Week 5 Panic Meter and Risers

Dave Kluge (0:11)

Some players are shooting up the rankings, and there are others that we are panicking about. And today Bob Harris and I are going to talk about some players right now that are in some not so great situations discussing how much we're panicking. And then in the second half of the show, we're going to discuss some risers that you can target, whether it be on the waiver wire or in trades, try to balance this out a little bit. So Bob, let's go ahead and jump right into it. The first guy I think that we need to talk about is Saquon Barkley, dealing with a week to week hamstring injury. But even before the hamstring injury, he was the RB 31 coming into the week. Now we get this Elaine Johnson retiring. It seems like the Eagles are just in disarray. What are we doing about Saquon Barkley? Because I don't know about you. I am starting to panic a little bit.

Bob Harris (0:52)

So I try not to panic and some of this is going to be connected to the investment we made and there was a pretty heavy investment in Saquon Barkley for the people who drafted him. Those people instead of panicking should be carefully considering their options each and every week. He is what he is at this point.

You don't have to play the breakout nor do you have to keep playing the minimal points you're getting if you have other players out producing them on a consistent basis. I think the concerns here for me, Dave, are the offensive, are scheme related and offensive line related. Not just, you know, Johnson's retirement, which is huge. You know, losing a future Hall of Famer is a bad deal. But I don't know how great he'd been playing. The same could be said of Cam Juergens, who hasn't been playing well for self-reported concussion this week. Landa Dickerson, he's been out.

I know they got a lot of faith in Markelle Bell. They invested in him. He was not great replacing Johnson this past week, but maybe with a week of practice, there's some hope. But I think the problems are more systemic and go deeper than this. Just to the offense in general, we're seeing this a lot with the new offenses. It's taking some time. Not all of them are working as expected, or certainly as we projected in our minds heading into the season. And that's the bigger concern. So this is a case where when you're assessed to Saquon Barkley, divorce the name from the numbers, pay attention to the players who are rising up. I mean, Chuba Hubbard, if you're deciding between Chuba Hubbard and Saquon Barkley, it's not a hard decision for me.

Dave Kluge (2:18)

Yeah, and I think that's spot on too, is that sometimes we just need to reframe expectations. The same way that you might have drafted a guy in round six, who is now giving you wide receiver one numbers, the guy you drafted in round two might be giving you RB3 numbers. Now, that doesn't mean that that player is just like dead and you need to cut bait and get him off your team and trade him for whatever you can. It just means that you're probably not going to be getting 2024 Saquon Barkley, but that doesn't mean that he can't be a backend RB2 with the occasional boom week. It is still Saquon Barkley. All it takes is one touch for him to outrun the entire defense and give you a 20-point week.

Bob Harris (2:51)

I appreciate the subtle nod to Michael Wilson when you said that coming from the wide receiver one thing. I appreciate that.

Dave Kluge (2:55)

Absolutely. Yeah, and that is what happens. We just reframe expectations. We're not 25% of the way into the fantasy season and we have to change how we feel about some of these players. So, no, don't cut Saquon Barkley. Don't go trade him for Will Shipley or anything like that. I think you hold on. And I think even if you are a manager who has a deep roster right now and you want to trade forward to Saquon Barkley in the hope that he can return some sort of value late in the season, if you have a roster built to do that, see if you can buy low. But I don't think that you should be selling low or totally panicking here. But we had a lot more players we're going to discuss. And Bob, we didn't share notes or anything before this show. So I don't know who you're going to be panicking about or who you're going to be keeping a calm head about. This is going to be a fun show to talk about. But before we get into the rest of these players, go ahead and like this video on YouTube. Give us that thumbs up, subscribe if you're new here. We're bringing you daily fantasy content Monday through Friday, every day here on the YouTube channel. And if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, please leave us a review. We love those reviews. We love knowing what we're doing well, love knowing what we can improve on. So let us know. Let's go ahead and talk about another one here.