Transcription
The preseason's officially over. We have actual players being named starters. We have injury updates. And lastly, I need to take a few L's before the season even starts because I can already tell you, yeah, I had some early on takes that are looking wrong.
Now, I'm going to get out all the things that we've already talked about this week. First thing is, yes, Jaylen McMillan and Chris Godwin are both injured. So, I moved up Mike Evans in our rankings considerably. We actually have Mike Evans now, wide receiver, 13th overall. I would take him as early as the middle of the third, but honestly, if you get him in the fourth, phenomenal value. And then with Igbuka, I moved Ibuka up to 61 overall at wide receiver 31. In reality, if you're using our draft sheets, you probably didn't have to take them nearly this high. With our draft sheets, we are averaging out the 80p for the platform you're drafting on, with my ranking for your specific league format to come up with a power ranking. And there you'll probably see our draft sheet suggest you taking a puka in round seven or round eight because in a more casual fantasy football league, I wouldn't expect your league mates to take him in round six.
And then going over to another update that we have to give is with the Brian Robinson trade. We have Shanahan coming through and saying obviously they are trading for Brian Robinson to be their number two back. So, this means in my opinion, it's about time to just move on from Isaac Gindo. We moved Gindo dramatically down our rankings to RB73. I mean, hell, I'd even look at like the backups for the Los Angeles Rams. I look at Woody Margs. I look at so many other players ahead of this dude. And then when we're looking at Brian Robinson, I moved him down to RB45 in my rankings. There's no way in hell you ever start him with a healthy McAffrey. You would only ever start him with an injured one.
Now going over to Tyler Warren. I've talked about him all preseason. He played 34 out of 35 potential snaps with the starters in the preseason. He is going to be an every-down player starting day one just like Brock Bowers was. Now, do I think he's as talented as Brock Bowers? No. But honestly, I'm going to be moving him inside the same tier as TJ Hawkinson. We had him at Titan six already, but I was viewing Hawkinson a tier ahead of him. Now, I think it's up to you and you can go in either direction.
Now, that's all old news. Let's get to the new stuff now. Starting off with me needing to take a massive L. Y'all know I was making fun of people for drafting Marvin Mims as high as they were in underdog drafts early in the offseason. I was sitting here going, "How the hell are you going to be taking Marvin Mims at this kind of cost when last year he played 27% of the snaps?" Yes, he ran 2.85 yards per route run. That's phenomenal. But for him to be out there for only what, um 10.4 routes per game according to flockfantasy.com. It's embarrassing for when he was getting drafted. However, you have the slot wide receiver getting traded out of Denver and the final preseason game. We have Bo Nicks playing three drives. Marvin Mims ran 100% of the routes. So, in those underdog basketball drafts, if you were taking Marvin Mims where he was going, you honestly were probably making the right call. And I even have moved Marvin Mims up in our rankings to the point where I think you could roster him in a regular ESPN league, a regular Yahoo league, a regular sleeper league. I move Marvin Mims up to wide receiver 58 right behind Rashad Baitman, Luther Bird, and Keenan Allen.
Now, if you're using our draft sheets for a start, two wide receiver, one flex league, Marvin Mims probably doesn't have the upside to make a difference in that kind of format. You should probably take a running back instead. Where Mims could make a difference is if you're in a league where you have to start at three wide receivers or you have multiple flex spots like the Flock league. There he could potentially be interesting.
Now another thing we haven't talked about is Joe Flacco officially being named the starting quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. Now I completely understand this was kind of the expectations for a lot of people including myself. I took Jerry Judy in round seven of the Flock League with the expectations yeah Flaco is probably going to be the guy. But if we go over and we look at Joe Flacco on flockfantasy.com, you can see that if we go season by season for him, Joe Flacco has not played more than nine NFL games since 2017. I was graduating high school the last time Joe Flacco played more than half a season. So I would not expect him to be the starter the entire year. I would expect the passing volume to look pretty good here at the beginning of the season and that's going to trail off dramatically near the end of the season. So, as somebody who drafted Jerry Judy in round seven in the Flock League, I'm actually going to be probably looking to sell him high about a month into the year to be honest with you, hoping that he starts off really hot with Flaco.
Now, I know we need to talk about David Andoko as well because David and Jojooko was phenomenal when Joe Flaco's been his starting quarterback, but with that being said, Harold Fannon actually has been getting a decent amount of work in Cleveland. Harold Fannon's been getting used all across the field. He got decent NFL draft capital as well. Do I think you should go out there and pick up Fannon? Hell to the no. Maybe in a dynasty league. Sure, definitely roster him. But I mean, in your regular redraft league, he's not going to make a difference outside of potentially capping the overall ceiling of David and Jooku. But in reality, they don't have a wide receiver too in this offense. So, it makes sense that they're going to get two tight ends involved.
Now, the other thing that we need to talk about is going to be the Jaden Blue ankle sprain. He remains hopeful for week one. So, I am going to have the devs put on flockfantasy.com the ability for us to get out our week one rankings very soon. And there you will see that Javvante Williams is probably going to rank well. I mean, he looks like he's going to be the starting running back week one. Jaden Blue injured. Miles Sanders really the only other guy. Now, do I think you should start him? Probably not. Unless you're like a 14 team, 16 team league. I'd imagine you drafted a better running back too. It's going to be a brutal matchup against the Philadelphia Eagles. But right now, early in the year, it looks like Javvante is going to be the starting running back and Jaden Blue is probably going to just get his timetable pushed back into the season for when you would assume that he actually has a shot at taking over this starting job. But I would be rostering my Sanders as well. Make sure you're rostering both Javvante and Sanders. Sanders is the perfect player to stick at the end of your bench because if you end up getting like I don't know only 25% of the snaps played for in week one, he's the easiest cut ever and you'll have somebody exciting to pick up off the waiver wire. But who knows, there is an outside chance that my Sanders does take over as the starting running back.
Now if you need help figuring out the best waiver wire names available to you, I would highly recommend linking your team with flockfantasy.com. If you link your team with the site, you can actually see in the far column the best available waiver wire options according to our expert average rankings or you could sort this by my ranking specifically. But there are a bunch of tools that you need to make sure that you are using on this site because they are set up to help you win your fantasy league such as our trade calculator, our my teams page, our range of outcomes tool, the weekly rankings, the rest of season rankings. And if you want to get access to all of it throughout the entire year, we currently have the best offer that we've ever ran on flockfantasy.com. $34 gets you access to everything for the entire season up until January 1st. And it's not even a subscription. It's just a one-time payment. And if you use code flock, I'm going to be answering your start questions and your trade questions in the live stream that we're doing every single night. And I can confidently say that this is both the best product for you to win your fantasy league and it's the cheapest at the same time.
But moving over to our next blurb, we need to talk about Jawan Jennings is expected to be available week one. However, Jawan Jennings still isn't happy with his current contract situation in San Francisco. So we don't know what this situation setting up to be. I have Jawan Jennings ranked as like a mid wide receiver four. I understand a lot of people are very excited about him because you go through and you look at the situation, it's an offense that's supposed to score a lot of fantasy points and at the same time, I mean, they don't really have an established alpha. But if we go through and we look at Jawan Jennings's NFL career, this dude has had, I want to say, a total of three games or I apologize, four games in the first four years of his NFL career where he has scored 20 or more fantasy points. Last year he looked really good when everybody was injured, but two years ago he ran 1.2 yards per route run. I don't know how good Jawan Jennings is versus him being just propped up in a really good situation last year. So for me, if you look at my rankings on the site, I am much higher than the expert average on Ricky Pierall. I have Ricky Pieraw ranked up as a low-end wide receiver three and I think he is a very strong target in your regular redraft play if this Jennings situation means that he is not the number one wide receiver for San Francisco this year.
Now the Miami backfield's completely changed over the past few weeks. First thing is Devon Achane had the calf injury but right now reports are saying he's had no setbacks and Devon Achane's good to go for week one. I think that should be your plans. I think you should be planning on starting him. However, I wouldn't fault you at all if you wanted to make sure that you had the backup, but the backup is not going to be Jaylen Wright. Jaylen Wright's actually going to be out for a couple weeks with an undisclosed leg injury. And Olly Gordon has been given the chance to shine. We go through and we look at Olly Gordon in the preseason. He had 26 rush attempts, 126 rushing yards, good for a 4.8 yards per carry, and a rushing touchdown. In comparison to Jaylen Wright at 1.5 yards per carry this preseason. And while it's great to hear that Devon Achane has had no setbacks and he's good to go for week one, there were rumors that Brian Robinson was a potential ad for this team. And I think that speaks a lot to both the Achane and Jaylen Wright injuries. So I moved up Olly Gordon considerably in our rankings up to RB55. We move Jaylen Wright down to a range where if you have him, I would cut him and pick up Olly Gordon instead.
Now, little update with Jordan Love. Sounds like he's going to be good to go. I don't think that should be too big of a surprise for people, but if you had a Packer, don't stress. Now, the surprise that I saw was the Chargers general manager is coming out here trying to tell us that Naji Harris could be good to go for week one. If you see this quote, maybe you spaz, maybe you go, "Oh my gosh, I need to move Amarian Hampton down our rankings. We are initially drafting Amarian Hampton at the four-five turn. This Naji Harris injury situation pushed Amarian Hampton up to the third. Do we need to move him back down to the fourth? Do we need to move him back down to the fifth?" Not at all. Naji Harris has yet to practice. He had the firework incident on July 4th. I don't know if you've heard, but it's a pretty big holiday where fireworks get shot off. That was almost two months ago, and the dude hasn't practiced. It's not like he has the familiarity with this system or this coaching staff. He was going to have to come to training camp and he was going to have to get the reps in. He was going to have to learn it just like Amari and Hampton would. The thought process was maybe the veteran's going to just pick it up a little bit faster. He was going to have the role at the beginning of the year and then once Hampton got up to speed, they were going to go ahead and give the job to Hampton. But Hampton's been the guy at training camp. Hampton's been the guy from day one. Naji doesn't have the juice. He doesn't have the same athletic profile at this point of his career that Amari Hampton does. So, I would not panic on Hampton. I I don't even know if this is going to be true. If I was a betting man, I'd probably say Naji isn't playing week one. But, it is a blurb that's been circulating. I'm not moving him up my rankings dramatically. I have Naji at RB54 and I'm not moving Hampton down my rankings dramatically.
Now, this was maybe one of the biggest stories that we've seen in quite some time. So, we have Benjamin Albright coming through and saying that JK Dobbins is the starting running back for the Denver Broncos. He and Tyler Batty are the only guys that have shown successful pass protection, which you need to have to play for Sean Payton. So, now everybody is losing their minds when it comes to RJ Harvey. And I even see comments on our latest running back rankings video going, "Oh my gosh, how are you ranking the rookies so high? They're not even the starters in their own backfields." We are not drafting our teams for week one. We are drafting our teams for the upside in the second half of the season. And what can RJ Harvey do in this second half? RJ Harvey realistically could turn into a three-down running back. So, I am still going to rank R.J. Harvey over JK Dobbins rest of season. Now, yes, we'll put Dobbins ahead of RJ Harvey in our week one rankings, but we're going to expect that the rookie expands his role as the year goes on. I have RJ Harvey at running back 22, and I have JK Dobbins at running back 35. I think Dobbins can be a great play if you really need some help early, but I would not be banking on him through the entire season. I think later in the year he'll kind of just turn into a premium handcuff bag that you can start if you were desperate.
Now going over looking at Jackson Dart. Obviously you're never drafting Jackson Dart unless you play in a Superflex draft. And even then if you play in a 10 team, 12 team Superflex league, I still really wouldn't be looking at Dart. But I am more confident in Malik Neighbors now in round one because of the Jackson Dart preseason. Dart wasn't just good. He was phenomenal. 424 total yards, four total touchdowns, and 80% adjusted completion percentage, and zero interceptions. Now, obviously, this is against backups. I'm not sitting here saying that Jackson Dart is the best quarterback in New York. I'm not sitting here saying that Jackson Dart's going to be the next Jaden Daniels, the next Bo Nix. He could still very easily be an NFL bust. We have no idea. But just to see the upside, see that there is some light at the end of the tunnel in what appears to be, I mean, back-to-back years of the Giants being a bottom five offense in the NFL. The thing that would limit Malik Neighbors from turning into a top three wide receiver in fantasy would be this offense. And if Dart can help with that, obviously we have to be excited.
And lastly, I wish I had a Terry McLaren update for you, but sadly um at the time of this recording on August 25th, we have not heard anything regarding the Terry McLaren situation. So, the reality of the situation is if you drafted Terry McLaren, you're just going to have to hold your breath. Hope that he's good to go. But right now, we just do not have that type of clarity. But I really appreciate you. Really hope I was able to help you out with this. And what I can guarantee will help you way more than just a single YouTube video is getting the season pass to flockfantasy.com. Getting every fantasy football tool at your fingertips and making sure that you have those updated weekly rankings and tiers. Rest of season rankings and tiers every single week through the entire year. It's by far and away the best deal we've ever done. $34 one-time payment gets you access to everything until January 1st. And on top of that, you are going to be getting me to answer your start sit questions and your trade questions in the live stream that we are doing every single night during the season. But I really appreciate you. Really hope I was able to help you out and really hope I get to see you out in the live stream later.