Christopher Harris' Fantasy Football Mailbag Week 16

Join Christopher Harris live on VICE Sports' Facebook page on Saturday at noon ET to ask him your game day fantasy questions, and for fantasy football advice based on film review every single weekday from now until 2017, listen to the Harris Football Podcast at www.HarrisFootball.com.

Dylan: What accounts for your disparity between LeGarrette Blount (ninth among RBs) and Dion Lewis (35th) for championship week? Despite your rank, my gut wants to start the latter.

I get it. Against the Broncos last week, Lewis had more carries than Blount, played six more snaps, racked up 73 more scrimmage yards, and was cheated out of a goal-line touchdown by the Patriots failing to challenge. But it was the first time Lewis has been used that way since his return, and my rank reflects the (I think) extreme risk that it doesn't happen again in Week 16.

New England fans know a "Blount game" when they see one. The Patriots are 16.5-point favorites over the Jets. Their approach figures to be run-heavy and while the Jets used to be stout against the rush, by my reckoning they've been variable at best in 2016. Plus, should the Patriots get a lead, Blount is their clock killer. He's a front-runner of the highest order. That Broncos game? That was not a "Blount game." You could see it coming a mile away.

I could be wrong here. Maybe last week convinced New England that a Lewis-heavy approach is the way forward. Even if I came to that conclusion, knowing what I know about Lewis's injury history, I'd save it for the playoffs.

Allen: Who has the better dynasty outlook: Dak Prescott or Marcus Mariota?

Clay: Where do you think you'll have Dak Prescott ranked among quarterbacks next year?

Because the Cowboys are the Cowboys, most folks' final perceptions of Prescott will be defined by what he does in the postseason. That's dumb, but it's true. If he gets to the Super Bowl, he'll be a locked-in top-five fantasy QB in many circles. If he crashes in his first game, he'll be viewed as a failure. That's life as the Cowboys quarterback. It's like being Trump or a Kardashian. You're a winner or a loser. Tony Romo is viewed as a loser, and his career record as a starter is 78-49.

If we presume that the Cowboys and the Titans keep the same offensive philosophies—which rely on good offensive lines and excellent rush attacks—I wouldn't imagine either Prescott or Mariota will get near my top five next year. But each guy has the potential to run more, and that would unlock their true fantasy upsides. By quirk of fate, both Mariota and Prescott have exactly 431 pass attempts through 14 games, meaning they're each on pace to throw it fewer than 500 times in '16. Cam Newton rode that kind of workload to fantasy glory last season, but he needed 35 passing and ten rushing touchdowns to do it. Fifteen QBs exceeded 500 attempts in '15, and 19 are on pace to do it this year. That puts the burden on Prescott and Mariota to be more productive with a lesser workload.

Which QB do I want in dynasty? I answered Prescott at midseason, so I'll answer Prescott now. To me, his rookie year is a better version of Russell Wilson's, where the reins are still on. With a receiver like Dez Bryant still in his prime, there should be a chance for Prescott to shoot downfield more; in '16, he's 25th in attempts that traveled 20-plus yards in the air. (Mariota is 11th.) Either guy could produce an awesome rushing season before 2020, but I trust Prescott a little more to become a Wilson-esque downfield thrower.

Josh: It doesn't seem like you get too upset when you lose games, or more importantly, fantasy playoff games. I go on super-tilt. How can I get over it?

Get old.

Actually, the way I get over it is I do a podcast five days a week for five months, so by the end of the season I want to stick my face in a blender. I'm incredibly lucky to have this stupid job, and I'd never complain about it, but every year for a decade I get to this point in the year and much more than winning money or bragging rights, I want a nap. It's hard to get too upset about losing a fantasy football game when you have a blender-face.

But the real answer is: getting older sucks in so many ways (Hi there! I'm your ear hair! We're gonna be such good friends forever!), but one benefit is that I just don't get worked up like I used to over sports. This isn't me saying, "How can you enjoy that dumb football game when Trump just melted the icecaps?" The mellowing just happens. Maybe it happens because you've already seen most outcome variations, felt the most intense crushing losses and orgasmic wins, and you just can't get as worked up. Most of my super-powerful sports memories revolve around baseball, a sport I barely even watch anymore. I cried when the Red Sox won the World Series in '04. (My girlfriend took pictures because she couldn't believe I cared that much.) Now if you sit me down in front of the third inning of a Red Sox game and keep my phone away from me, I'll claw my eyebrows off.

In the short term, deep breaths and long walks do help minimize the physical symptoms of hard-felt frustration, and casually leaving the room to be by yourself (rather than storming out like an asshole, which is really you saying, "Look at me!") will ease your reputation as a sore loser. But the best advice is: just let time do its horrible work on you.

Erik: In your many, many years of film watching, who jumps out as the five most talented running backs of all time?

Hey, ho, hold on there, Erik. I said I'm old. But all time? I'm not that old. I've been seriously watching NFL game film for eight seasons. My first couple years at ESPN, I dabbled but didn't take it as seriously, and plus I was covering baseball at the same time. I could give you my impressions of where Barry Sanders and Emmitt Smith rank among the younger generation, but I'd be relying on distant memory and casual analysis. So instead, let me offer my answer for the best running back talent since 2009:

5. Arian Foster. Of the players on my list, Foster is the most "system" guy, so maybe you want to question how much actual talent there was versus how perfect he was for zone blocking. Plus, he couldn't stay healthy after the Texans ran him into the ground from '10 to '12. In the end, Foster had only four great seasons but they were great. Nobody floated laterally toward the sideline while translating what he saw into lightning-quick acceleration at 230-plus pounds better than Foster. If you want to say Marshawn Lynch should be No. 5, I could live with that. Beast Mode was underrated for his zone-running skills, and there's only been one guy harder to tackle since I've been doing this. He wears purple.

4. Jamaal Charles. It seems about over now, but J-Mail was probably the greatest home-run hitter of his generation. (Chris Johnson's 2,000-yard season would beg to differ, but I can't forgive CJ?K for taking the rest of his career off.) (Not really, but you get my point.) Charles represents a dying breed: the 200-pound full-time back. As great a prospect as Dalvin Cook is, I wonder if he'll ever be given the chance to shoulder a bunch of 200-carry seasons. Charles himself only made it through four such seasons, and his breakdown has been disappointing, but that long speed and that quickness—he was great.

3. LeSean McCoy. Another 200-pound back, Shady edges out Charles despite the fact that at their peaks I think Charles might have been faster. That's because McCoy's quicks are almost literally unbelievable. When he's healthy—and yes, that's been a problem—Shady puts impossible runs on film every week. There was a run in the second half against the Steelers in Week 14 where it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say he cut around more than half the defense. It's laughable that Chip Kelly banished him from Philly because he didn't fit whatever dumb notions Kelly carries around in his headset-microphone-licking mind.

2. Le'Veon Bell. Bell is what's next. He's only been in the NFL four seasons and he's only 25 next year, but after he lost that rookie-year weight he became an impossible player to stop. By now, his rushing is almost a caricature of itself: he takes the ball, sleepwalks toward the line, looks around, and then accelerates. When he was north of 230 pounds, this wasn't a winning strategy. Now he lists at 225 and he's closer to 215 or 220 but hasn't lost any power while gaining an obvious extra gear. And he's a wonderful pass catcher in an offense that wants to use him that way. The future is bright.

1. Adrian Peterson. None other. David Johnson has a chance to be AP's heir, and I have loved being so surprised by DJ's film this year, but while I don't imagine for one second he'll be a one-year wonder, I'm reserving "legendary" status for Johnson and Ezekiel Elliott until they get more wear on those bodies. Peterson is nearing the end. He's 16th all-time in career rushing yards and 26th in attempts, and it's fair to wonder once he and Frank Gore retire if anyone will get near those numbers again in the pass-happy NFL. Peterson's career began during the age when running backs were subject to the "Curse of 370 Carries," and in '16 Elliott could wind up being the only guy who gets to 300. No matter the era, Peterson was just an insane blend of size and long speed, and he had leg strength like nobody who's played in the past decade. There's recency bias involved here, but if you line up every RB in NFL history, I can't believe Peterson wouldn't make everybody's top ten.

Joel: I know you may not agree, but you need to be on TV. You were good with ESPN, but you'd be great with a network that would cut you loose and let you do your own thing.

Thanks, Joel. My TV goodness or badness notwithstanding, your question hits on something that still baffles me: I mean no ill will toward any of my friends at the Worldwide Leader or at the other big networks, but why hasn't anyone figured out how to talk about fantasy football on television?

On existing shows, the analysts know their stuff, the producers are universally smart and hardworking, each show's set design is lovely, the graphics are good—and yet something happens when people start to put together a show about fantasy football that makes the end product sound like a standard network Sunday morning pregame show, which is the last thing we should be shooting for. Part of me honestly thinks fantasy got so huge over the past decade because we all got so incredibly tired of Terry Bradshaw and Chris Berman and Bart Scott doing the same inane, trite, uninformed jibber-jabber for years and years, and we were just looking for something else to occupy our Sunday mornings. Why would you want your fantasy show to sound like that?

I'd like to think the success of my podcast has helped prove that there's an audience for people who like to see beyond all the tired, clichéd arguments we've been hearing applied to all football since time immemorial. Instead, on fantasy shows now we get echoes of the same "analysis" we hear on the main pregame shows ("He's great at home!" "This is a revenge game!" "Look at that yards per carry!"). Again, nobody making these shows is dumb or bad; they're just trying to replicate what a pregame studio show is "supposed" to look and sound like, when the era of the studio show should've gone out with Jimmy The Greek. And so my answer to Joel is: I wouldn't be psyched to do TV again just to do it. Having control over a podcast means getting to make the kind of show—regardless of the medium—that I think has been missing from the fantasy landscape. But the day someone wants to build a TV show around smarter analysis and film watching, I'd get my blender-face in for an audition.

Peter: Why is my fantasy team cursed, and is there a way to break the curse?

I can't speak to the horrible karma you amassed to past lives, Peter, but as for breaking the curse? Said it before. Will say it again. Goat entrails.

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