Key Takeaways from the AFC East

of weeks. Good to have you back on the show. Um. I can't say Matt filled in for you because you're both co hosts, but it's nice to have you back. I think you're you're here more often so it feels like you're co host one A. But but you're you know, but I love all my kids equally, all right, but can I be one A plus? Uh, we don't do pluses in the show. I thought of the off season, they're allowed. I thought we determined that if two yeah, you know what, I can't go there. I can't go there.

The premise of the next several shows is we're going to look back and last year, go through every team and every notable player and give you sort of our key takeaways from the year, Like if there's one thing you need to know about every every one of the players, every meaningful player, Like you know, we're talking about guys that you generally started. You know, we're in the starts, start bench conversation every week. You know, what was the

one thing to take away? They weren't blow sea level, that's right, not C minus level Sea level guys most weeks are higher on Fantasy Football Weekly. Um. So these are quick hit er observations. These are not in depth dives. But this is just a broad look at all of the players. And we're starting with the a f C East, which had uh turns out, you know, you don't think the C is a fantasy powerhouse, but there was a lot happening under the hood of the a f C East.

There's certainly a powerhouse and there certain and that's Buffalo. Let's let's just start right there. Makes sense. Josh Allen, I think this last year proved that the year before was not a fluke. His running throwing combo makes him

Fantasy Football's most reliable and most potent fantasy quarterback. Yeah, he's a guy I think even in one quarterback leagues, I don't think we'll see him taking in a lot of first rounds, but mid to late second, early third, which I know we probably saw Lamar Jackson going that early on a couple of years ago, coming off his massive season, and that was kind of disappointment. But Alan's got that same upside. He's an absolute game changer at the position, which I'm sure you're gonna dive into a

little more. Great passers don't have his rushing and great rushers don't have his passing. He is the only quarterback that really gives you both. Uh with Lamar Jackson having having two straight down passing years and Josh Allen doing it in consecutive years, I think we can safely say that Devin Singletary had the third year breakout, which is it's not like it never happens with running backs, but usually by two, if you don't have it, you don't

have it. And Singletary looked good, dominating Zack Moss and every other Buffalo runner and eventually just relegating everybody else to the bench and just eating up the Lion's share of the workload by the end of the season. It almost took half a season before they turned him into a bell cow. But once they even Matt Barrita was getting some significant run in the mid towards the middle of the season. But yeah, the Singletary went off and going into the playoffs he was great. So and I'll

touch on that out. He scored two times in the first fourteen weeks Stephen Singletary did. Then he scored had a feeling nine times in Buffalo's final six games, nine times in six games. He will be a prime do the opposite target Devin Singletary will be in next year's draft. I doubt he even had nine touchdowns in his career prior to it. Definitely did not know he did it in the final six games, including the playoffs. Stefan Diggs.

I felt like, get down here for Diggs. He had twenty fewer catches, three fewer yards, but he set a career high in touchdowns with ten touchdowns. Do you know how many games Steffon Diggs had with no touchdowns and fewer than fifty receiving yards this year touchdowns? I'll say one, zero zero. I mean that's the That's the thing you love about Digs is he didn't give you the heartbreaking, you know, three point game four point game. You know, he always was giving you you know, the fifty yards

were accompanied by you know, four catches. He was you know, his bottom end was the nine point game, not the three point game. And he didn't have that handful of like two yard two touchdown games that he was having in splash games. There was still certainly a possibility for more of those there were. Let's stick with the wide receivers.

I want to talk about Cole Beasley next. Just one touchdown all year, failed the top sixty four yards in the final twelve games of the year, including the playoffs, which was bad for Beasley. Um there's only one year left on his deal and he'll likely need to restructure his contract to avoid getting cut. And if they cut him, they get a cap saving of six million dollars. I think he's a cut candidate here, Yeah, I say him.

Mackenzie sort of usurped him towards the end of the year as the top slot receiver, so they certainly have an able backup or a fill in for for Beasley at a much much cheaper cost. Emmanuel Sanders was just a spot fantasy starter at best, and he's a free agent. He's gonna be gone. But let's get to the guy who's gonna benefit from Sanders leaving, Beasley potentially leaving, and that's Gabriel Davis. Yeah, almost invisible in the first half

of the season. And I mean invisible. I'm talking one catch, zero catch to catch, one catch, zero catch kind of numbers. Then in probably Gabriel Davis averaging sixty six yards in a full touchdown per game in the ten games, the final ten games of the season, including the playoffs. Now, it's a little bit skewed by his monster four touchdown game against the Chiefs, but was still even with even taking that out, he was still averaging over half a

touchdown per game. Yeah, that's what people remember most or last, is that touchdowns. And that's spilled over into the early Best Ball drafting season. People are pretty pretty high on game Davis, and for a good reason. But give me a rough round where he's going right now? Uh, six seven ish. You know he's in that top four definitely inside top thirty wide receiver range. Uh for a lot of people that now there is some concern. You know,

they've been courting Christian Kirk in Buffalo. I believe he can't court anybody yet it's you know, well, no, well it's it's it's tampering. Basically, Josh Allen's been hanging out with him. I think that they even went on vacation with their spouses and un Sam stop that they brought Sam Donald along for some reason. I saw the picture.

He must be carrying the luggage. I don't know, but uh, but yeah, if they don't bring in a Christian Kirker draft one of the bigger name wide receivers, all systems go gave Davis, Um, Sanders and b easily leave behind fifteen hundred snaps and two hundred targets. Who that makes Gabriel Davis a sexy What round pick? What? Do you have a sense of what round he's going? He's only like six seven and I said I had mid round

in my notes. Yeah, mid round. But he'll be a sexy pick and some people I wouldn't be surprised to see his value get driven up, as if Beasley and Sanders end up leaving the team. If he skirts the free agency in the draft from many other big names coming into wide receiver, he should be more in the fourth round range. It could. I think it'll it'll bump up Dawson Knox turned into an improbable touchdown machine last year.

After scoring two and three touchdowns in his first two seasons, he exploded with nine this year, tied for the NFL lead among tight ends, and then by the way, he scored two more in the playoffs. He had eleven total touchdowns, which is more than anybody despite missing three games. Third year breakouts are common in tight ends, is not unheard

of it all. And then it also Sanders and easily leaving would free up some extra extra targets for him, and he only had seventy I think it was like seventy two seventy three targets last year for Dawson Knox. That number, could you know that number could vault up into the eighties or nineties and you could see even more upside, maybe not with touchdowns, but especially more in yards. He certainly was still touchdown dependent, but you could depend

on him getting a touchdown in most games. So as long as you're scoring touchdowns when touchdown dependent, yes, nothing wrong with that. Let's go over to Miami. Mike McDaniel takes over as your new head coach. This is a rebuilt, rebuilt coaching staff. Almost entirely supposed offensive mastermind Mike McDaniels. Yeah, we'll find out how much you learn from from Kyle Shanahan and Darryl Bevel takes over as the passing game coordinator. Now to Tungo, Viola looks to my eyes through two

seasons to be an average NFL quarterback. Last year, he his average game was two hundred twenty yards and one point three touchdowns per game. That's it. And I recall him not coming through in some like juicy prime matchups, big disappointment to A does not run and with the hip injury out in college, I guess that was you know, that was more of an expectation, So there wasn't necessarily

people thought he would be a bunch of a runner. Um. You know, if there was a pathway for Miami to upgrade from tah at the quarterback position, there'd be more talk about to uh, you know, them maybe already turning the page on to A. But there really isn't an obvious pathway for them to get anything better than to uh. No, it sounds like the Watson stuff is dead. Yeah, I think that's all dead, And like I don't know Russell Will's going to get traded at the Dolphins. That wouldn't

hurt either team really, but you never know. Yeah, you never know, but they're probably going to They're probably not. So the upside here, I think for Tuah, and the reason to think things maybe get get better for Tuah is Jalen Waddle, who turned in a terrific rookie season and could be even better. So let's talk Waddle a little bit more here. From Week six forward he topped forty eight yards in every game but two. He scored five times. And this is the biggest thing about Waddle.

He turned into a massive target hog for TUA. He pushed Davantae Parker into the back seat and became the go to guys I mentioned he averaged ten targets per game after Week six, targets per game. Drafting now he's getting a lot of love. He's some I've seen him

go over. He's kind of the tail ended round two, but some people are opting to go over Ceedee Lamb or DK Metcalf with the presumably safer j Waddle with with the ceiling well almost as high as Metcalf, those guys have to share looks, right, Ceedee Lamb has to share with Cooper unless he gets traded. You know, maybe

they resigned Gallup, but I don't think so. Et Cedric Wilson, you know, and DK Metcalf has to share with Lockett, but not Jalen Waddle and especially with DeVante Parker because he could be caught or restructured after back to back middling seasons. He's only had really the one good year that was his money year, by the way, and he was injured for half of last year. He only caught two touchdowns all season. Parker never topped eighty five yards

all season. If he sticks with Miami and he stays healthy and Mike McDaniel is a good head coach, a better head coach for an offense and to it gets a little bit better, then Parker could be kind of a steel if you think he could bounce back to where he was three years ago. But we've now seen him for five seasons. He's had one good year. Yeah, you can't draft him uh as a starter or presumed starter. You're just hoping he returns to for him and stays there.

But like you said, you cannot stay healthy for the last few years. Will Fuller will be a free agent after catching four passes on his ten and a half million dollar contract, yet absolute disaster. How is that a bad signing? Oh man? All right, So let's go to the tight end position. Mike asiki uh after he was a frustrating season. He finished tight end twelve, which doesn't

sound that bad thirty two teams. If you've got a tight end twelve, that's great, But he just had two touchdowns and from week eight forward, Gasecki averaged three and a half catches thirty five yards and did not score. And more frustrating because he really plays wide receiver, which is nice from a fantasy fantasy perspective because he's tight end eligible, but he's not like Kyle Pitts. He's a very average wide receiver. So and also throws dynasty nugget

out there quick. There are talks on his next contract negotiations. They are gonna push for, you know, the wide receiver eligibility in the real world. So because they want they want the money at wide receiver. You're sitting on gasick at tight end and you might be a good time to move him because if he goes to wide receiver, he's value just you know, sinks incredibly. You touched on this.

Gasecki note that he's headed to free agency, and you know, we don't know where he's gonna land yet, but if you're Mike McDaniel, you know you could probably convince him he could be the next George Kittle. And in a Mike McDaniel offense, well, they say that McDaniel likes his tight ends to block, and that's why we get so aggravated at times, is all we would do. We see George Kittle blocking, uh, because he doesn't fit that. He does not. He probably has one foot out the door.

We'll see, all right, Let's hit on Miami's backfield. Duke Johnson, Miles Gaskin, Philip Lindsay Salvon. They're drafting somebody they have to. I think so too. I think this is a rebuild. In fairness. Duke Johnson, he took over the job in week fifteen and he shined. You average four and a half yards per carry, which wasn't bad, and he posted the only two yard rushing games of the entire season

for Miami. We're both Duke Johnson games, but to me my eyes, they all look like replacement level guys, and

I think Miami should just overhaul the position. Yeah, that's it's a place where, like Breece Hall Isaiah Spiller, I don't want to get too much into the rookies, will do that at some point, but it's a place where a rookie can walk in and take that starting job a great one, a great We we'll get into the rookies in UH, in the month of March more UH and into April, well, especially April is heading into the draft. We'll be talking a lot of rookies when we come back.

We'll go through New England and the Jets. The things we learned, the key takeaways from this season, what made us smarter at the end of the season than we were at the beginning. Stay tuned. Fantasy Football Weekly, Welcome back Fantasy Football Weekly, Paul charchy In, Brian Johnson, Guillotine leagues dot Com. Some fun stuff coming to Guillotine Leagues next year. Can't say one. Maybe something maybe something maybe maybe Yeah, look at the rule. Yeah, we'll see. Let's

go over to New England. We're recapping the key takeaway from last season. Every meaningful player through the a f C East. This particular episode of Fantasy Football Weekly in New England, I want to start with the running games. So running gave us the best part of the New England offense by a mile, and also the most frustrating

every year. But yeah, it was most if you could, you know, over the over Belichick's rain, if all you did was just blindly start like the best running back from the Patriots, you'd probably be more often than not, you'd probably be okay. But this has been it's been really really tough to peg and going into any game like what the trend is, who might be valuable who hasn't? This year was a little bit more readable than most I thought. So let's talk about Harris for a minute.

Despite being in a frequent workload time share with Romandi Stevenson, Harris finished second in rushing touchdowns with fifteen. Wow, as predicted by somebody in the preseason who put Harris specifically on fifteen touchdowns, I did. We had we had to New York for the review on that, but I'll take your word for it. Oh yeah, he spread those fifteen and I love this park. He spread those fifteen touchdowns across eleven games. That's what you really want. And he

was fourth in carries inside the five yard line. He had sixteen carries inside the five yard line, and he converted over fifty of his carries into touchdowns, which is where we want to be. That suggests to me there's no reason for Bill Belichick to stop giving Damien Harris the ball at the stripe. He missed a few games too, if I recall he did, and we're gonna that brings

us to Romandre Stevenson. Even with Harris soaking up those sixteen carries from inside the five yard line, Stevenson got six carries, and impressively, he scored on four of them. All four touchdowns that Stevenson scored from inside the five. We're games in which Damien Harris was missing. Very interesting, very interesting. Both he Harris and Stevenson average four point six yards per carry, and they both look like above average running back talents and below average receiving running backs.

Um stevenson workload was just too low to start him on a regular basis when in the games that Harris played, Stevenson was seven, eight, nine touches and that's just you just can't you just can't cobble together and not getting those goal line looks. He wasn't giving you the touchdowns in those games. Either this is a situation where unless it's best ball, that's different, but does for standard leagues drafted in August, you know, things sort of stay the same.

You really gotta pick which one you're going with because they're pretty close in a DP S. I mean, Harris is going four around, you know, weight round, light, third round, fourth round, and then Stevenson's kind of in the late six, seventh, eighth round. You really don't want to sink that much equity into one backfield. It's not like it's a clear it's not like a McCaffrey Cuba Hubbard situation or anything like that, but you're clearly team Harris. Obviously. I like

that both great. I love Stevenson. I love Stevenson, but just the reality of their usage UH tilts towards Harris pretty heavily, and because they were so good at what they were trying to do. I think it stays with Harris. Yeah, I think I remember his draft profile last year. Stevenson, who went to Oklahoma. I believe just basically his season was marred by injury, and he would have been around one running back. He had that kind of talents and

the UH potential in college and he didn't. He didn't get to live up to because of injury, but stayed healthy last year or so, I did stay healthy, which is you can only get better. It looks like it's kind of the passing game. I thought mac Jones looked like a middle to bottom tier fantasy quarterback with a very low ceiling and not even a particularly high floor. Um, even with all those electric weapons. And I know there's that, right, So yeah, to me, it's a slightly more explosive Teddy

Bridgewater and that's it. He hit three hundred yards just two times all year. UM. And by the way, it's like three or seven and three or nine. I mean, just eat over three hundred yards for mac Jones. Jones threw three touchdowns in two games out of seventeen, which is not great, but at least he hit three, UM. But that's counteracted by ten games. Was zero or one touchdown for mac Jones? Didn't he have zero or one

passing yard in one game? Too? Was something like that, Yes, so you don't you don't want to look at per per game averages, but for mac Jones because they are snaps. By that game, Hunter Henry scored nine times, but when he did not score. Hunter Henry stung you with his low volume and his meager yardage. And you can't even blame Jonny Smith because Smith wasn't even a factor in this offense. It was that's just how they used Hunter.

Henry is basically an end zone target, and for me, that makes him just like a bye week fill in and somebody where you know, if you're you just hope you get that touchdown and can get out with because otherwise you're looking at two catches for even more so touchdown dependent than the four mentioned Dawson Knox for sure. Let's go to New England's receivers Jacobe Myers, Nelson Aguilar, Kendrick Born. I'm gonna talk about him all sort of

in one breath here, Brian. They shared a meager ten touchdowns between them, and none of them I thought particularly distinguished themselves. Myers had a few more yards, Born had a couple more touchdowns than the group, but they were just they're almost entirely unstartable in a low volume, blow

up side passing game. And I the Patriots seemed like a team that's gonna draft a bigger name wide receiver or bring one in free agency, whether it be an Alan Robinson type with Mike Williams something like that maybe, But they spent big on Agilar and Born last year, which were dumb dumb signing was Yeah, they were both baffling to me. Um Myers had a productive stretch of games in December, I'll mention that, so he finished the

season a little hotter than the other guys. But still I think on balance, these they all looked like danger signs to me. Jones probably gets better next year, but I don't know that he gets so much better that you have want to any reliance in any of those guys. Myers, Aguilar, Born ultimate just situational dart throws. Yeah, he's gonna be hovered in around that top twenty range, which means and standard No Matt Jones in a standard one quarterback, twelve

team league. He's a backup at best, but he might just be a floating free agent kind of guy throughout the season. Let's wrap up with the Jets. How long will this take? Not as long as he may not be surprised here, but the lead story and if I were to, if I'm talking to anybody, especially in Dynasty Empire leagues, Zack Wilson got a lot better in the second half of the season. You remember he missed a bunch of time in the middle of the year with injury.

The games before that were bad. The games after when he came back from injury, he played better. And it still was not like he wasn't a fantasy factor in most of the games. But if you just watched his play, and even the box scores show it to a degree. But really, ie test at, Wilson looked a lot better. Um. I thought he showed some of the armed talent, especially that led him to be the number two pick the year before. And he ripped off like a ninety yard

run in one game. Did He didn't score, unfortunately, but still to see a quarterback, I mean he's got wheels more than you think it looking more than you would think. Yeah, for sure. Let's talk about Elijah More. The rookies season ended in Week thirteen with the quad injury, but I want to highlight the five weeks leading up to that quad injury. He averaged six catches, seventy eight yards and a touchdown per game. Six catches, seventy eight yards and

a touchdown per game. That's Tyreek Hills catches and yardage and Cooper cups touchdowns. Yeah he was. He was. The numbers speak for itself, I mean for themselves. He was a top three wide receiver during that stretch. And that was a brutal blow to everyone who had Elijah Moren roster when he went down, because he he was just getting started. Yeah, flash significant talent. And if you think Wilson's going to get better next year, as I do, there's no reason to think more doesn't get better with

him and more consistent with him. And so I think, you know, maybe because of the quad injury that ended his season after Week thirteen, he might be off people's radar draft time next year and in Best Ball now. Um, But there's a lot of reason for upside here. Yeah, for sure. Corey Davis had an injury plague season, um. And he only scored in three games all year. In his other games in which he did not score, he killed you by averaging thirty nine yards in scoreless games.

And this that's just totally untenable. He's now played for five years. Corey Davis had one good season his money here twenty. He's not untalented, but he's deeply inconsistent and he has missed twelve games in the last two years. I don't know, he's nothing more than a like last pick of a draft dart throw coming up this year, I think, yeah, he's still got he's a good end zone, red zone target, but yeah, the injury concerns and when he's not scoring, he's, like you said, he's not doing

a whole lot. So yeah, I'm with you there. Uh, I wouldn't be shocked if you're probably gonna mention one more wide receiver at Braxton Burrios is the next Guyl mentioned the team's guy, deep threat guy. But he's headed to free agency and so we'll watch and see where he lands. I saw him or his agent or somebody was saying they expect him to get eight million a year from Like really, I don't know. It seems like

a lot for for the specialty role that he is. Yeah, my gut tells me he will be back in with the Jets um because they are probably one of the only teams delmanof much money that couldn't be in the case. But what I'm to round this out real quick, I'm really curious to see what the Jets do it tight end because we we we like Zack Wilson. There's some nice pieces. I know, you probably gotta get to the running game, but there either unfortunately nothing to talk about

from a tight end perspective from last year. But there's there are a couple of talented rookie tight ends that I could see ending up with the Jets, Jalen Wiedermeyer being being the top one, or Evan Ingram could stay in the same sta him his apartment. I'm certainly just I got my on who the Jets are gonna bring in a tight end, because that could be a a pretty nice landing spot forever. Whoever ends up the Jets.

They do. Let's go to the running game. Michael Carter flash from time to time, but honestly, I thought he was going to look better than he did. I mean, I I saw the college work and I'm like, oh this there could be a little something here. It just never seemed to translate down the field. I didn't see a lot of flash plays from him, um, and they never let him be a workhorse, which I found troubling

considering who they were deferring carries to. He never topped sixteen carries in a game, and Carter average just ten per game, ten carries per game. You just can't get it done on that. So you think Carter would get more usage next season because Tevin Coleman is a free agent and who's done nothing deserved to even stay in the league, and Ty Johnson's not that good. I want to believe that Carter will get more something closer to a workhorse level of of carries next year. Yeah, me too.

He's an the guy you gonna want to see the Jets uh skirt drafting a big name running back in the draft or bringing in even a guy like a Dante Foreman, who's who's a free agent running back. They bring in someone like that that spills disaster pretty much from Michael Carter from a fantasy perspective, So we got

I'll keep our eyes on that one. Carter had these two weird games in the middle of the season where he had an eight catch game for like eighty five yards and a nine catch game for like ninety yards, and then otherwise did nothing through the air. Nothing. It was so weird that they trusted him and game planned him to be so successful in those games and then never went back to it. Now I would suspect those

might have been games when Elijah Moore was hurt. Possibly maybe well they were, they were These are mid season games. I don't have the box score in front of me. Moore got hurt at the end of the year, so I don't think those overlapped, but there may have been other injuries or things out the field that contributed. You can say one thing for the Jets offenses, they were never like a cohesive unit because of health issues like Corey Davis was heard, Zach Wilson's was her, and Elijahmorrow

got hurt later in the year. Jameson Crowder was he missed the beginning of the season that he did, so they Yeah, they never had a unit the calgel really, so hopefully they do all right next week, Let's talk NFC East. Let's teams. Yeah, let's just tear the band aid off on that. There's got it. There's some intrigue there and there's some you know, there's obviously there's notable things to come. I know, I know you've got to.

I know you feel pretty strongly about Dallas Goddard. Yeah, and there's a another tight end who really hasn't had a chance to show what he can do before getting hurt and uh Logan Thomas very intrigued by bounce back to when he's on the field he does some damage he does, it'll be fascinating. We'll so recap the NFC East next week. Thank you for listening to Fantasy Football Weekly. Fantasy Football Weekly is a production of I Heart Radio.

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