Week 1 recap: Cowboys dominate, Tyreek Hill goes off and a lot of sloppy play

It's Monday, September 11th. I'm Matt Harmon. Welcome to the Yahoo Fantasy football show presented by Nerd Wallet. It's a hell of a day to talk, ball, man, because it is the aftermath of week one. I am joined to do just all that with the one and only Scott P. Nousey here very late. 11.23 PM Eastern Times of Scott. But I'm still adjusting to the Eastern time zone. We had a fantastic day of football, capped off by, I don't even know what to say about that Sunday night performance, man. Sure. Well, I was thinking all day, who can keep up with Tyree Kill, man, 39 points against the chargers. Who can run with Tyree Kill? Obviously the Dallas defense, your final score Tyree Kill, fantasy's leading score on Sunday with 39 points, the Dallas defense in Yahoo standard scoring 37 points. They tried. I guess they call off the dogs late, and I was telling you and producer Colin, a big Cowboys fan, you know, he'll enjoy all of this talk. My good friend Mike Perillo, college friend, my best friend from college, calls me a month ago. Keeper League. It's kind of hybrid scoring. He goes, I know this is crazy, but I can keep George Pickens with the Dallas defense. And the defensive scoring in this league is really screw ball. They score a lot of points. And so I said to him, well, do people hoard defenses, do people keep defenses? He goes, no, they still kind of ignore him. They treat him like both fantasy people do whatever. I'll get to a defense when I get to it. I'll stream them. I'll pick them up. I'll throw them away. And we had a conversation of 20 minutes, Pickens versus the Dallas defense. And we both came to the conclusion that as crazy as it sounded, because you would never do this in most traditional leagues, we thought the Dallas defense was the right play. But I'm not sure if he pulled the trigger or not. Now what did Pickens get like 35 yards today or something? Totally forgettable game. I was going to say you mentioned that that right now, the Dallas defense, you know, obviously, we've got money and I football left to go, but they're the second highest scoring player of we player, quote unquote, of week one. Let me tell you what, you got to scroll a long way down to 134th before you get to George Pickens. Right. So Mike, if you're out there, man, I hope I hope you did the right thing. I hope you're read between the lines and you realize what I was saying was keep the Dallas defense. It's a good news for the Giants fans, right? You just got embarrassed. You got you got eviscerated. You got crushed. You're playing the Arizona Cardinals in week two. So I don't think I don't think you need to radically change any of your Giants stances. They just wrong team, wrong matchup. They haven't played well against the Cowboys for the last couple of years. I'm still bullish on Daniel Jones. I still think Darren Waller is going to be the de facto number one receiver here and should be a top five tight end. It was a horrible tight end, Dave, or just about every tight end anyway. But you just football, it's important to remember you're not as good as you are on your best days and you're not as lousy as you are on your worst days. And things kind of percolate back to the middle and regress back to the middle. So I'm not going to do anything crazy about my Giants. They just, you know, both the Giants that I roster, they're not my Giants. But you know, if you like Daniel Jones 24 hours ago, I think you still should. Yeah. So before we, before we just get into the game, I do want to remind people, because this is a good transition into it. Tomorrow on the podcast with Andy Barons will be doing the people's panic meter. I think Daniel Jones presents a really good opportunity to promote this. You know, what we do here on Sunday night, like Scott and I for the rest of the show, we're just going to be basically quick reaction, shooting from the hip, like living in the moment, the goal with the people's panic meter segment is to Andy and I will be maybe a little bit more zen, how we're feeling about everything. So if you have players that you are panicked on, even after listening to this podcast, you might be panicked on a few players of Scott and I raised some alarm bells. You can send in emails, videos, you can send in voice memos, you can just send in regular old emails to fantasy mailbag at Yahoo Sports.com. You can write mad, harmon, a letter and crayon. He'll read it on the air. I will read it as long as I don't have to write it because I've got the worst handwriting on planet earth. So as long as it's better than my handwriting, I'll read your crann letter. Right here on the podcast. But yes, so with that out of the way, we'll just put it. We've already talked about the game a little bit. We'll put a bow on it here, Sunday night football, Dallas Cowboys, 40 Giants, zero, 40, two, zero. I mean, it was a fun day of football. This was like a very strange way to cap it off and it's funny, Scott, because I mean, I don't know that I would have said that the Cowboys were going to win this game, 40 to zero. But basically from the moment go, it felt like, oh, damn, they're going to take the Giants to the woodshed in this game. They're going to take, they're going to, they're going to take their lunch money. They're going to, they were just playing at a different speed and to bring it back to Daniel Jones and to the Giants defense, Scott, the fact that, you know, I, I talked about Daniel Jones a lot on this podcast. I had people, you know, tweeting at me about Daniel Jones during the game. But at the same time, like, well, I hope you listen to the preview podcast where I said, like, you want to be able to play anybody against this Cowboys defense because they're about to be that good this year. And my God, Scott, they looked that good in this game. Let's do some overreactions, theater, who's the best team in the NFC's? I mean, I, it's an open question. I'm still just going to go with the Eagles because I will say, I think Dak was fine in this game, but there were a couple of moments where like, oh, all right, like, I know you don't have to do much. I know the run game is taking this thing 14 carries 50 yards, two touchdowns for Tony Paul. I think he looks fantastic in tight spaces. He looked every bit worth like around one fantasy pick, also caught two passes as well. But I still think from, and look, again, they didn't have to prove it to me in this game, but I still think I have less questions about the Eagles passing game ecosystem overall than I do the Dallas Cowboys. So I'm not going to overreact. I will still say I think the Eagles are the best team in the NFC. But I do think the Cowboys are a legitimate Super Bowl contender. I felt that way going to the year and I still feel that way. I don't we didn't see any of it tonight. But is there a slow developing Polaroid in the Giants passing game? Is there one of those receivers who you're thinking, yeah, maybe you pick them up and somebody else drops them. Who do you like most long term in this Giants receiver room? Oh, dude. I have no idea what to say after this game. This is the type of game. Honestly, Scott, we're going to come on this podcast. And you said it actually when I was like, all right, we're let's reconvene at this time and let's do the recap. You were like, I don't even know what I'm going to say. I don't even know what to say to you. When you asked me that question, because this is just such a brutal take down. It's such a, I mean, it was an embarrassment. Like, right? It was, it was as bad. I don't think you could get worse for the Giants than what they had to endure. I mean, Daniel Jones going back out there, you down 40, nothing. He's complete. He's jerseys completely soaked through. It's as bleak as it's bad as it could get. And you're right. They get Arizona in week two. So, I mean, you're going to, I know it's going to feel bad, but you're going to go back to the Daniel Jones well in week two. They have the 49ers in week three. That's a tough draw in the first three weeks. You get one game against Dallas. You get another against San Francisco. But still, I don't know who the, I can't come away from week one feeling any differently about the Giants receivers because of how that game went. And so, anything I said in the off season is still kind of how I feel about this team. I'll just close with this. We talk about teams pull back from the exhibition season. They don't want to get players heard in August. So, they're like eight or nine teams that didn't even play their first string quarterback in any of the exhibition games. So a lot of times week one becomes almost a glorified exhibition game for a lot of teams because they're finally getting people out there in actual game situations. This may be the worst game today that the Bengals play all season. It may be the worst game that the Seahawks play in a while. The Steelers. This is going to be one of the worst games they play this year. And I think you just had to write off to the Giants. And remember, they had to drive going when that first Dallas touchdown happened, right? I mean, they actually, they had three first downs, I think, on the first drive. So, just sometimes the negative momentum kicks in, the quicksand kicks in, maybe a little panic kicks in or whatever you start pressing. You start trying too hard to make a play whatever it is. It's just important to remember that things go the whirlpool principle things go back to the middle, things regress. The cobweiss can't possibly be this good. The Giants can't possibly be this bad. Into the day, Dallas is probably a 12 and 5 team or something like that, maybe 13 and 4, maybe 11 and 6. The Giants are probably like last year quasi contender. It's just, if teams are going to really lay an egg, I think week one's a common time for it because of the cadence of the schedule and how teams have pulled back in August. I mean, you and I get on this podcast and we're gassed up because it's the start of the football season on the guys on the field feel that same way. So if you're because on the flip side of what you said when like the offense starts pressing, I mean, Collins, we're talked about this on the broadcast that late in the like the third quarter, when you're the Dallas defense and you're blowing these guys out, like they smell blood in the water. They smell like I can pad my stats here so that when I go to, you know, nobody's going to remember that I had three sacks against, you know, the Giants, when we absolutely had them on the rope, you know, you're what they're going to remember is that I had 10 sacks in the season at the end of it, right? You counted all at the end. So these guys know they can go hunting, right? They start feeling the blood in the water. The Giants feel the impact on the other side of it. It's just it's a great reminder that it's a human game and it's something we always try to keep on this podcast. So yeah, I think with that, we can go on to the rest of the games here that were slightly more competitive than 40 to zero. So all right, let's move on to the other big games our headliners here in week one starting with Miami Dolphins 36 at L.A. Chargers 34 Scott. This was as much of a banger as we possibly could have asked for between these two teams. Yeah, you know, after the first wave of games was so sluggish and we have a lot of sluggish games we're going to get to later. This game kind of cleans your palate. My big takeaway here is just look, there are certain slots you needed to get Tyree Kill. But if you wanted to take a Veloa, you could have had almost every roster. He was extremely affordable and watching Tyree Kill just be open this entire game, which obviously Mike McDaniel is a great offensive coach. I'm still we may never separate just how good Tua is and you know, remove it from his his environment, his ecosystem, right? His infrastructure, but doesn't matter. These guys are always open. And if two, if two of us stays held, I mean, last year we lived in YPA, right? We hit a great season. He just didn't complete it. If he can stay healthy, man, I think it's going to be a huge regret for a lot of people, me included, that again, you didn't get the slot for Hill. That's one thing. Okay. Jalen Wadley had to be in a certain slot, but Tua was out there, man. And you know, most are just going to pinch in this game. It was mostly chucking the ball down field. It was really fun game to watch and it said I was hoping for over time just as a football fan. I wasn't even going to game much on fantasy wise, but Miami hired the right offensive coach. They did the right thing with two receivers. Nobody can cover their quarterback is good enough. I think they're going to be a carnival every week. Yeah, I feel like a lot of the talk going into this game. And I mentioned this on the preview podcast that even Mike McDaniel will kind of roll in his eyes at oh, the Brandon Staley plan, right? Like sort of having fun with reporters bringing that up because they were really I think the one team that really gave this offense legitimate trouble with a game plan. If they were, you know, obviously, we'd need to watch the coaches film to know this for sure. But if they were trying to run that game plan back this year, Miami certainly found a viable counter punch to it. And a lot of it was like you said, just pushing the ball down field. They weren't necessarily trying to always is going to pick his spots over the middle of the field. But they really, again, in man coverage, just let Tyrick go to work. I mean, 11 catches, 215 yards, two touchdowns on 15 targets, just pushing the ball down field to him. Waddle had big catches average over 19.5 yards per catch. You know, even like river craycraft popping up in the end zone, you know, Braxton Barrios having moments Durham Smite having a couple of big catches. That's another thing that struck me with this two Scott. This this offense will always be highly concentrated and Tyrick Hill 15 targets. But if they can have other guys step up when the coverage looks are favorable, that is also a big win for two. I think these ancillary players, they're not they're not guys that we're going to pick up on fantasy. You know, they're not like having big performances or anything. Again, all these guys are between 40 and, you know, 44 yards that I just read off there. But those ancillary players stepping up, I think matters a little bit. I thought it was it hit the sweet spot where the secondary players played well enough to help the octane of the offense, but they didn't get in the way of the main appetizer. You know, they didn't get in the way of the entrees or your Hill 15 targets. Not only at five, but whatever, he'll have like 11 or 12 next week. I'm not worried about it. So I think I think two of a threat of the needle nicely where he did spread the ball around a little bit. But the guys who needed to eat certainly eight. Don't let me ask you this. What do we make of Austin Eccler? Our buddy great game. You go over a hundred gets a touchdown is active in the passing game, which he always is. But I think anyone saw Joshua Tellet Kelly go on 16 for 91 in a touchdown. We're at a time where there are very few bell cows. It feels like the league is littered with running back to running back three. Those what the heck flexes that segment balloon would call them. Can Joshua Kelly get into the what the heck flex conversation? You know, there were times last year and even Austin, I talked about around Echo's edge where we were just like kind of singing the praises of Josh Kelly. He's he's been very open with the fact that he wants to have that second pitch in the backfield to go along with him. He even it again times last year. In hindsight, it was coming off the Browns game. And I mean, the Browns got steamrolled by everybody. They were the really the only game that the charges ran the ball well last year. But I remember even coming out of that game, asking that question last year, like is Josh Kelly going to have sort of some standalone value and of course have monster upside or at least, you know, some level of running back high end to low end one upside. If anything ever happened, you know, knock on wood to Austin Eccler. Then he got hurt last year and that sort of threw that off track. So I do think it's possible that Kelly can carve a roll out here because Austin has been, you know, pretty excited about him. And again, it's open to having that second pitch. And I thought like coming out of this game, or like early early in the game, I was like, man, the charges are running the ball really well. And we talked a lot off all through all through the offseason about, oh, the chargeers, it is going to be an A dot boost for Justin Herbert, you know, 6.9 yards per attempt today. That wasn't necessarily like he was certainly not the one operating the fireworks show. That was the guy on the other side of the field into a. But we haven't really talked enough about Kellyn Moore bringing in a much more creative and much like a run scheme that marries well to their play action pass and their passing game scheme. So I think there is room for both of these running backs to be rather fruitful. And again, if there's any loss in pass game for Austin Eccler, we're hoping it's offset by an efficient ground game. Let me close with two more things. I believe there are 12 lead changes in this game. That's maximum excitement for me when it just pingpongs back and forth. Again, I was sad when this game ended. And full disclosure, we get a lot of things wrong. And it falls very humbling. When the Isaiah likely story exploded in the morning, there's a team that Frank Schwab and I co-managed. He was in Vegas at the Yahoo Sports Book, which looks like a wonderful property, by the way. It was pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, I was jealous. There was a lot of foam over there. You'll see pictures of our colleagues there out to try to get there during the season. But so I thought, well, maybe we can add likely to this team that we co-manage. It's a 14 teamer. I was happy he was available. It's like, well, we're going to cut. We're not cutting Jalen Moore and we're not. I have a thing for Chig. Go Conquon. I'm not going to cut him. Jonathan Mingo. We both kind of like. So I dropped Joshua Kelly. So I'm going to look back the day that I dropped Joshua Kelly for the Isaiah likely one catch four yards game of the Al Capone's Vault game. You open it up. There's nothing there. Look, it's a gross day for Titan. It was gross in the morning. It was gross during the games. That's been the ugliest position in fantasy right now. But here's the bottom line. I'm saying this to own it and to throw it out there. Yes, we've been doing this for a long time. We still do things that don't look good. But if you're afraid to make a mistake, if you're afraid to make these moves, you're playing far too conservatively, sometimes you're just going to make a call and it's going to look, this Kelly thing looks bad now. Who knows how to look 10 minutes from now, or week from now, whatever. But you can't be afraid to make moves. Sometimes you're going to drop the wrong guy. Who knows? Maybe we'll get Kelly back. But for now, it's feeling like a regretful decision. Yeah, just something to keep in mind because this is one of the, what should be a really good offensive environment? I feel really good coming. I feel good coming out of this game about both offences. Really good about the dolphins. I definitely think the chargers and Brandon Staley, at some point, have to figure out this defense. I mean, JC Jackson, that's another thing that was worth noting too. The big game they, they pitched against two and the boys last year on signing a football. JC Jackson, their prize for Agent Cornerback was not a part of it. And he was a part of this one and it didn't go so well. So I think the chargers had to figure out the defense. But let's move on to the next game here. I wanted to have this one high in the rundown because I spent a lot of time watching it. Jacksonville Jaguars, 31 Indianapolis Colts, 21. I think this one was, it needs to, like, this is a game you should react pretty quickly too, to me, right? There's always, do I overreact or do I under react to what I watch in week one Scott? And this game, I think, has a lot of things that you should react quickly too. Anthony Richardson dropped back to pass 45 times in the early window, the only guys to drop back more or in the early window, Kenny Pickett, CJ Stroud and Kurt Cousins. Obviously Kurt Cousins was in a little bit of a back and forth affair and they're going to be a pass heavy offense. The other two guys were an extreme negative game script, right? CJ Stroud and oh my god, we'll get to the Steelers later. That was not the case with this game. Like, the Colts actually let this game until about five minutes, like going into the fourth quarter, they led this game, 21 to 13. And then the Jags just broke it open with 14 points with less than five minutes in the game in about 90 seconds of total game time. They scored really quickly. So this side, if you, and I was skeptical of this idea generally, but if you thought this offense was going to be super run heavy, it was not in week one. No, and also, I mean, to me, the big takeaway I wanted to come in here, three things really. How ready was Calvin Ridley to play football? Could Michael Pittman be supported in a rookie quarterback offense where the quarterback may run a lot. Maybe they might want to shield him. And was anybody capable of doing something fun while Jonathan Taylor's on vacation? Well, Calvin Ridley looked fantastic and I'm underweight on Ridley that really hurt. Michael Pittman has a terrific game, eight for 97 touchdown, 11 targets. He's the target hog there. He just missed a second touchdown when Minshew had to play in that final series. And Dean Jackson did absolutely nothing. When you get 13 carries for 14 yards, it's like, okay, you know, if we picked up Dean Jackson, who's on my sleeper list, I think I'm on the DFS plate of all of that stuff. Brick, brick, brick. I talked about regrets if not having enough to. It's not that I was down on Calvin Ridley. I just felt like analysts, people I draft against were really in on Calvin Ridley. He was getting pushed into the second round of some of my drafts late in the summer. And I wasn't going to play that way. And I'm man, he looked, he looked like he had never missed any time. And not only that, he looked like he and Laurence had been playing together for two or three years. I mean, it's just like the, it might be a paid manning Marvin Harrison man. I mean, they were just in sync from, and they established it right away. And some people say, well, of course, you didn't you watch the preseason? Well, I mean, there's plenty of things that happened the preseason that did not replicate themselves today. Pittsburgh Steelers. We'll get to that later. Unfortunately, San Francisco insisted on playing their starters. I think at one point, somebody said on Twitter at one point, Pickett's like, when do we go against the second strings? We can score a touchdown. But yeah, Ridley, man, look, nobody ever doubted what Calvin Ridley could be. He was a first round pick. He was an Alabama product. He was a wide receiver four in 2020. I want to say, I mean, he's been a star before. It's just a matter of how quickly would that come back and how quickly would he get comfortable with a new team? I guess the answer is right freaking away. And I'm underwood on Ridley. And that really hurts with Pittman. I was just nervous that they would maybe try to hide Anthony Richardson. They did change the deck and said, you know what? We're just going to throw haymakers at you. And we're not going to hide Richardson. Unfortunately, he took a hit late in this game and had to leave. It doesn't seem like it's going to be anything long term. But he'll learn to be judicious. And you can't take some of those shots that he was taking today. But if the Colts can play games like this, if they can support Pittman, if they can give it back and forth, if you had told me before the game, all the Jaguarshan score 31, like, well, Jacksonville, they're going to get blown out. And as you said, yeah, the Colts were leading this game into the fourth quarter. They looked like a competitive team. So I was encouraged by all that. Tang Bigsby did steal that one touchdown. But I thought ETL was pretty good. I know his touchdown came late in the game, kind of a window dressing touchdown. But, you know, he got the five catches. The big thing with ETN since they drafted him. And I realized he had that one year lost to injury. Is they haven't relied on him as a major part of the passing game? They're going to let him catch three to five passes a week. Then I actually got ETN wrong in the preseason too. Yeah, just wrapping it up with the Jags. Five catches would be great for ETN. But still, if he's even just going to out carry Tang Bigsby 8 to 18 to 7, that's kind of enough. I also think generally too, just on Calvin Ridley. It was immediate four catches for 41 yards at a touchdown on the first drive. Like, it was just an immediate carry over from the preseason. And yeah, it's really, I don't think you could beat yourself up too much for not having a ton of Calvin Ridley because if you wanted to Calvin Ridley, you had to do some crazy stuff like me. And I ranked him at YRC for 13. And he Frank, right? Well, by the end of it with Cooper Cups injury, he was YRC for 12 for me just because I had to keep dropping Cooper Cups and dropping Cooper Cups. You had to do that to get him by the end of the process because people were that high on him. So I was one of the lunatics doing that. And just so that's kind of the state of the Jags. The Colts are not a good defense. They have a very, very young secondary. So that is also worth noting here when we're talking about these Jaguar performances. And I think you could say the same thing maybe for the Colts side of this too. But I just think coming out of this, I think Michael Pitman's going to out kick his ADP coming out of this. Frankly, I thought that going into it, but I think this really kind of cements that case because again, 45 dropbacks when the team was mostly competitive and or in control of the game, this, it just never squared with me. Scott that, oh, Shane Steikin, who I think is a sharp coach was going to build his offensive identity around like Dion Jackson and Jake Funk and Evan Hall or even Zach Moss. Like once the Taylor stuff happened, I think that was, if that was the plan going into the training camp, it was over once that public spat happened. And the great thing is, as Jackson, as you said, took advantage of a poor Indianapolis defense, but their schedule is so favorable that the divisions they're matched up with. They get the NFC South, which is obviously somewhere you can make hay, they're the overwhelming favorite in their division for the five division games are left with the one of the won't be fantasy relevant. So I think Trevor Lawrence, I don't Frank talked about him. Frank Schwab talked about him as a kind of a sleeper MPP candidate. I think that was justified today as well. Next game up here, Cleveland Browns 24 since now he bangles three. I think this has to go down as one of the more surprising results, Scott. What would, how are we feeling about both of these teams coming out of it? Yeah, I spent a lot of time watching this game. I'd like some of that time back. I also watched a lot of the Washington Arizona game. I'd like a lot of that time back. I'm working on that refund. It's in processing. These are pretty simple. These are pretty clean takeaways, though. Since then, it's a relaxed game. Joe Burrow, this was just a set up spot for them, right? Burrow hardly did anything all summer, and they go to Cleveland who has a great defense. It rains all day. Cleveland has controlled this series. They've actually played the Bengals really well, even when they haven't been great because their defense is excellent as a division matchup. Just forget everything you saw from the Bengals. T-higgins and eight targets, no catches. It's just a stone fluke. Chase was relatively held in check. I think Burrow threw for 82 yards. He obviously never looked right, but it was basically a preseason game for them. You can't take any that seriously, and just Cleveland's defense. You have a lot of playmakers on that side of the ball. Cleveland, Nick Chubb, Nashville Treasurer. Everybody loves him. No big deal there. The thing about the Sean Watson is I thought he did not play well, and he ran for 45 and a touchdown. He pushed into the 20 point plateau for fantasy. He actually had a good fantasy game on a day where he didn't play great in real life. I remember last year before the season. I was saying that one of the great things about Jalen Hurts is he can have a bad game maybe running a touchdown or two. He wouldn't have a great fantasy game. Now Watson isn't going to run as proactively as Hurts does, but the fact that I thought Watson didn't play well and he still scored well is gigantic for fantasy. Cooper and Moore were targeted both the same odd times. Neither one of them did that much with it. Again, we'll see how quickly Watson gets comfortable. Anyway, it was a rainy day. The game flow, it became obvious once Cleveland got a multiple score lead. They really didn't do that much. It's like, okay, you need to do much to win since it's okay. Let's shut up, control this game and everything. But the bottom line is it's knee jerk. A lot of people in big. Oh man, Burrow's not right. I'm scared all the Bengals. What's with C. Higgins all that? I trade for any of these Cincinnati guys in a minute. And I think most people are smart enough that they're going to give them at least another game or two and try to figure out what's going on, but not at all worried about the Bengals. I'm curious what your level of confidence with Watson. I like that he ran and I like the pieces around him. I'm just not convinced he's ever going to be a great passer again, but it's obviously too early to say that with any conviction. But what's your state of the Cleveland passing game right now? Yeah, we don't need to talk anymore about the Bengals because we're on the same page either. You get Baltimore in week two. Baltimore has played them well of late with Mike McDonald back there, but they have a pretty juicy schedule going forward. So I'm with you. If anybody's if anybody's dumb enough to want to trade those players, I'll be first in line to make those offers with the Browns. I'm with you that every time I every time I'm watching this game and I was one of my guy. By the way, I just want to give a quick shout out to YouTube. I think they crushed the first Sunday. Me too. I mean, nervous. They were great. Yeah. It was awesome. We had three screens going up here in the command center. That is what my brother and I was calling my new office up here. So three screens going to the command center for on the multi-cast thing and the in the early window. The Browns are one of those. This game was one of those. So I was coming into this game quite often. And I'm with you that the two things that still stand out with Sean Watson, it's pocket presence and it's ball placement. I still think his pocket presence is scatter shot and I still think his ball placement is scatter shot. Those two things room. Look, he played better I think in this game than pretty pretty much almost at any point last year, but that's a low bar. I don't that I'm not giving you flowers for clear in that because he was what like 38th and EPA per 36th and EPA per dropback last year when he played like we know he's going to clear that, but I don't I'm with you that I still have major concerns about him as a player. Yeah, I felt like his athleticism bailed out some bad decisions. Sometimes he was a beat late on the throw as you said the ball placement was an issue. So I think we're on the same page there and just you mentioned YouTube having a really good debut. Go start a Nick Chubb. There's another guy I wanted to draft like crazy and I just kept getting the wrong slot. It's no fun to be sitting out Nick Chubb, but you know, you already know dear listener Nick Chubb is a hell of a football player. Yeah, we're still you and I are still kind of raising an eyebrow at the at the Cleveland Browns who get the Titans, the Ravens. They have a excuse me. They get the Steelers, the Titans, the Ravens, and then a by-week before coming back with San Francisco. Not the easiest schedule. Let's move on to the next one here. Talk about a good debut. Lost Scientists Rams 30, Seahawks 13. Seahawks started kind of losing their composure at the end of this one. DK Metcalf with a dumb penalty late in the game. I think they look frustrated and hey, man, the staffer and the kids look pretty good in this one. Yeah, I own apology to Sean McVeigh who had them ready to play and man, Puka, Nikko was just hiding and playing site 4% rostered in Yahoo. We all knew, you know, Cobb, we knew he was going to miss multiple games and it came down a day or two ago for four game at least on IR. I don't know when he's coming back. It could be an extended absence. So I thought maybe it's just going to be the Tyler Higby show, but they don't have a downfield threat. I don't really like Van Jefferson that much. Tutu out well. I wasn't talking myself into those guys. I needed to ask myself, can Nikko apply? Who's just Nikko a guy? He looked great. And there's signature significance. When you put up the numbers he put up, what do you have like 10 catches I think in this game? 10 catches on 15 targets. You do that right out of the box. I think there's signature significance. It's very unlikely to be a fluke. And you get these 4% rostered Yahoo. That's he's probably going to chase over 50%. It's so hard to find an impactful receiver on the waiver wire. But this could be one of those cases. Can makers. I want to stick on I want to stick on Puka here because I produced a column set in the chat. He might be the number one waiver pickup of the week. And he's I think it's a receiver position. He's probably going to be that number one waiver guy. Sure. So let me let me just give you some of my notes on on him because I do a reception perception profile on him. And I tweeted out the I tweeted out the route chart for him in college like his success rate where he get like the routes he is best on the routes he gets open on. And then the route percentage chart for Cooper Cup last year. And your phrase hiding in plain sight sticks out perfectly there because if you look at what Puka Nakuha is good at overlap. It's a lot of overlap for the routes that they use Cooper Cup on. You know, it's getting open short and intermediate underneath like kind of stuff working over the middle. But much like Cooper Cup. And this is what distinguishes Cooper Cup. You don't need me to tell you this. But what distinguishes in between like a little pop gun slot receivers is that he can sting you on out breaking routes in the intermediate and vertical areas of the field. You know, who can do that? Who showed he could do it in college Puka Nakuha man. And and he also has great hands and great yak ability. I'm not saying he's the next Cooper Cup. But just to fill that position, there is a lot of overlap there. And I think he even if when Cooper Cup does come back, if he comes back, you know, within the four games or like after the four games or whatever, I still think there's probably a role for him on this team because these other guys, Van Jefferson field stretcher, Tutu Atwell, probably a gadget guy field stretcher type that they've always lacked that Robert Woods type of player the last couple of years. And I think even like Puka could be that type of guy too. What was the downside of him coming? Why did he go so late in the draft injuries? He a lot of I mean, he's perfect for the LA Rams in that case, but yeah, a lot of injuries. And you know, from BYU, not like he's not a flashy dude at all. I mean, honestly, you could say a lot of the same stuff about Cooper Cup, right? Like middleing athletic measurements, you know, not the flashiest player. He played, you know, Cooper Cup played at Eastern Washington Puka Nakuha played BYU, right? So I mean, he's an older, bit of an older prospect. Right. They both they both played four years in college, which they hold against any receiver. Like if you're any good, why are you staying there for four years? Yeah, exactly. So yeah, he played and he played in multiple schools too. That's like a thing that people ding you on at this point. So, but he perfectly fits the type of guy that, okay, if somebody's going to like fall through the cracks, but be like a rock solid NFL player, I definitely think Puka fits the bill. And again, you know, we always talk about the Steelers ability to find receivers in the nooks and crannies in the draft. The Rams identify Cooper Cup as an undervalued asset in the draft and he ended up becoming a star. I still think he was the best part in football two years ago and should have won the MVP. And let's be clear what I'm not saying. I'm not comparing Puka Nakuha to to Cup in a direct comp comp. I'm just saying that maybe it's just they've uncovered somebody. If nothing else, I'll say this. I'm going to, and this is obviously a season at the taste of what your needs are. I'm going to be an aggressive bitter and aggressive offer for Puka Nakuha in my waiver wire options this week. Now, the can makers get a late touchdown this game, but Kieran Williams got the two earlier touchdowns. Most of it's funny. I talk about getting acres wrong before the season. I'm like, well, the Rams are going to stink, but acres is the only show on town. And he played pretty well at the end of last year. So, okay, he's running back 23, 25, whatever. If you kind of quasi punt running back, hero build, zero build, care makers make sense. Well, this game, the Rams actually played well. And acres didn't have the backfield to himself. So I mean, you know, could I've gotten that call on any more wrong than I did. I acres are still the lead guy here. But Williams is a multi feed Williams. Here's the thing with those short touchdowns, right? You think, well, anybody can get them. It's kind of like in baseball. Well, anybody can pitch a ninth inning with a three run lead. But if you get that save and everybody shakes hands, they're happy. They give you the ball again in the ninth inning. And that's kind of the way goal line works, right? If you hold on to the ball, you don't fumble. You punch it in from the goal line. People like pressing a button when it's worked before. So I think the touchdown equity for Kieran makers has to be significantly less now than it was 24 hours ago. Yeah. Nine at one point, it was nine to eight in favor of Kieran Williams with carries, you know, out of 17 total team carries. And neither of these guys were explosive. Neither of these guys busted long runs. But yeah, I'm with you. That's a huge thing that I think you have to adjust to at this point because ADP did not suggest there was going to be any sort of time share at all with Kieran makers. And if there is any time share, he's in a lot of trouble. Real quick on the Seahawks, any panic for what was a pretty flat performance from them coming to week one, especially against one thing I kept saying with the Rams, this is a super young defense outside of Aaron Donald, but Aaron Donald. It's like, but, you know, outside of the best, one of the best players, it's ever played the sport. They're young defense, but Aaron Donald was a game record multiple times in this one, which I think helped the rest of the defense. I'm giving them a mulligan. It's actually that Seattle's offense played well for about a half. And then they didn't play at all well in the second half and lock it, get dinged up in this game, which didn't help. But I still believe Geno Smith's legitimate, at least JSM was on the field. He didn't do a huge amount in this game, but at least he's playing. I still think this is going to be a plus offense. And I would kind of give them the Seattle, the Seattle pass. I'd kind of give them the Cincinnati pass, even though it was only maybe a half of a sting bomb for the Seahawks. Yeah, I'm with you. I think that the, I think it just, you know, these NFC West teams always play each other like weirdly tough to. They get to Troy Carolina and then the Giants in week four before they go on by in week five. So I'm willing to give the Seahawks a mulligan too. All right, we've delayed it enough. Scott, we got to get to it here. San Francisco third, I almost said San Francisco 39ers San Francisco 49ers 30 at Pittsburgh Steelers seven. Let's save the Niners for a second. And let's just get out get the Steelers part of it out of the way. Look, set it on the preview podcast. There's a good chance people are going to come out of this over reacting to one of these two offenses having a bad day against one of these great defenses. The Steelers had a really bad day against a really good defense in San Francisco that added pieces in the offseason to an already great unit. That being said, can he pick a stat line 2.51 adjusted net yards per attempt 68.4 passer rating. Scott, those tell the story of how poorly he played. I, and look, he was under a lot of pressure. You know, they, again, they added Javan Hargrave to that defensive line, which was already very good last year. So he was definitely harassed. He was under arrest. But I mean, he was, he was missing layups. He was placing passes poorly that, you know, put like receivers needed to adjust to that shouldn't have been the case. I'm definitely, I wasn't high on Kenny pick up because of the preseason. I know you weren't high on Kenny pick up because of the preseason. But I'm coming out of this like, yeah, I get it bad. I mean, good defense, really bad match up for the Steelers offense. But I mean, if you're not coming out like a little spooked, especially because Diante Johnson gets banged up was ruled out very quickly with the hamstring injury. And Pat Friarmouth was dealing with the chest injury like their quarterback didn't play well. And they might have lost their best separator and best red zone weapon coming out of this one. Yeah, you know, a big reason why I was I was at least open-minded to pick it improving this year was I thought he was very poised and quietly effective the final quarter of last season. And you said, you said the word spooked. That's what he very early in this game. Kenny pick it whatever good feeling he had coming to this game was gone. He looked, he looked like he was, remember the Sam Darnold scene ghost game. That's what this look like. Yep, yep, right. They had the total same feel to it. Now you have to give a lot of that credit to San Francisco because they have a great defense and they force a lot of that stuff. As you said, they were throws over there and pick it. Just miss them. And sometimes that happens where quarterback gets out of sync and he loses his confidence or he loses his flow, his mojo, whatever it is. And that carries over to a course of a game. I'd like to think this is more about San Francisco's defense being great than Pittsburgh just being a lost cause. But it was frustrating. I spent all summer talking about, well, what part of the Pittsburgh offense I'm going to draft into and nobody played well in this game. The fact that Alan Robinson was your leading receiver tells you just about everything you needed. Even the running game didn't go any where Harris had one good run. And I think every other play that he and Warren had was a negative play. It was an unsuccessful play. So it's everybody pretty much has to go back to square one. It's a well coach team. Well, we're never we're going to have to deal with the fact that Matt Canada offense. That's frustrating. And I don't think anybody thinks Canada is going to be here for a long time. And not because he's promoted to a head coach, but more like he'll probably be like a quarterback coach somewhere else or whatever. Go to the CFL. But this was this was a tough bill to swallow because I was optimistic about pit three. The good thing is the cleanse the pallet. Man San Francisco. I mean, rock party look great. And and McCaffrey was McCaffrey and Eli Mitchell will be the whole idea that Eli Mitchell was going to get McCaffrey's way. It didn't happen today. And I don't think it's going to happen much much at all. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. I'm regretting. Okay. So Brandon IU has the big game. He has the two touchdown catches. He also threw a killer downfield block on the McCaffrey touchdown run. Yeah. One of my favorite plays of the day. So, okay. There's lots of the feed here. You know, it wasn't a kid'll game and and Debo was kind of quiet. There'll be days where Debo does it. Now you doesn't do it. That's fine. But their projections were pretty similar and Debo and IU and Debo went two rounds earlier. And that just looks like it was a gigantic mistake because I don't know how you can say if you can't get to Debo being a major difference maker with that running supplement, then why is he better than Brandon IU? Can Scott Barrett or fantasy points is always making this point? And you know better than anybody is you try all this stuff. IU could such a great man beater, right? And such a great runner. He can't he was the first round pick. It took a while. I think he was the first round pick and took some time for him to figure it out to maybe even grow up into what it's like to be a pro and NFL player and all that. He took all those leaps last year and they talked about how his approach had gotten better and he really thinks that really the light gone on for him and he's their best receiver, I think. I love Debo and then they're good at different things and all that. But I'm just looking back and thinking, did I really and I have some IU shares are going to team I have with Frank. We have IU. That was more frank than me. So I appreciate that while I'm screwing up the team, he's making good picks. But I think I don't know how we let people get away with getting Brandon IU two rounds later than Debo Sam. I know it's one game. I know Sam will beat him other weeks. But I don't I think they're pretty close to the same production type of guy. Yeah, man. Look, I mean, you're obviously preaching to the choir with with Brandon IU. You know, and the thing that I'm going to write in my care, don't care recap piece is that I think you just got to I think the reason that the you got to throw out the the previous hierarchy with this with this receiver core because the reason I think that Debo went earlier than I you can I had I had these guys do I did the hedge ranking where I had them back to back in my ranks, but I did put Brandon IU one spot ahead. And it's for the reason that I think yeah, Debo went earlier in drafts because he's had a better season on record. But you always say this guy you want to skate to where the puck is going. And if you've been watching Brandon IU run routes and you know consistently get better each and every year and not see. Dude, the puck is going to this guy being like a top 10 type of NFL receiver as an individual talent. And he might already be there and the stats might not show it, but you know, F the stats because like the watching him play in isolation is what's going to tell you the truth. That's where the puck's been going. And I you're right. It's going to be games when Debo has better fantasy performances. He's not going to lead the team in targets every single week. You know, kiddos not going to have three for 19. He's going to be I do think. Unfortunately, I think kiddos probably he's the guy drafted the least of in this in this passing game, which is a shame because I know we both love the player. But yeah, to me, the puck is going to IU taking us another step as he's consistently taking steps. And he's going to disrupt what people think about this offense. I know NFL narratives just flip so quickly, but have you ever seen a week where more tight ends, more signature tight ends, just kick people in the stomach. And amazingly, too, because the whole it's like, wow, we just we need other people to step up beyond the name brand guys. And then the name brand guys are all the ones that really they missed this this game and stuff like that. So I mean, yeah, what a what a disaster. It's funny that also I mean, kiddos did play. But team had pulled back so much from preseason and yet guys weren't playing anyway. And it's just it felt like there was a lot of injury news to go through in week one week one supposed to be near roster is pristinely healthy. And that wasn't the case this week. But you know, it's football. You just wait, wait 15 minutes and we'll have new things to worry about. All right. Well, we don't have to worry. We got it. We're going to take a break before we do any more worrying here, Scott. We're going to take a quick break and we come back with the new fantasy season underway. You're always looking for a weekly W. 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Yeah, I think a lot of us in the industry, me included, we're trying to think, okay, is Mike Evans? Can we get him on the chiefs? Can we get him on the lions? He's needed elsewhere, right? Tampa Bay is going nowhere. Well, he's in the end zone. Upset the Vikings and Baker was competitive. I thought he gave them a chance. It's just nice to see Baker Mayfield play well because he's had such a bad run out the last couple of years. Even though Tampa Bay was in a competitive game that they ultimately won, I was not at all impressed with Rashid White. He looked really jaggy to me. I thought a couple of times he made the wrong decision on cuts. There are a couple of plays. Sometimes plays are blocked to get three yards, but get those three yards. You know, and I, I feel like you left stuff on the table. Maybe it's just going to be that, but then you look at Minnesota, right? I mean, Jefferson's great. We don't need to talk about him. You drafted him first. He justified it. Sometimes I wonder if Kirk is cousins who's just good enough to lose with. I realized they went 13 and 4 last year, but this is the game. You have to be Tampa Bay in this game at home, and they somehow didn't do it. The TJ Hawkinson special, a million catch. All the catches, none of the yards, right? That's all he did last year when he went to Minnesota. He got peppered and peppered and peppered in the average, like eight or nine yards of catch. And I didn't think Madison played well either. He got, he bailed out with that touchdown, but I don't think he played particularly well. And Madison was, I gave him the Gabe Davis award for the most polarizing player in the preseason. And it's one of those things where it's like, I think the pro-Masson, people are going to be like, well, he's still their guy. He's still got in the end zone. Those points count. And the negative people are going to be like, oh, well, eventually it's going to be Thai chandelor. Maybe they'll bring Karim Hunt back in for another workout or, you know, they're going to realize he's not good enough. Did, did your opinion of Madison get swayed by this? And you think it's okay for Mike Evans managers to kind of come out of the word, because yeah, I took him. Yeah, I knew Baker Mayfield be good enough. Yeah, I mean, I still am very skeptical about the, about the, just about the bucks operation in general. Very skeptical about Baker Mayfield. You know, I'm with you. I wouldn't say Baker played extremely well in this game. 21 of 34 for 173 yards and two touchdowns. You know, it doesn't necessarily scream like, oh, man, but he's got, he's got some, I'm not the biggest Baker fan in the world, but you know, he's got some Moxie and he's got like a, I think he is, he's got these, he thinks he's got too much of a playmaker gene. So I remain very skeptical overall about the Baker Mayfield experience. You know, this is a defense that's totally going under transition too. So I think there's going to be some rocky moments. But let me, let me, let me say this pardon me for one second. It's not so much I even want Baker Mayfield necessarily to be good. I just want him to do a little bit of that James Winston thing, where he's just going to throw the Yolo balls to Williams to Williams to Evans and to Godwin. And if you throw some balls to the other guy, so be it. I just want him to be aggressive enough and good enough that he doesn't sink his two signature receivers. And I was not confident of that in the preseason. I did not draft Mike Evans very much if at all. And now I'm wondering if maybe Mike Evans can withstand this. Yeah, I do think that it's possible because I think these two guys are very good players. And yeah, just just putting the, putting the bow, the bow on the Viking stuff, box score looks about what you expect. You know, Jordan Addison gets a nice big play down the field in the favorable coverage. Look, Justin Jefferson is Justin Jefferson, TJ Hawkins, it catches eight passes. And I think Madison, I was a centrist on Madison. I generally liked him, right? But we'll see. I even with you that I think he was a polarizing player and people are going to take a victory lap on both sides, I think on this one. So I'll come down somewhere in the middle. Let's move on to the next game here. Gruby Packers 38 Chicago Bears 20. I love your note on this Scott. This spread was adorable. When don't the Packers beat the Bears? Yeah, you know, I did other Schwab special. He was, he bet the Packers like months ago. And he was pounded the table for this. They were in my, they were in my darts. And I took them out the last second. And for, I'm sure some allows you pick that loss. But you know, there's a thing called, are you familiar with the Ewing theory? I am familiar. Yep. Yeah. Well, could there be Ewing theory with Aaron Rodgers, a great player, Hall of Famer, walk in guy. And I'm really looking forward to watching him play tomorrow night that, that Jets bills game is going to be fast. So they ain't plus I, you know, we all think Garrett Wilson's going to the moon. If he's going to the moon, it's going to be on the Aaron Rodgers rocket ship. But I don't think there's that many Packers who were going to miss Aaron Rodgers. I think they're like, yeah, the guy was great. And he was a pain in the behind. And, you know, it was time to move on. And let's see if Jordan Love can play now. This is not the 1985 Bears. Okay. But Jordan Love, man, he made good decisions. He was accurate. It helped that he's playing from hitterscounds and the game flow went his way. But on a day where, you know, Dobbs was supposed to be compromised. He played well. They didn't have Christian Watson. That Jones got hurt after seem to get dinged up after one of his long touchdown runs. I'm under way on Aaron Jones and that kind of stung today. I think Jordan Love is a chance. I, again, it's one game. You don't want to overstrap it. I think that's so hard. People say, well, don't jump to conclusions after one week. All we're doing all season is speculating and talking about, you know, analyzing and crunching. And then we watch these preseason games where nobody plays, where they play for like two seconds. And so we finally see real games. And you want to find meaning in it. And you want to extrapolate. You want to beat people to the punch on stuff. And every year, they'll be crazy. I think cookie things that happen that look totally wrong out of context when you look back at them. And maybe Jordan Love's really good game. And a week one will be one of those things. But I'm impressed. He goes to a hostile environment, divisional game and any played, you know, he did, he played the type of game they need him to play. They don't need him to be a pro waller. They don't need him to be a pass first quarterback or anything like that. They need him to be competent. And look for, well, if there's a hell of a coachman, the idea that somehow the betting market took the packers and the bears who were nowhere near each other last year. It's said, yeah, they're about even this year. It just doesn't make sense to me. Okay. Okay. So number one, the one thing you said there is so true about like the reaction and people wanting to be hesitant about reacting, right? And all of that stuff. Because we don't want to overreact a week one. But there's only 17 data points here, you know? So one is significant. Like and getting that right. Here's a great example. I was just one that's on the top of my head because we just talked about Cooper Cup earlier. But remember after week one of the 2021 NFL season, the Rams beat the bears 34 to 14. Cooper Cup has seven catches for 108 yards and a touchdown. Robert Woods, who was going ahead of him in just about every draft after Matthew Stafford got there, has three catches for 27 yards and a touchdown. I think people probably were still like people held to their priors that Robert Woods was going to be the guy like for three weeks into the season. And then my week four, it's too late. It's too late because everybody knows now what you know. So if you were able to react quickly to these situations, another great example was like the cowboys when Demarco Murray was there and they were supposed to have this garbage defense and they were never going to be in like positive game scripts. And then they were in positive game trips as the defense was good. And then Demarco Murray had this incredible fantasy season. And if you could jump on those things early, you can find value. I do wonder if Jordan love is one of those things, you know, three touchdowns in this game. He doesn't have his top weapon either. I mean, Aaron Jones might be the top weapon on the team. He has two catches for 86 yards and a touchdown. He had a couple dynamic plays as a receiver. You know, they didn't do anything special on the ground. AJ Dillon 13 carries for 19 yards. But yeah, I mean, look, I buy what you're saying about the Aaron Rogers Ewing effect, not because he's washed or he's bad or anything like that. But I mean, imagine if you were on the Packers and you got to deal with, you know, the Roger stuff all the time. I mean, it's exhausting. And to the point that it's like, okay, they all seemed really gassed up. Even the defensive players were hyping up Jordan love and practice. So yeah, why can't Jordan love kind of take this thing and go with it? I'm starting to wonder if AJ Dillon's just a guy. And how does DJ Moore get two targets in a game where Chicago is basically in garbage time for the whole second half? That's tough, man. That's really tough if you're if you're a DJ Moore backer. I don't think I drafted very much all of DJ Moore either. You know, Darnell Mooney, who's a pretty good player for catch 53 yards team high. He gets a touchdown. I think you're got it. You got to that was definitely another takeaway on the other side of it was if you were hoping for like a big reveal of Justin Fields taking that leap in his in his next NFL season, you didn't get it. You didn't get it in this one. And maybe it will happen in the future, but it did not happen in this one. I saw like a couple of scrambles that I liked a couple of scrambles I liked from from Fields today, but I didn't see any throws that impressed me. I didn't see the whole game and I'll watch it all tomorrow, but I was just so even I just want to see a couple a couple of a couple of dimes, you know, to to more or whoever, you know, I want to see something and I didn't see it. DJ Moore had like had a couple of nice moments when he got the ball twice. I mean, literally a couple of moments. So yeah, there we go. All right, let's move on to the next one here. Philadelphia Eagles 25 New England Patriots 20. Scott, you know, the Patriots hung around. They made this one tough on the Philadelphia Eagles, but did what did we learn anything coming out of this one? Fresh red game from from Patriot fan perspective, because New England had a major edge in yardage. And I thought they actually defended Hertz very well. Hertz played a part as poorly as you'll ever see him play and still Philadelphia gets the win and they get the cover. It helped that they had that long defensive touch down the sleigh run back, but it's yeah, I don't know. I don't I don't want to fill it off. He's just so talented. I mean, I always feel like eight shape rounds ready for a splash play. I know you lost one on a challenge where you barely miss getting his second foot and bounds, but it's interesting. Philadelphia, they scratch a penny, right? They come out with game. Well, I mean, there's just it's so hard to figure out the backfield usage for them sometimes. I thought in New England, they play a lot of man's we know. And I thought that I think they spied Hertz for some of this game. This may at these may go down as the worst game hurts plays all year. And he still they win anyway because of right how deep this roster is. And yeah, it's just funny, even though New England had the edge in yardage and first downs and everything, I had no confidence at Mac Jones was going to leave them to anything down the end of the game. And ultimately he didn't underhand replay pretty well. I feel like I was underweight on him, but mostly this was a game that frustrated me. Yeah, Eagles passing game. It's like whatever that will there will be bigger games ahead. Deandre Swift, though, one catch for zero yards on two targets, one carry for free yards. There were by the end of the summer, I was like, Oh, man, I'm I'm a little like I'm a nervous. I'm about 200 weight on Deandre Swift. I'm not feeling that way after week one. You know, so we'll see that backfield. I think we'll be a moving target. But on the Patriots, you know, remind our students and get six catches for 64 yards. That's great to see. I do remain really interested in Kendrick born who I think is a good player who was kind of unfairly thrown aside by the last coaching staff, which the last offensive coaching staff, by the way, the last offensive coaching staff was Matt Patricia. Don't really don't really care what he thinks six catches two touchdowns 11 targets. I think he's somebody to keep an eye on because while juju is like a solid player, I think, you know, born probably gives him the most juice from a receiver position at this point. That's not saying a ton the other guys in the roster, but he's somebody I I'm not going out of my way to like empty the clip from a fab perspective on Kendrick born. But I he's somebody I'll at least be interested in. I mean, hey, you can't ignore six catches two touchdowns and 11 mostly the 11 targets. And I thought he made a hell of a catch on the second one. So he was a player I liked a few years ago. And then he was just so ordinary for such a long time in New England that I just kind of decided, okay, the cheese has gone bad. You career arc once career arcs go in the wrong direction. It's so rare. We're guys pick it up again, but the ball has to go somewhere. I mean, they're going to throw 500 passes to somebody. So I guess I have to be proactive with that. And again, I mentioned Henry in passing, but on a day where it was just a tight end dead zone, right? Gaseki did not have a great preseason. He actually caught three passes in this game, but Hunter Henry played a full season last year. And you know, Mac Jones, here's the thing with Mac Jones, right? It's going to always look weird that he was a first round pick because he's sounding anybody. Everything. He's going to be a star or he has a ceiling, but he was set up to fail by this coaching staff last year. If he can get competent coaching, if Brian is the adult in the room that we think he is, then maybe it's not a case of it's I talked about Baker May Field. It's not like I care about Baker Mayfield for fantasy. I care about Mike Evans. I don't care about Mac Jones for fantasy, but I in a year where tight end might be Skank, I would love to put Hunter Henry in the top 12, if I could. And at least this game showed that he has the potential to be there. We always liked him on the chargers, right? And then there's always a case of, oh, if he could stay healthy in the last year, he stayed healthy, but he was on a team that was such a rudderless ship that didn't matter. There was nothing to be gleaned there. Somebody, this team should throw for 23 24 touchdown passes. Why can't Hunter Henry catch seven or eight of those? Yeah, I think that's totally fair. All right, next game up here. We're on saint 16, Tennessee Titans 15. This game went about exactly as I thought. A little bit of a slobber knocker between two, you know, two defenses that I think could be really solid. And two teams that want to like run the ball. Chris, a lot of it was awesome in this game. Rashid Shaheed was awesome in this game. Dude, he can, he can freaking play. Like I really want to hammer that home that I know Michael Thomas is there. Five catches 61 yards, eight targets. That's great. But Olave is the gravitational center force of this offense. And I think Shaheed is somebody to really pay attention to. I mean, I hate that he's wearing 22, but he's a pretty good wide receiver. I feel that way too. Well, I just don't know how many players this offense can support. Olave is obviously a god. Eventually, look at Camera back. Maybe Michael Thomas has something left. I did not draft him at all per act. I don't think I drafted him at all period. So I just don't know Shaheed is the case of I think he may need somebody to get hurt there. It's funny. This game was 16 15. I think both coaches probably went in this game like, okay, let's try to steal this game 16 to 15. And the Saints did that again, a nod to our man Schwab who was frustrated. I think he had a Saints ticket and Mike variable played for the cover late in this game. He went for the field goal. And I hope to get the ball back, which of course they didn't. And it looked like maybe it seemed like a spot where you should have gone for it up fourth down. Maintain a hell was under duress this whole game. Oh my god. Yes. Again, I'm just trying to tell myself a story. I'm an O'Conquo guy. And you know, I have some trail in Berkshairs. And we'd like to think that maybe there's another year relevance left with Derek Henry. We know the Titans offensive line isn't very good. But every time I looked up in this game, I saw Ryan Tanahill just three guys around him. It looked like he was just about to get Malachi crunched. It was really hard to watch. And I wanted to believe Tennessee. Not that I thought Tennessee was like some great team. But they're collapsed last year coincided with Tanahill being hurt. And even when your offensive line stinks. Veteran quarterback can mask a lot of that with the right calls and getting rid of the ball and putting it where it needs to go and everything. So I thought maybe Tanahill could mask some of that. And again, I thought that they'd come in here and shoot the game out or anything. Again, I think we all thought this would be a low scoring game. But the Tennessee passing game was even uglier than I expected. How about in the running game? What do you think about the fact that the years to Jay Spears, the rookie running back played 34 snaps to Derek Henry's 30. And by the way, at the half, they played the same amount of snaps. So it was not as if this happened later, anything like that. It's a thing. I mean, it's always been Henry Henry Henry Henry Henry Henry even games that have salted away. They'd still run Henry into the ground. And it seems like they're finally ready to say, okay, we need to have a second pitch. You can't you can't just throw 103 fastballs. So this could be the year. It's a 70 30 or 65 35. I think that's totally in play. And it could be good for Henry long term, you know, keep him a little fresher, and it could be really bad for your fantasy team. Next one up here, Baltimore Ravens 25, Houston Texans 9. Scott Lamar Jackson throws no touchdowns in this in this game because the running backs ate them all. And I'll tell you this, I come out of this game feeling pretty good about the Baltimore pass game. But obviously, the big story here is is in the running back position, where JK Dobin suffered a torn Achilles. I mean, just what an awful run of injuries for this guy who looks like such a good player and was off to like a dominating the backfield type of start here. But unfortunately, he's going to miss the rest of the season. We know Achilles is a tough injury for the running back position generally. It was not Gus Edwards, but it was Justice Hill who banged in two touchdowns and kind of looked like the first guy off the bench. Right. Yeah. Justice Hill is still in the league. Yes, he is. Justice Hill is in the end zone. Everybody was ruined the year. They liked Justice Hill and he didn't do anything for you, but he did it today. Everybody's had a year. Absolutely. Nobody. I feel horrible for JK. It gets back. It's hurt right when it starts because this is an offense we want to invest in. I didn't think Jackson had a great game, but whatever. What do you need to do against the Houston Texans in this producer map, producer Matt producer Colin points out 25.9 is a score. Unique score, the over 1076 unique scores in NFL history. And this is one of them. Also a unique game for Isaiah likely who was Bally Hood. We spent a whole morning talking about him. He gets one catch for four years. Was there ever like a more red flaggy like fantasy trap potential than Isaiah likely? I don't know. I mentioned picking them up earlier. Just I think there's a little bit of FOMO like if likely does something I want to be in on it. I had a tight end 10. So it's in people I think every question people ask me about likely I think I pointed to the other guy. I'm not confident any of the other guys did anything either. It's not like Tyler Higley broke football today, but I was less I was less on the like is it was something we're pounding the table like you know, people are saying I picked up like me to block him from an opponent. You know, I mean, he's like, you know, I wasn't doing that. But whatever. I'm not I had a tight end 10. So that doesn't look good either. I got I got to own that big thing here. Okay. I know Beckham did his thing. He only makes two catches, but one of them was a highlight if I'm catching, we're going to replay it over and over again. Don't miss the signal here that Zay flowers looked fantastic. Oh, yeah. He could be their alpha man. He's really and again, you know, this when somebody does this right out of the box as a rookie. And I know it doesn't there's no guarantee that Zay flowers won't be relevant three or four weeks from now. But I think there's significant to somebody who's this good right away when they make their NFL debut. So you can't pick up flowers in any competitive league. Where were you on flowers before the season? I love flowers, dude. I think he should not have gone this this late. He was the fourth drafted of the fourth that the guys in the first round. I believe he was the last one. Right. I loved him. I liked him better than Jordan Addison, like the better than Quentin Johnston. Yeah, he's just right. I mean, he's behind Jackson spent the gig with me, but that was no shade at Zay flowers. Just thought JSN was a bit like cleaner of a prospect. I love I mean, he legitimately had like Antonio Brown kind of moves to him. I had more of like a Deontay Johnson comparison for him where he because of the route running, but he's he can make some bone headed plays, but he's so much more explosive than Deontay Johnson in the open field. That that's the thing where the comparison sort of falls apart. And you see it in this game, man. I mean, they were getting him the ball in space. He's him and back on where the top two guys, which I think was to be expected because Bateman was working back from an injury. I want to see, you know, in a couple of weeks, if Bateman's still like a part-time player, I kind of tend to doubt it, but, you know, Bengals, Colts, Browns, Steelers, Titans next. I mean, I'm with you that I think being aggressive on Zay flowers is is the way to go here because I think he is a really, really, really strong talent who is a perfect fit really in what this offense wants to do, which is spread the ball, create space. And you know, who's really damn good at both creating space and making something out of that space when he's in it is Zay flowers. I mean, to bury the lead here. So Dobbins gets hurt. What do we do in this backfield? I think it's possible that neither Hill or Edwards is really a right answer. And I would think Baltimore's going to bring people in, right? And there's a couple of big name guys, but there's always interesting that Melvig Gordon on the practice squad. Right. I guess they said they could throw it somewhere in the practice squad, trying to remember who was on it. You know, Melvig Gordon, who's been around, seen some things. I would Fred Zinky, our colleague at Yahoo, has a fab strategy. It's more of a fantasy baseball strategy, but sometimes it applies to fantasy football, but he makes his baseball offers for fab. He tries to come in second or come in third. He tries not to win. He makes a competitive offer. He doesn't think he's going to win. And if he wins, okay, he got the offer that he wanted. He got to name his prize. And if he doesn't end up being the person who wins, it's okay, okay, whatever. I'm not, I'm trying to keep my resources in line so I can get more bites at the apple. That's how I'm going to approach Hill and Edwards is rostered in a lot of leagues, but when he's not rostered, again, you have to cease in this to taste. Maybe if you're the person who lost to Auburns, you may be more desperate than some other teams are, but I'll make some kind of a quasi competitive offer for these guys, but I'm not going to pound the table. I'm not going to two-hand shoved for them. I think it's entirely possible. Both of them are kind of an empty doorway. You know, I think that Justice Hill is probably the guy with lean two if you're picking up, but I'm, I think that's perfect. I'm not going to go all out to make sure I get Justice Hill. I mean, there has just been a steady drum beat out of camp that they really like the way he's played and they like the way he fits in this offense, potentially more than Gus Edwards, like who probably fit the old offense better. But I think it's just, it's, this is going to be a passing team. And I think that will be the case when they don't play the Houston Texans. Anything on those Texans, I mean, Damian Pierce predictably, like you should, you should have hammered the under on his rushing yards. It was not going to be a good performance for Damian Pierce in week one. I'm not panicking on Pierce at all. Nico Collins gets six for 80 on 11 targets. Robert Woods gets 10 targets because he's, you know, just going to be that reliable underneath guy. But, you know, there will be better days for the Houston Texas. I do think CJ Stroud acquitted himself pretty well. I mean, he didn't, obviously, he's, this wasn't a game they were pushing the Ravens to win or anything. But I think he played pretty well in a very hostile opening game. The problem I always have with Pierce is that he seemed to get a swell of draft support as August moved along. And a team that's going to probably win four or five games, he's just hard for me to get behind one of those running backs. Unless I think they're special as a receiver. And Pierce, I think, is a below average receiver. The defense, actually, I give them credit for not getting there, even though they only put up nine points, they didn't get their doors blown off at Baltimore, which is can be an intimidating spot. And all I'm really asking for stride is, can you support one or two fantasy receivers? Right? I don't even care if it's Collins or Woods, although I'd be much better off if it's Collins, because I have been rostered in Woods as thin age. I don't want to roster him. But if he can just, if he can just push Nico Collins to like wide receiver 33, I bet he had a great season, man. Thank you. I appreciate that. That's what I need you for. And I think Demiko Ryan is a great hire. It's going to take a while to get this defensive culture and scheme to gel. But I think he used it a good time to play them as right now. I think there'll be a much more competitive team in the second half of the year. From the second overall pick to the first overall pick, Falcons 24 Carolina Panthers 10, Falcons are the bigger story here. So the Panthers are what we thought they were. I mean, Hayden Hurst is going to get some production. Yeah, that's true. It is a revenge game. He was predictably going to have a little nice moment with Adam Thielen banged up. The receivers are nothing. This this offense is just it's slow, man. It's slow. And this has not got a lot of pop. Miles Sanders gets 18 carries and four catches, six targets. I think that's going to remain his role. So I don't know if you have anything to add on the Panthers, but I feel like they are what we thought they were. Falcons, though, maybe they were what some people thought they were, where they were kind of in control this game throughout. And you know, Tyler Algier, he had more carries than Bijan Robinson. He's going to have a role. I think he potentially is the perfect type of back where he has stand-alone value, like maybe even just flex appeal, not even what the heck flex appeal. But then Bijan Robinson, you know, if anything ever happened to him, Tyler Algier obviously would go to the moon. Drake London has no catches. I know that's tilting Kyle Pitts has two for 44. They're going to that will not be the case every single week, especially when they play better teams. I mean, this Panthers team is just their defense is fine, but they're just never going to force anybody out of their shell. Yes, they're probably Atlanta realized they had this game. Remember, Ritter still has very little NFL experience. So once they realized they could just kind of grind it out. Now, cheers are really good player. Wow. Yeah. Arthur Schmeth. Look, I'm torn on Arthur Schmeth, because he, he schemes a good running game. And he realizes both the importance of getting a guy like Bijan Robinson, who's quote unquote generational, but also Tyler Algier having a role on this offense. And maybe it can be close to 50-50. And that could be a little tilting. And maybe Robinson is going to be more like a second round player than the first round boy who was drafted as. But I'll admit, you kind of shrugged it off. And I'm glad you're doing this because I need a little bit of therapy here. As draft season went along, I just started to think, and I remember seeing Drake London at USC. And they've had a lot of really good receivers. And I'm always talking with Michael Lazarus, our colleague who's a USC guy. And about how the great history of all the different wide-out seats, Smith and Kishan Johnson and all the different Mike Williams. And Drake London was really good at the end of last year. And I just, and I know that production and growth isn't always linear. But I was seeing it's like, okay, he took that step up last year. It was kind of muted because there was an offense. People were, you know, didn't want to watch. And Arthur Schmeth was driving his crazy. And Kyle Pitzen ever scores touchdowns and all that. I got more and more into Drake London as draft season went along. I started to get him. And I don't mind quiet games. It's just hard to look at the zeros. And I know I said, T Higgins, don't worry about it. And I'm not worrying about it. But T Higgins has been in the league for a while. And T Higgins is on a team that's going to prioritize T Higgins. At least his bagel came on eight freaking targets. What a London have. I think London had one target. Was it one? Yeah. 46 naps. And they threw 18 passes. And there's going to be a lot of games. I was hoping part of my pro and stance was like, well, they can't be this run however you again. Can they? Maybe they can. I'm nervous. I need some help here. I'm not going to panic. I'm not going to certainly not cut them. I'm not going to trade them for 70 cents or anything like that. But I'm afraid that maybe I get over my skis with Drake London at the end of draft season. Very possible that I got over the skis on mine over the skis on him as well. Because I'm a big fan of the player. And I was with you that I really liked him. I just think they're not going to play this way every single week. And maybe I'm not reacting enough to what I'm seeing. But I think that it's so hard to look at the zero. I'm with you. But they play the Packers who are a better team right now than the Carolina Panthers next week. They played the Detroit Lions who are really good team in week three. They play the Jaguars in week four. Like let's see if they're forced out of their shell by any of those teams who look much more capable of putting up points than the Carolina Panthers do right now before I'm going to freak out about Drake London. Let me see. It's not it's not the zero to me. It's the one. Yeah. The white target. Yeah. The one is what bothers me because the zero can happen. Did you know? I mean, it's the I don't know how we can never have a game where basically Drake London wasn't there. It did frustrates me. Yep. Look, I'm I totally admit that I might be in take lock and I might be under reacting. But that's just my perspective on it right now. So this is a great spot where the listener decide where you fall on the range there. Because I think Scott's on one side of it. I'm on one side of it. And I'm just I'm not going to react to it. I'm just going to sit on my hand. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not going to trade them. You know, I'm not. And when somebody comes to with a low ball offer, I'm not going to do it. I'm going to be like, no, I'm stubborn. But you know what? A lot of people are stubborn for Kyle Pits for two two plus years. And that's helped nobody at this point. I mean, I work here a lot of yards is Ricky here. And I work he tight ending produces is a good thing. But there's been stuff left on the table for Kyle Pits his entire career. And I'm just wondering. Maybe it was just a coach who would better get these guys unlocked. I need to fair question ask. Yeah. I just like Arthur Smith's offense a lot. Like people people tweeting at me in the middle of the game. Like you still think Arthur Smith's a good coach. I'm like, uh, he's winning this game and like his run game is awesome. So I mean, I I get congratulations. You just beat the Carolina Panthers and in their working quarterbacks first game with absolutely no downfield help. You know, I'll throw you a parade for that on Monday. Let's move on to the next game here. Raiders 17 Broncos 16. I don't come away from this game impressed with either offense. I'll say that. I will note just what an awesome game from Jacobi Myers. Unfortunately before suffering a really massive scary hit late in the game left the game. He was able to walk off, which was, you know, kind of surprising and good to see. But man, he was awesome in this game. And you know, kind of looking like a guy that was a totally forgotten about late round player, but such a good player and a really good fit in this offense. But that was my only no man. Because honestly, again, I didn't come away like impressed with anybody in this one. Yeah. That Myers was the most impressive player to me, uh, based on my preseason expectations of what they did here. The Denver passing game was frustrating. I thought Williams and pre-run were actually effective as runners at Williams. I thought I had a pretty good success rate from just from my eyeball off to see what the stats say and what the tape says. But for somebody who wasn't overly optimistic with Williams and draft season, it was encouraging to me. But Myers, you know, when I first saw the hit, I was afraid, oh my god, he's neck injury is going to be out for the season or something like that. Just to see him walk off the field was encouraging. I think he could be an 85 catch, 980 yard, seven to nine touchdown guy. Yeah. For one thing, what he's good at, like Daniel's was good at scheming and it's the throw. It's the throws that Garoppolo's good at identifying, right? I mean, there's a good intersection of what does our quarterback do? Well, who fits what receiver fits that type of skill set and how can we get him to our plus he's got familiarity. Myers does with McDaniel. So I think I think Jacobi Myers has a chance to who's probably drafted after the top 40 receivers. I think he can easily be a playable wide receiver three if healthy going forward. Love the player. So I'll, I'll rubber stamp that one. All right. Let's move on to the last game here. Washington commanders 20 Arizona Cardinals 16. I mean, Scott, you, you were just dialed in on this game. You were taking notes. You had the you had the magnifying glass. So tell us what did you see by the commanders almost, almost given that damn thing back to the Arizona Cardinals here. Yeah, to dialed in and so all you got it was hung up on Washington won the game. So they my survivor sheets survived, but they did not play well. And look at Arizona. I think Arizona's who we thought they were. They got seven of their points where a gift touchdown where Howell was running around and chicken with his head cut off and turned the ball over and just gifted Arizona a touchdown, which made me want to throw up. But here's what really frustrated me. How it took six sex in this game. He looks skittish. He looks like a guy who has some played a lot of NFL football. So that's part of it. But again, it wasn't so much that I mean, look, I was superflax or deeper leagues, whatever. Howell was okay, but mostly I wanted him to push term. McLaren took a good year. I johan dots and I talked about all summer and he was a priority pick for me. Draft him as your fourth receiver. He might be your third receiver. He might be their best receiver had a prop on dots and he only needed to go over 43 yards. He had like 30 yards as soon as the game started. Second half, Howell was not playing well again. He took six sex in this game through one pick. They dropped at least one or two other picks. They just said we're going to win this game with defense and running the ball up the middle and they basically unplugged Howell. They just they weren't going to take any more chances with him. And that makes me think that maybe I overdrafted Dotson, maybe I overdrafted Robinson, maybe I even overdrafted Howell and the superflax deeper leagues that I have him in. And this schedule, man, I mean, you just played Howell. That's the worst team you're going to play. That's why you played them in Survivor maybe this week because this is the one time to do it, right? They get Denver Buffalo Philadelphia the next three weeks. So if Sam Howell looks skittish against Arizona, how's he going to look against some of those teams? 100% fair. You can't be feeling great about Sam Howell after this one. I mean, look, it's one start. It's fine. But the a little bit too quick internal clock. That was a problem. And like you said, the schedule coming up here, they go to Denver, the Buffalo Philadelphia. I mean, this is not going to be any easier that going forward. So yeah, I think I think I'm in weight and C mode with Sam Howell after this one. There were some nice moments. You know, he can move around a little bit. He can create, which is good to see. But for sure, I'm a little like raising my eyebrows at this one too, wondering, he also got banged up at one point as well. And then the Cardinals man there, again, another, they are who we thought they were team. I got nothing on the Cardinals. What you thought about Arizona 24 hours ago will stand today. All right, well, Scott, that is going to do it. A nice, nice little beefy recap here coming out of week one. Dude, it just felt so great for football. I'll be back and having all the screens on and everything. I hope you enjoyed your week one, Scott. I hope everybody else out there did as well. For sure. And I'm going to try to trim these down, going further weeks. Hey, this was good. This was good. Talk about, hey, you know what? Here's the thing. We're going crazy all summer. We don't even get preseason games anymore because nobody plays. So just to get everything, you mentioned YouTube was great. It was just so exciting to watch a bunch of different stuff at the same time. And it's something you'll see a bunch of teams. The red zone at the same time. Touchdowns, ping, ping, ping, defensive touch, you know, even when football isn't great, because the first window wasn't great. It's still such a fantastic day. And I'm just thrilled I get to talk about it with you and I get to do this stuff for Yahoo because where else would you rather be on a Sunday? Literally nowhere else. Hell of a show. That's going to do it. Reminder. Tomorrow I will be on Tuesday. Andy Barons and I are going to debut the regular season version of the people's panic meter. Like I said at the top, if you want to get your submission in fantasy mailbag at Yahoo Sports dot com, send us a voice memo videos. Those go to the top of the line. What are you panicked on? Who's got your panic after week one? Let us hear about Drake London. Let us hear about Damien Pierce. We will decide after feeling, you know, kind of after feeling it out a little bit, maybe have a little more zen. I really appreciated the YouTube. If you if the stream was gone, they had like the zen stuff. That was great. I feel a little more zen after, you know, decompressing a bit off Sunday. So people's panic meter fantasy mailbaggy out of sports dot com send in your best submission video, audio. They can just be regular old emails as well. I also will have the tweets from the tweet I'm sending out. I'll see you all tomorrow. Until then, we're out.