Transcription
Literally right when I started setting up this live stream to update our rankings for y'all, we just got the word that Drake London downgraded to questionable. This is already with it looking like Kurt Cousins is going to be the starter for the Atlanta Falcons. So, we actually have a considerable amount that we need to talk about here with these updates as we go through and take a look at our rankings.
So, first thing is Drake London downgraded to questionable for week eight. I cannot imagine being a Drake London owner where you are maybe struggling to just fill out a starting lineup with all the by-weeks and now you are having to deal with this as well. This is going to be something to monitor for sure. I will say if London misses obviously you needed to go through and you need to move up Kyle Pittz in your rankings dramatically and on top of that you will need to move up Darnell Mooney.
Now moving over to our next one, Christian Watson activated from the PUP list. You can pick them up, put them on your bench if you really want to, but I would definitely not start him this week, even if you are just extremely desperate. Don't really care about the Trevon Diggs stuff. Kareem Hunt is going to play week eight, so something that we will have to re-evaluate honestly is going to be where we have Isaiah Pacheco in our rankings. I thought Isaiah Pacheco could have been very appealing if you had no Kareem Hunt this week. And also, if you had Rashad Smith, it may be wise to move him to a different handcuffed running back off the waiver wire.
Um, Tyrod Taylor ruled out for week eight. So, this is going to be the Justin Fields show as well. Justin Fields is going to be the starter. Terry McLaurin and Deebo Samuel both are going to be playing in week eight with Mariota as their quarterback. I'll show you their projections. I'll show you their rankings in a second, but long story short, do not start these players.
This was the big surprise. I've been coming out here with the most confidence possible, saying we are going to have Lamar Jackson back this week. Wheels up for Zay Flowers, wheels up for Derrick Henry. And clearly that was oh so wrong. Lamar Jackson not playing week eight. This is despite being at practice in, I mean, I want to say since Wednesday. He was at practice Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And yeah, Lamar Jackson not good to go week eight. This will make us lower Derrick Henry and Zay Flowers in our ranks.
Um, Saquon Barkley don't care whatsoever. Let's see. And I know that we have some trade rumors circling around Brian Thomas. I'm not going to speak too much on them unless we were actually to see a legitimate trade. But Kirk Cousins considered highly likely to start at quarterback for the Falcons in week eight with Michael Pittman Jr. I think he has a bone bruise on his knee listed as questionable.
Um, Nico Collins, Christian Kirk, both listed as out. This is going to make Jaylen Wright and Jaden Higgins viable if you are under the most desperate of circumstances. Brandon Aiyuk could have 21-day practice window open next week. So, realistically, I do think we have to slowly but surely start moving Aiyuk up our rankings. Brock Purdy is ruled out. Ricky Pierce is ruled out. Make sure you have George Kittle in your lineup. DeAndre Swift's going to play. And let's see if there's anything else. AJ Brown being out, you obviously have to bump DeVonta Smith. You'll see that in our rankings in just one second. As well as the fact that you need to go through and you need to bump Dallas Goedert.
But let me go ahead and let's pull up our updated rankings on the site and let me show you some of these notable names. I mean, obviously, we can look at a player like DeVonta Smith, who I now have as our wide receiver six in our rankings this week, and you could say like, "Oh, yeah, he's a must-start name." You're already probably starting him anyway.
Now, the thing that we're going to have to, I think that's interesting to talk about is maybe where we're putting some of these wide receivers that the guys in front of them are out. I have T.J. Hockenson at wide receiver 32 as a viable name. I have Jaylen Wright and Jaden Higgins, wide receiver 40 and wide receiver 41 in the same tier with guys like DJ Moore, Kendrick Bourne, Jerry Judy, Darnell Mooney. Obviously, I will update these rankings and Darnell Mooney would be sliding up to the A-tier wide receivers and I probably would rather start Darnell Mooney over Deebo Samuel and Terry McLaurin if you were to not have Drake London in this game. But right now, I'm not going to be moving Mooney up dramatically. I'm not going to be taking London out until we get official word. But I want to remind you, of course, I'm going to be live streaming later tonight giving additional injury updates. I'll be live streaming tomorrow morning giving additional injury updates. So, just make sure you go ahead, drop a like on this live stream, come out to those streams. I'll be answering all your questions. And of course, if you wanted to get guaranteed free questions for those live streams, you can actually do so by taking advantage of the offer on Underdog Fantasy.
I'll go ahead and I'll show you the projection rankings on Underdog Fantasy for the games tomorrow in a second, but I want to remind you that Underdog Fantasy is the number one sports app in the app store. They essentially have been for, I want to say about four weeks now. It's essentially lines up with exactly the time they started having the best promos in the industry. I've been with them as my only sponsor for five years and I've never seen anything like this. $100 added to your account after you play your first five. And on top of that, you'll get a free Jordan Love pick, higher or lower, half a total yard against the Green Bay Packers as well. You'll get both of those promos with code Flock. Underdog Fantasy is the number one sports app in the app store because it's an incredible app available in almost every state. The best promos in the industry and you'll get free questions in the live streams that we're doing every single day going into the future. Um, if you use code Flock on Underdog Fantasy.
And one thing that I will point out as well, looking at the projections with Dallas Goedert. Dallas currently higher or lower 51 and a half receiving yards. This feels really good for me having Goedert knowing that, um, I can bank on more targets going his direction with no AJ Brown. Like for reference, Michael Pittman Jr. is higher or lower 48 and a half receiving yards in this game. But one thing that we always do every Saturday because I'll always tell you like, I know everybody here in the comment section, y'all are all geniuses. I'm an idiot and I completely understand that and I would never argue against it. But I'll tell you who is not an idiot and I'll tell you what is going to be tough for you to go up against is going to be those projections on Underdog Fantasy. I think a lot of times they are extremely valuable if you were looking at them in terms of just getting baseline expectations. You can tell these are not my exact rankings on FlockFantasy.com because in my rankings I also take into account probability of scoring a touchdown given the offensive output as well as the receiving role. But one thing I always like doing is going and ranking these players in order of their actual yardage projections on Underdog that you could go higher or lower on.
Right now, this is the tier of running backs that Underdog has as start players kind of regardless of your situation. And I know a lot of people are going to be wanting to get these guys in their lineup just because with the amount of by-weeks, if you're losing someone like J.K. Dobbins, if you have an injury to like Bucky Irving, you're not going to have an option, right? But they have Bijan high or lower 135 yards, Taylor 122, CMC 115, Barkley actually gets bumped up with the projections because you have no AJ Brown. So all of a sudden you're actually going to see Saquon Barkley just, um, having more usage. They're going to have to run the ball a bit more. So obviously I'm starting Saquon Barkley kind of regardless of if they would have AJ Brown or not. Ah, higher or lower 102 and a half total yards. Derrick Henry is still higher or lower 98 and a half total yards. So despite Lamar Jackson not being in this game, you still need to start Derrick Henry. Then you have James Cook 92, Breece Hall 90, Rachaad White 88, Josh Jacobs 86, Javonte Williams 82, Kyren Williams 82, Tyjae Spears 80, Jaylen Warren 79, and then DeAndre Swift 74, D'Andre Swift 72, Chase Brown 71, and Alvin Kamara 70.
Now again, are these my exact rankings? No. If you check out my rankings on the site, I'm going to have Derrick Henry much lower than this because I think that James Cook, um, Rachaad White, Josh Jacobs, they're going to catch the ball more than Derrick Henry will. I'll have Breece Hall ranked a lot lower than this because I think Breece Hall is a lot less likely to see a touchdown than somebody like Josh Jacobs, but this is a very good baseline to get an expectation of maybe the running backs that project as guys that you could go ahead and start.
Now, the running backs that I would say are the guys that project out as players that you should be benching are actually going to be Tony Pollard as the first name. I actually have Pollard ranked a lot lower than this in my rankings myself. He is on my own bench this week who is higher or lower 59 and a half. Then you have Mark Ingram 58, Dameon Pierce 58, Isaiah Pacheco 56, J.K. Dobbins 56. So one thing that I'm going to have to do again and you can see this backed up with the projections currently on Underdog is I'm going to need to go through and I personally need to move Isaiah Pacheco down my rankings because Kareem Hunt is going to play today. So all of a sudden you do have concerns that this is more so a committee. Then Alexander Mattison, Nick Chubb, Spears, Gainwell, Pine, Harvey, Henderson, Justice Hill. Most these running backs are essentially just handcuff RBs. I hope you don't have to start them. Um, I understand that some of y'all are going to just because of how down bad y'all must be.
And let me see, does the Jackson Dart fantasy points out? I mean, we showed off Jackson Dart higher or lower 15.5 points for so long yesterday that I figured enough y'all were going to take the higher than 15 and a half. That does get moved higher or lower 16 and a half on Dart this week. But that's just a side note. I was just interested in seeing that. Um, but anyway, let's go over to wide receiver and let's look at the players that more likely than not you should put in your starting lineup based off these projections.
Obviously, we do not need to talk about the players like Ja'Marr Chase, who's higher or lower 85 and a half total yards, has the best projections of any wide receiver in fantasy at the moment. Do not bench Ja'Marr Chase. You don't need me to tell you that. But also in this top tier, you have Puka Nacua, CeeDee Lamb, and DeVonta Smith as the best projections on the week. Maybe one of y'all would be crazy enough to bench DeVonta Smith with no AJ Brown. And just in case we have one of those goofballs in this live stream, I will say out loud, if DeVonta Smith is on your bench, make sure you put him in your starting lineup. We have Rashee Rice, that's higher or lower 67. Then we have A.J. Brown 64 and a half, London 62 and a half. Waddle 61 and a half, Courtland Sutton 60. All these wide receivers are must-start names. Now, personally, I don't have it ranked this way. Personally, I have Courtland Sutton ranked higher than this just given the fact that you do have a great matchup against Dallas. I think the ceiling is really, really strong there.
Now, moving over to the massive tier wide receivers that all project similarly, you have Pickens, Worthy, T. Higgins, McLaurin, T.J. Hockenson, Romeo Doubs, DK Metcalf, Stefon Diggs, Romeo Doubs, all between 57 and 54. I actually do like the idea and we are going to do this together because right now I have an Underdog promo pickum. I don't always have these so we haven't always been doing this on these live streams but I actually like the idea of going with George Pickens higher than 10.35 fantasy points. While he does project in the same tier as guys like Worthy, T. Higgins, McLaurin, I personally am fine sticking with Pickens and saying that he should project out a lot closer to that top end range even in a tough matchup against the Denver Broncos and even with us having CeeDee Lamb back in this offense.
Now, moving over to the wide receivers that project out as players that you could potentially put on your bench, you have Zay Flowers 52 and a half. Obviously, Flowers was much higher in our rankings earlier in the week, but with Lamar being out, I think that Flowers is borderline benchable if you're not dealing with too many by-weeks. Then Wandale Robinson, Michael Pittman, Deebo Samuel. All these players are 52 and a half to 48 and a half. Then we have Terry McLaurin, Khalil Shakir, Shaheed, Keon Coleman, Jerry Judy, T.J. Hockenson, then Matthew Golden, Darnell Mooney, DJ Moore, Alec Pierce, Shaquon Jennings, Alec Anderson, then Jaylen Wright, Jaden Higgins, Troy Franklin, Kendrick Bourne, Sterling Shepard, Kahan Booty, Legette. I would say that these last two tiers are players that you need to be benching. However, Darnell Mooney's projection is going to be something that's very interesting to follow as we get updates with Drake London. I am sure that Underdog's taken down the Darnell Mooney projection. They have not taken it down, but they have risen it dramatically. Right before we started this live stream, right before we got word that it looked like there was a chance that you were going to have no Drake London in this game, you had Darnell Mooney higher or lower 38 and a half total yards. That has since moving up to 46 and a half. If you were to now look at the range in which Darnell Mooney projects alongside, that range is more so with the guys like Terry McLaurin and Khalil Shakir. So Darnell Mooney is getting steamed up. And honestly, what's hilarious is at the very beginning of our video, we said, "Oh, okay. London's out. We're going to move him next to Shakir and Terry McLaurin." Which it looks like that's exactly what Underdog's already done.
Um, realistically, right now, you probably shouldn't plan on starting them. Let me see if they have projections up for London still or if they've taken these down. They've moved Drake London down to higher or lower 59 and a half. Previously London was higher or lower 62 and a half, which is going to be interesting here.
Now let's let me know with these pickums if there's anything that stands out to y'all that you're like, "Mason, this is really interesting. I like this projection to go higher or lower." I currently have Pickens and Michael Pittman selected right now. Pittman to go higher than 48 and a half yards. George Pickens to score more than 10.35 fantasy points. But we are looking for a third thing to take so we can take advantage of this 50% profit boost token. Y'all know normally we don't submit pickum slips in these live streams, but when we have a 50% profit boost token, I want to take advantage. You know, something I may actually do is because you have the Bengals favored by about a touchdown, I think we may actually look at Chase Brown going higher than 52 and a half total yards. But yeah, in that case, we it's a 9.25x and we can flex this. This is what we're going to do. Let's flex this entry because I need to book at least a single win because I don't know if y'all know this about me, but I'm the biggest fish on the planet. I think we've gone 0 for a thousand in our last Underdog pickums. So, we're going to flex this. So, if we get three right, 50 will turn into about $220. But, if we get two right, I think that 50 will turn into about 80. And then obviously, if we only get one or zero right, we lose. But, I like the flex entry here. So, we know that we're most likely getting at least something back.
But, I think that's all I got for y'all. Of course, I'll be live tonight. I'll be live tomorrow morning answering all your questions. So, just make sure you're subscribed if you haven't already. And if you wanted to get guaranteed questions for those live streams, you can always do so by taking advantage of that offer over there on Underdog Fantasy like we already discussed. If you go over to Underdog Fantasy and use promo code Flock, you'll get a $100 added to your account after you play your first five. And on top of that, you'll get a free Jordan Love pick. Higher or lower, half a total yard for Sunday's game. Underdog Fantasy is the number one sports app in the app store. And it's been that way for about the past month because for the past month, including today, they have the best promos in the industry. And on top of that, they're available in almost every single state. And they're an incredible app. Code Flock will get you all those promos and it'll get you free questions for the live streams that we're doing. Um, and I'm streaming every single day until Christmas answering your questions. But I think that's all I got for y'all. I really appreciate you and I really hope I get to see you out with the live stream, um, later.