's Rams here in 2022, what a great way to start the season. It had me thinking just now, has there ever been a bookend matchup, meaning that it started the year and it ended the year. Because this legitimately could be a preview of the Super Bowl. I mean, I kind of personally am predicting a all-L.A. Super Bowl, but really, Buffalo is right there for me. And I think the Rams are going to go back from the NFC.

So it legitimately has a chance to book in the actual season here with this matchup. Definitely could happen. Off the top of my head, I don't remember that happening at any point. It certainly could have. but I don't remember it happening. And one thing I did go look is that the Rams are the first defending Super Bowl champ underdogs since the Broncos beat the Panthers that year and then Peyton Manning retired in the offseason. So that was what, like seven, eight years ago?

So the first time we see the Super Bowl champs come back the next year as underdogs. And underdogs at home with the bills going into L.A. As the favorite here, it's going to be a great way to start this 2022 NFL season. And of course, we have so much that we are looking forward to in the family. fantasy football world in this week one. And that's what we're going to talk about on this episode of the athletic football show. Last year, week one, gave us Elijah Mitchell. Rehme Moser goes down with the knee injury, ends up being a season ender. Elijah Mitchell runs for more than 100 yards and a couple of touchdowns against the Lions and ultimately becomes a fantasy football fixture

for the rest of the season and right here into 2022. So we're talking about that here. What are some week one storyline, some things we can't wait to watch, some things we can't wait to see play out on Thursday, Sunday, Monday, whatever the case may be, that ultimately could be harbingers of what is to come for this entire 2022 season. Get us rolling here, Funston, on the Athletic Football Show presented by our friends at KFC. What do you got for us? Well, I was doing a guest, I was guesting on another podcast this morning, and the exercise was to come up with your favorite week one pickups that are available in like 67% of fantasy leagues or more.

and there's like this smattering of Green Bay receivers in that range. So Alan Lazard is not in there, but Romeo Dobbs, Dubs, whatever we want to call them, Christian Watson, Sammy Watkins, Randall Ka. I mean, like, this is going to be fascinating. There's 225 vacated targets between Devante Adams and Marquez Valde Scantling for the guy who, the quarterback who was the MVP last year. there is a huge vacuum that's going to have to be filled by somebody. And if Alan Azard, it could be, you know, a lot of Alan Lazard, but it could be a lot of one of these other guys. So I will be fixated on how this Green Bay offense looks.

It's also interesting for that backfield where we might see them lean more on the backfield than we did in the past. But are we going to get a weird eight-catch 80-yard game from Randall Cobb? Are we going to get a big play from Romeo Dobbs? What are we going to get in this Green Bay? passing attack, and is there going to be any context clues that this is something that we're going to see repeatedly throughout the year? It's one of the most fascinating things to watch in week one and really the early season. It's not just what does the, how does the receiving

core shake out? But really, what does this entire offense look like? Because Devante Adams, I would venture to say that no offense has run through its number one receiver over the last two years more than Green Bay's offense ran through Devante Adams. Everything they did. Aaron Rogers said it himself. Robert Mays, this tidbit on an episode from the preseason that when he sat down and talked to Rogers is here that Rogers said that Devante was the number one read on 80% of their concepts. 80% of the things they drew up, he was the number one read. So you were talking about truly running your offense through the number one receiver. And no disrespect to those other guys

who are there. None of them is anywhere near what Devante Adams is. So that whole offense is going to change. And we all trust Aaron Rogers and Matt LaFleur to figure it out. But still, we're going to be talking about figuring it out in a totally different way than what this offense has looked like over the last couple of seasons when they were world beaters and Aaron Rogers was winning a couple of MVP awards. So we know those receivers are going to factor in. We know Aaron Jones is going to have a role to play. We know A.J. Dillon is going to have a larger role to play on the ground. And then that is going to have an effect on the entire offense, even though we're not talking strictly the passing game there with what A.J. Dylan does. It's going to be totally different.

We think it's going to be productive. We really don't have any reason to doubt that. It's just going to look different, the shape of it's going to be different. And someone, right, Funston? I mean, someone has to. It's really what you're getting at here with this point. Someone in that receiving group has to emerge as an obvious winner in the fantasy game. And it can be alongside Alan Lazard.

It's not like one of these guys who you mentioned as being available has to supplant Alan Lizard as the number one. There should be enough here for it to be Lazard Plus, but anyone who tells you that they know who it's going to be is lying to you right now. Yeah, exactly. is it Robert Tunyon surprising as a top six fantasy tight end? Yeah, or is it one of these- It's an Aaron Jones catching 100 balls.

Yeah, I mean, I think any of these receivers, if Lazard turns into a back-in wide receiver two and there's somebody else kind of emerges as a back-end wide receiver three, that's totally in play, and that means both of those, whoever those two guys, I mean, Lizard, Lizard and whoever the other guy is, are both real values right now at where they're going. So I think there's a lot of potential upside here.

It's just who gets, who gets, who gets lucky to be that guy. It's going to be something to watch, as we said, this weekend into the early weeks of the season. Packers taking on the Minnesota Vikings, what should be an important NFC North game in week one. For my first storyline that I'm going to be watching this week, Funston, I'm going to Jacksonville. They play the Washington Commanders. I just really want to see what Trevor Lawrence looks like now that he is out from underneath the thumb of Urban Meyer. I think we are all comfortably willing to give that entire Jacksonville team a break.

for what that season was. I mean, that was just, you know, quite possibly the worst one-year coaching run we have seen in NFL history from Urban Meyer last year. And that team was just a mess. They were a mess from the start all the way through the end of the season. You're talking about a rookie quarterback who just never really had a shot last year. And things are totally different. Now, not only do you get rid of the Urban Meyer cancer, but you bring in Doug Peterson into this, and that totally changes everything for this team, because we've seen Doug Peterson have success with a young quarterback who, hey, he's going to be facing off with in that week one matchup with Washington and Carson Wentz.

Not saying that Wentz and Lawrence, excuse me, necessarily play similar styles, but Doug Peterson is just such a breath of fresh air for Trevor Lawrence and for that Jacksonville offense. You also get Travis Etienne in the mix last year, or this year, excuse me. Of course, last year did not have Travis Etienne at all because of his season ending injury suffered in the summer, so you've got him there now, you've got Christian Kirk there now. It's a team that doesn't have an obvious number one wide receiver, number one pass catcher, frankly. I mean, it's going to be Christian Kirk, but we don't, you know, he's not a number one other than being on Jacksonville's depth chart as the number one guy.

But a lot of guys who you can mix and match and whose roles alongside one another make sense when you look at them on paper. Trevor Lawrence was coming out of Clemson as, you know, the best QB prospect since Andrew Luck. That does not vanish because of one unsightly rookie year when you consider everything that was going on around him in just. Jacksonville. And this just feels like the sort of guy who could make a monster leap in year two with the right pieces, the right coaching staff, the right infrastructure around him. I'm excited to see how it gets going against Washington. Yeah. Just to kind of speak to this point, our colleague Jake Seeley, and we were taping an athletic fantasy football podcast this morning, or actually earlier. And his he laid out his bold prediction was Trevor Lawrence is Joe Burrough this year. You know, and there's some similarities there. There you go. Yeah. Kind of a wasted rookie season for whatever reason and, you know, different reasons between these two quarterbacks.

But terrible team all of a sudden becomes like a team on the upside and the quarterback takes a huge leap. And, you know, that was Joe Burrell last year and it could be Trevor Lawrence this year. And yeah, it'll be interesting if that does happen to see if, you know, Christian Kirk is the guy that gets a huge value spike or if it is kind of like a community that sort of does this with Evanine, Grumman Zay Jones. Marvin Jones. So we'll see how that plays out, but I like that. It feels like there's an adult in the room now with Doug Peterson. Yes. And so back in on Trevor Lawrence, willing to give him a mulligan for year one, given the ridiculous circumstances that team had last year. Yeah, definitely could be a big breakout season for Lawrence in year two. All right, Funston. Let's get to storyline number two that each of us is watching this week. What are you going to take us to for

week one? Yeah, this is not so granular. It's kind of a broad. picture approach, but it's it's the rookie class. You know, you can go back every year and there's there's a, there is somebody that emerges out of the woodwork, whether it was Elijah Mitchell last year or James Robinson the year before, or it's a top receiver that gets, you know, gets top receiver love, but not enough. Like Jamar Chase was wide receiver 26 and ADP last year, and he goes gangbusters. Justin Jefferson, I haven't looked up his ADP, but it was probably something similar. And he goes gangbusters.

So who are these, is it going to be Drake London that goes gangbusters? Is it going to be, you know, who's going to emerge? And we've had some conversations on our podcast here at the athletic where, you know, I asked our colleague Jake Sealy, who would you start at rookie in week one and feel good about? And at the time that we said that, it was Damien Pierce, the rookie out of Houston, the running back. And, you know, I think Alec Pierce is starting, you should be starting for the Colts in that game. maybe it's two pierces at rookie that jump out in week one. He could be interesting, but I just think there's a lot of interesting places. The Breeze Hall thing with the Jets, is he really going to split right down the middle

with Michael Carter? Is Michael Carter going to lead the way there? Were we overdrafting? There's just a lot of storylines within the rookie class that I think are going to be important for us to see how they play out early on to get a good read for the rest of the landscape. Yeah, depending on the shape of your team, might feel all right about Drake London. I could see you feel on all right about Chris Alave in your starting lineup in week one. But I think the point here is that you take all those

receivers. It was another great receiver class. I think we should all already be used to that and get used to the fact that we're going to have great receiver classes coming out year after year after year. It's a pretty safe bet that one of those guys, at the very least one of those guys, London, Alave, Garrett Wilson, George Pickens, whoever it might be is going to significantly outperform where we've been drafting them for the last month or so. And that's just going to be the case. know that. We don't necessarily know who it's going to be. Like, Chase was the obvious candidate to be that guy last year. And so even though he did it in a dramatic way that not a whole lot of people were predicting,

the fact that it was him wasn't a huge surprise. I think we have a few other guys vying to be that guy this season, and maybe there will be a couple of guys. But it's going to be really fun to watch. And it's going to be fun to watch those guys, especially in week one, to see if someone already lays claim to be in that breakout immediate impact rookie receiver this season. So we'll have our eyes on all those guys and certainly on Damien Pierce, the way that he climbed the ADP ranks over the last couple of weeks of draft season. Funston, for my last point here, I'm going to go to something that is going to be bigger picture that we're going to be talking about all season long.

We know that. It's the proliferation, excuse me, of two high defenses across the NFL. We saw this used most dramatically against the Chiefs last year. The Chiefs have ultimately adjusted to it. They were in the AFC championship game for a reason and held a pretty big league going to. to halftime for a reason in that AFC championship game, but we saw those two high defenders really

slowed down what the chiefs, the most explosive offense of the last four years wanted to do. And Tyree Kill was still effective, but they weren't getting those big chunk plays down the field. And we know this, I mean, Funston, you know it as well as anyone living in the Seattle area, being a Seahawks fan, that single high defense that

Pete Carroll ran with the unique talent that he had on the outside, that spread across the NFL. Everyone was wanting to do it. It became very effective. Teams found a to beat that and now we see the shift to the too high being the base defense across the NFL. So in the fantasy world, how does that translate? Well, we love those big plays. We love those 70-yard Jamar Chase touchdowns, those 80-yard-tiree-kill touchdowns. Are those going to be there quite as frequently as they have been in recent years with the explosion of the passing game across the NFL?

Or our team's going to have to dink and dunk their way down the field. Our defense is going to be comfortable living with death by a thousand cuts rather than one huge or two huge chunk plays. that you see so many teams being able to pull off in, as we've seen this transition, to a new look defense. So I'm just really interested to see how many defenses are playing that way, how many of them are capable of doing it well, what that means for some of these offenses and some of these big play passing games, and then how that all trickles down to the fantasy world. And if we're suddenly seeing, you know, Jalen Wadle being a more effective receiver than

Tyree Kill because of the looks that Miami is getting just to use them as one possible example. Yeah, and I also am very aware of this. kind of reaction to the big plays by watching defenses and how they evolved to play against Russell Wilson. So, you know, in Seattle, probably be doing this same kind of technique against Russell Wilson in week one. And week one. Yep, exactly. So yeah, it's certainly something evolved. It's going to probably force teams to, you know, get a legitimate threat in the running game and try to get those running games going and maybe try to get a safety to be, you know, be pushed into something around the box, be an extra run defender if that becomes a bigger threat,

maybe ultimately going to push teams to be a little bit more balanced in their attacks so they keep defense as honest. Otherwise, it requires a level of patience from a lot of quarterbacks that, you know, have a gunslinger mentality that maybe don't always want to dink and dunk, as you mentioned. So certainly it's an evolution, which we see in the NFL all the time. And, you know, of course, there will always be some kind of a counteract to that. We'll see how that plays out as well. But yeah, I think for right now, this is the time of the two highs to shine in the NFL.

The ultimate cat and mouse game, and it all gets started later tonight with Bills and Rams, at least if you're listening to this on Thursday. And then, of course, a full weekend of NFL football ahead of us. Just four of the storylines we present to you here that we are going to be watching this week one. Thanks so much for being with us for this fantasy football edition of the Athletic Football Show presented by KFC. please be sure subscribe to the athletic you're going to want to be with us all season long the athletic dot com slash football show also subscribe to the athletic football show's youtube page going to be doing a ton there there is a link to that in the show description and if you are listening to this on thursday or even at any point this

weekend so long as it's before sunday kickoff it is not too late to join our picks pool that we are running on the athletic football show this season you will find a link to that in the subscription page as well our thanks to run your pool for hosting that for us for brand of funston i'm michael beller the two of us will be back with some more fantasy football goodness. Like next week, the Athletic Football Show returns tomorrow, so be sure to be subscribed to that in your podcast feed. We'll talk to you soon. This was the Athletic Football Show.