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
Week 4 Postmortem: Making Moves and Tracking Takes
Week 4 Fantasy Football Insights: Power Rankings and Trade Decisions
In this episode of the Smashville Fantasy Football Podcast, hosts Andrew Banta and Will Ott dissect week 4 of the fantasy football season, reviewing player performances and analyzing emerging trends. They discuss the importance of making timely trade and waiver wire decisions as player roles begin to solidify. The episode covers takeaways from recent NFL games, unpredictable player performances, and speculates on potential team strategies. They also debate on hot takes and predictions, including the productivity of notable players like Jordan Love and Jaden Daniels, and the implications of a possible Devante Adams trade. This episode is essential listening for fantasy football enthusiasts gearing up for a promising week five in the league.
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 are heading into week five, having wrapped up week four. Starting to solidify the view of the season, players who we've seen either excel or do poorly starting to draw some conclusions that they are who we thought they were or not.
Um, it's, It's hard to.
The windows are closing on certain buy high, sell low trade opportunities unless situations change, of course, on teams with changing roles trades, other players getting injured. So that makes some things challenging. Especially for myself with a few players who I can pretty much write off at this point, and then other players who maybe have one really solid game in there, and the rest of the games have sucked, Amari Cooper but for my part, Zemir White is, four bad games.
I just think he's not gonna be the guy for me this year too
much.
I think it's more of the Las Vegas Raiders
offense is just not really
I think with Josh Jacobs is a little bit more
steady,
more solid,
more consistent without him.
It's just too easy to plan against them, make them one dimensional, because if they're going to be like, one week, we're going to just shut down the run. The other week, they're going to shut down the pass.
So therefore you're going to rely on Samir white a little bit more, rely on quarterback and maybe Devonta Adams a little bit more another week. So I pretty happy about staying away from Las Vegas Raiders players.
As far as corrections go, you had
speculated that Raheem Mostert was 30 or 31. He's actually 32.
So a little bit older and then we were both wondering where Jane Daniels was in rookie rushing yards. We thought maybe number one and you had mentioned you'd knew some other guys that were on that list for rookie
rushing yards through the first three games, you thought
As a quarterback.
As a quarterback. Sorry. Yeah, you thought maybe previously Warren Moon was number one, then maybe number three, RG3, Robert Griffin III. I checked up on it. Jane Daniels is now number two with 171 yards, still behind Robert Griffin III, who has 198
yards, but now ahead of Charlie Batch's 160 yards.
Jayden Daniels did set the rookie record for completion percentage though.
Yeah. So nothing major there, but just to provide some additional insight there. As far as the matchups we had mixing it pretty good is who you thought she was. Up there in points now running number one through the first four games.
With a very high scoring matchup, you're starting to look good on that hot take you had
So I want to clarify my hot take, is that Sarah would not fall behind, she would maintain number one through number five.
I'm only gonna take partial credit for this.
I wanna allow myself
To be humbled just a little bit. I didn't, get it 100 percent but I'm at least partially right, so I'll be glad to take that.
Yeah. I'll give that to you. I feel like that's being a little overly critical on yourself because she's sitting good at a three and one and top of the standings there with the 556 points for Next closest is No Hard Feelings with 525. Rounding out the top three, Crunchy Leaves, with 409. So it's a big drop off in points after the first two.
Yeah, and Simple Jack actually has 4 EV8 but he is uh, 2 and 2.
Yeah. I moved up one place to seventh with points for Tiebreaker there. I'm sitting at two and two after winning my last week's
matchup.
Yeah, number 7, and where am I
You're number eight, so you're right there
Hey, we're
neighbors now, boys!
You won your matchup with the Meg. It was higher scoring than I might have thought it would be.
Uh, 112 to 111 roughly. That was a close game. Actually, I said 112 to 111, but I really need to go down to the decimals for this one. Because it wasn't that. It was 112.
01 points to 111. 84 17 if I'm doing my quick math correctly. That was a tough matchup for the Meg.
I'm totally biased here, sorry Will,
but it's my wife so.
I was hoping she'd get a win there, because it was one of the better opportunities she had, just looking at the points you scored so,
far this season and it came down to the wire.
She was
favored for a long time in the middle of the matchups, but who ultimately pulled it out for you.
In the one o'clock games, Jordan Love started off being
projected to score like 12 points,
but then in the fourth quarter, Green Bay
score 22 points,
and most of them were receiving touchdowns. Actually, I think they might have all been receiving it. Don't count that against me, please.
But he ended up lighting it up and really put me in a position to potentially win. And, that was really the game changer even though that was before we realized it was a game changer.
Megan had Keon
Coleman and Tyler Bass playing, and only needed an additional like one point at that point, but Buffalo lost that game very badly.
And I was like telling
her as I'm watching,
that the game script is really going against her at this point.
And it's looking rough because it was, fourth quarter, I
think at that point when I was talking to
her about
it. And Buffalo's way
down they're not kicking field goals, and they even pulled Josh Allen towards the end,
But Coleman's a wide receiver, so there's a chance that he gets more points at the end of
the game, because they're behind so much.
If they're still trying at that point, but
They forfeited in a sense. Having pulled Alan and they were running out the clock. Buffalo is far
down as they were, was actually running out the clock on the last possession.
Kind of playing their game, getting some
live to fight another day, don't get anyone injured.
unless they score on one of those earlier drives and have some. Hail Mary chance.
I don't even see Coleman getting any more points. And sure
enough, they didn't from the point I had said that.
I will say
also that I
did sync my FaZe
football team rosters and scoring with my YouTube TV.
So I get to watch
how bad I'm doing on the big screen.
That is a different kind of perspective and it
always makes me feel bad
checking it. So I've said, I'm not going to check it anymore.
Yeah looking at some of the other matchups, I think this one's relevant to one of my hot takes that I messed up on
last week.
I
predicted the
No Hard Feelings, Mitchie Mitch would be the matchup with the most points so far, which would make it like 268 points. They didn't exactly get close to that, about 210 points between the pair.
It was a good matchup, but it was lower scoring. Rasheed Rice getting injured at the very
start of that
Kansas city game was a big blow to Caitlin's team, as well as to the total
points And then the Bill's game blown out so horribly and, Josh Allen fumbling, not gaining touchdowns.
And then Ultimately getting pulled from the game that, kept points there at quarterback to other matchups of note,
it was Sarah's turned again to have the highest points. 173. 07 points over simple Jack's 110. That put her right back on top of the standings with that high total, despite having two lower scoring games.
Before this week, and then I'm very pleased to have won that game. It felt like a must win for me beating under the radar. I feel a lot better at two and two than one and three. I had a
hard time predicting. What players to play earlier in the week. It was looking like I'd have potentially three of my starters injured out.
Kenneth Walker Debo Samuel and crystal. They were all, uh, looking at the wrong side of questionable at first. But then 1 by 1
, they started to look like they're probably going to play. That was a big deal for my points, but it made it hard for me to decide whether I should play guys like Jameson
Williams, Xavier Worthy.
I kept swapping them prior to certain games and being like, okay, let's plug them in as a safety net. Let's not. And then ultimately I made a, negative blow by sticking Cam Acres in there. Just because it was a running back
that I could put in that flex spot and an earlier
game. So I viewed it as an insurance policy.
I could deal with one injury. But if I had two guys out, then the way the games were timed out, I would
have had to go the waiver wire, essentially just pick up
some random,
no name person in the game or take a
zero. So that is my self defensive. Why I put in cam acres. I. Didn't expect him to get more points than Jameson Williams or Xavier Worthy, but I just couldn't stomach the chance of having multiple guys out. And I just wanted the sure points in there with an early game. I think Acres played one of the first games for me.
Especially in a matchup
where you think you have a chance of actually winning the game, or you should win the game,
it's probably best to do that.
I'm gonna take a zero, but man, it hurts to see. Okay, I got 5. 3 points from Acres. I was shooting more for aid ish is what was my hope, but then I see Jameson Williams got me 17 on the bench, Xavier Worthy 16. 3, and then. DeAndre Swift, another hot take, finally goes off and has a 22. 5 point game.
I'm one of two on the next three games being double digit games. Didn't happen
last week for me.
Happened this week, so I need Swift to go in week 5 into the Panthers game, and put a whoopin on them to get me double digit points, so my hot take is good.
But it a W is a W.
Yeah, I mean it
sucks that I showed that faith in Swift to the extent that I made that bet but then I Panicked after last week and benched him and finally he has a great game. I had him starting for three weeks straight and then in the fourth week I moved him to the bench where he got me the most points any matchups you want to talk about or we can move into games and stuff.
I had a problem with figuring out
whether Jordan Love is going to start or
not.
I
mentioned, I think in the last podcast that I
was going to leave Derek Carr
as my
starter until I have an idea of what Jordan Love's status is going to be. I did manage to have some time to actually see that Jordan Love was starting and I just went with my gut with Jordan Love, knowing that, it's a big game, it's against the Vikings, they're going to make him throw the ball a bunch.
They got behind early, I felt really bad about it, especially because he threw two interceptions early in the game. And then one late in the game. So when he threw the two early in the game, him and Derek Carr were both struggling. I think it was projected to be like 12 points versus 11 points or some really low number.
And then if I would've started Derek Carr, I would've easily lost my matchup. Whereas Jordan Love ended up bouncing back, showing resilience, throwing four touchdowns, three interceptions.
It Can be messy, with three interceptions, you can have some fumbles in there. As long as you're chucking the ball and getting some
yeah, yep. And that's why it's always nice to pick a team that's
good,
but not great in terms of offense.
So then
when your team's behind your quarterback is going to be throwing the ball bunch. So you, pick those quarterbacks and
I feel pretty good about
Jordan love right now.
Minnesota Vikings have really surprised me being now what four now didn't really expect that with Sam Darnold. I was down on just Justin Jefferson at the beginning when we did the actual draft and now I feel like an idiot, but that's okay
because how many people would actually bet on Sam Darnold leaving the Vikings to being four and Oh.
And speaking of records, I'm finding it hard to peg who the
best teams are this year. I feel like most years you have one, maybe two teams
that you're like, Oh, these are the ones to beat.
And I don't feel the same. I guess I just don't know the Vikings well enough. Maybe they are the ones, but I watched the Chiefs enough to be like,
this seems like a terrible 4
0 team.
The injuries
obviously contribute too, but like they looked very lost the first half of their game.
I ended up winning 17 to 10.
Yeah, I don't know. It just seemed to me that they couldn't get anything done on offense and I was like, how are they 4 0?
Yeah,
I'm just they were
like that last year, in my opinion.
They were, to an extent, earlier. Um,
It
they picked it up as the
season
went on.
That's true. That's definitely true.
Bills last year did not look good at all,
in my opinion. I felt like they were almost barely a playoff team.
I expected them to be easily competing there with the Kansas City Chiefs. They
performed mediocre early,
if that's a word. And so that was
astonishing to
me. I'm surprised
Pittsburgh's three
in one. I'm surprised Cincinnati's only one in three. I'm surprised by Jaguars being oh, and four,
I'm surprised by that.
I'm surprised the commanders are three in one.
I'm also surprised there.
surprised the Vikings, especially after JJ McCarthy was injured before the season started being 4 0. I am surprised maybe the Seahawks had 3 1 and the San Francisco's
2
2.
I was going to bring up the Seahawks and say, from the games I've been able to watch, they feel like one of the stronger teams to me. That's true. Even though
But looking, Yeah. I'm looking preseason versus the
actual season. Um, Yeah, I feel like they're
outperforming.
how, hard it's been for me to peg who I think the strongest team is from what I've watched, because I saw the chiefs and they don't feel the strongest to me.
I haven't seen the Vikings. I don't think at all this year. But the bills didn't look very good this week. Obviously they had weeks where they look better, but they have a game like this where they're just completely blown out and it makes me question if they're a top contender or not. Commanders have been surprisingly good, but I don't know that I'd consider them contenders.
Seahawks, I think maybe they're one of the stronger ones. Also.
Ravens look pretty good two and two, but parts of the games I've witnessed, I'm like, okay, they look like they, they, know what they're doing.
Four games into the season, they had a slow start. I
But then they got Henry
to the Raiders. as I will say,
they rushed Derek Henry for over 20 carries. He dominated the game.
And do the line graph of Henry carries versus. Points scored and it's
going up into the right. And
so if they just scale that up, I wonder what's the upper limit on that. Give him 50 carries a
game, you'll
never lose. I guess
I guess.
predictions now and they're like Oh, Derek Henry is going to go for. 250 plus yards this next
Oh man.
I'm like, maybe, but gosh, there's got to be a limit. What more do you want to get 200 yards last game?
just So yeah, with, Henry,
Ravens are looking pretty good.
once they realize, Hey, we should probably be handing this ball off to Derek Henry more than 20
times per game.
They're, O and T when he carries it less than 20 times, two and O when they're 20 or more times. So I'll just
throw
that out there.
Let's see, other games that I watched. Hey, I like the Colt Steelers game. That wasn't what I was expecting. The Colts had looked so bad the previous week, and then they suddenly looked super efficient with Richardson, and then unfortunately Richardson got injured so Flacco stepped in, but he picked up right where Richardson left off in the first part of the game, and they were super efficient, moving it down the field.
I watched
a little bit
more of
The bears Rams game. and
even though the bears won,
I am still not very
high on them
Also, when you have Cooper cup and Puka Nuka being. out for the game
from the Rams side.
It discredits the win in terms of what you feel like any bears players were in
terms of
fantasy
value offensively. No. And so I'm not like, if you have Matt Stafford, I'm not going to say, Hey, he sucks or he's worth dropping or anything like that. Let them be healthy. And from what I understand, those injuries are not long term injuries.
They're likely to be back in at least two weeks. Knowing that, I'm not gonna say too much negatively on the Rams players, even though they're 1 3. I expected them to be 2 2 but knowing there's injuries involved, 1 3 is not unreasonable. It's still early in the season for them. It's still in the early season for us.
I know, not too long ago, I was 0 2, sitting 11th, and now I am 2 2, sitting 8th, which is in the playoffs.
Yeah. Last week I'd mentioned that if you were 0 and 3 Yahoo had an article that they said. In their leagues, there's a 12 percent chance of making the
playoffs.
I couldn't find anything from Yahoo on 0 and 4 since the Meg is sitting there. But I did use fantasy pros to analyze our league and give their own playoff odds on each team. And I thought I'd highlight a few of us seeing
that the best odds currently in the league is mixing it pretty good with a
96 percent chance of making the playoffs Even an 8 percent chance of being the champion. uh, No hard feelings right behind that with a 95 percent chance of the playoffs, I'm seeing fourth, 92 percent chance of playoffs. Having that second wind in 7 1 3 helped immensely there. It gives me somehow a 13 percent chance of being champion, even though I'm lower playoff odds. You're sitting at 8th, projected 8th right now on playoff odds with 62 percent chance.
It gives you a 5 percent chance at being champion for what it's worth. But where I wanted to really get the stat here is the Meg.
0 and 4 projected record is 4 and 10. That would be maybe even a good scenario
at this point, but the playoffs odds for her are staying at 4 percent according to FantasyPros with less than a 1 percent chance of being our league champion this year.
What other games did you. Check out or have thoughts on this week. Cowboys Giants. I saw the second half. Lions Seahawks. I saw the First
half. So it was just spotty.
What I
was able to see this week. Maybe I'll just react to what you saw.
Saw the endings of many games because I believe the Rams bears game was on and then it ended and then I went to CBS because there was a chance that the Packers Vikings game was going to be the next game on CBS after the serious cold schemes and then they transitioned to the incorrect game.
Two times before they went to their post game show instead of watching the rest of the package Vikings game, I believe that one of them was the Broncos jets with the, I believe in this field goal to end the game. Basically. And that wasn't really anything super interesting.
I was not really impressed by any of the games that I watched, honestly.
Yeah.
I don't know if it was me or the games, but
My attention was waning this week for
sure.
Yeah.
One game I didn't see, but
wished I
had was the Commander's Cardinals game,
because
can you guess who the number one fantasy points scorer that is this year?
Jade and Daniels.
Jayden Daniels.
I'm not even 100 percent sober and I knew that,
Yep. And I prefaced it with saying what game that I wished I had
seen, Daniels is getting it done there. The commanders as a team are much better than I thought they'd be this year. So they're competitive. Daniels can mix it up. He's not putting up crazy numbers.
From, passing touchdowns or,
Total yards. Standpoint, but his efficiency is really good. For a rookie or for anyone, like he's been super accurate. He
through four games has.
the highest rookie completion percentage.
So even if he's not throwing for a ton of yards, he's getting enough touchdowns and running for touchdowns to be able to make a lot of fancy points.
So my prediction is on track for a top five QB finish for him, for sure.
I just can't wait until there's enough
defenses
that have schemed against him and understand, Hey, we have enough film on him. this is what he
likes to
do.
We're going to shut this down and then he gets exposed.
But that's really
most likely going to be against his divisional opponents,
which are going to be the giants,
they're just not good.
It's going to be against the Cowboys that have not performed to even
close
expectations, and the Eagles who
have also had hiccups against beatable opponents. I like to bet against them, but at the same time, East just feels like an, underperforming battleground of Who can be the best underperformer, and the fact that Jay Nielsen is an overperformer in my book just means that he's going to succeed. I want to be down on him, but he has, at this point, proven me very incorrect. I think that Next year will definitely be an underperforming year. I don't think he's going to have the same year next year as this year, but how does the rest of the season go? This year is still going to be a question mark.
We've seen some really good years from rookie quarterbacks. I have personally said, Oh, they're not going to have that great of a first year and then they've done well, so I wouldn't mind eating my words, but as long as next year doesn't really work out for him, I feel like I'm justified in my, call, but I can't really make that on my hot take.
Otherwise we're gonna have to wait another year
for that to be come to fruition.
I'm just happy that a draft pick that I was second guessing after I did it is actually working out really well.
do you have any takeaways from the Cowboys Giants game? We both know
maybe Chris was right to draft the Cowboys kicker, Aubrey.
Definitely a better pick than Tucker for this year
I want to see the exact numbers on the season. He's got 60 points and Chris Boswell, who has picked up by no fading on Jaden with 51. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah, Yeah. yeah,
yeah,
yeah, Jake Elliott, he's just not getting many opportunities at all. I didn't like what I saw from the Eagles from a kicker fantasy standpoint in that they're going for it on fourth a lot. They're not opting to kick many field goals. So I just don't think he has a very high ceiling despite the fact that like he's projected for a higher number of points and he's higher ranked than a lot of other kickers. So I'm just trying someone else.
and then kickers are pretty disposable, can't really feel too bad about it. Swapping in and out, in the middle of the season. I believe in my other fantasy league, I'm also adding and dropping a kicker. I might be casually attempting to do that in our fantasy league,
and then New York again. Jets and Giants coming up so I like that string of games. They've not fared super well against kickers.
Another one that I was debating who to get on waivers. It was going to be Chris Boswell, or who No Hard Feelings ended up picking up. Chase McLaughlin, who I nearly chose instead, but I didn't like some later games in the season for him. But that string coming up the next four games is pretty beautiful.
Atlanta who Kickers ranked first against. New Orleans, 7th rank against Baltimore, 4th, and Atlanta again. Over the next four weeks, looks pretty juicy for McLaughlin, so that was a decent pickup, I think, by Nohart Thielen.
Dashed it in,
Yeah. Who is the Cowboys uh, running back this year? I'm saying that a bit
Facetiously.
The guy that I'm trying to pick up off of
waivers,
Yeah.
He was dropped.
just waivers by, Wu Tang Financial, Rico Dodo, Dodo,
Dowdle.
Yeah
But yeah, so that's your RB1 for the Cowboys, I'm cool picking up off waivers, I don't think you drop them, but I'm not super excited about the Cowboys RB1, they don't have much of a running game at all this year, Ezekiel Elliott's not been useful from a fantasy perspective.
And Dottle could be the same way for fantasy.
Yeah, and it's interesting because I would have him and Ezekiel Elliot on my team. So I'd have that nice little handcuff. I also have the handcuff of Josh Jacobs and Emanuel Wilson. I don't feel bad about it Yeah.
I've got Bigsby to your ETN.
Yeah, so Andrew has proposed Xavier Worthy and Tank Vigsby for Josh Jacobs. feel like Josh Jacobs really cashed in at the beginning of the season when Jordan Love was injured. Maybe he's not going to be the biggest deal in the world now that Jordan Love is back. I'm not against him. I still like him, but I am weak at wide receivers. Xavier Worthy, especially with Roshi Rice going down with
injury, is now all of a sudden, hey, this is someone I feel like I need. And Tank Bigsby would be my handcuff to try to sit in. I'd be losing the RB1 to my handcuff of Josh Jacobs with Emanuel Wilson.
And to be honest, I didn't even notice that Emanuel Wilson was on there as a handcuff to Jacobs.
I just pressed the accept button.
did you really? Okay. Awesome. yeah. My thinking on that. I'd seen. Trade targets for the week saying, buy low on Josh Jacobs. That they think a fair trade would be Xavier worthy for Josh Jacobs one, one to one they weren't low on worthy at all, but it's just if you need help at running back, we think you can get Jacobs at a value this week. I'm Going to look at his upcoming schedule real quick. I think perhaps it gets a little more favorable as well. Three of the next four weeks are against teams that fare in the bottom ten against Rainbacks. So I'm hoping I'm getting a buy low there. I do like Worthy, but
Um,
off I'm hoping Jacobs instead is an every week starter, which he will be for me Unless it goes much worse this season.
And then Bigsby, I just picked up on waivers to try to initiate this trade with Will. He'd be a piece that Will would value, not only as a handcuffed Travis ETN, but he has been challenging ETN for production and carries it's getting to be a little bit of a timeshare situation and hot hand thing, which could be a nightmare.
If that fully comes fruition. ETN's still RB1, but Bixby's definitely impressing. So I think it's good to have him on your team if you have ETN in case it goes south for him,
I will say
through injury or through production.
I would likely not accept this trade if Nick Chubb weren't returning to practice this week.
Yeah.
The fact that
thought that might, that crossed my mind too.
That is a big determining factor for me willing to trade Josh Jacobs with Nick Chubb. If he comes in and he can produce close to what Josh Jacobs has projected to.
Put out throughout the rest of the season then why do I need Josh Jacobs? I've got Nick Chubb. inside my own roster. It's a one for one trade, quote unquote. So that means that either Nick Chubb or Josh Jacobs is now expendable.
I'm super excited that we did a trade on air. That's awesome I thought we might have to haggle a little bit I didn't know if you were Soured on Jacobs enough because I know you were higher on them at the beginning of the season I thought you might say no, I won't do Jacobs.
But what will you give me for ETN? In that case, I'm like at least I had Bigsby already. So I thought it could have gone that way too. And, that'd be a little harder because I do want Jacobs more than Etn at this point. Earlier in the season when we had discussed a similar trade the balance was more even in my mind for them.
But now Etn's, I'm a little worried about his role.
I'm also worried about Josh Jacobs role now that Jordan Love's back. They really, I think, leaned on him and the running game through Jordan Love's absence. Seeing that's how they utilized him during Jordan Love's absence was not convincing to me that he was going to be a performer through the end of the season.
I told you in the notes on the trade, I was like, the numbers don't make sense for this on the Yahoo projections.
of, it's more of a.
was a.
vibe.
A vibe, an emotion, a Love for the game.
Love for the game I can't, I don't know which player loves the game more. But,
No, it's about your love for the
oh, my love for it. Well, I do love trading. . , so Yahoo predicts this will help me on the 27 points and actually hurt you by 11. I don't put much stock on that. Honestly. I put forward trades where I'm actually projected negative all the time. But I know some people seem to not want to do it if it says it's negative for you.
And I wasn't sure where you fell on that.
I don't have the confidence for George Kittle or Kyle Fitz to perform consistently to where I would put them as a starting role and then still benefit
from them,
Yeah.
and that's where it really comes down to. Terry McLaurin has had a couple of good weeks after Daniels that's learned, Hey, this is how I Can throw the ball versus just run the ball for fancy points.
So I was not convinced that Jane Daniels would be able to throw the ball to Terry McLaurin. I was looking to shop him after the two
weeks. I'm of pumped that I didn't because the last two weeks, I believe, have been pretty good for him
when it comes to fancy points. Uh,
Wish I'd got him from you now because I was trying to get him as a piece in the trade. That would have worked out better, but then it was counterbalanced by ETN and Jacobs underperforming from that point in time, so I would have felt like I overpaid for them back then in week one or whatever.
Yeah, that's fair.
But yeah, would have liked McLaurin though, especially after seeing the past two weeks for him.
That trade will have a day to be reviewed, and then probably by the time we publish it'll have gone through, unless someone vetoes it, but I don't think there's any reason
I don't see a reason.
other than the commissioner's gonna veto, because he said he vetoes every one of my trades, because
No, I believe he said, I believe he said he vetoes any one of your trades with Meg.
Oh, that's right. Yeah,
Because there's a potential conflict of
serious allegation, Chris. I'm not sure I like what you're
pretty false. I
Will say that on waivers, I am trying to pick up Rico from the Dallas Cowboys. Rb1 I'm planning on dropping Gary Slayton. I'm hoping that works for me. And now we have that trade going through. So those are really my roster changes. Oh, and I also did drop a Matt Prater for Austin Siebert , the Arizona kicker for the Washington kicker. He had more points on the season and that's about it.
Yeah the waver pickups this year haven't been super exciting there hasn't been one that's just Consistently at this point. Juwan Jennings had a great game and everything was a good pickup for Chris But I can't say for sure if that's a season changing waver wire pickup I can't think of any running backs would be definite starters now.
I feel like most seasons that happens through injury or something. But I guess all the most important handcuffs were already drafted and I don't think anyone picked up one that's just taken over a lead role.
can see someone picking up Joe Flacco. Anthony Richardson was out with a concussion or hip
Mm-Hmm. Hip. He's already limited at practice, so he's trending in a good direction. At least getting a limited practice in.
All right. Which case
then I retract my statement of picking up possibly Joe Flacco if you're possibly thinking about a new quarterback.
There's still some options out there like Trevor Lawrence hasn't been that good But I think you could plug him in for a bi week if you had to
dropped him I've already dropped him, so don't worry about it. If I've dropped him, he's not worth it.
okay. Yeah, Caleb Williams is trending in a positive direction I know you're not a believer, but the past
two
weeks have been positive performances for fantasy.
he had a really good week. I think he had the really good week last
week. I don't expect that to be continuing. To me, his stock is still below purchase value. Why would you buy a stock at, 10 if you're expecting 20?
Yeah.
And you are pretty sure that it's not going to reach 20. He might be worth something where you have an extra slot because someone's on the pup list or IR, and you now have an extra roster slot so you can squeeze someone in there. Maybe then he'd be worth it. But if you're not really looking in that direction, I wouldn't bother.
Kirk Cousins Justin Herbert also available on waivers here
I feel bad for Justin Herbert.
Yeah, in what way?
He was thrown to Keenan Allen, and now he's thrown to Joshua Palmer as his wide receiver one. Nothing against Joshua Palmer, but he's no Keenan allen.
Should I do awards?
yeah, go for it. do
Okay, Might need your help on this one, because as we were talking about the Waiver Wire pickups, there haven't been too many game changing ones, and I feel like that was even more the case this week. For my Waiver Wire Wizard nominees I'm having trouble coming up with some good ones.
Looking at people who did okay production and maybe have an okay outlook I picked up Rashaun Johnson. He's looked in the two games he's played at times than DeAndre Swift even. But Swift at least had a good game last game, so maybe Johnson's not gonna potentially usurp him like a lot of people were thinking after game three.
So I don't know that'll be too influential of a pick on my season going forward. Under the radar picked up Aaron Rodgers. He's looked good in some games but I'm not either too excited or down on that pickup. The Meg picked up Trey Tucker dropping, running that Corum. Point wise, that really paid off for her this week. It was almost the difference in the game with you. But you pulled out the win. But Trey definitely gave her a better point differential there. And then best of year round, picked up DeAndre Hopkins.
Hopkins hasn't done that well this year, but I, still like, at least having the option to put in a guy that has historically been great. could turn around for him this season. So I like that one, but I'm having a tough time choosing a winner.
We don't have to we're gonna say you know what they were all mediocre They're not really a
wizard. You have to you have to be a wizard.
Okay. Fair.
something You have to be something like remarkable or I found the diamond in the rough. I think those are all, reasonable, but not necessarily game changing. They're not wizardry.
It's more of just eh, I should probably make a move.
All right. All of us are just muggles this week. As for bench blunder nominees, I'm going to award one, but I might need to talk through it with you to figure out who. I feel like most of them at least had an explanation, like you could defend yourself on the substitution.
I feel really bad about starting CanMakers over almost anyone. But as I talked about earlier, the timing of certain questionable starters worked out better that I just wanted to take the certainty and making sure that I didn't have to do injuries I couldn't cover because of the kickoff times of certain games for people like Swift and especially Jameson Williams and Xavier Worthy, and they all had much bigger games.
Under the Radar left Taysom Hill on the bench instead of Mike Gusecki. Gusecki's not a guy I, want to be in my starting lineup, so I almost want to just see rolling the dice on Hill on this week. Given that there wasn't a great option, I'm not saying that Hill's the guy that should normally be starting, but if I'm gonna roll the dice, I might like the wildly variable point totals that he could provide.
4 points. Sorry. I should say 4. 44 points. Rolls eyes. Anyway he ended up with negative 9. When you get below five fantasy points. I think at that point it's worth really throwing someone else out there that can potentially get a bunch of points. That's where Hey, you know what, as a tight end, he might catch a touchdown in a goal line situation. He might come in a wildcat formation and then score a touchdown in a run play. He might be in the wildcat but in the more of a passing style. Situation where he throws a touchdown. I personally would probably take Tyson Hill. I agree.
It's a solid nominee. I like that.
I've listed uh, Mike multiple times this year, but I've also listed myself multiple times this year. So I just want to let them know, I'm not trying to pick on them with this. I'm definitely also a nominee having cam makers in, and I have a defense of it too. And I'm sure you have a defensive ear player.
Another one that I thought maybe there's just relying on recency for performances was Wu Tang financial having Quentin Johnston in it flex over guys like Brian Thomas Jr and Rico Donald, who is now dropped. I could have definitely made an argument and feel like I had better than 50, 50 odds of putting them in over Quentin Johnston at the flex spot, given that it was a wide receiver writing back flex.
That's tough. Because it's hard when the quarterback has All mediocre options because then all of a sudden everyone's an option as a wide receiver. And I feel like that's what Justin Herbert's situation is over in Los Angeles as a part of the charters it's hard to really monitor or figure out, Hey, this is who I should be going for. I feel like Jacksonville has had a pretty rough time in the quarterback position. I'm okay With the nomination, but at the same time. It's hard for me to say I agree with that.
What about over Tyler Lockett
Oh, I would have, I would probably put Tyler Lockett over either
of them, especially with the way that the Seahawks have been playing. And to be fair, Brian Thomas Jr. has put in 10. 7, 10. 4, 4. 8 coming into this last week and then scoring 15. 9 last week. After you get like two of three, you say, I'm going to go with strong hand. I feel like the first two, maybe even three weeks, you say, I'm going to go off of last year's information or kind of off of a hunch. But after three games, I would be a little bit more inclined to say, I'm going to give the benefit to the person that scored more points.
I think Brian Thomas would be a reasonable one. I would probably have been skeptical of exactly what he'd be able to do this week. And I'll just leave it at that.
I'm not super strong conviction In the nominations, but the last one I wrote down as I was looking at the results in the matchups was you benching George Kittle again for Kyle Pitts. I've been after you twice for this, Will. William, when are you going to start George Kittle?
I don't know man, I feel like I start the wrong one every time.
Yeah, that's a tough place to be in when you're just like coin flipping and it's coming up wrong each week.
Yeah because the problem is, is that with the tight ends, they tend to be either feast or famine.
And I honestly feel like that there's been too much famine four points, 13. 6 points, zero points for George Kittle coming into this week. I almost felt like they forgot about him, that he exists.
Wasn't he injured for the zero point day?
Yeah, I don't think he was in now that you mention it. I think part of the question that I had to myself was he going to be fully healthy or healthy enough to be a contributing or key factor in the game?
And even then, it was a big question mark the big key play that he had was a touchstone reception. I did not actually watch it, but I did read some articles on the idea behind the play call. George Kittle was surprised that there was a play call for him to receive the ball into possibly double coverage. And it ended up being, I think, double or triple coverage and having to basically quote unquote Randy Moss, three New England defensive backs to be able to catch that touchdown.
without that play, I think he was nothing.
week three he was declared out before the game versus the Rams, so that's why he's got zero points there. I don't know, Will. What do you think? Who should be our bench blender of the week? I don't have one that stands out to me more than the others.
Man I think routine financial, you were saying he had Quentin Johnson and instead of Johnston.
You didn't mind that though, right?
Part of it too is going off of the skepticism of what a four point person would have so that removes Mikey from the situation
and then also with George Kittle. Being out the previous week with injury also, I feel like excludes him to a degree. He was, I think, questionable running into this week.
So his ability to contribute was again, questionable. So I think that kind of leaves only really one option, one reasonable option.
It could be me.
I Don't think it, I would love to smack
talk. You, I don't get me wrong. I love to smack talk you, but I don't really feel, that's really enough to, to really to really say.
I felt like I played it too safe because the guys were trending like they were all gonna play But I was like, oh they still have questionable tags if two of three are out, I'm screwed
I don't feel that strong about Kmakers now, especially With Joe Mixon coming back.
But, okay. If you want to award it to Wu Tang Financial this week,
I will do it with an asterisk of saying there was no better option.
that's good. No one's being completely irresponsible with their pitches,
I
Yeah, no.
do you wanna do the hot takes? Want to do the thing
Thing. Oh my
where we make, completely random guesses and see if we can pick heads or tails.
Oh man.
Oh, I'll bring up that. Your one from week three did not come to fruition.
Uh, you said that Joe Burrow would have at least two touchdowns and 300 yards. He got the two touchdowns, but only 232 yards.
Didn't get that one. I didn't get mine with the highest points in the season total with no hard feelings and Mitchy Mitch. But my Jaden Daniels prediction for the entire season is going well. What can we guess wrong next week?
That's a real good question. Do you have one that. stands out for you?
I do. I have two, a kind of short term one and a long term one. In the short term, I'm looking at how bad this Patriots Dolphins game is gonna be. The over under on it is 35. 5 points. And I'm going to take the under on that. They have struggled so much to get touchdowns. With Jacoby Brissett quarterback, the Patriots have averaged just 13 points and 238 yards a game.
The Dolphins are averaging 11. 3 points. Each team has four touchdowns through four games. And that's even skewed to the positive since the dolphins have no touchdowns since when Tua was healthy. And the Patriots only have one in the past two weeks. So I'm going to say that I'll take the under on the 35.
5 points. Between the two of them, and I'll only give them one touchdown combined
Oh man.
I'm making it rough on myself trying to be So, specific, but just one, one touchdown is my guess.
according to Andrew, if you have a Dolphins or a Patriots player, you should not be starting them this week.
I'm streaming
Patriots defense just because I don't think the Dolphins are going to do anything.
feel like, so my hot take is that Aaron Rodgers will not play in the fourth quarter, or will exit in the fourth quarter, meaning that they're going to be behind enough to where they're going to bench Aaron Rogers and let the next player play.
And who are they against? This week?
That's like cheating?
to ask me that question.
How's it cheating?
They're against Minnesota.
Oh, okay, I guess you couldn't remember. Okay.
Yeah, I couldn't remember. I feel like Minnesota is going to really just dominate the offense side of the ball to where Aaron Rogers is not going to be able to keep up.
And therefore they're going to say, you know what, we're going to preserve our QB one. We're going to let someone else play at some point in the fourth quarter.
It'll be like the bills this week,
Yeah.
Alan said.
Yeah, he's not going to be worth starting. Mikey Pete has Aaron Rogers and he also has taste some Hill as a quarterback and Anthony Richardson, I would honestly start Anthony Richardson.
I know he's had some struggling. He says the struggles, but you know what? Mike. Start Anthony Richardson. I love to smack on Bears fans because I'm a Packers fan. I also love to smack on Colts fans because we live in Indiana. And I love to give them a dose of reality. But you know what? Start Anthony Richardson. Please, If you want to win, please start Anthony Richardson.
If you got Patrick Mahomes, is he still an every week starter? Or do you need to have a pretty solid streaming backup to use on positive matchups?
I think you have to have a good backup to start him. Patrick Mahomes is going to give you consistent points.
Yeah,
Is he going to be the best option? Maybe not. But at the same time, I very much doubt that he's ever going to score you 15 points in a game or less. He's gonna score you 15 or more, most likely 18 or more in a game. And at that point, you know what? It's worth keeping him.
Yeah, I just I am worried about who he has to throw to Losing Rishi Rice, Hollywood Brown earlier in the season and then your writing game's hurting with Pacheco out he's got Xavier Worthy And
And,
for you now.
and there's some discussion that they might possibly add Devante Adams.
Oh, is there really?
Yes, there's discussion on ESPN. They've done a reality check on exactly where Devante Adams might end up.
Yeah. I had heard more of the
jets.
He has officially asked for a trade before it was he might get traded.
Now he's Hey, I would like to be traded. Depending on what his personal goals are, I feel like Kansas city is the best place because Patrick, my homes plus Devante Adams, plus see if you're worthy is still very much a super bowl contender. Whereas Xavier worthy. As your wide receiver one, no offense to consider the receiver worthy.
I, I have faith in them because I accepted the trade, but at the same time, I don't think that's really enough with Travis Kelce to become an offensive powerhouse or a threat enough to where we say we're going to deny the run and then just play the pass. To where we make sure we stop the run at they try to pass the Xavier worthy or Travis Kelsey, those are their main two targets. They're not really gonna really bother with anyone else. I think the chiefs are a reasonable Devante Adams. And that scenario would be mind boggling.
Yeah, that would change. My second hot take here if they have Devante Adams. But right now. I'm thinking that Mahomes is going to be pretty middling this season. Given the slow start, even before the injuries and then the injuries compounding over it, I bet he finishes as a double digit fantasy QB.
So outside of the top nine, at least I'm going to say not necessarily outside of the top 10 because I could really see him falling right there at 10 and I don't want to go that far. But yeah, I think he'll be in the double digits. Right now he's 16th. And while they do have a history of getting better as the year goes on he's fighting against the injuries to his wide receivers.
He finished 2022 as number one QB in 2023 as the number eight. So this would be continuing a downward trend for him if that did come to pass.
And that's one of the reasons why I believe that Devante Adams is destined to go to Kansas
that, that would be awesome. And if that happened I'd want to retract the prediction. I think that alone could
So, so so we're gonna, we're gonna create a little
asterisk next year, your take to say if Devonta Adams does not go to Kansas City, then
Sure. Why not? I can make it that specific cause it only helps me. So yeah, this is all assuming Devante Adams does not go there, which is new information to me that it could happen.
To be fair the article that I read had, I think six different teams where Devonta Adams could go to. That included the Jets, the Packers, the Bills the Chiefs, and I don't remember the other ones. But those are the ones that were interesting to me to see. Especially, the big thing was that Roshy Rice going down, it sounds like to me that he's going to be missing enough time to where Kansas City wants to make a move.
Yeah. That'd be really interesting.
I think we are good to close out. If you notice any errors please let us know. We are very happy to accept humility in our lives amongst casual sports fans.
We'll kick off week five. Get out there, make those waiver wire claims. Send me your trade offers. Do it.
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!
