Welcome to the newest episode of "Fantasy Island," where our hot takes are so scalding, they'd make a jalapeño feel like a cucumber. Fasten your seat belts as we navigate the emotional roller coaster of Week 2—overreactions worth an Oscar, underreactions you'd snooze through, and a deep existential dive into whether any of this reactivity even matters.

Is the traditional running back handcuff as extinct as your social life during the fantasy football season? We've got Bombo and T sharing their coconut oil-infused wisdom—or is it just slick nonsense?

We're questioning everything you thought you knew, like whether Kirk Cousins could actually be a top-five fantasy QB (spoiler: only if prime-time games get canceled).

And hold onto your hats, we're journeying into the era of the wide receiver handcuff because running backs are so last decade.

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Tune in to find out why your fantasy roster's more unpredictable than your ex and why our advice is only slightly better than your Uncle Jim's stock tips.

Warning: This episode teeters on the NSFW boundary—so if you're offended by humor, fantasy football blasphemy, or the reality of your impending loss this week, maybe sit this one out.

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Week 2 Fantasy Over or Under Reaction Coconut Statements

Mixed: Welcome back there. Islanders is sweet tea kicking back with my boy Bombo over here. King. He's on hiatus right now. He's got prior commitments, but that's okay. We got you covered. We're going to go ahead and we're going to talk about our over and under reactions of the week.

These are our coconut statements. This could be just a hot take headline, and I'm going to throw something to Bombo. Bombo is going to throw it back at me and we're going to tell you whether it's an overreaction or an underreaction based off of the previous week results and what happened. So Bombo.

We're going to go ahead and get into it. I'm going to throw one at you right now. And I'm going to talk about the handcuff. Is the handcuff now going extinct?

Yeah, T. I think one of the common themes that this show has, uh, so far been putting out there for the listeners is the state of the running back in fantasy football right now. I know that we've mentioned the Bell Cal back is pretty much gone. This is a passing league, so you definitely have to be an a well-rounded back that catches, passes and run routes in order to be successful. And in the past, you would get your stud in the first round.

Maybe come back around on the snake, get that other stud, worry about receiver later, and then in your later rounds, handcuff your studs with the guys that are, that back them up, on the bench. I'm just gonna throw some names at you, T, at who, uh, Pro Football Focus has as their top handcuffs this year.

Samaje Pirine, Chubba Hubbert, Zach Charbonnet, Josh Kelly, Eliza Mitchell, and Jalen Warren. Alright? Just coming under there from that list. To round out that top 10, AJ Dillon, Roshan Johnson, TyJ Spears, and Sean Tucker. Now I know you're a Bears fan, you've seen Roshan Johnson move, and you have some stock in Roshan Johnson.

Outside of that, none of these names sound like guys that are going to win you your league. It's not like in the past when, if you had if you had Zeke. And you had Pollard on your bench and Zeke went down. You got a good chance with Pollard coming in and being a dynamic runner. I think now we are seeing the handcuff go away.

I think if you see what we just seen with Nick Chubb, Nick Chubb goes down, they're going to hand the keys over to Jerome Ford, but they're not going to give Jerome Ford, Nick Chubb run. He's not going to get 30 carries a game because what happens if he goes down? If anything, when one of these stud running backs goes down.

The next man up is a committee, so I don't think there's a true handcuff star out there. You could make an argument for AJ Dillon and Elijah Mitchell because they have CMC and Aaron Joes in front of them. A couple of guys that constantly have hammies and anything like that, but I've seen them, I've seen those guys miss time and, AJ Dillon started this last week and put up a stinker.

I've seen, Elijah Mitchell. They're trying to limit CMC's runs. Elijah Mitchell hasn't had a carry all year. So I just don't think the handcuff is, is a thing anymore. I think now you want to stack up at wide receiver, you know, you want to be able to balance your team out with starting running backs.

And then from there, it's whatever's left over. Um, that's why trades are crucial. That's why depth is crucial. But honestly, if a stud running back goes down, the guy that's sitting on the bench behind him in a real team probably isn't the guy that's going to boost your fantasy team.

You know, you make a great point, Bambo. I'm going to throw something out to you, right? Let me just say this. Right now, when you think about just a dynamic duo, a handcuff type of backfield, one of the ones that kind of stands out to me as potentially being the best handcuffed backfield is in Atlanta.

Think about that. You know, you got a stud rookie and you have a second year guy over there. That's a beast. He runs hard. He had over a hundred yards rushing on two freaking carries a week one, and then they stopped giving him the rock because why they want to feed the rock to the rookie for whatever reason.

I don't get it. You have a dynamic duo. And you just want to focus one guy. You don't want to split anything. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the new toy. It's a new shiny toy. And everybody just wants to play with the new toy.

I don't understand that. But, let me throw this little bit of WWE type of Because I know how you love this, right? The whole script. What if the days of the traditional handcuff is over and we're in a new era of handcuffs and the handcuffs are in the wide receiver because now we're going to handcuff receivers look at what you have over there.

Let's just say green Bay. Okay. You know, F G B for me. And that stands for fuck Green Bay because I'm a Bears fan, so I'm not going to be about them. But you know what I'm going to say? You got Dobbs and you got Watson over there. Watson being your number one, but that is a great duo that they have over there.

And so maybe it's that we're entering the era of the handcuff for the receivers as opposed to the running backs. T, I'm glad you brought that up because that brings us into what I was going to propose to you for your over or under reaction. Because I would say right now, what proves what you just said right is Puka Nakua.

Cooper Cup goes down, Puka is the next man up. We spoke about him as the handcuff to Cooper cup. Remember it started off, Cooper cup was just going to miss week one. And then somewhere between that report and week one was he's going on IR. And you don't decide to put your star on IR unless you have a backup plan.

And the backup plan is the handcuff wide receiver. Most teams have it. Fantasy is a mirror of what's really going on in real football. And that's stacked wide receiver rooms. If you think about it, like in, I'll just take the Jets, for example. Uh, there was a time earlier in camp where that, that Jets room was Garrett Wilson, Alan Lazard.

Elijah Moore, Corey Davis, some of those guys, Corey Davis, retired Elijah Moore guy drafted, but that's a lot of talent in that room. So if you're that coach and that, and Garrett Wilson goes down, you feel good about at the time, Aaron Rogers spreading the ball around to the West, rest of those weapons and not really falling off on the passing game.

Come on, really? All right. I mean, is this even a question at this point? Hell yeah, I do. Okay, let's put it this way. Fantasy aside, he just set the rookie record for the most catches, the first two games. Now, Bamba, let me throw this out at you. He's, this is the company that he's in when it came to the fastest catches in two games.

There's four guys. Michael Thomas is one of them. Cooper Cup is another one. And there's one other guy besides Puka. And we're going back. We're going way back. So for the old heads out there, Andre Rizin. Oh, right. I mean, we're going back to the 90s.

And this is a kid who came out of nowhere, Bombo, and again, I'm going to be giving you all the credit in the world because this came from you. You started that trend over here on the island, and I'm telling you right now, everybody that knows us, everybody that is reaching out to us keeps saying, how did you guys know?

How in the hell did you guys know about this guy? I'm saying is because, because Bumbo over there's knows his shit and he's good and he was the one that turned me on to this guy and then that's when I started going crazy over him, you know, so we, we all have stock in this guy in different leagues.

That to me is a no brainer. I think if Stafford just keeps feeding him the rock, we figure that Cup is going to be out for an extended period of time. We don't know what the hell's going on with him, right? So, because we don't know who's the default over there.

Because it's not Van Jefferson. Van Jefferson's sucking ass. So, hell yeah, I'm going to feed the rock to Puka. Because no matter what, he's gonna come down with it. That guy just goes after everything. He's just a machine and he comes down with that rock. So for me, I think that without a doubt he's gonna be that guy, especially as the season progresses.

I don't see a guy like Bijon or any of these guys taking those away from him. So I think from a fantasy standpoint, he's gonna get the most fantasy points out of this rookie class.

I couldn't agree more, uh, just because the opportunity is there. You can't ignore the numbers that you're seeing from Pucca.

So one of the sure signs for me was even if you were to take that Seattle game as a fluke, all the catches, all the targets, that's still a full four quarters worth of game film. San Francisco watched on Pucca and the Rams offense, and that's a really good defense. And he still torch them. They may have lost the game, but Puka was torching San Francisco.

You trying to tell me San Francisco didn't watch film on Puka and tried to scheme to take away that, that asset for Matthew Stafford. It just didn't work. I like to believe that, you know, we got two more games with the Rams going against the Cardinals coming up. They got another Seattle game coming up.

And the best part about it is. Literally, if you have them, you got them for free, like you, you literally got this guy for free and that just makes the value of all of his touches go up for everybody's roster. So yeah, give me all the Puka 2023. Think about it. Most people, I would say, um, there was probably nobody that actually drafted Puka Nakua.

They all got him off the waiver wire as soon as week one was over because nobody knew who he was. The only ones that had him on the bench or on the team at all were guys like you and I who knew who he was and we snatched him up, but we didn't even have to draft him because he went undrafted. Hell, ESPN didn't even have a picture of him when the, when the season started.

They do now, but there was no, it was one of those blank silhouettes. That's why nobody knew who this kid was. And that's what's so hilarious. That's why I give you all the credit there, Bombo.

Haven't seen anything like this from someone that went undrafted super late round since that James Rob, James Robinson, uh, fluke season with the Jags.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. Bombo going from our running backs to our receivers. And now we're going to go into the last one, which is our quarterbacks. And this is going to be kind of like a hot take hot headline, but I have a problem with it, but I got to throw this out to you because you know how I feel about this guy.

So I want to hear what you say about this guy. And the question to you is, is Kirkland cousins. A top five quarterback. Come on. As long as they're not playing at night and national TV, you can say yes, but primetime Kurt's a thing, but can you, but can you, yeah, because yeah, because they're all in playoffs count.

You're right. You're right. But for fantasy purposes, Kurt cousins is he's sneaking into the top five. I'm not ready to commit to say he's a top five, but I'm gonna throw some names at you T. So the top three are in stone. Mahomes hurts Allen. Now I know that. Alan has not really been up to par yet. That one game against the Raiders, everybody gets right against the Raiders.

Um, but Mahomes and Hertz, even if Mahomes has his few games where he's not throwing for a ton, you know, that he'll make up for it eventually through the season, those three are just fantasy, you're not rolling the dice with those three. Then you get into the next tier of guys and he's not even in there.

So if we're going by preseason rankings and where, you know, these guys are steadily in the top 10. Every week and before they even take a snap, we're talking Lamar, Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, Justin Fields, and Trevor Lawrence. There's a few names you could take off that list right now just based on how they're performing.

You could take, you could take Justin Fields off that list right now based on how he's performing. You could take Lamar Jackson off that list right now based on how he's performing. You could take Joe Burrow off that list based on the injury and from week one. that's where you start getting into who's going to take those guys spot.

And I want to say that right now, Kirk cousins is the Kirkland brand, Justin Herbert, and he's just outside of the top five, but what's going to put him close to that borderline top five, but definitely in that top 10 right now is the Vikings are throwing it a ton. They abandoned the run. The only team that abandons the run faster is, uh, the chargers.

That's why I say he's the Kirkland, Justin Herbert, but they're just throwing it a ton just to either stay in games to make up for that defense or to really, you know, feed the beast. They got a couple of, you know, really good receivers on the outside with Jefferson and Addison. It's just a volume based number right now, he's going to be a volume quarterback that throws it a ton.

We said it before, T, how can you take a guy like Justin Jefferson as an unquestioned number one, and then not at least look at his quarterback as a starting caliber quarterback for your fantasy team, but I'm not going to put him in the top five, but he's going to be floating around there.

I think you got a lot of guys that could possibly be floating around there in the, just in the general facility. I mean, you got Tua. I mean to it is going to be having a great year already two games in. He's already has a great year so far, but let me throw this at you Bumble before we wrap this thing up.

It's funny that you mentioned the chargers when you were kind of giving your case, they're facing each other. Both teams are facing each other. Both teams has sus defenses and they're going to be throwing that ball a ton, a shit ton this weekend. So I'm just going to throw this out there. Anybody who has stock in any of the receivers from, from, uh, the Vikings and the chargers.

You guys better be playing them because they're going to be scoring you a lot of points this weekend because they have really sus defenses. I'm sorry. It's going to be a thing to see. It's going to be. It should be. At least it should be so. Good shit Bumbo. I'm going to go ahead and wrap us up over here with that Be sure to all the listeners if you haven't subscribe, it's free.

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