The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Week 1 fantasy reactions that aren't overreactions & Week 2 advice

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

Michael Beller and Brandon Funston break down their reactions to how fantasy football played out in Week 1 with some Appropriate Reactions That Aren't Overreactions, including Saquon Barkley, Russell Wilson, Najee Harris and more as we set our lineups for Week 2, and it's all presented by KFC! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Football Show. Hello, everybody, what's up? Welcome into the Athletic Football Show. Fantasy Football Talk presented by KFC. Michael Beller and Brandon Funston here with you on this episode. We are going to take a look back at what happened in week one and talk about some overreactions that maybe aren't quite overreactions. Brandon Funston, how did week one treat you, my friend?

Oh, it treated me glorious in reality as a Seahawks fan. That was fun to get some, get the big, you know, Russell return win. In the fantasy world, oh my gosh, too many shares of Alan Robinson everywhere I turned. I was like, did I really draft Alan Robinson on literally every team? It was horrifying, actually, going through there and finding out that I pretty much do own him across the board. I'm surprised he's not one of the overreactions that not quite. an overreaction for you then because I know where you're going with yours. Did he almost make the cut?

Jake, Jake, you know, said some things that made me feel better, you know, talking about how he was out there running routes like crazy, being double teamed and that the bills were letting Cooper Cup, you know, be the one that burned them. They were going to live with that, but they weren't going to, you know, I don't know. I mean, I guess apparently it works. You can't fall a 31 to 10 score. But apparently he dissected it a little bit. bit more and said there was some reasoning behind Alan Robinson basically being AWOL. So look,

there's some history here with Sean McVey and two wide receivers. And I'm not going to let one week wash that all the way. So I still have some hope for Alan Robinson, but he will be playing himself off my bench at this point. That makes some sense, certainly. And it's a good thing you brought up Cooper Cup because he's exactly the guy I wanted to point to when I introduced exactly the details of what we're going to get into on this episode here. Funston, you know, this is one of my favorite bits to do early on in the season. It's the easiest piece of fantasy advice to give someone. Oh, it's one week. Don't overreact. Oh, it's one week. Don't overreact. Forget about that. Because not everything is an overreaction. Last week in week, or last season, excuse me, in week

one, Cooper Cup caught seven to ten targets for 108 yards in a touchdown. Cooper Cup was drafted as what last year? Like wide receiver 20-ish somewhere in there. If you went out and said, you know what, I like this. I think there's something here and paid a wide receiver 10 price to go get Cooper Cup on your team, everyone would have said, that's an overreaction. What are you doing? Why are you doing that? Why are you making that move? And then boom, probably would have won you your league. So not everything that happens in week one that we react to is necessarily an overreaction. So we're going to highlight some of those here on this episode that we think sound like overreactions as we say them after one game, but will be proven to just be

appropriate reactions. I'm going to grab a piece of KFC chicken tenders over here. You tell us what your first overreaction that isn't an overreaction is. All right, let's go with Najee Harris. I will say he will not be a top 10 fantasy running back. And, you know, he had the 10 carries, 23 yards on the ground against the Bengals, week one on Sunday. He did find the end zone with catch. I had a couple catches.

So he brought up the Lysfranc injury in preseason, left the game. did not play in overtime because of a foot injury. And then I'm not liking the way things are going. Big guys with little injuries like this tend to end up being exacerbated. And you start to hear more about Jalen Warren and the fact that they might want to like, you know, kind of pump the brakes on giving him the same kind of volume as last year. And then you look at last year, I just had to do a little bit more, you know, double-taking on Naji Harris's number from last year.

the volume massed a lot of inefficiency. We know he averaged 3.9 yards per carry, but a lot of his passing game work was front-loaded. He was not a big guy in the passing game down the stretch. He had some games where he had like five catches, but a lot of like five catches, 16 yards. Not big numbers in the passing game. I think he had one touchdown through the air in the final 10 or 11 games or so.

I just feel like, you know, where we look at rookies, and big numbers, we start to expect, oh, you know, it's going to go up, you know, because young guys, they just get better and better. I actually think he's going to come down a little bit now. Just looking at the offensive. And really, I buried the league because the offensive line might be worse. It might be worse this year than it was last year, and it was horrible last year. And so throw in the potential for a quarterback change midseason.

Like, I just don't like the way things are settling in for Naji Harris out of the gate. I'm right there with you. Top 10 is maybe a little bit aggressive for me. because the volume still should be there. But I think that you have every reason to be concerned with Najee Harris if you took him with what was probably a late first round pick, maybe depending on your league. You got him early in the second round.

But either way, one of your first two picks, certainly. And you can't have a ton of confidence. It's a bad offensive line. It's a quarterback who you played well enough in the win over Cincinnati, but isn't going to exactly strike the fear in the hearts of defenses. So there could be some growing pains really all season long for that Pittsburgh offense. And it would extend to everyone, including Najee Harris, even if he is touching the ball 350, 360 times this season.

So that definitely caused for concern. For my first overreaction that isn't an overreaction, I'm going to go fenced into that Monday night game that you referenced. And I'm going to say that Russell Wilson's cooked, man. I mean, Russell Wilson, the Russell Wilson that we knew did so much of his damage by getting outside of the pocket and making things happen on the fly, improvving when things broke down, but even improvving as really play design, right?

I mean, it looks like improv when you're watching it sometimes, but it wasn't actually improv. They were designing plays for him to get out, use his legs, create some open throwing lanes, and then make something happen with a host of different pass catchers. Most recently, Tyler Lockett and DK Metcalf, of course, but going back to Jimmy Graham and Doug Baldwin, guys like that, was always able to make things happen.

You know, the numbers, the bottom line numbers for Russ looked pretty decent last night. He goes over 300 yards, he throws just one touchdown. They had a couple of drives where they lose the ball inside the five. So you could certainly explain all that away. The efficiency numbers were nice, thanks largely to that touchdown pass to Jerry Judy. But, I mean, that was not the best thrown ball from Russ that Jerry Judy turned into a 64-yard touchdown.

Russ easily could have had two interceptions in that game. And then most importantly, going back to the way I started this, he was not a threat at all when he got on the move. He just, he looked slow. And if Russ no longer has that threat, if Russ is no longer the super-athes, that he was as recently as two or three seasons ago, I think that changes the entire calculus for him, for this Denver offense, and for what he is in the fantasy world. Instead of a locked-in, no doubt about it starter, I think we're talking about him as a low-end QB-1, maybe someone who in aggressively shallow quarterback leagues ends up falling on the stream radar. And just to throw a

couple of names out there, some people who I was drafting behind him as recently as, what, two weeks ago, who I would now trade straight up for him. Kirk Cousins, I'd rather have Cousins than him the rest of the season, Derek Carr, rather have him. The rest of the season, maybe Aaron Rogers, Funston, maybe even as far down as Trevor Lawrence. I just think that there could be a rude awakening ahead for Russ if he is not able to get out on the run and make those plays that have made him into one of the best quarterbacks of the last decade.

Yeah, he was sliding into the top 10 at the quarterback spot, and then it was the Rogers, you know, Derek Carr, cousins contingent. I think you're absolutely right. One thing that I know that a lot of people, including myself in Seattle, have been talking about is like curiosity about how Russell is going to run because it's been no no secret here that he has not in the last couple years had that ability to be elusive and create magic with his legs that we saw for what the first six seven eight years in Seattle and there was a lot of like oh if he goes out there and he starts running around and stuff there was going to be some bitterness

because he had been you know not showing that the last couple years and what we saw was what we saw the last couple of years in Seattle. He does not have the burst that he once was. His legs are just not what they once were. Gino Smith was running around and doing a lot more on the ground than Russ was. And I just don't think, A, he wants to run a whole lot anymore. And B, I think he's just lost, literally lost a step. So if he is pocket tight, I mean, I think just watching Denver,

they should make this offense about Javante Williams. That guy looks awesome and, you know, more Javante, but letting Russ cook might just be pocket-tied, Russ. And as you said, that's just not going to make him quite the upside fantasy player that maybe we thought. I fear he is too cooked to let him cook. And I think it would have been unreasonable two weeks ago to sit here and say, oh, yeah, you know, Russ can run for 400 yards and four touchdowns still. I mean, that was out the window a couple of years ago. And so no one should have been expecting that. I think it would have been reasonable to think he's not going to run the way he's.

used to, but he can still make plays happen with his legs by avoiding pressure, getting outside, creating a throwing lane, and making something happen. Or if the play breaks down, he's able to stay away from the rush long enough to let his receivers get open downfield. I think that was a reasonable expectation in draft season. And after what we saw last night, I'm not so sure that he's going to be able to do that with the consistency that we expect from him. So I'm definitely concerned about my Russell Wilson shares.

All right, Funston. here we go now a couple more overreactions that aren't overreactions from you and me and this one very interesting that you've got here Funston because you and I over the years that we've been doing shows together have talked a lot about Curtis Samuel

it has never really clicked but maybe just maybe this is the season for him yeah I was going to set that up from Colonel Sanders to Curtis Samuel it was going to roll over nicely but yeah I am a sucker for Curtis Samuel So when I see him go out in week one and get 11 targets, eight catches,

and then they throw him in the backfield and let him carry the ball four times. Look at this is a guy who was, you know, had the Percy Harvin comps and spent a lot of time in the backfield at Ohio State, a guy that can play everywhere. And Scott Turner, the offensive coordinator for commander, said that over the summer. When they brought him, or when they were talking early in the summer, he was like, he can play everywhere. He's one of the smartest guys. I know he absorbs what we're doing.

And we saw that. And, you know, it's Jacksonville. So we want to temper our enthusiasm a little bit. But the way Washington is set up with Terry McLaurin and John Dotson and the way they use Antonio Gibson out of the backfield and you got Logan Thomas, there's a lot of different ways to slice and dice for Carson Wentz. And I love the fact that just a lot of attention paid to Curtis Sammy. Very, very vital in that game,

especially early on, just continuing to get first downs and finding the end zone. I just don't think this goes away completely. So we saw this in Carolina a couple of years ago, and he finished as wide receiver 25 because we love duality. And when you're, you know, he had, I think 50 carries had like a couple hundred yards on the ground, some touchdowns on the ground. Like I think that's in play, especially while Brian Robinson is down. I think, you know, much like San Francisco is going to have to lean on Debo,

more in the backfield now with Elijah Mitchell out. I think that's the plan in Washington as well, that Curtis Samuel is going to be a regular part of this backfield mix. I'll move him around, but they're just going to have a lot of fun with him. And the way the offense is set up, I think that's going to continue to reap dividends for his fantasy value. I will say top 35.

So I'm going to call him a solid wide receiver three where he was going undrafted going into the year. So that's a big jump, and I'm buying into it. Health, health permitting, as always with him. Right. So more of a question for him than a lot of other players in the NFL. But you can see where it's coming from. And Scott Turner, I think he deserves a benefit of the doubt here. I'm going to steal a little nugget from the person who hosts the show regularly, Robert Mays,

and that the Washington offense last year, we think about it. And we remember a whole lot of ugliness. That's what happens when Taylor Heineke starts 16 of your 17 games. And they were barely below league average in offensive EPA. And the fact that they were as competent as they were from an efficiency standpoint, sort of masked how bad they were and really didn't give Scott Turner enough credit, I don't think. And so now we're talking about a team that has a major quarterback upgrade, you know, gets Jahan Dotson in the fold.

Like there could be some sneaky fun offense happening in Washington. Curtis Samuel definitely someone who could be a part of that. So maybe it's another year. Maybe it's finally that year, Funston, that all of your Curtis Samuel loyalty pays off. You deserve it. I will say that. I will say that. You definitely deserve it. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, I'm going to wrap things up here. One more thing that I don't think is an overreaction. Sekewon Berkeley looked awesome in the Giants win over the Titans. Now, that certainly no one would accuse of being an overreaction. He looked great. He looked apart. He looked rejuvenated with Brian Dable in New York. So everyone is on board with that. What I am going to do is take it one step farther and say,

if I was drafting today, if I was sitting down on this, very day to draft right before week two starts, I'm taking Seekwon second overall in that draft. I still take Jonathan Taylor over him. Jonathan Taylor carried about 30 times in the Colts tie with the Texans. Looked awesome. 160 plus yards. Jonathan Taylor is going to be just fine once again this season. So I'm still taking Taylor over him. But once we get past that, give me Sequin as the second overall pick. I mean, the dude looked like pre-injury Seacuan. He was getting fed on the ground through the air. They draw up that two-point conversion play for him. them that win over the Titans. He was pumped. I mean, everything centers around him being

the heart and soul of that offense. And this is a team that after the last couple of years, and the draft picks they've got Andrew Thomas on one side, Evan Neal on the other, Andrew Thomas throughout the preseason and into that week one game looked a whole lot better than he did last year. This could be a sneaky good offensive line that he is running behind as well. So I just think we're going to see a bonanza of a season from Sequan Barkley. And right now, I'm not, I put my money where in my mouth is Funston. You know, if I took Christian McCaffrey, Dalvin Cook, those guys in the first round, someone like that, Derek Henry, I'm going to the Saquan owner and I'm saying, hey, let's have a challenge trade here because I would put Saquan as the number two fantasy

player right now, maybe number three fantasy player with Justin Jefferson also ahead of him, but the number two fantasy running back right now. Justin Jefferson looked awesome too. Ridicrous. You would take him over Cooper Cup? I would. Because Cop was pretty awesome too. Cup looked awesome too, but I would take Sequin. I admit to that being a little bit of a running back receiver value theory, but I'll take Seaquin. He just looked like the guy who, you know, could get to 1,900, 1900 yards and 15 touchdowns. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I said this on the athletic fan of football football pod earlier this week with Chris Welsh.

I was like, Barkley, when he was running down the sideline on that long run that he busted, looked like, you know, like he was going at 1.5 speed, you know, like when you, it was, it was unreal. I was like, oh, my God. I mean, he probably ran 4-3 with pads on there. I mean, like, low 4-3. He was flying. And then the other example, so he got, he had the north-south thing going. And then you get him on that two-point conversion where you got the east-west thing going.

He had to sidesteped a defender. He sort of looked dead when he caught the pass. Yeah. And then, you know, then he had to power through a couple of different things. defenders to get over. I mean, he just really showed it all there. You talked about in the passing game, six catches. Like, this was Sequin of the first two years that we saw before the injury started to settle in. So look, and that, back then, he was the number one with the bullet. Yeah. If we're talking about, if we're talking about that tank being restored and everything

being all good, I mean, this is Christian McCaffrey. These guys are on par. If these guys are both healthy, these are the two best running backs in terms of just explosiveness and versus that you can have. So then you start to look at the context of things. You mentioned the Giants offensive line could end up being pretty good. I believe in Brian Daibel. I mean, so that's already a huge upgrade right there. And I was a big fan of Andrew Thomas at Georgia.

And sometimes guys just don't show well because of the context of where they're at. I think Brian Daible brings a nice light to this Giants organization. It's a hard league, right? It's a hard league to step into at any position. Not everyone just is for Sean Slater and steps right in as a rookie. He's like, yeah, okay, good, I've got it. I know how to block the best pass rushers and best run defenders in the world. And so it's not crazy that it would maybe take Andrew Thomas a little bit of time to get going

and get that better coaching staff underneath him. And sure, Brian Daibel isn't spending as much time on offense, purely offense, the way that he did in Buffalo when he had that great run there as the offensive coordinator. But we still know this is his offense. He's the one calling the play. It's like this is still him really at the head. of this offense. And so we should have a lot of confidence in the big players in this offense, I think, going forward to Saquan, of course, chief among them.

Thanks so much for joining us here on this episode of the Athletic Football Show, Talking Fantasy Football, presented by Kentucky Fried Chicken. For Brandon Funston, I'm Michael Beller, the two of us back with you right here next week. Until then, be sure to listen to the athletic football show and everything we got coming your way later this week. And also, Funston, Jake Sealy, Chris Welch, Nando de Pino, Chris Vicaro. covered on the Athletic Fantasy Football Show. Thanks for joining with us. We'll talk to you soon.

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