Welcome to the week five IDP Blitz joined by the best and brightest in the IDP world, Matt Schalf from draft sharks here this week. Let's start out down in Miami.

I know we think a lot about Miami's offense, but Miami's defense, as long as that offense is racking up points has a lot of opportunities.

They certainly should have opportunities to get after Daniel Jones this weekend. Matt, let's start with edge because Jalen Phillips promising edge rising star has been banged up this year as there's somebody that we can use from this defense in place of him this week.

Yeah, it looks like Andrew Van Ginkle is just going to be an automatic start every time that Jalen Phillips is out.

He Phillips has missed two games with separate injuries so far and Van Ginkle played 88% the first time he played 76% the second time.

He's got three total sacks, five QB hits in those two games, 11 total tackles. So it's enough where even if Phillips plays, he's probably in play for this one because he played 63% 49% in the two games that Phillips did play.

So far, so I'd go ahead and play Van Ginkle in a lot of places whether Jalen Phillips is playing or not, but especially if Phillips is out and that playing time is up, Van Ginkle is going to get some opportunities, especially versus that offense we saw in Monday night. Let's hope that that one disappears for good for everyone's sake though.

Yeah, he just feel bad. Remember when Mike Kafka was a rising star, right? He's going to be a head coach. Well, he's got his work out for him.

Let's go back to the second level. Talk about well, sometimes second level, Jerome Baker, linebackers getting harder and harder to find. And also how does David Long tie it up in all this because he's been doing well lately. Is that going to keep up?

Yeah, so Jerome Baker every year has it seems like every year and it is every year at this point. It's three out of the past four that he's had this stretch and we'll see how long it is this time where his playing time dips. It's to 75% 76% the past two weeks after he was a full time or the first two weeks.

He did the same kind of thing last year. He had a late season dip in playing time. Then it came back up started this season full time. He's down in past rushes per game this time around though. And if we look at if we look back to 2021, he's dipped for two straight years. He was at 9.75 past rushing attempts per game in 2021.

According to PFF, that was down to 6.6 per game last year down to 4.75 per game this year. And if he's not rushing the past and Jerome Baker becomes somebody that we shouldn't wait on to see the playing time for because that's really just been the thing that has kept up any fantasy value for him over the past few years.

The other part of this is David Long who looked like he would be a full time or heading into the season and then he played 21% of the snaps in a week one against the chargers. So I thought, all right, I guess he just is not in their plans and we should delete him from the ranking. So David Long played 84% of the snaps in week two against the Patriots then went 58 week 393 and week four.

Vic Fangio said after week one that David Long was going to kind of be in and out depending on how they ran their defense. So you might think going in. Okay, if the opponent's going to run the ball more, then we'll see more David Long.

It's been kind of that way. It hasn't exactly been that way, but when we pair that with Jerome Baker spending less time on the field the past two weeks, I think it makes it a little bit easier to consider David Long a possibility in deeper leagues. I think if you're in a shallower league where you play three IDPs, maybe even five IDPs.

And there are maybe 40 linebackers on rosters. Probably wouldn't worry about him, but deeper leagues. I think he's got a shot to give us some useful packers.

In deeper leagues or leagues that are really just standard IDP leagues for you play three linebackers. They've been tough to find. So this year more than ever, Matt, the ritual of someone that we love goes down.

Someone that we don't really know much about comes up there. They are Jack Sanborn comes to mind right away from last year. We have a new candidate to pick up.

I was so excited to watch Troy Anderson get unleashed this year. He was the kind of player last year that when he was on the field, you couldn't help him.

If you're looking through the box scores, you can't help, but not miss what Nate Landman is doing.

I've been excited to watch Troy Anderson since they drafted him. The guy was an all conference quarterback after stepping in as a backup quarterback at Montana State.

He was an all conference linebacker after finally switching the full time linebacker. He was a successful running back at Montana State. Then they drafted him in round two.

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