Week 2 recap: Bounce backs, comebacks and injured running backs

It's Monday, September 18th. 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 and joining me to do just that is Scott Pinawski, Scott, week two Sundays in the books. How are we feeling, buddy? Good. I thought there was a much better flow to this week and we're scoring more guys getting home and fantasy. The ending of the Sunday night game of the bad taste of MLF maybe, but I'm a Patriots fan. That's a me problem. Well, hey, I will get into Sunday night football and everything that happened here in week two on Sunday. If you're listening to this show, we know you've got some people, you drafted on your fantasy team that you started a week two that are making you absolutely panic. We're going to touch on a lot of that this week, but as you know, this is the instant reaction show on Sunday night football, Scott and I are kind of shooting from the hip. We're going off the cuff here a little bit, but Andy Barons and I will have some have had some time to decompress maybe be a little bit more zen in our response to the game. So if you have people that are making you panic here. Remember the people's panic meter. That's your thing. Okay. So send in your written audio hell video responses. What's got you panic? Who are you panicking about and why send it into fantasy mailbag at Yahoo Sports dot com or you could find it on my Twitter feed as well. So just go check that out there. If you want to be in the show with some plays, Japan, I can on but Scott. When you're talking zen masters, you're pretty much talking Phil Jackson, the Dolly Lama and Andy Barons. Yeah, Andy Barons is the ultimate zen master and he'll also be like, you know, sometimes I'm not panicked about this at all. He's like, well, we should be a little panic about it. You know, he's he's perfectly right down the middle there. I see how panicked he is about Justin Fields on pace, probably to allow 147 sacks and 29 defensive touchdowns. I mean, I'm at the point now where any defense against the bears looks. Looks like the 85 bears to me. I love that when I asked Andy how he felt about the bears on the last people's panic meter episode Scott, he just said resigned. Like he's resigned to his fate. And I think that is. I think I think I think that is very fair. All right, let's get into the sign of football here. This was an interesting one Miami dolphins 24 New England Patriots 17. Yeah, Colin just put it in the chat. I saw this this one right before we logged on here. Toa is 5 and 0 against the Patriots, but I think that's a pretty good tip of the cap to toa. Scott will get the Patriots. We'll end on the Patriots here, but let's talk to offense here. Not like the most exciting, spiciest game from the Miami dolphins, which, you know, from an offense a perspective after the firework show they put up in week one, but against Bill Belichick in New England. I think we kind of didn't expect that anyways. What were your takeaways from this one? Sure, that's what Belichick does. The Patriots do. They make you play left handed. So what was New England's obvious game plan? You are not Tyrick Hill is not going to beat us. He had a short touchdown catch, but Tyrick Hill's efficiency was well under what a Tyrick Hill game is to expect to be expected to be. He actually doesn't have the greatest history against the Patriots. He had a big game against them when he was still a Kansas each chief, but they kept Hill somewhat muted. So what did Miami do? They they ran them all down their throat with Raheem mostard who look great and is I see a lot of Twitter victory laps with Raheem mostard the problem with most of them. I'm a fan of him. I've always liked him, especially when he had that big season the breakout season with San Francisco. It's just he's 31 years old. And even though he's got low mileage, they talked about that in the broadcast. It's just how much can you expect from mostard? Is he a half season player? Is he a 12 game player? It's hard to imagine him lasting for a full season. Nobody's ever questioned his ability when he can play. He's very fast. He's decisive and he hit a couple of home runs tonight. So he's one of those guys he talked a lot about trying to win September getting off to a good start. He fits that ethos and with some of the running backs who have struggled or some of the running backs who have gotten injured or maybe falling out of favor with their teams, but he mostard is the perfect panacea for that. Raheem mostard is a good player. We just don't know how long it's going to last and we have a feeling like it's going to expire at some point in the middle of season. It's just a matter of when. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I say it all the time about Raheem mostard. He's here for a good time. He's not here for a long time. That's that is the ethos of Raheem mostard. It's been a good time so far. He scored a touchdown a week one scored twice in this game 6.7 yards per Okay, ripped off a long 43 yard run, but victory lapping Raheem mostard. I mean, what are we doing here? There are a lot of a lot of stuff had to happen for Raheem mostard to get to this point. Jeff Wilson had to go on IR. Devon Hane had to get banged up in the preseason. You had to avoid the the Jonathan Taylor gets traded to Miami thing. It's okay. If you if you landed on Raheem mostard, I think he was a good draft pick, but. You don't need to be victory lapping that okay because like a lot of things had to break in your favor, but then again, Scott as we know on this podcast the victory laps. I mean, there doesn't need to be a rule, but I do think again as long as. Raheem mostard stays at the head of this back, but he absolutely is, you know, Sullivan Ahmed. He was involved a little bit. He actually left with a groin injury. Devon Hane again. He gets one carry for five yards. He catches a catch for four yards. Like he's just not all the way. Ready yet after missing some time in the preseason. So this should remain the Raheem mostard show. He's a tough guy to say again tough guy to save like rest of season. Where would you want him, but as long as he's in this role, he is like pretty much in every week start. Yeah, and again, I think a lot of condoms are put it out there will sell high and Raheem mostard, which is great. If you can tell me where that market is. Yeah, where the people who are banging down your door for Raheem mostard. I think it's going to be hard to do, but. Yeah, we'll enjoy it once here. He's a good story. I mean, he feels like he's been in for a physical or try out with like half of the NFL teams. I'm not even exaggerating when I say that. I mean, he's at least 10 teams have worked him out. Maybe it's more than that. Some of them. He signed with some of them. He didn't played a lot of special teams. So it's a great story. And I'm going to enjoy it for as long as it lasts. I just don't think in any league of sophistication. People think it's going to last that long, but that's okay. You know, it was fun tonight. And he's a likable guy. And they trust him. It's just a matter of how much how much juice can they get out of him for the full season. And I just think it's also a credit to Mike McDaniel in this offense for knowing they needed a counter punch. You know, I talked about this a lot in the off season that I think the way that they needed to evolve as an offense was when they get in situations like this where. They're not going to give you your first pitch billbell chuck in the Patriots are not going to give you your first pitch right nine targets to Tyree kill five catches for four yards. He does get the touchdown as well. You know, Jalen Waddle. He's in the concussion protocol after this game after taking a hit to the head from Mapu the rookie kind of a tough spot for Mapu. I felt, you know, I mean, I get why you throw the flag. It's helmet to helmet. But, you know, don't know that his damn heads going to be there at that point. So four catches for 86 yards for Jalen Waddle on six targets. You know, 21 and a half yards per catch. But again, not a consistent like you didn't catch 10 passes or something like that. We're just going to ripped up all game by Jalen Waddle. So when you don't have your first pitch to the past game, you're able to do the running stuff. I think that is a credit to the Miami dolphins. And it's just a credit to two of her. I think continuing to play well. I'm just really impressed with where this dolphins team is at right now. Let's move into the Patriots here. Sky, we're talking a little bit before we got we you and I got recording here. You had a similar thought and I said to my wife, like halfway through the third quarter of this game, like the Patriots offense feels like just just good enough just good enough to be average, like they're just missing one like one real playmaker. And that was apparent tonight where I don't know about you, but I was generally impressed with the way Mac Jones played. They're asking a lot of him like 42 pass attempts. But it just again, it's like just something missing here. Oh, for sure, there's no explosive play as the longest past play of the night was 14 yards and the longest running play of the night was some miraculous 18 yard Mac Jones scramble, which may never happen again for his career, because he's not the thought who he is. So all of their drives, it feels like it has to be these 15 play methodical drives. They ended up getting some good stuff late in the game when they sped up the tempo. And they were and people always say, well, want to do that earlier in the game for a couple reasons. One, you don't want to tax your defense too much. And also that type of thing often is more effective when the other team is tired. And you can see they were really exposing a tired Miami defense late in the game when they did that. But for fantasy, what do we want? We want the offense to have enough buoyancy that it covers Montreje Stevenson who's so much better than Z Kelly right now. And I don't know why the Patriots thought bringing Z Kelly it made me sense. I know you need a second running back in just about every city to play. And it's just you get to have somebody who's better than Z Kelly. I don't know why they did that. But Max, but OK, Bill Brian's the adult in the room, Devonti Parker made some place tonight. Hunter Henry's look good for two games in a row. I know his touchdown was a little controversial because he got away with simulating a block like at the running play and then he went out for a pass. But whatever Hunter Henry's getting involved. And he is so much more upside this year with a better coaching staff. So at least the Patriots will give us some fantasy juice. It'll disappoint the Kendrick born got nine targets and did absolutely nothing with them. And if you told me, jujitsu, Schuster was 38 years old, I'd probably believe you. But going for the Patriots, you know, they're kind of in purgatory. They're not good enough to really have a major upside. They're not bad enough that they're going to be in on the Caleb William stuff. They're going to be somewhere in that seven, 10, six and 11, eight, nine and miraculously everything went right. Maybe they go nine and eight, whatever. And even if they made the playoffs, they probably get both raised in the first week of the playoffs. We're just hoping Steven since a full season factor probably will be we're hoping Hunter Henry can give us some good moments at a position that's been really rocky this year and a lot of times is difficult. So Henry looks pretty good occasionally receiver will pop here. That's about it. You know, Mac Jones, I put them on the sleeper list. What you probably are playing a quarter back sleeper in week two. But if Mac Jones can be good enough to prop up Hunter Henry and to keep the offense and scoring position for Mondays Stevenson, I would take that. All right. Well, I'm that very exciting note of this particular offense. I think it's time to move to a game in particular that's going to lead our headliners section where there are a lot more points and a lot more fireworks. Let's talk. Seahawks 37 lines 31 Scott. We didn't quite get to, you know, like 90 combined points like we had last year, but pretty exciting. Very full fantasy game here. Yeah. If not for a couple of Detroit guys getting banged up. This would have been such a clean fantasy game. And I think the big stories that Seattle, they played a good half against the Rams. Then they played a horrible second half where they have 12 total yards. They lost both of their offensive tackles. And you can coach that stuff up during the week. And even though it was a makeshift offensive line, Gino only took one sack. The sack was really his fault. It was a play late in the fourth quarter. The ball for the most part in Seattle went and we wanted it to go walk around a couple of touchdowns, lock it at a couple of touchdowns. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just a case of when you see a team that has coaching infrastructure that you believe in and they're embarrassed and they look like they're broken. Just give them the best of the depth that they'll probably fix it. I know there's a referendum on Gino right now. A lot of people are waiting for him to pump in and then this people who are more confident in Gino and I would count myself in that second camp. Not that he's really not going to win the MVP or anything, but I think Gino is just fine. And he's got three good receivers. And maybe that offense is going to have to score and push the game a lot because their defense hasn't played well for two straight weeks. Obviously the Rams pushed them around into whatever they wanted last week. And then the lines put up some big stuff here. I also want to point out he's not going to be the headliner of this game, but Sam Laporta made a couple of grown ass man plays late in this game. He's going to be a superstar someday. We know rookie tight ends are never put expectations on them, but you're going to want Sam Laporta. I don't know if it's this year, I don't know if it's next year, but he's going to be like a stud. He is so friggin talented. I mean, shoot, buddy. It might be this year, right? Like five, five catches in this game, five game, five catches in the opener and look at the tight end position. That's, that's not bad. Five catches is, is, is, is, is not too bad. Oh, for sure. We'll take it a little bit of a buzzkill that David Montgomery was having a nice game. He lost the touchdown. Yeah. I would, I thought was a tiki tack penalty. And then later he got twisted like a pretzel. It's one of those injury. It looked really bad when I heard that it was a thigh injury later. I thought, well, okay, maybe it's not as severe as we thought he did leave the game whenever somebody leaves the game. I think it's a card to the locker room. You get nervous. They haven't been able to get Jamar. Jamar gives looks great every week. I feel like, but it hasn't really popped for him yet. But at some point, you would think they would expand his role. They have the thing with Montgomery and Gibbs, obviously, and this is set a million times. They do different things well. They're complimentary players. That's how the lines want to use them. They have a coordinator. We like they have an offensive coach that we like. And Jared Goff, although he threw that one awful pick for the most part. He's playing at a high level. They do play better at home. So I think maybe, I think the Seahawks are carnival. I think maybe the Lions can be a carnival. All that good defensive mojo we felt from opening night kind of went away because they're not going to have the laundered Geno's jersey after this game. But bottom line is when I was looking at the slate, right? It's like, oh, you know, the Chiefs Jaguars would be a million points. Nope. You know, some of the other games I thought, you know, would maybe be fun. They wouldn't be this game. Certainly, you know, it left me sad. But nothing guys had huge games. I mean, Walker didn't have a great yards for carry or a ton of yardage, but he scored twice for the most part. Whatever you needed to get home in this game got home. Yeah. The I really think it's interesting just with Jameer Gibbs, right? Because now we've got David Montgomery. He's I think it's like a five brews. You know, we'll see how long, like from a long trip perspective, how he might be out. But it just is interesting with Jameer Gibbs that it's not going to be a clean. If Montgomery misses time, like definitely bump up Jameer Gibbs, like Craig Reynolds is involved for three carries today. Like they might have somebody like that step up a little bit. Like I think they are still despite saying we all we have, you know, plans for Jameer Gibbs that nobody's ever seen before, like those type of quotes. It still feels like they're kind of trying to figure out what to do with him on the fly, despite being so jacked up about the pick. So that's interesting. Now Josh Reynolds scores twice again in this game. You know, he's somebody that like I pointed out on our on some of the videos, Andy and I shot this morning. He was the third, I think the third most added receiver over the last two days on Yahoo, like right there with Alan Robinson and Calvin Austin. And I was like, you know what? I would rather have Josh Reynolds above those guys. Like I might think those those guys are more interesting, maybe from a player perspective. But Reynolds just, he's a goth favorite. He's a coaching staff favorite. And he's just going to be out there until James and Williams gets back. And maybe even once Williams gets back, like James and Williams gets back, they might have him out there. But you're right. I'm, I'm, I'm endorsing what you're saying to about Jared golf that I think he other than the interception is playing at a really high level in a solid ecosystem. I think the same grace needs to be extended for Geno Smith to I'll admit Scott. But after week one, I was a little panicked about the Seahawks not panic, but just was so shaken by what I saw. And you're right. This is not the perfect game. But I'll tell you what, like DK Meccaff right now every, every two or three routes. I see him run on like on the live feed on the watching the game. So like, damn, he is, he is cooking right now. He's, he's from a timing perspective. He looks really, really sharp. Lock it gets going in this game. You know, they're trying to establish Kenneth Walker. But I still don't think they have their run game totally going. So I come away from both with these both of these teams in this game. On the line side, I feel better that they've got an answer and Josh Reynolds is an outside receiver. And then on the Seahawks, you're so right to say that if you trust the head coach and we should all trust Pete Carroll implicitly. A week one blip. I'm not too worried about that at this point. Right. And they actually played well for a half to it's not like they played horrible for three hours. Just one before we move on just want to co-sign the Reynolds talk. Not only is he relevant right now and has the trust that he mentioned everybody pretty much in that huddle. But who's to say Jamison Williams is like ready to go right out of the box, right? He's hardly play any professional football. They wanted to give him a camp too. Want to give him a ton of reps and free season to so he'd be more ready to go when he suspension was over and then he get hurt right away. So maybe Josh Reynolds is relevant, you know, deeper than you think. Maybe he's into November, into December. Who's to say? I, you know, it's an offense we like ecosystem. We like they like him. I like Josh. 100% I love that call. I know people probably want us to have a deeper conversation about Jameer Gibbs. But I have a feeling he's going to be a highly sensitive player to the panic meter overnight tonight here Sunday going to Monday. So I'm sure Andy now we'll talk about him on tomorrow's episode. Moving on to two teams that found their way into last week's panic meter and one still might be there. Baltimore Ravens 27 Cincinnati Bengals 24 Scott. Let's let's talk about the Bengals here. We'll get to the Ravens in a second. A couple of injuries to note here. Most notably Joe Burrow re aggravates a calf injury. That's what he said after the game. Call himself day-to-day, re aggravate the calf injury. Bengals just haven't looked sharp, right? I mean over the last two weeks. So where are we at with the Bengals at this point? Well, at least, you know, we got a little bit of show of faith. I mean, T Higgins was if you're in a league of idiots and you bought low on T Higgins. Congratulations. None of the leagues I'm in was that available to me. Yeah. Yeah. The Bengals still, I mean, what 5.4 yards per attempt for Burrow. He gets staked up in this game. They still look they they're in precision mode. Obviously, Burrow couldn't do much after he got hurt early in the summer. So I'm still quorum, quote, buying on the Bengals, but the problem is that it may be until October before they really hit. Try it again. This was a game they really needed. I was disappointed. I don't know anything they did. All that great in this game again. 5.4 yards per attempt. Just isn't going to do it. So I think the Bengals will get there. I think they'll get there, you know, sooner rather than later, but that doesn't mean it's going to be in week three. I would be nervous. If you're going to play Higgins and Chase is going to come around. I would be nervous if I drafted Joe Burrow right now only because the opportunity cost. What you didn't draft to get Joe Burrow and I realized he's not the only signature quarterback who's off to a slow start, but you don't get that many regular season weeks and fantasy football right 13 or 14. You can't just blow off like a month and it looks like that. This might just be the exhibition season for burrow the first month. So I'm panic. No, and again, you know, I don't want to step on the panic meter. You guys did a great job with that. It's a great hookup and I'm looking forward to I will. I will go there with my own anxiety and see if you guys can talk me off the ledge on a few players, but I'm concerned about Joe Burrow right now. I'm concerned to they get the Rams on Monday night next week. The Rams have looked much better than most expectations so far this year. And you know, this is a consistent team. The ramp. I mean, excuse me. The Bengals are absolutely the fantasy manager Scott that you tell everybody to not be, which is like, yeah, September, whatever. No big deal. We'll come around by the end of the season. It'll be fine. And you know, it's worked so far. The last couple of years in the Joe Burrow era has worked and went to the Super Bowl. They made a deep playoff run. But just like in fantasy, especially in the AFC right where there's so many good teams, you don't have a ton of weeks to mess around here Cincinnati. You'd like to think that we'll get something like we'll get something going here at some point, but it is. It is a little concerning. I think at this point, panicked, maybe not like by the time we get to week four, week five, week six, when they're playing the Titans, the Cardinals and the Seahawks going into their by week. We might be at like a fully operational Cincinnati Bengals, but before then, I don't know, just like, are we going to get another dud on Monday night? And like you said, there's not really much advice to take out of this, but I share the concerns a little bit. I'm going to give you a couple of hot takes and maybe you won't agree. I think Adele Beckham Jr. and Rashad Bateman are drops. Yeah, no. Well, Beckham, it depends on the injury. Beckham, it depends on the... No, even if he's not hurt, and I don't wish injury on anybody, of course. But what would Beckham have to do with this point to justify? And the Reavers are such a weird offense right now. I mean, today it's Nelson Agalar that goes to the front of their receiving room. And even though Jackson was a proactive runner in this game, do you know he said he's at three rushing touchdowns in his last 24 regular season games. Yeah, no, it's a fair point about his... The rushing touchdowns at least. Somebody pointed this out to me when I was talking about my concerns with JK Dobbins. And I can't remember who it was. I apologize for forgetting who you were on Twitter. But it was a good point that made me think like, oh, you know what? Actually, that's true. Like Jackson hasn't been this big touchdown throughout the last couple of years. And obviously, you know, JK Dobbins, we're not going to get to know the answer of was, you know, from where... He looked like a great fantasy pick at the very, very limited action that we saw of him, because he was getting those touchdowns down there. So, yeah, Jackson, I agree with you with the touchdowns. I will just say I think if Beckham was healthy, I think he was having a pretty nice game here. I think he was going to put together a decent effort against the Bengals. But with an injury now, I think he is a drop in Bateman. Look, you know, I love Rashad Bateman, the player, but he is being eased in. Like, I think by November, December, they might be playing him a full workload. But, yo, what is the theme that we keep hitting on here? You don't have a lot of weeks to wait around. Like, if you drop Rashad Bateman right now, because you need to pick up a running back, or, you know, a Josh Reynolds, who's going to help you write this second, and he comes back and is playing well in November, December, I don't think you can hate yourself for that. I just think that that's probably the reality of where we're headed that Bateman might be a second half of the year guy. But let me ask you this, though, Scott. I come away from this game feeling a lot better about the Ravens offense overall. Totally fair. And you both, both the running back, you may have picked up this week, at least did something. What we kind of need, and actually, I'm in one deep league where I have Nelson Aguilar. I guess that's a me problem and not a listener problem. But Nelson Aguilar is what I call a fantasy disruptor, where he just gets in the way of other players who we want to get the production. If Nelson Aguilar is going to get three to five, four to six targets a week, that's bad news for the other people in this target tree. No, I think that's fair. It does make the offense better overall. Like, and I think it's good for Jackson when you at least are sitting here saying, like, you know what, Nelson Aguilar is like involved and he's their fourth receiver. In previous, I remember when they signed Nelson Aguilar and I was like, oh, my God, what a classic Ravens signing. You know, he's on to like his fourth team and his best days are definitely behind him. But if this guy's like, we're going to pop up every now and again for decent games. I think that is good news for Lamar Jackson who hasn't necessarily hit that like nuclear fantasy season yet. Because they're still trying to work this offense in and they have injuries on the offensive line. And that was apparent at times today. I do think the best is yet to come for the Ravens offense. That at least I feel pretty good about even if I am sort of saying like, yeah, I'm okay. Dropping some of these guys that were really encouraged about the receiver room. Let's move on to the next one here. Green Bay Packers fall to the Atlanta Falcons. Falcons 25 Packers 24. Talk about a game that I come out feeling a lot better about the Atlanta Falcons offense Scott. You know, look, last week, it was, I think last week and you can, you can he check me on this Scott because you could tell me if I'm just living in like the reality that I want to live in. I think it was understandable. The panic about the Falcons offense in week one because, you know, we were so on Arthur Smith red alert. They throw 18 passes to 26 rush attempts. But the Panthers didn't put up much of a fight into the scoreboard. It was kind of close, but like Bryce Young throws two picks to Jesse Bates. They have these short fields. This is much more, I think, what their offense might look like when they're in a competitive game. Desmond Ritter dropped back to pass 38 times. The Handable, the Handable to the running backs 35 times and five design runs to Desmond Ritter. Like that's what I think this offense will look like much more overall. But Kyle Pits, folks, I can't help you. I can't, I can't give you any good words, but I can at least feel better that Drake London gets involved here. Has over 60 yards in a touchdown. Right. I mean, there are four assuming you're not in the deep league and you don't need Desmond Ritter. There are four players here. We have fantasy interest in Robinson, Algera, London and Pits. Three of them essentially did something. I mean, I realize Algera only 16 for 48. You can't get that mad when he gets 16 carries. And although they obviously they were run heavy because they want to be run heavy. But look at how condensed the passing was. They only targeted five guys. That's good. And I'll take, if you told me Drake London was going to get seven targets the rest of the season, I'd be like, done, take it and sign me up. Because he's going to have a lot of six for 67 in a touchdown games when he doesn't need, you know, it's great when you see double digit targets for Drake London. But remember to with some of these like Drake London gets seven targets today. A lot of those are play action targets from a team that's been running the ball down somebody's throat. So again, they're going to be highly efficient. It's going to be one of these things where he's going to end the season with like 108 targets. And people can be like, well, what would you do with 140 or 150? But he's kind of getting the filet of the targets because they don't look to throw as proactively as other teams. But when they do, it's designed to be a splash play. A lot of time, you know, they hit the splash play to Mac Holland's on a trick play. So, hey, Arthur Smith is 2 and 0. I'm going to back off on Arthur Smith. As far as pits not showing up in the last week, it was London this week. It was Pets. Well, again, this four guys here we want to do something every week. You're not going to get all four of them three out of four. You would take it on the other side. You know, we had a couple of spots this week where a starting running back was hurt. And the backup was going to over the understudy or even like, you know, in the case of the Packers, it's kind of a one in one a situation. It's like, okay, we'll stop for AJ Dylan. There's no, there's nothing in the, and I know Aaron Jones in his way, right? 15 carries 55 yards along of eight. And he catches one pass for eight yards. I mean, AJ Dylan is the jaguest of all. I know he was an early draft pick. And he had an interesting tape coming out of Boston College. I never watch AJ Dylan to think, oh, he's Corey Dylan. Oh, he's, you know, he's Derek Henry Light or something like that. I think he's just a slightly, maybe, maybe Jag is a little bit too harsh, but I don't think AJ Dylan is in any way a special player. And the next time he comes through a spot like this, I'll look at him as somebody maybe I could play, but certainly not a must play by any means. That's exactly how I approached him. Like when people asked this week was, yeah, it depends on your other options. Like he's not a, oh, yep, slam dunk. And really, because I think watching this offense, this week, it gets the Falcons this week, and then the Bears last week, and look, the Bears are like an unserious defense right now. We'll get to the Bears much, much, much later in the show. Well, they're unserious offense in my dad. Actually, just they're an unserious team right now. And again, we'll get to practice every week that Justin Fields taking a sack. Oh, yeah, they're, and they got that play nailed down, buddy. They got that play right off the playbook. Man, the play sheet is perfect there. I just think watching these, this team in each of the first two weeks, man, Aaron Jones is an important player for this team. And that's something that I think we might have this same conversation later about Josh Kelly and Austin Eccler, but I think it's especially true about AJ Dylan subbing in for Aaron Jones. He's just so like completely opposite of Aaron Jones. You know, Jones, they use as like a pre-scent motion guy. He's like defensive eye candy. He's an explosive pass catching guy. And AJ Dylan is not eye candy and he's not explosive. I mean, other than his quads are unbelievable eye candy. Those are great to look at. But not not great when it comes to, you know, being sort of that dynamic piece in the offense. And they're still missing Christian Watson too. That is one thing if I'm a Packers fan, you know, this game is competitive. It doesn't look as good with six yards per attempt, 56% completion rate for Jordan Love. But they get Jayden Reade involved, eight targets, two touchdowns. I think if he's on waiver wires, he should be on rosters at this point. They just don't have a guy who can flip the field like an Aaron Jones or like a Christian Watson yet, but eventually they will have those guys. Yeah, I can't wait to see. I actually thought Love played better than the stats would indicate in this game. And I can't wait to see. Look, Watson's their best receiver. It's nice that they get a couple of touchdowns from Jayden Reade. And Musgrave is another guy who looks like a runaway for it. I don't like him as much as a reporter, but Musgrave is going to play in the sleep for 10 years. But they need their number. I mean, they were without the number one receiver and their number one running back in this game. And that love did not by any means embarrass himself. He got very little help from Dylan also. So the Packers easily could have won this game. I feel a lot better about Jordan Love today than I did a month ago. Absolutely. I feel not great about Jordan Love, but I feel much, much better than I was expecting to at this point in the season. And again, this is such an inexperienced team. Like Aaron Jones is their only real veteran that's an above average player at this point. So they still remain, I think, a team on the rise. Let's move on to this next one here. Kansas City Chiefs 17, Jacksonville Jaguar is nine. You know, definitely was not like the points fest that we were expecting. But let's talk Chiefs first here before we move to the Jags. Obviously, concerning week one effort for Kansas City, you know, they only put up 17 points here. But what's your temperature on the Chiefs offense at this point? Yeah, you know, I'm really torn on this because there's so Skymore catches that backshilder touchdown from Patrick Holmes. Go on, Patrick Holmes. So it never felt like he was having a signature game. He still throws for 300. He throws for a couple of touchdowns he ran for 30. I mean, it was a perfectly acceptable game, even not a blow up game, but a fine game for him. So I see the Skymore backshilder touchdown, a chemistry play. And I think, okay, we can build on this. Skymore, maybe I've been looking like everybody else, all spring, all summer, all fall. I'm looking for a right answer in this receiver room. I see Skymore back to play like this. And I want to be like, okay, great. Let's go. And then I just see a cast of thousands. I mean, I swear, Dwayne Bow played in this game. They threw the ball to everybody. But the 12 players took a target. How can you get there? I mean, I realize, and this is a game where Kelsey had a quiet game. You think maybe one of the receivers would step up. You would take the Skymore 4 for 70 and touchdown. That's great. But nobody's getting more than the three or four targets. Distributing the ball all over the place. Even Pacheco, I thought he played well. I'd like to see more than 12 carriers in this game. We're at a point now, where you play my home's obviously. You play Kelsey, obviously. And then you have to be backed into a corner to play anything else on the Kansas City Chiefs. It has to be like, oh my god, I just get riddled with injury. Oh my god, it's a by-week from hell. You can't play anything else proactively in this offense. And that's really sad for me to say, because I like a lot of these players theoretically. Again, Pacheco, if I could get him to 15, 16 touches a week, fine. Maybe a little bit more goal by an equity. 12 carriers isn't enough. And nobody in this receiver room, even more off a good game, can we play with any level of confidence right now? Yeah, Patrick Holmes drops back to past 45 times in this game. And M.V.S. leads the team in Rouse Run at 37. And like another disruptor. I mean, he's the lead guy. In terms of Rouse Run, he's the lead guy. But you know, he's never going to get more... I mean, in this game, he has two catches. Like, two catches on three targets. That's the M.V.S. special, you know? And sometimes it could be two for 13. Other times, it could be like big catches like they were in week one. So I definitely... I mean, look, Skymore gets three catches, 70 yards, and a touchdown. That's great after he puts up a straight zero in week one. But I'm with you that he's not a guy. And he was never drafted to be a guy that you'd play proactively. I kind of wonder if the cheese... You know, again, he runs a route on 31 of 45 dropbacks, not even 70%. Like, there's just such a deep rotation here. And I kind of wonder if... I wonder if this is what it's going to be like all season. Or if we're going to get to a point midseason where the chiefs have figured out like... Yeah, these are our guys, right? And like, we're going to get Pacheco more like... 15, 16, 17 carries a game. And we're going to get, you know, Skymore playing a full route load. And I mean, MVS is going to be doing his thing. And like, Justin wants to... I don't know, I think they kind of just need to settle on something. And maybe I'm an idiot just for... Like, I don't have the right answer here. But I am a little torn on the approach of just kind of seemingly throwing a lot at the wall and seeing what sticks. Because I think for a guy like Skymore to grow and play more, he's... I mean, to grow, he's going to have to play more. And he's going to have to get more of that chemistry with Patrick Holmes. But I did think today was an encouraging sign for growing that chemistry, at least. This is going to sound like a cop out. Because I said you can't play Pacheco or more proactively right now and you can't. But they would be the perfect... If you made like a bigger trade and they were... I'm not going to say throw-ins because they're too valuable to just be thrown in as nothing players. But if you can get them as the non-primary piece of a trade... And you had the... Maybe the roster that was deep enough to wait on Pacheco or more to develop into something greater. I think that's perfectly in play. I think that's very reasonable that may happen. There are players I'd love to have on a roster right now and not need them. And again, you may not have that luxury. You may need... You may be old and too. You may need to win next week and you don't have time to wait up the Skymore story. The Isaiah Pacheco story. But I think at least their arrows are ever so slightly pointed up. And sometimes that's good enough. We get to talk Jaguars. Yeah. I thought they were a smash-pot. I thought... Just out of Vitria, a new Yahoo contributor who's doing a great job. He was talking about how the spot was so good for Lawrence because it was a game with a high total. And they were slight underdogs. And I thought that was a great hook. I played Lawrence with confidence and whatever. I mean, Lawrence didn't get there today. But he easily could have had like three or four touchdowns. Hey, Jones, I feel like left three touchdowns on the field. Yeah. Yeah. Half foot out here. A full foot out there. Six targets. Zero catches. But he could have three touchdowns so easily. Yeah. Yeah. And so meanwhile Kirk gets 14 targets. He catches 11 passes after last week doing nothing. Ridley gets eight targets. They go nowhere. But he left the touchdown on the field too. Were they through a post near the inside the goal line? Close to the goal line where just again the pass was just a little bit too far. And thankfully Ridley didn't get hurt because it looked like a dangerous play waiting to happen. We all know Ridley. We kind of know what he is. Okay, fine. This is a game. You write that off. And Lawrence, you write it off. How are we appraising Kirk versus Zay Jones going forward? Well, Kirk leads the team in routes run today. 38. I think that's really encouraging. Trevor Lawrence drops back to fast. 48 times. You know, Doug Peterson sort of talked about this coming into the game that like schematically he matched up better. Christian Kirk, like getting some of those bigger plays against man coverage. You know, because he's he's an interesting slot receiver. He's not like a traditional slot receiver is Christian Kirk. But like if you're going to line up your nickel corner against him in man coverage, that's a pretty good mismatch in favor of Christian Kirk. So I kind of get what he was talking about from that perspective. I think Kirk. He Kirk is a better player than Zay Jones. That's the weird part about like the freak. And I understand why people were concerned about it. And I think I'm sure I'm sure I talked about being concerned about it too. That he is behind Zay Jones and routes running in the first game. He didn't play in two receivers. That's in the preseason. But it's like, you know what? This is smart coaching staff. And like they got to know that Kirk is just a better player than Zay Jones. I know it's easy to say when Christian Kirk catches 11 passes and Zay Jones catches zero. But I would have said that coming into this game as well. What's our conversation right now about Travis ETN who had a very ETN-ish game. He didn't get a ton of carries. He was ignored in the passing game. He doesn't score a touchdown. I feel like he's going to be more. This line will pop up more than you wanted to for where you drafted him. I did feel really good about Travis ETN coming out of week one. And he's still pretty involved as a route runner. Like a runner routes in this game. 24 routes in this game. So I think that's nice. But you're right. I think there are going to be games where he rips the long run like he did against the Colts. And then there's going to be games where it's a lot like this. So if that's not what you can stomach at your running back one spot, I get that. But there's not a lot of it's not a lot of better bets out there at the position at this point. For sure. Yeah, my there are our editor Jason Kamlaka was talking about that. It's been a really rough push off for some of the primary running back. So let me ask you this. Travis ETN ever ever season where he's like a top five or top six fantasy back? No, probably not. I don't I don't think so. I think he's a good player, but I don't think like top five, which is weird because this is an offense that we like. And he's like a first round pick. But I just think there's something not all the way there. And yeah, I don't know. I think my answer to that is no. Let's do one of the next one here. San Francisco 49ers 30 LA Rams 23. I want to talk about the Rams here first. Even though they even though they lost the game. I feel, you know, Matthew Stafford drops back to past 60 times in this game. Just in an absolutely absurd amount. And the story out of this one. Well, actually, there's two stories out of this a lot of stories. A lot of stories. A lot of stories coming out of this one. Before we talk about Puka Nakua, I want to start this reminding people that this day began. The Rams intrigue began well before the game. When Jay Glazer drops a report that. Can makers is going to be a game day inactive, a healthy scratch. And he is on the trade block. I mean, I can I cannot for the life of me. Remember a weirder player team relationship. Yeah. Like absolutely bizarre at this point that. Can makers coming like they go. He tears his Achilles. Then he comes back for a Super Bowl run. And he's clearly not the same guy. You know, it's a devastating injury for running backs. Yada Yada. We go into the next season. And he's supposedly the starter. But then by the mid the midpoint of the season. The team hates him. They want to trade him. All that. They don't trade him. They end up cutting Darrell Henderson. And then can makers finishes the year on a freaking tear. Like just pile up big game after big game. They're winning people. They're fantasy leagues. And then we come into this year. And, you know, McVase talking him up in the off season. It's like, oh, yeah, things are good. And then Kyron Williams starts over him in week one. And then week two. Healthy scratch by can makers. Can makers even tweets that I don't know what's going on. Like I have no clue. And now, yeah, apparently he's back on the trade block again. I mean, Scott, again, I can't remember a weirder player team dynamic and can makers and the Rams. Well said. I have nothing to add to that. I mean, twice. The second time they basically said pack stuff get out of here. In the middle of that league winner run that he had this summer. And, you know, in Williams, I have to admit is a better play than I expected. He gets 20 touches in this game, 100 total yards, two touchdowns, one on the ground, one through the air. And I think the Yahoo fans, he handled had the great tweet that 89% of the teams that rostered Williams did not play him. This is where you get bit because the game was a later game. Because if the game was an earlier game, even against the San Francisco 49ers, even with the Rams as a heavy underdog. You think, okay, now Williams has his backfield to himself, which he basically did. Nobody else was in his way. And it's not just having the backfield yourself. You have to have some ability. You have to have enough receiving chops that you don't get game scripted out of it, which Williams didn't. So it's some it's wheels up for Williams, man. He's going to be such a, he just smashes ADP obviously. But now it's like somebody asked me on Twitter, is he a top 15 back? And I couldn't go quite that far. But he's at least a running back to, maybe not a front door running back to. But he's somebody who I'd feel really good about starting in part because McVey and Stafford and this offense is just so much better than I thought. There's so much more buoyancy than I expected. The 49ers eventually sack Stafford late in the third quarter. That was the first sack that Stafford had taken all year. And I thought he was going to be a statue out there, a bad offensive line. Yeah. You know, it's he's on the last, the last hole of his back nine and all that stuff. Obviously, Nikku is, you know, going to the moon. And maybe Atwell's going to the clouds. I mean, you know, at well, seven for 77 in this game. And nobody will talk about it because Puka has 25 catches through two weeks. And he's getting skimmed open by McVey. I, it's just there. There are never, I feel like we never have enough offenses that have. I always say the word buoyancy. Infrastructures we can trust. And I didn't think the Rams were going to be one of those teams. I felt pretty confident they wouldn't be. I thought they might even be in the Caleb Williams sweepstakes. And they beat Seattle. They, you know, this game was at times competitive. At times not competitive. The Rams got a miracle cover if you were in a point spread pool or anything. Because they get this late field goal. So a lot of people were talking about that. But the LA Rams are a competitive football team with a professional quarterback, with a game collar. We like with interesting receivers. It looks like a wheels up running back, man. What else could you want? I get the other team that I like a lot more than I did. It's that day. I have, this has been, I've gone from totally red light to the Rams to totally green light on the Rams in two weeks. They don't even have their best player out there. Like Cooper cup is on IR. You know, he's probably, he's probably coming back, right? You know, Puka and Kuhi gets 20 freaking targets in this game. That's a pretty condensed usage tree, by the way. I get everything wrong. But there's, by the way, I thought Tyler Higmy was going to have like 80 boring catches. Let me resize that. He's going to have 38 boring catches. Yeah, that, that there you go. I thought Van Jefferson might be a little more involved, but they just got such a good thing going with Puka and Kuhi, who's such a good player, man. I mean, and I don't know about you. I definitely, I mean, he's going to have, he's going to have some staying power. Like he's, he's not going to just disappear when Cooper cup gets back. He's not playing the Cooper cup roll. He's playing outside and he's like beating man coverage. This is not just like a one-for-one little slot receiver thing. So I think Puka's got staying power. I mean, 15 catches on 20 targets. That's just, that's great stuff, man. Like I just, I know that Sean McVey schemes these layup targets up, but trust me, Puka is adding to those layup targets. You know, this is not like a Ben Skaronik situation when he'd pop up every now and again. So I think this is legit. I think Williams is legit. You know, 14 carries, 10 targets out of the back. I mean, kind of Williams thing coming out of the draft Scott was that he was good in pass protection. And he's a nice little solid receiver. So yeah, he's going to be involved in games like this. Just on the Niners, I mean, nothing surprising here. They throw to five guys. McCaffrey touches the ball. 23 times. Brock Pertey. You know, I missed a few downfield throws. He wasn't perfect, but overall did more than enough for them to win. And I just feel like this is going to be the Niners every single week. Yeah, at least Pertey did get a rushing touchdown if he needed to start him in this game. Because as you said, he left some passing touchdowns on the table with their guys open. He just missed them. Believe me, McCaffrey beat his rushing prop in the first quarter, which is nice. And you know, we talk about a lot of times. Well, there's four alphas in this passing game. Are they going to cannibalize each other? Well, they're only going to target five guys. And I realized they didn't have to throw the ball as much as maybe you would have wanted to. And did they get a touchdown defense too? They didn't get as many snaps as we would have liked because they were so efficient and they controlled the game. But this is there at worst, the second best team in football right now. Yeah, 26 dropbacks for Brock Pertey. That's not going to be like a normal situation. Anytime your defense has like short fields or interceptions for touchdowns like that, you're always going to, you know, level off your offense. So I'm with you on that one. Last year in our headliner section, I had to jack this one up into the headliner section after a lay. I'm watching this game with my brother and all. He goes, Giants are going to come back and win this thing when they were like 20. I mean, just a shout out draft. What a, what a prediction on that one when it was looking pretty bleak for the New York Giants. And sure enough, Giants 31 Arizona Cardinals 28. All right, the Giants get the win, but it might have come quite a bit of a cost here. Giants running back, say, Quan Barkley suffered an ankle injury in this game. He X-rays were negative after the contest. But is he scheduled to undergo an MRI on his right ankle, Monday in Arizona to determine the full severity of his injury and how much time he could miss. Sources tell ESPN's Jordan Ranan and Adam Schefter. Barkley's ankle was swollen after the game. Initial thinking in the words of one sources that quote, it's an ordinary sprain rather than a high ankle sprain. Just need to verify that on Monday. So that's obviously something to monitor. I don't know Scott is Daniel Jones just like and you know, I drafted a good bit of Daniel Jones this year. Is he just the most like don't watch the games. Just look at the box score fantasy quarterback this year. Yeah, he's a little bit like that fantasy baseball closer who would give you a heart attack. If you watch the game snap by snap pitch by pitch, but the stats are there at the end in part because Jones always has a ton of rushing equity and he has rushing touchdown equity. And he's he's going to at least meet his ADP. I think he'd easily beat it and we like Brian Dable that last week. You just have to look at it as an outlier game. The Cowboys defense is nasty and the Giants got a quick sand. And it just all went to crap so quickly. Let me ask you this Mr. Reception perception. I think the Giants are like the poor man's chiefs where you look at the receiver room. You're like, is there a right answer here? You know, hi, it's an interesting rookie. Darius Slayton was part of that great receiver class. And every once in a while, he makes a couple of splash plays. Paris Campbell was somebody that the coach liked once upon a time. Sterling Shepherd used to be good once upon a time. Is there an answer that we can feel good about in this receiver room? Was just going to be like whack a mole every one of them. They have a good game every two or three weeks, but you can't count on anybody. Yeah, 45 dropbacks for Daniel Jones and Darren Waller of course leads the team with 36 routes. Like, I don't think no, I think the answer is no. I would think that this is going to be a rotation all year long. And these guys fill in roles. But I don't think somebody, even Jalen Hyatt, who made a couple of really nice catches in this game. But that's like perfect for where he is at this point in his development. Run like 10, 11, 12, 13 routes and make big plays down the field. And just be kind of like a little sprinkling of seasoning, a little finishing salt on the offense, but maybe not a full blown meal at this point. Like I like finishing salt. I've also, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for sleep. And I mean, he played for an opera scene. Darren, do you want your favorite players? He is and he's a better real life player than fantasy. Maybe that's he's not a great player and either. I mean, when he went to Auburn, they didn't have great quarterback play. He gets three for 62 on six targets today. And he made a hell of a almost catch at the pilot. It almost went for a touchdown. He just went full out. He was completely horizontal to the ground and just couldn't quite catch the pass in bounds. I he's always been somebody, you know, the Patriots who I've read for a course. They've had a pretty ugly receiver room. See what they do tonight against Miami. But and by now you already know the answer to that. We've talked about it up front of this podcast. But I've always thought the teams that need a receiver, I've always said, Oh, get Darius Slate. You know, would he be interesting on the Chiefs? I'm probably going to die on the Darius Slate and Hill. We have to ask this if Barclay is hurt. Nobody knows on Sunday night with the injury. Is it didn't look great? I'm not a doctor. I'm not going to pretend to be one. Could you squint and see any value for somebody in this running back room if Barclay were to miss time? It just feels like such an unknown. You know, Matt Breeda gets one carry for five. And this one happens so late in the game too. So we're not going to get like a like very late in this furious comeback effort. So we're not going to necessarily be able to sit here and say, Oh, yeah, well, this guy got usage and that guy got usage. You know, they have Matt Breeda, like I said, who's who followed Brian Dable from Buffalo to New York. They have Gary Brightwell. They have Eric Gray, rookie running back. I don't know, man. I'm so like the giants are such a weird team to me right now at this point, based on the way their first two games have gone that I'm not sure how I feel about just some random backup running back. You know, being dropped up in here that doesn't have, like a resume, but it does look like he's going to miss a few games here at Sacred Parkly. I know this is totally anecdotal, but I feel like Daniel Jones has never missed his rushing prop. Now, let me say this for Arizona. They're own two. They were competitive in both games. I actually went on Twitter and said, I don't know who the commanders are right now. I don't know who the giants are right now, but the Arizona defense has impressed me. And right after that, the giants like marched on the field and scored a million times in a row. And actually the Washington offense kind of perked up too. But I'll say this for Arizona. They play hard, man. They're competitive. They could have won either one of these games. And Dops has been okay. I mean, he hasn't suffering. I'll be really asking for Dops for fantasy is like make Hollywood Brown playable. Well, guess what? Hollywood Brown is playable. Make James Conner playable. James Conner is playable right now too. Yeah. Yep. Totally agree. I think the carnels deserve a little credit there, and especially their defense, which I do think has legit outkicked expectations could not have been lower, but they're not a total joke on defense. I mean, some moments in this one, but not a total joke on defense. All right. Let's take a quick break. We come back where we kept the rest of week two's Sunday action. With the new fantasy season underway, you're always looking for a weekly W. But is it a smart decision to start a running back with a history of fumbles? Of course not. You want someone smart who can come in the clutch with the right knowledge to nail your next move. That's why NerdWallet has a whole team of nerds who provide objective ratings and reviews to help you compare and find top credit cards. So you know you're making a smart decision. It's time to make a smart play with the nerds at NerdWallet. Compare and find top credit cards, saving counts, and more today at NerdWallet.com. NerdWallet, the smartest decision for all your financial decisions. All right, Scott, first game up here. We've got to talk about in the rest bunch. Indianapolis Colts 31, Houston, Texans, 20. Big news coming out of this one. Obviously, Anthony Richardson suffered a concussion. Taped himself out him, his own self out of the game. He had already put the Colts in a pretty commanding position here. Gardner, Mitch, who comes in and doesn't, you know, lose the game for them. 19 of 23 for 171 yards and a touchdown. I will say, you know, Zach Moss, think what you want about him. But, you know, he came up pretty big here for this team that needed a run game. 18 carries or 88 yards and a touchdown for Zach Moss. Four catches on top of that as well. I love it. Punches in the touchdown. And he's not all we ask for with a player like Zach Moss is, don't be a zero in the passing game. We caught four passes. Yeah. So that's not a zero in the passing game. This was a really fun fantasy game because other than Damien Pierce, everybody got home, right? I mean, Pittman didn't have the game you wanted, but 8 for 56. If you're in any kind of a PPR scoring league, that's at least a passable game, especially in a day where they had this switch quarterbacks. Minchew, I've always thought he was one of the better back up quarterbacks in the league. I think he could be a starter for a lot of teams. Is he? How much worse is he than Sam Hall? I don't know. I think they're probably relatively even. I may even prefer Minchew. They're in the same neighborhood. They're in the same neighborhood. Yeah, they are waving to each other in the morning when they're drinking their coffee. And driving out of the neighborhood. So for sure. I don't know what it is. I swear, you and I have both been card carrying members of the Nico Collins fan club. I swear he gained like two inches on the off season. He looked taller on that touchdown. Look, I've always known he could get deep and another player. I talked about Slate and Auburn, right? I mean, one of the problems with Nico Collins that Michigan wanted to run them all so much and they never had great quarterback play when Nico was there. So it's screened some of his value. He looks like a difference maker. He's gone from, yeah, Draft Nico Collins will be like the first receiver off your bench. The moment you need him, you plug them in to like, no, no, no, start benching people proactively. You know, all I did all summer was talk about Johan Dotson. This is even a hot take. Nico Collins is so far ahead of Johan Dotson right now in my mind. Same. And I love Johan Dotson. But look, Nico is Nico Collins is a huge win for like try to look at receivers and isolation from their surroundings because there's not been worse surroundings than the Houston Texans the last two years. But Collins consistently flashed with like freaking Davis Mills and Kyle Allen as his quarterback and CJ Stroud. I have so much respect for CJ Stroud after these first two games. One, he goes into Baltimore in his first game and look, he put some good stuff on film. Like the results, whatever, who cares about the results? He put some good stuff on film and he looked like a, he just looked like an NFL quarterback and making like big time anticipation grows in week one. His first NFL game in a hostile environment in Baltimore. And then in this game, Scott, they're down like four of their five offensive linemen that they wanted to walk into the season with. It's like Shaq Mason and a bunch of backups out there. And again, they didn't win the game. I do think, you know, Indy was probably in control of this thing from the beginning. They just, they did look like they were going to have they had this one in the bag. But Stroud goes out there and he doesn't embarrass himself. Like how many other first round rookie quarterbacks would play behind a makeshift offensive line and pee down their legs in a game like this, take six sacks, throws 47 times, completes almost 64% of his passes. Nico Collins, 20 targets. I'm with, like, for the first two weeks, I'm with you that you're playing this dude every week and like, he could not just have like, oh, he beats his ADP type of season, but he could be like one of the clear right answers right now in fantasy. I believed that the talent was there. And it was like, okay, he's a rookie, CJ Stroud rookie quarterback. How much is he going to elevate Nico Collins? Well, they're elevating each other quite a bit at this point to where I think Nico Collins might be like rest of season. Oh, just a wide, like coming in this week is like, yeah, he's probably a wide receiver three rest of the season. Now coming out of this and like, is he a wide receiver two the rest of the season? Because even these other guys in this offense are like having like the Texans offense just looks like it might be a place to pick passing game fantasy value at this point. Yeah, I think I'm going to be annoyed when some of the people in industry will talk about Nico Collins like you could sneak him off somebody else's roster when I think anybody who rosters him right now is thrilled because he, as you said, he's going to out kick his slot, right? He was wide receiver four before the season, maybe a wide receiver three. If you squinted it, if the deep league now he's like, it's a guy you're going to start every week probably as a wide receiver two. And even though Stroud took too many sacks, you know, sacks are often a quarterback stat but I'm not going to blame out to see what, you know, the rewatch shows me on Monday. But when you're missing four year five offensive lineman, I get to figure a lot of these sacks weren't struts fault. And he props up three different receivers for fantasy value. We've written a love letter for Collins. He deserves it. But Robert Woods has a solid game tank Dell seven catches and a touchdown. He was on a lot of sleeper list before the season. This is going to be what's going to happen is the Texans are going to probably be one in six or one in seven at some point. I'm going to be, ah, man, you know, long rebuilding ahead. And I could see them having maybe a little bit, maybe not quite as exciting of a run as Detroit had in the second half of last year, but it can be a Detroit that that kind of take off where it's really bad for two, two months. And then people look up and say, oh, wow, Houston's foreign for the last eight weeks. And they upset Baltimore. They upset Cincinnati or Jacksonville or somebody like that might be sure he's on their schedule. But I think they're going to be a team that plays a lot better as Stroud gets comfortable. And there's talented players on this team. Maybe this is one for the panic meter, but you can just give us a hint of what's the come. What's your state of the Damien pierced address? I think it's hard for me to feel too. I know it's been a rough start to the season. Obviously, it's pretty hard for me to feel too down on him at this point, just because the Texans offense has been like the passing offense has been much more better than expected. But again, yeah, we'll probably have to I'll probably have to unpack my feelings on this one for sure heading into heading into the episode tomorrow. Next one up here. Cowboys 38 jets 10. This went about as expected, right? If you just look at the look at the box score, right? Zach Wilson completes 44% of his passes, throws three interceptions. No running back has more than nine yards on the ground. The cowboys swarmed, I mean, swarmed the jets on this one. And the only thing that happened that was was interesting. Gary Wilson gets a 68 yard touchdown. Scott, I'm not here to give anybody gambling advice. But I bet the under on Garrett Wilson's receiving yards prop. And my buddy James goes like, why would you do that? You love Gary Wilson? You think he's so good. Like he can get 50 yards all in one play. And I'm like, well, you know what? If he does, then I love Garrett Wilson. I'm happy to see it. So that's a little like if you want emotional hedging betting advice, that's how you do the emotional heads where it's like, well, you know what? I knew he could do that. And I love to see this guy thrive, even in a garbage situation. But I lose my money. So that's that's how you emotionally hedge in betting. But yeah, again, that was the only thing of note for the jets offense, which again, this went about as you'd expect. Yeah, leave it to producer Colin, big cowboys fan to right in the script that was a 38 10 finals. No, that was me. That was me. It was me. I was trying to speak in eight extra points for the cowboys because it was me. Matt, if you told me this game was 58 to 10, I believe it. I know. I was going to we're going to go back. I was going to not even go back and edit it. Just leave that in there. Yeah, nobody will miss that. Nobody nobody will cast it. It could be 58 to 10 and nobody would have noticed. Yeah, nobody would miss that. 78 10. Yeah, the jets literally, if you want to rewatch the jet snaps, rewatch that one play to Wilson, then Wilson gets hurt late in this game. So just everyone on Twitter, it's just sad that my Garrett Wilson love is reduced to please have one lucky play today. He got one lucky play in the Buffalo game. Zach Wilson throws that. You know, Yolo ball and Garrett Wilson somehow not only breaks up the interception, but turns it into a touchdown catch. It's just going to go down as one of the 10 best catches of the year. They hit on one big play today. At least you were looking for something to feel positive about other than a long touchdown is always nice. At least eight targets went to Wilson. So if you're going to pepper one guy, that's the guy. Is there anybody I wanted to hold. Look, nobody, nobody said anything nice about Zach Wilson this week. I get it. I wanted to hold out that five or 10% chance that he wasn't early pick. He was hanging around iron Rogers all summer. Could you just be a little bit improved? I'm asking him to be great. I'm asking him to be good. I just want him to not sink Garrett Wilson. And now even on the day where Garrett Wilson gets a long touchdown, I'm afraid that Garrett Wilson. I was hoping Garrett Wilson could hold on to take the wide receiver to value that he held last year. Now that was all propped up by non Wilson quarterbacks. It was Joe Flacco. It was Mike White. Those were the guys who were doing well with Wilson. It wasn't Zach Wilson. Now I'm afraid there's look up below potential with Garrett Wilson. Of course, if he's heard that throws all this out because it's just totally changes the dynamic. But is there anything they can do? Is anybody on the street? Is anybody's third string? I don't know. How what again, I don't mean the step on the panic meter. But fantasy is about reactions to players who were not as in love with as we were a few weeks ago. And with Garrett Wilson, none of it is his fault. Yeah, it's like if you have the stones to play Garrett Wilson against the Cowboys defense, like congratulations. You got out of here with a good fantasy game. But this could have easily gone the other way. If that safety makes that tackle on Garrett Wilson, we're talking about what a two for 20 type of line on eight targets. And we're all coming out of this. And yeah, guess what? That didn't happen. Okay. And Garrett Wilson is good enough to Garrett Wilson's good enough to just to do to do that to make plays all on his own. But I wouldn't feel any better out of this. And yeah, it's like is Carson Wednesday better than Zach Wilson? Probably. But are they going to call? I don't know. I just. I go about both ways with it where I feel like they've psychoanalyzed themselves to death and like put themselves in this Zach Wilson corner, but also like. Shouldn't you want this supposed to be a super bowl season like Aaron Rogers is talking about. Oh, yeah, I'll be I could make a miraculous comeback and come back for the playoffs. Well, you're not going to come back if this is the team every single week. Let's play a little either or quickly. Garrett Wilson or Terry McClure going forward. Oh, Terry McClure. For sure. Garrett Wilson or Christian Kirk going forward. Oh, God. I've probably probably Garrett Wilson, but I don't know. Wilson or Drake London. Drake London. It's easy. Yeah. Maybe I'm shooting too high. Maybe you can't get any of these guys. I'll give you one more. Garrett Wilson or Johan Dotson. I have that. Garrett Wilson or Nico Collins. I'm totally saying this with a straight face. Would you rather have Garrett Wilson or Nico Collins the rest of the season? I probably Garrett Wilson, but I don't know if I feel that good about it. I'd let you talk me out of it. I'd let you talk me out of it. So anybody anybody on the Steelers you take over Garrett Wilson? Healthy Deontay Johnson, but he's not a healthy. So that's not going to happen. Okay. Cowboys real quick. Like not a ton to take away from here. Tony Paul gets 25 carries and a positive game script. That's awesome. CD Lamb is such a stud, dude. I think he I think he needs to. I don't I'm not saying he's like an underrated player, but he's just so good. He was awesome in this game. 11 catches 143 yards and nobody else really does much of anything. Even though Jake Ferguson sneaks in the opening touchdown. So I don't know, man. Cowboys kind of are who we thought they were at this point too. All right. Next game up here. Chargers. Oh my god. Well, I think I have the score backwards on this one too. Actually, it's Titans 27 LA Chargers 24 Scott. This is a classic Chargers loss and a classic Titans win. Right. Yeah. The ugly Titans win. The Chargers. They checked off all those boxes of the first team to do like all these good things and then be 0 and 2. And I told a lot of people to play Kelly this week. What's your takeaway on Kelly? Tennessee's run defense is very good, but yeah. Obviously, Kelly, Kelly disappointed what our expectations were. What's your takeaway on that? Yeah. I mean, look, it was kind of one of those things where you had this winning part is he's so uninvolved in the past game. One target, zero catches. That's the part that's concerning, right? But you know, this was definitely possible against this Titans run defense because it's so good. And like, you know, there was always a chance that they were just going to throw the ball for 300 plus yards. This is exactly what happened here. I just can't believe the Chargers somehow. Don't beat this, you know, Titans team with the hobble Deandre Hopkins. And yeah, ugly win by Ryan Tanehill and the boys. Yo, Ryan Tanehill after that game that he had a week one Scott comes out and completes 83% of his passes and 10. 10.3 yards per attempt. You know, trailing Berks gets behind you for a 70 yard catch. You know, Derek Henry obviously has 80 yards wasn't a fish or anything, but those big plays. Chris Moore, 49 yard catch here. He's still in the league. Yeah. Yeah, right. Honestly, that was one of those ones. Who's 11? Who's 11 on Titans? Right. Chris Moore. Yeah. He's on his like fourth NFL team or so fifth NFL team or something. So I just branded daily and his defense is like really on my radar at this point. I feel like, you know, I have tremendous respect for Mike for Abel. I actually have a lot of respect for the peak of Tanehill's career, which were so far past now. I have tremendous respect for the peak of Derek Henry's career, which is probably in the rearview mirror. He's a hollow famer in my mind. It's at the point now. I don't realize again, Tanehill is you said 10.3 yards per attempt. They hit some splash plays. It's so hard for me to watch Tennessee's offense because I expect every play to fail. I don't know how they did this. And then it's cute to say what's charging right? You know, the charges found a way to lose this game. Maybe just Tennessee those six or seven plays they had to have, you know, Tanehill ran for a 12 yard touchdown. And they hit the home run to to Berks. And what do you do with Berks, right? He gets the 70 yard catch. Yeah, yeah. That's why I like trail on Berks. And then you see the four targets and you're like, yeah, it's why I can never play trail on Berks. Same with Chico Conquo. I was talking them up this week because he left some plays in the field last week. They missed them on a couple of plays. It's going to be difficult. It feels like their offense is always playing uphill. Yep. And I think it always will as long as especially this offensive line is so problematic. Not that you know it that much with the, I mean, the what the Chargers got going on in defense right now. This is just such a toothless. I mean, it's like five sacks against 24 attempts. That's way too many. Yeah. That's it's way too many. All right. Next one up here. All's Vegas Raiders fall to the Buffalo Bills. Bill's 38 Raiders 10. Pretty predictable one here. You know, man, Josh Jacobs last year's leading NFL Russia has nine carries for minus two yards. But at least he got some catches for you there, speaking of running backs. Man, I mean, if I'm a, I know if you have James Cook's James Cook on your fantasy team, you were definitely pissed off that like Damien Harris punches in a touchdown. And Latavius Murray, I mean, that one's really got to grind your gears. He punches in a touchdown. But at this point, James Cook has a really nice role for fantasy. It's not going to be a league winner type of situation. But he has 17 carries. No one else has more than seven in the back field. But he catches four passes on four targets in a game where the Bills didn't have to do too much to beat the Raiders. Again, I know there's got to be some frustration because these other guys popped in touchdowns here for if you have James Cook on your fantasy team. But for where you drafted him and what you're going to get out of him, I think he's going to, you know, going to help your team. Yeah. I feel never feel sorry for somebody who got 159 total yards and four catches out of their running back. Especially back to Cabaca's note, you know, there's been so much running back messiness in the first two weeks. James Cook so far as a right answer. And Murray's just so old and Harris is a good player, but not a great player. And like Josh Alman only ran for seven yards in this game. James Cook is already in the circle of trust. And he's got the upside to be better if he carves that a little bit more goalline equity. I don't feel sorry for anybody with James Cook. The funny thing about Jacobs was I've written a lot about him in the past few years. This is very consistent with a lot of running backs that his production, production games usually come in wins. And his touchdowns usually come in wins. And his production goes way, way down when they don't win because he doesn't catch the ball that much. And his touchdowns kind of vanish. Now what happened last year is a lot of times the Raiders upset people. So I'd say before he'd be like a borderline call for somebody or a DFS call or something. But well, I think the Raiders are going to lose and the game trick won't go his way. But the Raiders won the game that throws that out the window. How could this is Raiders team? I think they might be like a 6 and 11 team where it's all set and done. I know they got the win last week and even losing the Buffalo. Everybody played Buffalo on their survivor league and Buffalo was coming in off a loss. It was just a terrible West the East spot for Vegas. I don't think anybody was surprised. The Vegas got boat wrist in this game. But his Vegas going to get boat wrist in this season. You know, I'm just worried that the team may have look up below potential. They're so shallow too. You know, they have Max Crosby, but really nobody else on defense that gets you excited. On offense, they have in week one, wow, this receiver duo of Devonte Adams and Jacobi Myers looks really good. Jacobi Myers misses this game. Devonte Adams leaves this game. And they have, you know, like Hunter Renfrow, who's just not a difference maker. And then a rookie trade Tucker at receiver. And again, this is all like with a Jimmy Garoppolo lead offense. It's just, it's just, when you start taking, they're one of those teams. You start taking even like a guy like Jacobi Myers. We like Jacobi. I have really like Jacobi Myers a long time. I'm excited to go Myers. Me too. I mean, I am as well. But it's like, it's Jacobi Myers, you know, who's probably like a top 40 NFL receiver, like a really good player, but not like a superstar. It's like, oh, you take him away. And the offenses are all the sudden in a bad spot. That's when you know your team is his way too shallow. Totally agree. Yeah, he's one of those zone busters. You know, he catches, he sits down. He catches that nine-yard pass that moves the chains. But your offense shouldn't collapse without him. But again, part of it was the spot. But it's just funny to think that Garoppolo, just two or three years ago, was one of the signature players of the league. And now, I mean, you have to kind of squint to imagine him being league average. Next one up here. Oh, back to the unserious bears. Bears fall to the bake. The fight in Baker mayfields. Baker mayfields got the boys 2 and 0. 10th Bay 27, Chicago 17. There were a couple of little moments for the bears offense. And this one, a couple, you know, DJ Morgan's over 100 yards. But they throw an interception on a busted screen pass. To, to, to Shakyel Barrett for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Fields take six sacks. You wrote on the outline, Scott, that Justin Fields hands out sacks like Halloween candy. Well, he is very in the spirit here, even though Halloween is like over a month away at this point. Any, any defense against Justin Fields for fantasy. Steve's next week. The Broncos the week after that. Then the commanders on a Thursday night. The Vikings. You know, some of those defenses aren't very good. I don't care the Raiders. You know, as you said, Max Crosby in like 10 kind of anonymous guys. I did play it and look, maybe I'm just feeling a little bit, you know, tall on my shoes, because I played Tampa Bay and some leagues just strictly on Justin Fields will. Yeah, he believed, look, I get it. He believes in his athleticism. He never believes the play is dead. But sometimes you get to get rid of it, man. You can't hold the ball that long. You can't take as many sacks as he does. That interception was on him with, I can get those middle screens. When they turn to interceptions, they look horrible. But Justin Fields has not always had the greatest setup around him. The whole idea this year was that maybe they gave him some help that he hasn't had in recent years. But I'm playing any defense I can against him. I would like to see Roshan Johnson play more in this game. I thought the script would have set up well for him. He ascends to the running back to spot. I think he's one of these players that all of fantasy is like just expecting him to run by Khalil Herbert, like a park car. And maybe that's going to happen. I was, I don't know if Johnson had an injury in this game or there's a reason why he wasn't on the field if he did something wrong. If he missed the blitz assignment or something. But I was just appointed given the script of this game that he only got six touches. Yeah, don't to form in a healthy scratch going in this game. So it is, they're narrowing it down to two guys at least, which does help for Roshan for fantasy three to two. Make a thing. And Tampa Bay, let's say it's for Tampa Bay, man. Perfect. Perfect fantasy setup. Baker, maybe good enough. Rashad White, basically the backfield to himself. And then in the receiver room, Evans was great. Godwin was involved in K-Dot and at least got enough work that when if you're desperate to tie down some week, you could think about using him and White was involved in the passing game. So I wanted Tampa Bay to do two things. I want, I want Baker to be okay. To be competitive, to be competent. It looks like he is. And I wanted the usage to be very, very narrow and right now it looks like that's true too. Yeah, hard for me to take too much again playing an unserious Bears defense. I said about Rashad White in this game, like you're coming into this game. If you can't do it here, then he's not going to do it ever. Well, he at least did it here. So, you know, you got to feel at least decent about that. I will just take the L on Mike Evans, where I didn't draft like any bucks. But I did at least clearly prefer if you were going to take a bucks receiver to take Chris Godwin because I've seen Baker Mayfield fail with like vertical outside receivers before because he can't make those difficult throws, which I still think is true. But Evans gives you such, I mean, Johnny Manziel just had this whole documentary out, right? Remember the Johnny Manziel thing was basically just throw up prayers to Mike Evans. I mean, Baker Mayfield can throw up prayers to Mike Evans and makes quarter bad quarterbacks right. I mean, he was doing it with with James Winston for years. So, if you're going to have one of these receivers hit, you at least want it to be the guy who's going to get downfield looks. That's not going to be Godwin at this point of his career. It is still going to be Mike Evans. So, he's the guy that I think he brings you out in this offense. As much as I'm talking myself into Baker now for Evans' purposes. I didn't draft Evans. I don't think anywhere this summer. And I still want to see Evans on a different team on the Chiefs or on the Lions or on one of these the giants, whoever it is. I don't think Tampa Bay has any upside. And when you talk about a quarterback, just throwing up prayers. Let's brief this for the last game. Is there a better? Yeah, literally. Is there a better quarterback throwing up prayers that Russell Wilson took to Brandon Johnson? I mean, how many podcasts that we have that were all about the Broncos passing game that the Seas have parted for Brandon Johnson. And here we are in week two. There it is. Well, we really nailed the Brandon Johnson stuff. Yeah, Scott is mentioning. Wash the commanders 35 Denver Broncos 33 and the ending is much more exciting that that final that final score shows it. I was literally hopping on the podcast to start this thing up. And Collins, like, oh, there's producer. Oh, they're throwing a hail Mary. I'm looking my screen over here. You know, Russell Wilson throws a hail Mary gets bopped up by a bunch of dudes. And yeah, old Brandon Johnson scoots into the end zone there. He's got two touchdowns on the day. Quentin Sutton, five for 66, Jerry Judy returns three for 25. Marvin Mims catches two passes. Takes them for 113 yards and a touchdown. But those are his only two targets of the game. Yeah, I know Russell Wilson is going to end up finishing this game with over 300 yards and three touchdowns. But I feel I don't feel a lick better about the Broncos under Sean Payton than I did. It really that much than I did last season, which is not saying a lot. I'm not sure why Javanta Williams dominated the running back work when he did so little with it, man. And I don't want to be hard on him. He's coming off a major injury. I thought it would be 60, 40 with him in pre-rine. And they're not running it that way at all on the Washington side. I don't think Brian Robinson is ever going to be great. But he's good, man. And he is pushing Antonio Gibson out of the way. Gibson was more involved with three catches to two. But here's the other thing, right? Robinson was basically never used in the passing game last year. He caught five passes in preseason. He caught that one touchdown catch last week that some people have even speculated it wasn't intended for him. He caught two passes for 42 yards today. Three targets. If Brian Robinson can be their clear first down second go and guy, their goal line guy, and a non-zero in the passing game, he could be like running back 14. That's going to be incredibly valuable. And you drafted him as probably running back in the 30s. Yeah, he's going to be a big ADP beater because I see so much more reliable than Antonio Gibson at this point. The coaching staff has told us that, you know, they talk about Chris Rodriguez as a guy they liked. He doesn't get any carries in this game. I agree. I think Brian Robinson got way too much crap people. Oh, he's not explosive this time. We got shot in the freaking leg. It's been college too long, right? Yeah. Yeah, the whole thing. So I think he's just going to be a good grinder back for this offense and somebody that you want to play in fantasy. I mean, he gets 18 carries. Curtis Samuel gets one. Sam Hal gets two and Antonio Gibson gets two. Like Antonio Gibson is in the Curtis Samuel zone at this point. That's not where you want to be if you're running back on a team. Passing game wise. I mean, Sam Hal still a little shaky here. This is a tougher defense. So I think I still think better days will be ahead for the Washington offense. But maybe that's like take lock from me. I feel like I talked myself in and out of how I like I did every watch. Every other series. All their steps last week. Right. And then the first half on you. Hal has a chance. They takes this horrible, you know, give away touch on the card. Oh, man, Hal was driving me crazy. I've compared him to Baker Mayfield. And the good and bad ways he's extremely competitive. He's a good athlete, but not a great athlete. And he's totally fearless. With the way he runs, he's fearless with the throws he makes the decisions he makes. So you're going to kind of live and die with how old is some extent. I just hope he can support. And again, this distribution was much wider than I wanted it to be. McLaren got a touchdown. But nobody was heavily targeted in this game. Johan Dotson has fallen under his prop as very low receiving proper two straight weeks. I thought he'd be in a good spot this week. I thought he was going to beat it this. Get off to a good start. Both games were very similar. He got off to a good start. He's probably involved in that first 15 game script for 15 play script. And then he's kind of gone off the rails. So part of that is on Dotson part of it is on how well part of it is. It's just this is a mid-level offense. You know, struggling with its own limitations in the hard space to start on. I get all that. But Sam Howell. I don't know if I can approve him once. You know, the Washington fans are going to watch him snap to snap. This is a team I would try not to watch snap to snap. I think they're going to drive you a little bit crazy. The one player who will be easy to watch. I think he's Brian Robinson. I agree with you worth noting Logan Thomas left this game with the. Another massive hit from Kareem Jackson after just getting fined for knocking Jacoby Myers out last game. So there's a talk they might look into him for like disciplinary issues. Yeah, Logan Thomas. He was having some moments called touchdown and that was the play he got knocked out of. But yeah, Washington's offense. Definitely a little too wide distribution. Then we would hope. But Scott. That's going to do it week two Sunday is in the books, buddy. It's fun. You know, there's more fun this week than last week I thought. I thought we got more scoring. More of stuff that we expected to get home, getting home. And we're first week was rough. I feel like the first window had like five touchdowns. I know that's it wasn't quite that bad. I thought this week things went. There was a little bit more you could hang your hat on this week. So that's all we're looking for. Just get a little bit better every day. A little more just like, okay, drink London doesn't have zero catches. We don't have to talk about some crazy like that. Yeah. T. Higgins had a catch today. I can actually a couple of touchdowns. You know, so. Yeah, I feel I feel better about this week than it is above. And week one is just week one. I mean, teams take the preseason. So differently now than they used to that week one is the glorified preseason week. This felt more like a national football league Sunday. Right. But we know for you all out there, not everything was perfect. There are still things that you are worrying about. So on that note, be sure to tune in tomorrow on Tuesday. Where Andy and I will go through the post week two panic meter. If you want to submit to the people's panic meter, make sure you email fantasy mailbag at Yahoo Sports dot com. Send in who's panicking you. If you got a video or a voice memo, you go right to the top of the line. So send those in. Also, we're going to take tweets to Andy puts out a tweet. I put out a tweet at Matt Harman underscore BYB. So look out for that. If you listen to this right now, it's definitely out because I put it up after Sunday night football. So again, make sure you hit the mailbag, fantasy mailbag at Yahoo Sports dot com to send in your submissions for the people's panic meter. And of course, we'll cover top waiver pickups too. And after this weekend of action, I'm sure you all have something to panic over and need some people to add. So until then, we're out.