Smashville Fantasy Football
Join Andrew Banta and Will Ott as they dive deep into the Smashville Fantasy Football League's 10th anniversary season. This weekly podcast offers a unique blend of league analysis, player insights, and friendly banter. Whether you're a league member or just a fantasy football enthusiast, you'll enjoy our hosts' distinct perspectives on roster management, player performance, and league-wide trends. From draft strategies to weekly matchups, we've got you covered with armchair analysis, historical comparisons, and plenty of laughs along the way.
Smashville Fantasy Football
Fantasy Fireworks: Week One Analysis and Week Two Predictions
Smashville Fantasy Football Podcast: Week 1 Recap and Week 2 Predictions
Join us for the Week 1 of the Smashville Fantasy Football season! Andrew Banta and Will Ott dive into the exciting first week of the Smashville Fantasy Football League. From near-record blowout wins to surprising underperformances, we break down all the key matchups and standout players. We also tackle week two predictions, waiver wire tips, and some bold calls for the season ahead. Don't miss the hot takes and in-depth analysis that are sure to keep your fantasy game in top shape!
Welcome to the Smashville Fantasy Football Podcast! I'm your trade-addict host, Andrew Banta, joined by our analyst who swears he can predict the future, Will Ott. Get ready for armchair analysis, friendly banter, and a whole lot of fantasy fun!
We have week one in the books heading into week two, and we have a lot to discuss from an exciting first week of smashville fantasy football. We had some blowout wins near records and some losses in there.
Yeah, it was a hard one for me.
Yeah, we'll definitely highlight the match between your two hosts here. That was a good one. We'll hit all the performances here and there a little bit. We'll do maybe some predictions for week two matchups. We'll look at any players that really stood out offer any ideas for waiver wire advice, without compromising our own situations too much and make some bold predictions that are almost certainly to be false as the season goes on.
Do you have any corrections you wanted to address from previous weeks?
I don't think I have anything off of the top of my head.
Then we're perfect, or perfectly imperfect.
Yes, absolutely.
Looking at our fantasy landscape here, the top six teams fell directly in order of points scored above the bottom six teams. So that's good to see you hate it when someone's losing their matches, even though they would have beat four or five other players in your league, but one through 12.
The rankings are in order of points for so leading the list is mixing it pretty good, followed by simple Jack, Mitchie Mitch, myself, no fading on Jaden Wu Tang financial and crunchy leaves all with wins in their first week. After that. Sitting at 0 and 1, but in order of points scored, we have No Hard Feelings, Best Eater Around, Chase Me If You Can, Volume 2, Under The Radar, Berry Crunch, and to round out the end of the list, The Meg.
I'm noticing that a lot of names have changed, mine included. I've mentioned I think before that I always like to pick a quarterback on my team. I'm rolling with Jaden Daniels here, so we're not fading on Jaden. We're going to have some blind loyalty here and it worked out for me in week one.
So hopefully that trend continues. And I don't have to rename my team out of shame.
Yeah, I went ahead with chase me if you can volume two because two years ago I ended up having Jamar Chase as my first round pick and I figured it'd be fun to play on my first round pick because I expect them to do the most. So since Jamar Chase was my first pick. Two years ago, it was chase me if you can off of catch me if you can.
Yeah. I love that film. I've watched it so many times. Do any of our league matchups stand out to you? Any storylines developed in the first week that you want to talk about
I was kind of disappointed in how my team played out. I drafted two tight ends this year, and I feel like I completely goofed that up. I picked up Jalen Reed on my other fantasy team and I left him on the bench.
He scored 30 some points this week. So
I think he was the
like shedding a tear.
I think he was the top player of the week.
That was definitely a, highlight there with him.
So your tight ends didn't work out for you. Kyle pits, he scored 8. 6. That's fine. He exceeded his projection, right?
Yeah, I believe he did better than his projection. George Kittle didn't really do as well. I just shot myself in the foot. And that's okay, it happens sometimes, right?
Yeah. That's something I've really noticed with the games I was able to watch is the tight ends, the top tight ends really underperformed. At least from a fantasy perspective, and you could argue that a lot of them did overall too no one was anywhere close to the projections George Kittle, no Travis Kelsey, no Mark Andrews, Sam Laporta. I think you could argue that Travis Kelsey did what was asked for in that game, he blocked well, he ran his routes, It just didn't translate to fantasy success, and I'm curious.
if that's going to be a season long trend where they just have enough weapons that he's not going to need to be the big scoring guy for the Chiefs this year.
I'm not sure if he was necessarily that big scoring threat last year. He was just consistent enough to be able to put forth fantasy points worth starting him in a lot of fantasy leagues. In my other fantasy league. I drafted Travis Kelsey, I believe in the fifth round. So sad that he hasn't transitioned that into a good start to the year, I would not be surprised if he managed to turn around, I could also see him fading back in terms of what's asked of him in terms of being able to put up.
Solid production for fantasy points or it's not obviously for fantasy points But what translation translates to fantasy points for us.
Unless he's on Taylor Swift's fantasy team, he probably doesn't care too much about your fantasy performance, but maybe he's doing it for her league. We never know.
He might not be on her team for fantasy That's the reason why he's not performing super well maybe some conflict of interest there
I can't say I'm surprised about the Titans. That's why I'm not compelled to draft the position. It's just even the awesome guys that you can't debate that these are great players. It's very spotty, their performance week to week. you might have a guy like Isaiah Likely, go off and then, Lead all tight ends.
And then your top five guys are down the list. I don't care to try to predict it. Wide receivers are hard enough and then tight ends. I feel are even harder. So I don't want to mess with it. I think marking Andrews, I'm the most worried about from, a real life league aspect.
He didn't look that great. He's coming back from injury. Don't know if he's going to be the same player. Maybe Isaiah will be, relieving him on a lot of. Games and that could be like an alternating sort of scenario on who has the better game.
I wouldn't have been so concerned if Isaiah likely didn't ball out and score 20. 1 fantasy points. if Isaiah, scored 9, 10 fantasy points, I'd probably say, you know what, I'm not really going to think too much of it. But when he balls out for 20. 1 that's significant. I would not be surprised if Mark Andrews falls out of the spotlight completely for the Baltimore Ravens in terms of production value for fantasy teams. was hesitant on drafting Mark Andrews initially due to scheme of the Ravens with adding Derek Henry, which I will talk more about later, but it is what it is.
Speaking of disappointments, I think there's a few teams in our league who have to be a bit worried after week one. Oh, and one is certainly not insurmountable hole by any means. But when you're looking at how the guys scored on your starting lineup and your bench, and you just don't see enough guys there to put together a full lineup of guys you can trust that's got to have you worried.
The Meg is sitting there in last place by points and. Looking at her team, I just don't see a path, to the playoffs, with those players. Running back, she's pretty good, but wide receivers, Chris Alave, who was, supposed to be the best wide receiver on our team, scored 1.
1 point. Hopefully that doesn't continue, but beyond him, you don't see too much that gives me confidence in that lineup. Michael Pittman, Jr. Trey McBride, you're seeing with two tight ends there, McBride and Ingram. I'm just worried about the points for that team. And there wasn't much on the bench either.
I'd say she didn't make any mistakes per se and who she shows for her starting lineup. the Scoring
what happens when you autograph, right?
Yeah. Then that was an auto draft. Exactly. And she told me That's it. Next year. I'm not auto drafting, but we'll see if that holds. She would have got more points had she put in Denver defense instead of Cleveland, but I wouldn't have advised that.
That's just the luck of the draw. She could have scored more points with Gino Smith instead of Dak Prescott, but I wouldn't have advised that either.
Who would have picked Gino over Dak on
no incorrect picks were made. What do you think about Raheem Mostert though? You said you didn't know if he'd be the same production as last year, but this was worse than I expected. Six attempts, nine rush yards. Devon and Shane got all the production.
Yeah from what I remember he had a lot of receiving yards. Ashain had. 40 receiving yards and a touchdown or something like that receiving in the first half. He was our leading receiver for at least the first quarter and a half
Seven targets, seven reception, 76 yards. Yeah, that's good. He also had the lead in the rushing attempts, but not many yards. There are only 24 total rushing yards helped out greatly by the one rushing touchdown he got in 16 total fantasy points.
But yeah, that has me pretty worried about most of this year.
I think it's
more of a more of a Miami
offense problem
As I'm looking for trade requests myself and seeing players, I might want to target that makes me a little more hesitant to pursue. Most are in a trade request as well.
That might make me more interested in actually picking up most dirt because the owner of most dirt would be like after one game, he's shown that he's probably not going to do anything. I might be able to pick them up for better value for a backup player that I have that it's extra.
I'm like, okay, yeah, he might average Five or six that I have currently, but at the same time, if I trade my player for most or then most are beyond the off chance, pick up 20 points here or there have a breakout game it's better to have that handcuff even kind of situation that you were talking about before, where you have backup to the player, that's getting the most production off of it.
Miami, I think might be more interested in running true to running back scheme compared to most teams, so you might see Mosterd on first down, you might see Ahshain on first down. So if you're looking for random value that you might be able to pick up because your team just doesn't have what it takes, I feel like Mosterd might be a good way to go if the owner of Mosterd doesn't really have a fond opinion after one game.
It gets a little bit harder as the games go on because then you get a better idea of, yeah this player is absolutely garbage. I definitely don't want them now.
It's always tricky to find the balance of when do you target guys who didn't perform in week one because. They're going to bounce back versus no, this is who they're going to be this season. It's going to be disappointing. And likewise you have the other fantasy manager thinking, no, if I hold on, they're going to do okay.
So it's a real kind of pendulum swinging one way or another on perceptions of these players. Part of me wants to offload guys after they have a really good week, like Jameson Williams and Xavier Worthy. Sell high if it's just a one off blip. And the other parts of me is no, they were like my best guys this week and they're guys who I thought would be bench players, my starters didn't do as great as I expected.
I better hold on them for dear life. So I have a lot of kind of soul searching on what to do with some of these guys, because if it really was a one off week, if they come back next week and they have a very, low single digit performance. Boom. All the trade value is gone.
Everyone will interpret that as just a blip on the radar.
You really got to put back to back excellent weeks to have someone really move up the, the rankings of wide receivers.
Drake London got shut down by Joey Porter Jr. I believe. That was like a really tough matchup for him.
So I seem maybe, Hey, is this indicative of a long term performance, or is it just a bad matchup on for defense? And then Marvin Harrison Jr. Got 0. 4 fantasy points,
Yeah, he was hyped.
A, yeah, he was hyped up and now I'm not
but he's still a
that's a Kyler Murray problem. I don't know if that's a Kyler Murray problem. I don't know if that's a offensive schema problem or is that Marvin Harrison not being as good as advertised, so that's one where I would not really put a whole lot of stock into it.
Drake London, I might put a little bit of stock into it. But mark andrews that's one where i'd be like, yeah, I almost shipping them off and send them off and be like Okay. Yep. You're gone. You're done. Now. It's only been a week. I know but I think we might be done with you
One guy on my team who I'm worried about is DeAndre Swift. Surprise, Chicago offense.
the bears,
know you warned me on that one repeatedly, but the game script was just awful. And when he did get attempts, he did nothing with them. Averaging three yards per rush. This feels more like a season long issue.
To me, because your team is going to struggle rather than just you having one bad game.
the one thing that seemed to really work out for Chicago is that their defense did what they were supposed to do. And that's the only reason why they won the game.
Yeah.
Didn't they have a block plan and an interception return for touchdown.
or something like that? But either way, their defense is the only reason why they won that game. Kayla Williams did absolutely terrible. I remember talking about how I hate first year quarterbacks. They all typically suck. one might stand out, but same time, is it going to be worth drafting one at maybe the sixth or seventh round versus letting something else fall to you that the odds of success are going to be much higher with that player.
Yeah, Caleb Williams 7. 22 fantasy points and a fun little statistic that I heard Bill Belichick talking about was average air yardage on the throws 2. 1 yards per attempt. So on average, he threw the ball 2. 1 yards past the line of scrimmage.
Just shovel past it at that point.
He's either not comfortable with the system or he's not adapted to the NFL through practices and preseason games, which you would hope that he would have some idea of what he was going through. I know I was not a big fan of Trevor Lawrence and he outperformed my expectations and he didn't really even have a great rookie year, but he wasn't this bad. I can't iterate how frustrating it was to see some of the other quarterbacks play. If we don't mind having a small side here Deshaun Watson, 1. 9. air yards per attempt with a total of 12. 66 fantasy points for our fantasy league jayden daniels 2.
3 yards per attempt but he did have the rushing yards and the rushing touchdowns to go with it that's the only reason why he scored 28. 16 points this week.
That's why I got tempted into drafting him. It wasn't pretty by any means, but if he can stay healthy and keep the kind of dual threat rushing ability that he has, then he can succeed for me in a fantasy perspective. So I'm very happy with this performance, even though it was a sucky passing game.
I'm going to chop that up as a win.
you take them
where you can get them, fading on Jaden. No fading on Jaden.
Kyler Murray had 2. 4 yards in the air per attempt with 14. 1, eight fantasy points this week. Bo Nix 2. 4, 13 points this week. And Will Levis had the best of the under threes with 2. 9. But he only had 8. 68 fantasy points for our fantasy league.
When Bill Belichick was talking about how bad the air yardage was for these quarterbacks, it really baffled me, and I really want to make a point of they suck. I know it's after one week, but having three first year quarterbacks in there. And then you also have more of running quarterbacks of Kyler Murray, Jane Daniels, no offense to Jane Daniels. He hasn't had a chance to actually throw the ball much. But Kyler Murray, who is considered to be a really great prospect and he's got plenty of years in the league and he's shown that he can throw the ball, but then doesn't do a good job of throwing the ball.
Or the team has no faith in him throwing it beyond 2. 4 yards. That's absurd to me. Anyway, that's my little rant here.
That's good. I'm just looking down the QB fantasy points for the week. And Seeing who is, who's at the top of the list. And we had Anthony Richardson, who is up there and I've heard analysts argue that he could be the QB one, for the year.
That's not beyond the realm of possibility. But I wasn't willing to take the chance on him at where he was drafted, but he definitely performed well this week. Josh Allen there at number two for the week. I think no surprise there.
He had a rough first half. The Bills had a rough first half.
Baker Mayfield, that's why he's a guy that I sometimes like to pick up at the very end of the draft or even off the waiver wire. But he was drafted this year. So I didn't get that chance to just snag him after everything was all said and done, but he was the number three scoring quarterback this week.
Your quarterbacks, Had a little injury mishap there. And I know you accidentally drafted Trevor Lawrence, but maybe that'll be important to have now. What do you know about injury news there?
So Jordan Love, they were initially thinking it's an MCL sprain, and that he might be missing up to six weeks, but then after reading more into it, they're saying three to six weeks with more likely closer to three they're not interested in putting them on the injured reserve.
I R is four weeks, they cannot play for four weeks. So if they were not sure that he was going to make it into three weeks, then they should have put them on IR. That's telling me that the MCL sprain, is not significant enough to where he will miss more than three weeks. Or if he would come back week four and they want him back that one week earlier instead of having to guarantee he will not play that four weeks. So to me, I'm not super concerned about it. I'm more concerned about how they played as a general, as a Green Bay Packers.
They had a lot of mishaps, a lot of missed opportunities. I think the opportunities they missed will happen again, but maybe not in the same quantity. I don't think the opportunities that they ended up capitalizing on will always be there.
Expecting or hoping for 20 points from Jordan Love every week would be just fine. He scored 19. 4 for the backers this week. I'm not really upset about it. Not super crazy about it. I am just a little bit frustrated that maybe I didn't take a better look at Jalen Reed. The Green Bay backers haven't drafted a lot of offensive players, especially wide receivers. I don't really put a lot of stock in terms of who is catching the ball. I think they're all reasonably talented. I don't think they're exceptionally talented. There's no Calvin Johnson kind of player, no Tyreek Hill player on there.
Any given player might show up and score 20 points one week, but then score only. Five or six points the next week, I think it's more focused on Who's your quarterback and jordan loves the quarterback and he's injured.
For your team, at least you have Tua, I think you'll be in okay shape there as long as you don't get a second injury.
Yeah, i'm riding with tua until until proven. Otherwise
Does that stop you from moving Trevor Lawrence
no comment no comment? I've been known to roll with only one healthy quarterback,
I think it was three years ago. I only drafted one quarterback and I maintained one quarterback throughout the whole season. I might've picked up a second quarterback just for the off week, but I don't remember for sure.
But I do remember I drafted only one quarterback at least once in our league and it did not change much.
In our week one matchups, I have to highlight what was very nearly a, record setting performance in our 11th year in the league here by Sarah team, they mixing it up pretty good. It was so close. Brock Purdy just didn't get quite enough points at the very end on Monday, to give her that one 80 something needed, but she finished with 177.
74 points. And nearly a new, one week record for our league. The last league record for points was also set in week one of last season. So week one seemed to be a good opportunity for players to get the most points.
Everyone's pretty healthy at that point. You can roll with your optimal lineups. So I don't know if we'll see a record saying performance from here on, or if that was our best chance at it here in week one, but it was exciting to see. And that was just a blowout one 77. 7, four to 85. 5, four points for mint.
Mary crunch really wasn't close at any point. And everyone on Sarah's team from top to bottom pretty much excelled.
These players stood out, they were not necessarily hyped or there was question marks around some of their play coming into the season. Jalen Reed, was not on this list, even though he did score 32. 1 points, he was also wide receiver one, he was expected to do that, or have the opportunity to do that, whereas Joe Mixon, with the Houston Texans with CJ Stroud, you've got a really good solid receiving core where every one of those three players could easily hit 1000 yards a season. With that kind of offense. It's almost like Miami last year where there's only so many yards you can actually put up in a season. Everyone can't do well. So to me, it was a really big standout for Joe Mixon. He had great yards. He had great carries. He scored 23. 8 points. I think that was pretty insane to me. He solidified himself in my view. He's still good. He struggled the last couple of years in Cincinnati.
Rashid Shahid was a really big one. He also did really well also on Sarah's team. He was not wide receiver one. Olave was supposed to be the one that's picking up all the points.
Two of those players to me both on Sarah's team. And then you also have Jane Reed who balled out this week just did great, but then also has Derek Henry, who was my other point of contention where I was also upset with his usage.
Well, yeah, when Derek Henry's almost the low point on your team for the week, you probably did okay. He got 10. 6 fantasy points and that was one of the fewer points on her team from her RB1 and still look at her performance is just great. But, she really dropped the ball with Younghoe Koo though.
What was she thinking? Just pathetic,
absolutely terrible.
joking. Imagine though, if she had put in Baker Mayfield instead of Brock Purdy. Which I wouldn't have done, but you'd be sitting at almost 210 points. It's just insane. And probably got 30 points of that. So it just would have been a crazy score to see on our league.
also look at the Chicago Bears.
Yeah. The one thing the Bears
did well.
Yeah, I mentioned it earlier, but now that she actually has that, I can look at the stats behind it. Three sacks, two interceptions, one fumble recovery, two touchdowns, because it's also including special teams one block kick and fourth down stop, resulting in 33.
55 points.
Is this a team that does what the, I can't remember which year, but a few years ago now the Patriots were the number one defense and the conventional wisdom was like, Oh, don't. Worry about the defenses too much, but every single week they were getting like 20, 30 points for fantasy.
Do you think Chicago is going to keep it up or
No.
no,
No, I don't think their offense can keep them in that position and you're not going to be playing will love us every week. Who's throwing 2. 9 yards past the line of scrimmage in the air per attempt. You're going to be going against a better quarterback than first year quarterback will love us. You're going to be going against probably The Jordan Love, Jared Goff, those are two in division rivals that will have a quarterback situation that is well set aside and will be a problem for Chicago.
well, there's one more matchup that I really want to highlight from our league, and then we can get a lot more into individual player performance this week. But that is the matchup between no hard feelings and Wu Tang financial. This was either a miracle or. Heartbreaking performance, depending on which person you were.
But it also leads us to what I'm going to term the bench blunder of the week. And this was a tough break because it wasn't just a bonehead mistake or anything like that. But Caitlin did leave Christian McCaffrey in who was a surprise inactive. Did he even have a questionable tag leading up to the game?
Probably late on Sunday or something like that, but by then it would probably been too late to actually make any changes or consider any changes.
Although she does have Mason, she does have Mason as the handcuffs. So this is where this, like having the handcuff was really big deal.
I was shocked because I do like very small bets on a betting platform and stuff. And I had Christian McCaffrey scoring a touchdown. Yeah. I'm going to put 10 cents on that. That's fine by me. And then I looked at the stats the next morning. Cause I went to bed early and I was confused.
Where's Christian McCaffrey. What did he do? And then I found out that he was inactive.
Yeah. I think I remember seeing he was questionable, but it almost seemed like a given that he was going to play. There really wasn't an indication that he was on the wrong side of so that was a bit of a shock. And I think it was like within an hour before game time.
They said no, he's out. So that didn't give a lot of time for Caitlin to put in Jordan Mason, but had she done it, she would have easily won the matchup converting that zero points for McCaffrey into 21. 2 points for Jordan Mason. And she only lost by, about five points. It was a tough break there, no doubt about it, but it is also our bench blunder of the week.
You had set yourself up so well, Caitlin, with that handcuff on your team performed a lot better than my handcuffs did for one. I had Rashaan Johnson and he was a healthy scratch. you know, I Might not be keeping him as backup to DeAndre Swift. They did not use him as a backup as I thought they might.
So yeah, it can be tough, not only choosing your handcuffs. But deploying them when they're most needed. And that's just one of the challenges week to week in fantasy.
What'd you see in from the games this week? I don't get to watch near as much as I'd like to anymore. With my kids, they dominate the TV with Spidey and his amazing friends. So I'm only watching really the late evening games, unfortunately. I tried to catch some highlights, but I missed out on a lot. What's going on in the league.
I did see the Indianapolis Houston Texans game and I also did see part of the Ravens, Kansas city game. We already talked about Mixon. Visually, stat wise, everything checked the boxes. I was really sad that I did not get my hands on him to draft him for fantasy football, I think he's going to stand out really well.
The Raven's game was perplexing because Derek Henry got so few carries. First drive. I think he had six carries or seven carries. And then he ended up with the total of what, like 13 carries
Yeah. Was that just
the whole,
for the whole game. So Harbaugh basically after the game mentioned that was their plan. It was to incorporate the whole team on offense, rather than have it be the Derek Henry show, like it was when he was in Tennessee.
When we were drafting, I had mentioned, I don't really want to pack up Derek Henry because I'm not sure they're going to adjust their game plan because of Lamar Jackson. And I feel like I'm completely validated. He ended with 43 yards and a touchdown. So that touchdown was the only reason why he put up reasonable fantasy points this week. And it was really perplexing to me when I went ahead and looked at all of his games from the start of 2020 to now, and when he has carried the ball 20 times or more, he has 19 wins, eight losses for his team. There are 25 games where he carried the ball less than 20 times. Do you want to take a guess on this one?
Let's say Nine wins.
Five,
Ouch.
five, five wins, 20 losses when he carries the ball less than 20 times. How do you bring Derek Henry into Baltimore and give him less than 20 carries? It really baffles me. It grinds my gears. This guy is born to run the ball with power. He grinds out defenses. He wins the game through attrition. with Lamar Jackson, like you give Derek Henry the ball for three quarters, and then you let Lamar Jackson run whatever he wants. That defensive line has no chance. No chance.
I think sometimes there's a tension and a difference between what's effective for a team and what's effective for a fantasy players points. It might be, you're rooting for a guy to have the entire offense run through him. But that's not always what's best for the team when you want a more balanced attack.
And clearly they're trying to do more of a balanced attack, even though Derek Henry owners are going to hate it. But you citing the record, you citing the
Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
at least with Derek Henry. Other people, you can say that it. Maybe the Colts would have been better.
Some games that Peyton Manning didn't throw the ball every single play but they couldn't establish the run. So it's just tough to know when you need to stray away from your best weapon, just to shake things up and keep the
defense. It's guessing.
this is where I wish I played football in high school so I can actually relate, but my dad played football in high school and he knows. How much running the ball with a running back like Derek Henry, you get exhausted if you get the ball run down your throat by a big dude for three straight quarters, you're at the end of the game and you're like, Oh, geez, now I gotta go try to tackle this guy again.
I'm fighting the offensive lineman. I'm fighting Maybe a second blocker or something like that in order to try to catch up to the guy that now I can't catch. You're just exhausted. That should be the game plan for the ravens I'm, not an expert by any means but I can at least read.
There tends to be a correlation between running the ball with derrick henry and not because he's not a small dude If it were it would be different if he were smaller so where he couldn't abuse the linebackers or safeties that are trying to tackle him, but he is that big, he is that strong, he will run everyone over.
With John Harbaugh, making those comments of, Hey, this was designed by plan. He's 30 years old. We're going to be running the whole team through X, Y, and Z like Lamar, Mark Andrews, Isaiah, likely, Bateman Zay flowers, I cannot see Henry being the guy that you want to go to on a Monday night game for fantasy football, you need 15 points. I don't know if Derek Henry's going to be the guy to get you there. Nine times out of 10 on the Ravens. Anyway, that's my little rant.
Any other performances? really surprise you either to the positive or negative from the week.
I was surprised J. K. Dobbins, was able to perform that well, especially after so many injuries. He hasn't really been able to play more than what, three or four games, for two, three seasons. Maybe thinking that he might be. Irrelevant at this point. So that was my standout and I actually have J.
K. Dobbins and he sat on the bench. So it makes me feel bad, but at the same time, it is what it is. And it's fans football, baby.
I want to discuss some of the action on the waiver wire. I think in the week leading up to these games, nothing too noteworthy happened. No one did a pickup that was like a huge contributor. A kickers happened with our league. But I do want to get in the habit of giving out a waiver wire wizard award.
and kind of in lieu of a better option, I'm going to give it to Chris Coakley this week for Ray Ray McLeod. He got about eight points off the waiver wire. So he was serviceable there. And I just don't think there's really an opportunity for too many big moves on the waiver wire yet.
What about you?
I'm hoping to change that this week.
Yeah. I've put in a couple requests as well. Without giving too much away, I think there are a couple of players who had breakout performances that are going to be picked up for sure.
We can talk about it because it's going to air
afterwards.
I think there's one guy that's likely to be picked up for sure, and that's Isaiah likely. Yeah, he's definitely going to get picked up. I actually did not request him just cause I'm not convinced that's going to be weekly performance, even though it was a great week.
I'm not gonna pursue him, but I'm sure someone will.
This guy.
Yeah. Yeah. That's okay. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna take it from you. You'd get it first anyway, based on the.
Uh, Probably not because that's my second one.
Oh, okay. Gotcha.
My primary for the record is dropping Trevor Lawrence and picking up Derek Carr. I was surprised by the Saints coming out and dominating the way that they did. I feel like Derek Carr's first season with the saints was a blunder and it just was not.
They just needed a little bit more time or maybe a quick change in something to where it will match up and they just destroyed, they dominated. I don't know necessarily how much Derek Carr was the reason for that, but at the same time, it was enough of a reason for me to want to pick him up. Trevor Lawrence looked pretty bad. I'm planning on dropping him for Derek Carr.
I have a couple, claims in there. I'm going to try to do weekly defense optimization. So I rolled with, Seahawks on defense this week. I'm going to change it week to week and just try to maximize based on matchup. But other than that, I wasn't happy with my handcuffs.
I was really worried about, Zamir White's performance. So I'm putting in one for Alexander Madison, to try to give me some optionality there because he received, A lot more work in the passing game, and outproduced white. So that worries me a bit; my starting lineup with my running backs, between him and Swift. Kenneth Walker did fine, but got a minor injury.
I'm a little worried there at running backs, so I just might do some tweaks there, but nothing too major yet. My handcuffs just flopped on me. Chubba Hubbard, sorry. Chubba Hubbard, I just like saying Chubba Hubbard, even though it's wrong. Hubbard had the start but did nothing with it.
Really nasty stat line of six attempts and 14 yards . I was like, oh, he might actually be startle for a while, while, Jonathan Brooks is recovering from his ACL injury. But, no, it doesn't look like it. And then I had mentioned Rashan Johnson Healthy Scratch. So he's gonna go Bye-Bye off my team. I might look for some different backups in there. Cause I, I'm not too confident. It's like I won the match, but I only feel like C grade right now about my performance.
Do you want to make a trade?
I always want to make a trade.
I know this wasn't part of our planned segment, but once you started talking about how you were not really happy with your performance, I was interested. Maybe you want to do a trade because I have some running backs available.
Yeah, and I have some wide receivers with some really good performance. I'm still deciding how they're going to fit into my starting lineup. are you seeing that interests you?
All I can say is I have Ezekiel Elliot and he did pretty well this weekend. He's, shown that he's not over the hill. He's not 40 years old. We can work out something where, we do a two for two.
I get Zemir White, you get something like Ezekiel Elia or Travis Santian or something like that, and then I go ahead and get one of those wide receivers, a Zemir White.
We can talk about that off camera.
Yeah, TravisETN, I'd mentioned I didn't like drafting him in the second round, but that doesn't mean I don't like him by any means.
I'm just going to let you know. I've got J. K. Dobbins, Travis Ntian, Ezekiel Elliott, Josh Jacobs.
yeah. Elliot, I just don't have as much faith in, even though he had a good week one.
We can always talk about, hey, how do we want to divide that up? I'm just going to throw that out there. We'll talk about it later.
He's a pretty compelling handcuff and he got 12 attempts and 73 yards is backup with a healthy ETN. So he actually out gained Travis CTN. But I don't think the starters changing by any means, but I think he's a great handcuff to have if you do.
Will shoot some reckless predictions at me. What do you got? You're not held accountable for this. So feel free to say anything.
All right. Anything? All right. Let me take a quick look at week two. I'm going to lose to MinBerryCrunch.
So you're gonna sit at O and Will, are you
to set 0 2.
I don't know about that. We're not going to go that far, I don't think I'm going to win the first two weeks. I think also mixing it pretty good is going to not quite beat points, but maybe over 150 and be the league leader in points through week five.
Okay. I'm going to take a bold prediction along those lines. I looked through Sarah's roster there and it's a very strong starting lineup, not so strong on the bench. I'm not going to contradict you on the first five weeks.
I don't know. She could do a few more really high point games, but I'm going to say that once injuries start coming in and by weeks, I think. She squeaks into the playoffs within one full game plus points as a tiebreaker of missing the playoffs. I think she's only going to be one win ahead of the first team out of the playoffs.
Sarah might trash talk me later, but I'm going to roll with it because I look at the bench and I'm like, not feeling good about these bench players that she has.
If anyone gets injured, I think it could spell trouble, whereas I think there's other teams in the league, myself included, that have a little more depth, even if they don't have as good of a starting lineup. So there's my bold prediction, as far as week two. I think I'm going to come out with the win this week against best eater around.
He had a tough blow, with Puka Nikua getting injured. Definitely out for an extended time, headed to, injured reserve, with a knee injury. So that's a tough break there. And looking at, eater's bench, it's hard to replace, Nikua's ceiling there.
I think that'll provide a bigger gap between the points, this week and allow me to get two wins through two weeks.
What else do we want to talk about here?
We already Did a little bit of trade talk slash waiver wire.
Yeah. I'm looking at the mega I just think there's potential there. I haven't worked out a trade to actually offer, but I, see some things that I could package to her, but then I'm also a little worried about her people that underperformed Chris Lave and Trey McBride, is that a trend or just a one week thing? So I'm a little hesitant to offer something for those guys, but it's been on my mind as a possibility.
We'll talk first
tough thing with her team, I think, is that I'm weaker at running back, but she doesn't have a lot of depth at running back to actually offer me a running back.
Like I
Two for one for Pacheco or something like then, who does she have at running back?
Bijan Robinson and no one especially if Mostert ends up being the clear second running back on the dolphins.
Last year he was, he, Technically, I think the first one on the death chart.
Yeah.
What'd you think of Aaron Rodgers on the jets? First we've got to see from him in quite some time.
did not watch any game footage, but at the same time, I was not surprised at the stat line.
me pull up the stat line here. I watched a little bit of the game while I was also outlining the agenda for this podcast. And I wasn't too impressed. I don't think he's, propelling the Jets to the playoffs by any means.
No, I guess in theory, because he got injured so early that they didn't give up much for him to the Packers. But at the same time, I still feel like it would have been better to keep the pick.
21 past attempts, only 13 completions. 167 yards. The passes weren't like wobbly by any means, but they just didn't seem like laser pinpoint precision at all. They were just kind of, and I was like, I don't
I was a former NFL, NFL MVP.
I just, yeah, it just wasn't anything special. I don't think
that he's a difference maker of a quarterback anymore.
Here's something else though, that was very interesting through week one. Derek Carr was number 15 in terms of passing yards. Take a guess how many passing yards he had?
Yeah, I
200. When I think number 15 in yardage for the whole NFL, I would expect to be like 225, 230. I Feel the week one performance for quarterbacks in terms of yardage was awful.
It was awful.
Jane
Daniels had
184 and he was the fourth fantasy producer. So that's kind of like where I was trying to pinpoint and offer a guess. I put too much into fantasy points there on my guess that skewed it.
Brock Purdy was the first one that was above 225 yards and he was 11th. So to think that only 11 quarterbacks through week one have put up over 230 yards and passing is just mind boggling to a degree. It's frustrating. That's not what I think of when I see quarterback. And this is the reason why I mentioned that yardage being a big deal is because you're not guaranteed to get touchdowns via running from your running quarterbacks. You're not even guaranteed to get passing touchdowns from your quarterbacks. But you should be able to at least have some reasonable assurance or security that they're going to put up over 220 yards passing per week.
And the fact that only 11 quarterbacks did that is slightly distressing to me. And it's also concerning some of the names that I see up there.
Yeah, I was just looking at who was at top and who was at bottom. You had Tua. Say his last name for me. I always just say Tua because I can't pronounce it.
Yeah tag a low vote. I can't. I can't.
Tagovailoa. I don't know.
that's about as good as the list to a top, the list of 338 passing yards. That that's
great. My homes is up there, even though his fantasy points weren't amazing, but he had 291 passing yards. Homes is still obviously a great quarterback. Even if he's not going to be maybe top five fantasy points this year.
But Oh my goodness. At the bottom of the list here, have you looked, do you want to venture a guess? Of actual starters. Yeah. I've actual starters that minus
I know Caleb Williams it. of them.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Caleb Williams,
I mean, uh, Will Levis wasn't very good. I'm just looking even just the air yards attempt. Will Levis, Bo Nix, Kyler Murray, Jaden Daniels, Caleb Williams, Deshaun Watson were the bottom five in air yardage.
And that's similar to the total yards to
I was listening to on ESPN. com Bill Belichick talking about it, and he mentioned Bryce Young being down there and on the website that I use to see those advanced quarterback statistics, I didn't see Bryce that far down on terms of air yards per attempt. So I was confused. I respect Bill Belichick because he is really good what he does, but he was that 3. 8 yards per attempt in the air, according to fantasy pros. com. But Bill Belichick, I think had a even lower number than that. I know that Bryce Young had only 161 yards.
Terrible.
yeah. Jacoby Brissett only had 121 for new England.
I was surprised Justin Herbert and Kirk Cousins. Had low numbers as well.
I was surprised. Yeah, I was as well. That was disappointing. But yeah, man, Caleb Williams with only 93 yards, you would think their running game would have been better. They won
the game. And didn't
that's when their Their defense wins, guys. Woo.
the offense came from. They definitely didn't get it from anyone on the offense that day.
Yeah, will let us through two interceptions and there was a blocked punt, but I don't remember other details because I actually had Tennessee, winning the game against the Chicago Bears.
I hope you didn't. Did you bet
I did not bet money on that. I that was not a bet money, but that was,
you're losing those dimes I'll treat you to next lunch.
Okay.
Yeah.
no, are good.
They only lost one fumble from Will Levis, but Chicago also lost one fumble as well. So I'm surprised that it was that one sided from the defense. But when you get a. 43 yard interception return for touchdown, 21 yard block punt. That's 14 points. And if your team can only manage 17 points, you don't really need much from the offense in order to get past that.
League managers, remember to set your lineups, check for any injury updates, even up until kickoff, because those come in late as we saw this week. Make your waiver claims and we'll carry on with week two of Smashville fantasy 📍 football
That's it for this episode of the Smashville Fantasy Football Podcast! As always, we have aspirations of adequacy, so come back and we'll try to do a bit better next time. Who knows? We may even reveal that one sneaky trick guaranteed to win your fantasy league. But until then, keep those trades rolling and get your lineups set before kickoff.
See you next week!
