Fantasy Football Daily - 2022 Dynasty Startup Draft Strategies and 2022 Rookies with Shawn Siegele

Episode Date: June 2, 2022

From the Off-Season Points Livestream, Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) welcomes in Shawn Siegele (@FF_Contrarian) to discuss Dynasty strategies, Zero-RB, 2022 rookies, and more. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time for the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by FantasyPoint.com. Top level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. Please and gentlemen, you were watching the Fantasy Points live stream. I'm your host, Scott Barrett, joined by one of my favorite guests, favorite person to just, just hear how he thinks about the game, what players he's on, because he thinks about things in such a unique way, really one of the godfathers of the industry who reshaped, yeah, the way we think about fantasy, inventor of the zero RB strategy, a guy I play in a lot of dynasty leagues with who who who who whoops my butt. And that's Sean Siegel. Sean, how are you doing today?

Awesome. And you set me up with some high expectations there, but you were awesome when you came on OT recently. So I have to try and return the favor. That should be great. Yeah. Yeah, I'm excited. So we were just talking a little bit before we went live about tennis. I know you have a tennis background.

I'm talking about some books. But your handle on Twitter, which you no longer use because you're so much smarter than me. Like I'm jealous. I'm envious that your mental health. much be much better than mine. Is FF underscore contrarian? And I'm just curious, what went into that? Did you study the great contrarian investors, the Warren Buffett's, Charlie Munger,

Seth Clarmons of the world? Or is that just because, you know, you invented zero RB and everyone called you an idiot? And now it's like one of the most popular and successful strategies out there. Yeah, I think it just helps to. make sure that we're always questioning, right? And if there are things that are accepted as elements that you have to do, at least explore the other path. I mean, one of the things that you find with people who want to be contrarian all the

time or are just giving you the opposite point of what everybody's saying is that they're going to be wrong a lot. And so it's not necessarily a matter that by simply rowing in the other direction that you are going to stumble across something that works or certainly that you're going to be good at whatever you're doing. but I want to make sure the mindset was to question, to think, and kind of goes back to that beginning element with zero running back. And all I would really say is that I wrote an article about it that I liked and became popular.

So that was nice. The instinct for it really came out of my own leagues, right? And I had been playing pretty heavily from sort of 2008 to 2013 in high stakes leagues. it was successful in that. And as you all know, one of the things that can be a little bit tricky, depending on how much you're playing and how you're doing, there can be a little bit of reluctance to share some of those secrets. But at the same time, it's what we do.

And some people will come back and say, well, you know, share your secrets with the rest of the community so they can do it wrong just like you're doing it wrong. So we always have that back and forth. And I think that's pretty fun. Yeah, I think that's where all the money is, too. you know, in investing, you don't make money going along with the herd. You make money betting against it when they're wrong. They're wrong often, you know, the madness of crowds and things like that.

And I just know personally, from a fantasy perspective, all of my best calls ever were the ones where pre hindsight I got the most trashed for it. Christian McCaffrey, 2018. Oh, this guy stinks. He can't run between the tackles. He's frail. blah, blah, blah, or Lamar Jackson, 2019, this guy stinks. You know, you couldn't have the broad side of the barn.

Guy wins MVP. And, like, I got ruthlessly trashed for those takes. But just, like, the more everyone is against me, the more confident I'm starting to become in my takes. And I think that's the right way to go about it. That's asymmetric returns. That's where you're going to make the most profits in investing or fantasy or, I don't know, anything like that.

Well, definitely, as you say, if you have something you feel pretty strongly about, you have a lot of exposure to, it's not that popular, so you're getting a good price. And then you're right. I mean, that's obviously the last piece. Then things turn out pretty well. So we always have to work in that direction also. But yeah, I mean, I love some of those calls. And you and I have a different philosophy on running backs in some ways. And yet, at the same time, as most people will, we have some overlap.

And I really like the small guys, right? I like the fast guys, I like the playmakers, like to run to daylight, like to catch the passes. And so smaller guys like Jamal Charles and Christian McCaffrey, who are just complete game destroyers. I've had a lot of exposure to those guys and often it works. And then every once in a while, you'll have a season like last year with Derek Henry, where at the halfway point, I mean, it looked very, very good for him. And I do feel like it's unfortunate, even though I didn't have exposure there, that we didn't get to see the end of that season. I mean, he was playing so well.

I mean, he deserved to be able to finish it just from a human perspective. It would have been great for the Titans. It certainly would have been great for the managers who did draft Derek Henry in the first round last year because he was playing very, very well. Yeah, so like you said, we have some disagreements in terms of philosophy, but mutual respect. I think zero RB is optimal in dynasty startups. I think one RV to zero RV is optimal in bestball. I think is suboptimal in redraft. But when I say that, I don't mean in general.

I just mean maybe for me, and the way I go about it, it's like the polar opposite to my strategy, which is typically two running backs in the first three rounds without fail. But you've had so much success in redraft, in FFPC, high stakes, tournament style leagues. running out the zero RDB strategy. So, and we've had this debate before. We've had this debate on a Fantasy Point show.

So if you're interested, the listener can go and find that and re-listen to that. We won't spend too much time going into it in redraft, though I will get some quick thoughts on that. Mostly today we'll be talking about Dynasty Startup Strategy. And again, you're a powerhouse in every Dynasty League I'm in. And we'll talk a little bit about the rookies. But just in general, in redraft, can you give the listeners, specifically me, any tips on how to find those late round running back gems, which are so valuable? What are some tips you can give me on spotting those pre hindsight?

One of the things that I like to look at with the running backs is definitely this element of talent. And I think that we can sometimes get trapped. into the mindset of looking at all backup running backs and even some committee backs, the lesser half of committees as being a guy where if you couldn't push the starter out, then they're maybe more or less the same. But we want to have exposure to the young players. We want to have exposure to guys that we think are elite. One of the things that really helps with the RRB,

and one of the reasons why I like it in redraft, it's kind of interesting, you know, this difference between best ball and redraft because they both have some real strengths and real disadvantages in terms of zero RB. The limited number of roster spots can really launch those zero RB teams in bestball, and people have kind of in the past, this is not as much the case now, will overestimate the value of simply drafting a lot of wide receivers and thinking that that can cover it up from a point's perspective. It doesn't really do that very well.

At the same time, especially if you're not drafting a lot of teams, it can be frustrating because if those guys don't pan out, you can't just churn the back of your roster and add the guys who actually are scoring for you, which, you know, in a redraft, zero RB build you can do and can be very favorable for you. But when we're looking at those runners, we want guys who have athleticism. We want guys who can potentially catch passes. We want guys who are in offenses to where we think a lot of scoring is going to happen. I mean, one of the things that you can look at really easily with Leonard Fournette and James. Connor last year, so we expected those teams to score, and they did. And so that can be very, very helpful. Also, when you think about even Jamal Charles going back to his breakout, and he was

not a guy who arrived on the scene as an instant star, you've got an offense there where you're scoring some points, the running game works. You can see that with the players that were ahead of him, and then when he gets the opportunity, he goes out there now. There are some even better offenses for that. But I'm looking at these situations where you can easily see. see a scenario to where the player goes and scores a lot of points. And we're looking at price and how expensive that scenario is to buy. That's one of the things in zero RB that if you're getting good prices on scenarios that could be league winning and you're stacking your team with that once you have a good foundation built, then in all likelihood you're going to be

successful over the course of a number of leagues and a number of years. And the teams that are successful are often very, very successful. They end up being these super teams that are very difficult to compete with. So that's sort of the mentality I go with when I'm trying to build that zero rb depth into rosters that, you know, may already be or should be at that point because of how you've waited on running back. I mean, you should have the best team at wide receiver and likely one of the best teams at tight end with some good QB upside. Were you drafting Jonathan Taylor last year? You said you spoke to the importance of talent. Was that someone you were drafting or mostly steering clear? Because I know sometimes you do draft a running back in round one. If it's

one of those, what do you call it, Uberbacks, which I think we define similarly. Yeah. And I mean, you obviously want the guys who are superstars. I can understand that. I probably am even more, I'm just pickier in terms of these top guys. They have to be people that I think have this elite point season to where their expected points are going to be in a range that then once they outperform that, because you really need them to outperform the expectation as well, not just have this really dynamic workload. If I think that that is in play, then I'll go for a guy. One of the things that people always kind of come back to and say, look, I mean,

even for yourself, it's not actually your zero RV teams that have come through in that 2013 year where I had the good fortune in FFC. The top couple teams were Jamal Charles teams, but all the rest of the teams were, Calvin Johnson, Jimmy Graham types of teams, Des Bryant, Andre Johnson, Johnson, Alshon, Jeffrey, and Josh Gordon were, filtered into all of those because even in a zero RB build, you're not just taking the top wide receivers. You have to have exposure to the breakout wide receivers as well, or else you let someone else in your league. I mean, you got to know the top couple guys. And especially if they're

priced to have a lot of room to beat that ADP, you've got to have exposure to them. Now, that part of the market has tightened up in the last eight years quite a bit. So you don't necessarily get quite that much value on the breakout guys. Not that they don't still break out. and we saw Jemar Chase come right out of the gates and kind of blow the league away last year. But you have to have those players also. And you can definitely look. And within that, if you have the right running back, then that's potentially even better. And so last year kind of, I don't know, July-ish wrote this article about Jonathan Taylor being the key to the 2021 first round.

And then Scott, he doesn't even go in the first round. He's like at the one-two turn. and there were some real things that were happening there. They were pushing him down, but especially once he gets to, you know, 201 to 203, I mean, you can't not draft a guy you think could be the best player on football. You and I were in a dynasty startup, I think, the previous season, where I had an early pick and then I traded whatever it took to get up to like 110. And I took Jonathan Taylor because it's the best running back process we've seen in a long time.

I mean, there are some guys who were close. Certainly, Sequin Barkley came out, and before this other stuff happened, was unbelievably good. But, I mean, Jonathan Taylor is going to be this guy. This was pre-NFL draft. And so then, you know, we go through all the drama where the chiefs pass on him and he falls into the second round there.

But you got this generational prospect. I took it at 110. I got messages, obviously, from you and Curtis saying, I mean, that was very aggressive, which it was. I mean, fortunately, it's worked out. But I do want to have exposure to those guys in redraft also, especially at the good price. So I think that you could even do some things.

You said, you know, have a couple, you know, running back, running back in the first three somewhere. I think you can even go with a hyper fragile type of approach, take three guys, but then you can't take more, right? And when you're taking those three guys, it can't just be guys. I mean, you think you have to believe that anybody that you pick could score 25 to 27 points per game. Now, they're probably going to fall short of that.

They're probably going to get hurt in this time. But when you're going to go. like that. I mean, you have to have that type of ceiling if you're going to pass up really the safety. I think that's the thing that maybe has changed the most within the fantasy community in the last five years is that at the beginning, Zero RB was looked at as being ultra aggressive and super risky. Now it's almost looked at it as a safe strategy and you need to throw that running back in there to inject a little bit of risk and a little bit of upside. Yeah. As you know, I'm more bell-cower bust is how I defined it, where I really want those highest-end. And,

fantasy running backs who play just about every snap, get nearly all of their teams running back carries and targets, but getting both of those in combination. Like Najee Harris was a perfect example last year, but I've learned this lesson the hard way where you said right off the bat the importance of talent. And no one was higher on Jonathan Taylor pre-NFL draft than you. I was really high on him. And like you, I said he was, you know, a generational prospect and like easy RB1 in this class. He wasn't even RB1 until the combine, which is so stupid.

But then landing spots came into the picture. CEH goes round one. And I just abandoned Jonathan Taylor and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. C.H is the 101 in rookie drafts. He's tied to Patrick Mahomes and they're going to score 50 touchdowns per year. So like, this is just easy money. And that burned me. And then last year, I was like, no, I'm.

I'm fading Jonathan Taylor. Listen, he's the best or second best pure runner in football. But Frank Reich has said, you know, they want him at 60% of the snaps. They want Naheem Hines to get all the targets. They want Marlon McInvolved. And so I just want a bell cow. And that destroyed me. Like I luckily like Cooper Cup and oh, Leonard Fernette bailed me out. Like I, I had Leonard for net everywhere, but I barely wrote him up. I was so embarrassed about it. Like the only argument was like, oh, it's a Tom Brady offense, and he was the Belcow in the postseason. But yeah, it'll probably be a 50-50 committee with him and Rojo, who's lighting up trading camps, supposedly, for the third season in a row.

And yeah, so, like, oh, Leonard Fernette was a bell cow, and he crushed it. Jonathan Taylor was finally a bell cow and he crushed it. But, like, it was so difficult to identify that pre-hindsight that, that, like, I just didn't have enough exposure there. And another guy was Jamar Chase, right? I think you felt similarly, but I'm like, this is easily the best wide receiver prospect since Julio Jones and AJ Green. But, you know, he had a full year removed from football.

Every beat writer said he was really struggling. He might not start right out of the gates. I was like, all right. Well, Elijah Moore is eight rounds cheaper. And I really like, and so, like, I think that was one of the hard lessons I had to learn this offseason is just, just, you know, trust talent and trust that. talent's going to rise to the top at the end of the day. I don't know. Any thoughts on that before we go back to the zero RRB strategy?

Well, in some of those cases, I think, too, you can just kind of get unlucky. And a certain scenario doesn't play out. And it feels like you have to make some adjustments. And maybe it just was that a low likelihood scenario did play out. And then there are tricky elements to it. But one of the things with the very top guys, I just think that it's very hard to do projections in a way that's both accurate for that element of it and also reflects the full upside of the player.

And it's one of the reasons why I've always tried to emphasize contingency-based or scenario-based drafting to where we're looking at what could happen and knowing that there's a lot of chaos in the NFL season. So you have things like injuries. I mean, Marlon Mack obviously didn't end up really factoring in. He could have a little bit more. one of the things with these top guys is you have the potential for them to be so good even someone like a hinds doesn't get that involved and then you know obviously

Carson Wentz is Carson Wentz and they have to go so heavily to Taylor and then it becomes a case where Taylor is so good that there's almost no such thing that's a low value touch for him now I'm going to get most of the low value touches still don't have much value but you break some of these it changes the game gets you down by the goal line sometimes you score right away from 50 60 yards out and those plays create a huge impact on your weekly fantasy score and then certainly in tournaments and DFS or in the fantasy playoffs. It makes a big difference. I mean, the unfortunate thing really was that he wasn't quite the factor in the fantasy playoffs that he had been for much of the year or we'd be talking

about even a little bit differently, I think. So, I mean, that part of it is disappointing if you were heavily on to Taylor. But, you know, we have all of these wide receiver situations now. They're so difficult because a team could have three good receivers and you're going to have to look at the prices and the scenarios and how that all plays out for all of them. But if a guy gets hurt or the players need have to be hurt and out, the player can simply be hurt and limited to where they're in more of a decoy type of role. And then if the talent was there for the other two guys, I mean, you can get some very big scores for a while. And it's getting trickier, I think, to load up effectively at wide receiver. One of the things people have always talked about is that wide receiver is deep.

And I've kind of pushed back on that and suggested that, and there really are these pockets where you're going to score a lot more points. And you need to have those guys because having a sort of a bunch below that actually puts together a suboptimal roster for you. But increasingly, we're going to get some of these muddled decisions. And I mean, the most interesting thing right now for 2022 is that rounds three, four, five, traditionally very strong areas for wide receivers. It's kind of muddled.

Right. Or can you give anyone like one of your favorite late round? running backs and in drafts right now, maybe redrafts, or not dustball, like if you can, if you can come up with something like that. I will just say, again, on this point of sort of walking back how I typically draft running backs, like Derek Henry has killed me year after year. I'm still, again, dangerously low on Derek Henry. I just think this offense is not going to be good. Vegas does not think this offense is going to be good. And wins versus loss is for Derek Henry are worth like 14 fantasy points per game.

He's so game script dependent. So I'm again a little dangerously low on Derek Henry, but now I'm high on Nick Chub pending Deshaun Watson's suspension because, yeah, Kareem Hunt's still there, but he's like Derek Henry, been so game script dependent. But when Deshawn Watson is the team starting quarterback, I have to imagine not only his game script could be phenomenal, but more sustained drives, more red zone drives, more scoring opportunities.

And we were just talking about talent. And you talk about who are the three most talented peer runners in football. I think it's Jonathan Taylor, Derek Henry, Nick Chubb, and then a distant fourth, whoever that might be. So that's a player I've always faded Nick Chubb, who I'm actually very high on this year. And I think there's a little discount with his ADP, but again, pending the suspension. Is there anyone you're currently looking at you really like non-bestball, and non-dynastee redraft?

The Chubb point, I think, is interesting because I've been trying to actually convince a few of my co-managers to take a shot at him when he slips. And you look at some of the formats and he's going to be there, you know, second half of the second round, potentially, again, depending on the format in the third round. And it is tricky because if you're going to be a run first back and you're probably not going to get the receiving touches, you need a huge number of touches, which is what we got from. Jerry last year. And it's trickier to see that path for Chubb because they have such other talented backs. But those backs have had some injury issues.

I wouldn't say it's likely, but we have the possibility that Kareem Hunt and Chubb will be more separated from a talent perspective in 2022 than they have been in the past. I mean, the frustrating thing for Chubb is just that you mentioned that he's in that three person group and there's a big gap. but his backup will be one of the guys kind of in the next group challenging

and that just creates a big problem. I also think the Deshawn Watson stuff just creates a big problem, but you look at a format, especially if you're playing a half-p-r format, well, I get asked all the time, are you going to play zero RB and half-p-pr? And I know that there are formats that with half-pPR

that it still works pretty well. And if you're in a situation where you need a lot of wide receivers, even though the scoring is lower, you know, still get the wide receivers. You can build in these running, backs that have the great upside. At the same time, I like playing in some leagues that aren't full PPR just because I could go ahead and actually take a guy like Nick Chubb, where I think that, especially in half PPR, just like you're saying, he could have a huge season, especially at the price.

No, exactly. I agree. Is there anyone else who stands out to you, or do you not want to give away your secret champions? Well, I mean, I think that some of these teams that have two guys going in a range where you'd be interested. I mean, Devin Singletary, I think, is an undervalued reality player. And he showed again kind of that skill lovely actually has at the end of last year. But then they add James Cuck. Well, now both of those guys, I mean, you have to have exposure to, right? Because it's actually, I think, a less likely scenario that both of them completely cannibalize each other than you have pockets where one is awesome or a scenario where just one wins out and becomes very, very big.

There are a lot of people that I have a lot of respect for coming down on either side of that. And I mean, James Cook had a lot of red flags as a prospect. And yet, again, I'm drawn to the little guys. If you've got a small guy, you know, talking small, I mean, 200 pounds, who runs in that like 435 to hopefully low 4's range and creates big plays. And as a plus receiver and a team has said, we like them. We're drafting them early. then, you know, how can you not be in on them?

And, I mean, one of the things you pitched here is sort of a dynasty-oriented show. And from that perspective, I think it's interesting because I think he's completely hands off in dynasty, even though it's end of the first round. You're like, I mean, how much are you really expecting to get from the 111 or 112? Anyway, I think it has to be good or you move down. And cook in Dynasty, that's a bad price. But from a single season perspective, where you don't have to live with, with the consequences of the bills having missed

or the bills not evolving to take advantage of him or Singletary being good beyond that one season. And you're drafting him at a spot where, I mean, you can cover it up anyway. It's not like drafting him is going to kill your team now, especially in a redraft format where you can fill in the guys as the season progresses and have some exposure there. And so I like playing that.

I think that the bills are so weird. And that makes them so fun to where they're this explosive offense, but they haven't created points for the running back position. And that makes them tricky to evaluate. I like the idea of having exposure to offenses that score a lot of points, even if they've gone through a patch. And it could very well continue, but they haven't created running back points the way we would hope.

I don't know how sustainable I think that is if they're going to continue to score like we think they're going to score. Yeah, like that makes me so nervous. You're like, well, you have to have exposure. Like I imagine I'm going to have zero exposure, just imagining this scenario shakes out as, you know, single dairy early down workhorse, Cook, the JD McKissick to the offense where there's not much value overall.

But like all this uncertainty makes me nervous. I'd rather just grab the proven commodities at the top. Dalvin Cook, round one, Nick Chubb, round two, Zee, round three, and then just be done at running back, hope I'm not destroyed by injury. And I'm like, this is just, oh, it's easy, very little risk beyond injuries. But to your point, maybe that's where the value is.

Over the last six games of the season, including postseason, Singletary average 20.5 fantasy points per game. So what if there's an injury to this backfield or someone takes over? And there's definitely, yeah, when there's risk, there's also values. There's upside down. Like we said at the top, fading the crowd. The crowd right now is, yeah, that's a committee backfield. So not much interest in it.

But like you said, I did say this was going to be. a dynasty show. So let's talk dynasty startup strategy. We're in a number of of weeks together. I typically go very, I typically go full on punt year one and then try and win year two, year three and year four or five, six, seven, like build an actual dynasty. I think that's where the value is, take advantage of everyone has a high time preference typically. So the value is, in waiting. Plus, you know, if you finish last in year one, that's actually a good thing.

You get the 101. You would have had Jamar Chase last year, Powell Pitts. That's a big advantage. But, you know, we're in a lot of leagues together and you've done really well. The one league where I took the opposite approach, that's just where I thought the value was,

was Curtis's Black Crown League, where I've finished in the championship every year, but could never walk away with the victory. Like I said, I win now, so I didn't have any first round picks. You had, you got Jamar Chase. This is one of just a few leagues where I didn't have him. And of course, in all of my Jamar Chase leagues,

I finished like, I didn't expect to be as competitive as I was. And I finished like only three points away from the buy. And then I get knocked out in the first round because he flaps. And then he explodes from then on. And he absolutely buried me in the championship against you. I was, I think I was in your DMs or in email just crying. But Sean, yeah, why don't you talk a little bit about your general dynasty startup strategy? I like to go about it a couple of different ways.

And the sort of tagline that I give to how I like to play dynasty in general is this idea of perpetual reloading. Right. We want to stay young. We want to continue to turn the team. We want to continue to create a team that has as much overall trade value in it as possible and not get caught up and targeting any given year or a couple of years because if you target that and miss, and we've all had teams that were upset, I mean, you talked about the black crown and it's just, there are some really weird teams too, right?

I made the decision in that one because I wasn't in the right position to take quarterbacks and to get a quarterback was going to be so expensive that I ended up with, I think, Jimmy Garoppolo and Taylor Heineckee are my quarterbacks in this Super Flex league. but the flip side of that was that there ended up being so much firepower at the rest of the positions. I was able to overcome the fact that those guys don't score a lot of points, right? And so that part of it worked out. And I mean, we all think that we're being aware of price.

And that always comes down to sort of our own perspective on how much the guys are worth. And so you have to hope that your own evaluations are at least decent in terms of that. because really focusing on the price is going to give you a lot of different options, a lot of different paths. And so we're trying to have to build the exact same way every time, find the value that's in that given league, and then don't give away value to try and hit one specific thing. And really, in the Black Crown, I was trying to tank for one more year, but there was really no ethical way to start the lineup that didn't result in it going on this massive winning streak.

And then like, well, I better not mess it up now because, you know, now it has a chance to win. And there are there are obviously options to add QB. I just, I can't, I can't spend that much. And Curtis sends me trade offers all the time for quarterbacks. And they're not even bad offers, right? I was like, I can't give up those guys to get a Matthew Stafford. I mean, he's a good player. He's a good Superflex.

May have a long time yet if he could follow in the footsteps of a few of the guys who were a little bit further ahead of him, kind of on this timeline trajectory, but that's not the guy that I want to be in. And so it has a little bit of patience there. But you mentioned the Dynasty Startup Strategy, and I think that there are two ways you can do it. The one is to go heavily into year one, but with the sort of note there, that you go heavily into year one and you want to go very young still. Because the idea of going heavily into the first year is not to build a team that's going to win the first season and be old.

but simply that you move the value of your picks into that year as well. And one of the things that we see with dynasty trade values is that these young guys have a very tiny window where their values on average increase. And then they continually to drop, even for the most part, the player's pretty good. Now, if the player's pretty good, he's going to hold his value better. But what you're really looking for are those good guys who are still young. And then you get the big spike. You can move those players then for even more value than if you would help. onto your rookie picks and you get to play them that year.

But you kind of started their perpetual reloading by moving all your value into year one and then being young with us. You have to have discipline because you're looking at that and you're like, well, I don't have picks in, you know, say 2023 and 2023 is a good class. So I need to like hit this veteran now who's fallen below value so that I can win this year. That trap I think will kill you because that veteran is not going to be tradable. And so you really do have to have to have.

discipline with it. The other thing is just to do what you said. And some of the values that you get when you move back and you move out of the startup are absolutely crazy. And there's really no way to compete with teams who get a lot of value out of that. And so you have to be in that market yourself. And one of the things I would just kind of add as an aside for people who are doing that is that I actually see people give away. their, you know, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh round picks and they don't get enough back, right? I see people make mistakes where they trade those picks, they move out, and they don't get value.

So, like, well, then how does it work to move down? You have to just relentlessly move down, not all the way out. It's this, the way that you win is you move from round one to round two, from round two to round three, from round three to around five, from round four to round seven, from around five to round 10, you still get to make your pick that. And, you know, if you prepared for order, just number one, it's fun to make the picks. But then number two, when we all feel like we've got a guy once it gets to that spot, that we would have two or three rounds earlier, you know, so the value of moving down there.

So maybe you move down to the 10th round, but you've got a seventh round tag on him. I mean, you're still going to want to make that pick, right? And then you have all of the value. So move down, but don't move out of your startup. Yeah. So I think that's a really key point. I'm from the T.J. Kalkins tradition. He's my long-time dynasty co-partner, just because I hate, I'm not active during the season. I have too many articles to write. I can't be bothered with trades and waivers and lineups and things like that.

So it works well. But for one thing, yeah, he's always against winning now and loading up on low, old perceived values like Adam Feelein this year. I love Adam Feelein and redraft this year. I think he plays for like three years at a high level. If he doesn't get injured, that might sound crazy to you, but I just like firmly believe it. But I'm still not taking him in a dynasty startup. It's just like there's nothing worse than having a declining roster where your players are just losing value each year and you can't trade them. Like no one wants them. Just like such a horrible feeling. So I like having that hope and optimism of every year my team is getting better. You like it through reloading.

I like it through just full on punt year one, loading up on as many picks as I can. And then, you know, reloading via maybe if I have like the 109 in this year's class and someone wants Sky Moore or Christian Watson, like I'm happy to just, okay, here, have the pick, but sell me your 2023 round one plus round two, something like that. But yeah, so T.J has his, if you could ask him like number one rule to winning a dynasty league, his single most important rule is find the biggest dummy in the room and loot the coffers

until there's nothing left. Because if you're not first to do that, someone else will. And like, that really creates a massive discrepancy that can just break leagues where just like one absolute moron just gives away everything and just like so unfair to everyone else but yeah in general the best advice i could give beyond that is trading down trade down as much as possible and this isn't always the case right it's like different leagues have different interest rates different how much a dollar today is worth versus a dollar tomorrow like that black crown league i noticed everyone was trying to win later so i was like all right let me zag you know, fitting with her contrarian theme. And I finished in the championship both years.

But in general, most leagues, especially expert leagues, everyone wants to win now. Everyone's impatient. And there's so much value in winning later. So in a typical startup, I trade down relentlessly. And I feel great about it. All the while, trading down and acquiring rookie picks or massive trade-ups later in the draft or just buying picks outright. I think the perfect example of this, Sean, is I was recently in a dynasty league, and I think I got the 112, and Curtis got the 101. And I'm just like, all right, game over.

Curtis won. Like such a massive advantage, the 101. And then giving it to Curtis is an even bigger advantage. And he played it beautifully. He gave up the 101. and he got the 104 while also picking up a free round three, a move up from round 18 to round four, a move up from like round 23 to round 10,

and he got two firsts. This was one of the, this is a football guy's writer, something along the lines of that. It was like one of the most egregious trades I've ever seen. And so he basically traded Justin Herbert for Josh Allen while getting two future first, going from like around 10, which is like DJ Chark to DJ Moore,

and then something else like that. And then what does he do when he has the Justin Herbert pick 104? He trades down again, gets another similarly impressive haul. And now he has all this capital. And it's just like, I'm sitting there at 112 and I'm just like, you're destroying me. There's nothing I could do. It's so unfair.

But in this league, I didn't have a single pick until round six. And this was, by the way, a basketball league, which we can talk about, a best ball dynasty league, where people severely underrate the importance of depth. I loaded up on future rookies. And I was very happy to do so because a lot of the teams who traded me, their rookie picks have minimal depth.

My team is tanking year one. I bet my team makes the playoffs. Like, I have no QV2. I have no RB1. No RB tour. I took, like, Damien Pierce and Tyler Algier and guys like that for super dirt cheap. But I was actively tanking, hoping to get like zero points and finished at last. But my depth is so unreal, like prioritizing wide receivers that, like, I'm going to finish.

I'm pretty, this isn't Hubris. I feel pretty good about it. But anyway, long aside, sorry, well, we could talk about Best World Dynasty. We could talk about zero RB and Dynasty, which is what I typically do. And we can talk about any further comments on trading down and being robot most in that. Yeah. It's strange to me just how much people will give to make some of these moves. And the moving down part of it, I mean, the two elements are number one.

You are diversifying your risk and you're showing some humility in saying, I don't necessarily see the future well enough to have that big a gap between these types of players. And then you're also saying at the flip side of it, it's like, I've got that confidence-based play. We're like, I'm still going to select somebody I really like at whoever I moved down to. So you really get both parts and you get picks. So we like that. We've been doing that a lot in the road of his Triflex Dynasty Leagues over at the FFPC. Got teams with Ben, Ben, Gratch, Blair, Andrews, Monty, Fawn.

And this is a league where you can have 20 roster spots, cut it in the end. You can have as many as you want during the summer. We've got like 30 plus players in all of these that we now have to move back out of because, I mean, like 15, 16, 17 rookie picks in this draft from last year's tradeback. The other thing then, Scott, as you're well aware of, is that once you have a lot of picks in the rookie draft, then you can manipulate areas of it of extreme value. and you and I were in a league already this offseason where you had a lot of the early picks. And as a result of that, you're able to get the guys that you want.

And if you have somebody that maybe you're not as high on and let that person slide based on how you're picking but still have another pick, then if, you know, if you don't want Traylon Burks and he falls to your pick at the 106 and then someone's looking at it and saying, well, I mean, 106 now I can get up there and I can get Burks who is more like the 103. and I pay that price. And so you can actually get 103 prices for the 106 that you didn't want to make anyway. And that element of it in terms of controlling the future rookie drafts can also leave you with some profits that you wouldn't otherwise have had. Yeah. So one of the leagues we are in, which we can talk about, is the rookie draft is before the NFL draft. And I maintain every dynasty should be set up like this. But actually, to the point you just raised too, yeah, it's like you trade down from the, you know, 406 to the 607 while getting, you know, a massive boost somewhere else or a future rookie pick, the guy trades up.

And let's say he takes George Kittle, right, in a tight end premium league. There's massive risk there. And like, hey, you know, Kittle has declined in fantasy points per game every year. There's injury risk where there's not going to be any injury risk. in a future rookie round one pick. So that was a great point. But yeah, the league we're in, I don't know if you can tell them. Just like so excited to talk to you.

I keep jumping around all over the place. But yeah, we were in a pre-NFL draft, rookie draft. And I think that's the way every league should be. That devalues the value of a rookie pick a little bit. But like, I love it because I think it just gives me a big edge. Like in the league we're in together, I partnered with Danny Kelly, who writes a literal draft guy. So, like, I think that's a big, like,

Tyquan Thornton, round four, late round four, every single draft. And then, like, goes round two. That's a massive value that makes actually drafting more fun. Do you- Did you load up on a lot of Thornton after the draft? Because one of the things that really surprised me

in some of these leagues that I did was that him going early did not change how people saw him. He was still, I mean, it changed the least. a little bit. But he was still very inexpensive. And so as I'm going through some of these drafts, and some of them are fun too, if they've got some not just veterans, but high quality veterans, pushing people down. And that, I think, is also fun because then you're round three picks. I mean, those are meaningful picks. And so you're looking at an interesting veteran. You're looking

at Thornton. You're looking at some of the players going at the same place as Thornton, you know, maybe we're drafted late or were undrafted, but they have some pizzazz to the name. or the landing spot and Thornton doesn't have those things. How were you doing that after seeing him go there to the Patriots? Yeah, like I said, almost all my leagues are pre-NFL draft. I'm in two post and one, Tyquon Thornton went like pick 28, which is probably earlier than most. And then in the other one, actually, I took Justin Ross early round three because I spammed

out trade offers when he wasn't on the team. Then when he finally landed with Kansas City, I up the offers. and no one sold me a single share. Like my whole thing was like love Justin Ross, but not taking him pre-draft. I'll wait until the draft capital destroys him. And then I'll buy him cheap. And I just wasn't able.

So I just wanted to get another share of my guy. But like in my own rankings, I'll have Taekwon a little ahead of him. I think rookie rankings are really bad this year. I think if players just went off of draft capital, they'd be so much better. I think there's weird hubris this year. And I'm just seeing like a lot of guys I didn't like, the NFL didn't like,

who were going super early like Isaiah Spiller. And then guys I really liked and the NFL really liked like Juan Dale Robinson still being, you know, an afterthought, which is, I don't know, pretty weird. Do you want to let's talk a few more things about general startup strategy that we'll move on to rookies. and the rookie draft class and how to navigate that. What surprised me is, like, in our dynasty leagues, you don't go zero-r-b as much as I go zero-r-b.

I really go full-on punt, hoping to finish dead last. And, like, that's where I want to draft rookies running backs is their rookie season in the rookie draft, where I think they're cheaper. you know like next year's 104 versus like a startup whatever to take bejean Robinson if you are eligible to take him I just think there's so much risk there in terms of like it's the most injured position which you've written about they have to navigate free agency or new coaches who might have a committee preference or things like that but you haven't been afraid

to do that and I'm just going to guess that's because of like the asymmetric returns of having a Jonathan Taylor, which is just such a world, like one of maybe five unicorn assets in all of dynasty. Is that why? I don't know. Yeah, I'm going to get pulled in a little bit more to the way that you like to do redraft almost in Dynasty for a couple of reasons. And I would probably call it, you know, superstar or bust because just having the workload isn't going to do it for me. But when you have these clear-cut stars and when you have guys who absolutely dominated from a production perspective in college and, you know, like I said, I like the small guys, but especially if they have size, we know the NFL just values that so much. And then they

go to the combine and they run at a level of a superstar. I mean, those guys are going to be good. Number one, they're going to be good, right? Unless they get hurt, they're going to be good. And then the other element of it is that you actually want them for the first couple of years. That's when a lot of the running backs are going to have those huge seasons. It's also when they're going to have trade value. And so if you're going to have a dynasty team, one of the things we talk about from time to time in dynasty, and you can do it by trading down and just having so many stars, you want to do that.

And you want to have this elite wide receiver foundation. But I mean, you're going to run up against some other very good teams in your league. One of the things that happens in Dynasty is there's a little bit of a sifting effect. And you do often have a. a situation. I mean, you're playing with Ryan McDowell, you're playing with Curtis Patrick, you're playing with you and TJ and that kind of thing. You're going to have these super teams, right? And so, you're not going to necessarily beat a super team just with depth. You need some star power and you needed all the positions potentially. And so from that perspective, I think that you want

those top running backs even a little bit more, but where you take them. When we talk about the running back dead zone so much now with redrafted for a very good reason. But I think in Dynasty, it's so important that if you're going to take those running backs, take the young stars, don't take anybody else. If you want to pay for that, then pay for it because you're going to get either scoring or trade value out of it. You've got to have the guts to move back out, you know, before it becomes the Dalvin Cook, Alvin Camara situation where you can't get anything back. But you're going to score the points and then you're going to have to really wait. And so it's very much the situation where there's this massive,

group of picks in a dynasty league where running back is just simply not an option at all. And I think you see that both in startups and you see that in rookie drafts to where, I mean, if you're fortunate enough or you know, you kind of gained it out well enough so that your first year was bad and you have the 101, you have the 102, there's a superstar, you may take that pick. But even once you get into the first, you know, you get into like picks four through 12 in the first round in the vast majority of years, I mean, you couldn't take a running back there.

The second round isn't very good. back into running backs in sort of the mid-third, even the fourth, and you take all these late guys who have some contingency elements to them, they can score some points for you. They could jump in terms of value and get your Lysha Mitchell, that type of thing. You score some points. Maybe you can trade out of them. In expert leagues, it's hard to trade out of those guys even at that point because they understand the likely trajectory of players like Mitchell. But that's where you want to be invested. And I think that you can, I sort of flip back to the running. back's at the point where, you know, we're getting into that wide receiver group.

Or now it's like, I mean, this guy didn't have a great production profile. He was drafted outside the first three rounds. It's not into, or maybe even outside the first two rounds, kind of depending. He's with a bad quarterback. I mean, why are people continuing to add those wide receivers? So we flip into running backs. And the other thing is just if you're built well, you know, taking a third round wide receiver, it's not that you never hit, but it just doesn't make sense within the context of your build.

And so I think from that perspective, it's even more. exaggerated where dynasty is about the superstars and then about these late round guys. What about when it's a best ball dynasty league? I don't know. Do you change up your strategy much? Because I change up my strategy completely, where I treat it like a best ball league where I think depth is massively important, like especially in one of these leagues. You want to be trading down, trading down, trading down, trading down, where I don't care

so much about having those super top quality assets if I can get, you know, two or three high level assets or where it's just, you know, you'll score your points that way, beating, beating other teams. Because if you're not trading down, you're not going to have that depth. And in another league, which is not baseball, but it was a start 13 dynasty league, I made, which seemed like a sacrilegious trade to me, I traded Justin Jefferson and the 210 to Curtis for Rashad Bateman, DJ Moore, and Devontas Smith. I think I won that trade and like it was at least fairly coin flipish in a typical like start 10 league. But I think like in a start 13, that's just sort of what what I had to do.

because, you know, he has a killer lineup, but he also has, like, three dead spots. And mine, you know, I have 14 to 15 quality starters where I'm still sitting pretty, even with an injury. Do you view leagues like this any differently, like a start 13 or a best ball league? Yeah, you're going to have to because one of the things that you find is that if you are in, a normal format and you have the 10 guys and they stay healthy you can win you can't do that in best ball and so especially as they get deeper too it's fun to try and build these out i have a couple of leagues that i'm in 30 roster spots and it's kind of go through it all 30 players could contribute and it does give you a big advantage especially once you get out of the superstars but i think

the other element of creating that much depth that you can then do is that you can occasionally make some very mild win now trades compared to other dynasty formats because your depth is so great that if a guy does go to zero and you just have to hold because you can't get back out at anything that makes sense, then that's all right. It's one of 30 and you've got 29 other guys competing. If you want to bring in a Devante Adams, if you want to bring in a Tyree Kill, then those guys, and especially obviously before they change teams, but you're going to be able to get that impact from them.

You're going to be able to kind of wait them out as they just go down and become Adam Thielen like you were talking about. And so creating that depth is important. We still want to kind of have it both ways. I have our cake and eat it too and make sure we are creating exposure to some of the top guys. So one of the things that I really like and really like in all formats is this element of the, it's not just trading down, but like the two for one trade or the three for two trade or the four for two trade. And one of the ways that you can get trades to happen, especially if you're in leagues where

maybe you don't know some of the other people. You know, if you're in a Rodevis Triplex League or, you know, you join a league in a dispersal, maybe you don't know all the people. I mean, some of the expert leagues that we do, I mean, you know everybody pretty closely. And so you kind of know what their approach is, you know what types of things they're going to go for. You know, they're not going to simply respond or not respond because you've thrown in a big name. But if you're interacting with people that maybe you don't know as well, you put that big name into the tradeoff, or they're going to at least look at it.

and send you a message back as opposed to, you know, ignore, auto reject or something like that. For so long in Dynasty and, you know, Fantasy Football Trade's kind of across the board, people have really wanted to get the best player in the deal. And I think that sometimes you can put the best player in the deal out there simply to, you know, get a discussion going. Maybe you actually have the rankings flipped, right? And you're different than the market on these guys. But by putting the big name out there, you can get some.

discussions going, but I'm very willing to do a four for two where the best player is on the two side going away and I'm getting four players. Again, it's this kind of humility-based approach and a contingency-based approach. You don't know what's going to happen in the future, and you're building this deep roster. And that deep roster has a lot of benefits that you just talked about. All right. Well, we've got about 30 minutes left. So let's jump to what everyone wants to hear us talk about, I believe, which is the rookies and how you're not. navigating a typical 22 rookie draft. Sean, you have the 101.

What are you doing? Is it tough at all? It's not for me because I do believe in Hall and I think that he can score points within the context of what that offense and what that situation is going to be. I don't think that he's Jonathan Taylor by any means, but I think that he's better than people are giving him credit for, at least a little bit. Now, I mean, that kind of seems funny because you're like, I mean, people aren't giving him credit for being good. I mean, he's the 101, right?

But a little bit of that, at least, is skepticism about the receivers who follow, or at least kind of having them in a tier to where, especially if you have multiple picks, if you're a rebuilding manager or someone who has sold him the first year and is looking to year two, maybe you've got multiple picks there. You're saying I can address multiple things here. I do think that Traylon Burks and Drake London are viable picks there, especially if you can't move down. I mean, obviously you would try and move down. And then especially if you're really loaded up at running back.

I mean, those guys have a really good chance to actually come in and score a lot of points, and they've got a great opportunity to be there once he no longer is. So you can make an argument there. But I think having that type of athlete, that type of life. likely immediate producer at a position that has scarce. I think that the scarcity actually works in a more important way in dynasty than it does in redraft, where I think the scarcity element is always been overrated. But yeah, I mean, I like Hall there.

And the interesting one for me and, you know, looking at our ADP from the RV TriFlex and then, you know, getting a sense across some of these other leagues, I don't think it's the case nearly as much in expert leagues. but we see Walker at the 102. I mean, is he even in that discussion for you? If you are already needy, I could see it. I worry that this class is going to be a lot like the 2016 class. I think I said this on your show,

where I see Hall is like a poorer, slightly poorer man, Zeke, and Walker is a poorer man's Derek Henry. and then with the wide receivers, massive busts where like draft capital is not super predictive. Like you mentioned Drake London and Trelawn Berks. I had Drake London wide receiver one. I felt okay with it,

but I know there's massive risks to his profile. And Trelon Burks, I saw basically Leviska-Chanal 2.0. And that's not saying he's bad because, you know, hey, maybe if Leviska had a better coached coaching staff that was committed to him. We'd see more production if he landed in Dallas or wherever. You could be a lot more successful. But I just see a very risky, not very NFL ready wide receiver.

Granted, the landing spot looks awesome. There's just not a lot of target competition. But in general, this is sort of a risky class. I think last year we were so spoiled. It was like one of the best classes ever. Jamar Chase, Najee Harris, Kyle Pitts. Trevor Lawrence, who's a bust, but Zach Wilson,

Trey Lance, no, I'm just kidding. Do you think the value of those guys? And, you know, you mentioned that I was able to get Chase in the Black Crown League where one of the few that you didn't have him,

the crazy thing about that is that that was the 106. Oh! I must have been trying desperately to move up and just had nothing to sell. That's horrible. That just broke my first. heart. Well, but again, it speaks to like how much firepower was in the middle of that round.

Do you think that there's a potential for people that kind of get caught up in that and actually overdo it in terms of trying to move into now? Most people believe 2023 is going to be very strong, but those things, especially a year out. I mean, all you have to do is look at mock drafts a year out in any kind of situation. And you see crazy movement and all types of surprises are. And, The, you know, Jamar Chase, Kyle Pitts, draft, and that wasn't the only one recently that's been very good for rookies. They're not all like that. I mean, do we get to the point where we're overstating the value of some of these first round picks? I would say that it's hard to simply because you can actually trade busts, even after they've been busts, if they're still young.

And so you can mitigate some of the risk that way. But certainly, it's a very high standard that these current rookies, which as you said, have a lot of bus risk, that they're going to have to live up to. I just got to brag about this. Rookie draft last year. Titan Premium Superflex. I had a 102, 103, 105, 106, 109. I landed Kyle Pitts, Jamar Chase, Naji Harris,

Trey Lance, and Javante Williams. It just doesn't get any better than that. But yeah, I mean, like, are you viewing? this class, kind of how I am, where like, I, in, in comparison to the last two years, maybe three years, it's just not a lot of high-end talent. It's sort of risky. Like, I mean, last year, Elijah Moore was like 203. Jalen Waddle was like 112. Devontas Smith was like 111. Just, now who are you taking at those spots? It's like Alec Pierce and I don't know. Well, I mean, it kind of goes back to your original point, which is that Wondale should be going a lot earlier.

I mean, he's a tiny little dude, right? And so there is tiny guys. I mean, that's going to limit the ceiling. There's almost no way that it doesn't limit it some. And people are looking at some of these other players and saying, okay, I prefer to take the huge, huge swing. But, I mean, as you said, I mean, Juan Del Robinson was good. and you know you can make some real mistakes if you kind of go through you look at some of the numbers you know what's predictive you know the general types of profiles that succeed you know where they need to be in terms of age adjusted production you know what some sweet spots are in terms of size speed all that kind of thing and then you go watch some of the guys play and some of the people who are very good

you know they won't pop in quite the way you wanted and so then you're not as excited you watch somebody else who really all they have is highlights and they were basically bad on all the other plays. You're like, oh, this guy looks great, right? But for a tiny little dude, Robinson is a playmaker. That guy is electric with the ball in his hands. You can definitely understand how he could be used at the NFL level.

I was kind of thinking about this earlier today. And I think this is one of my predictions that is almost certainly wrong, as many of them are. But, I mean, Robinson's going to lead the Giants in receiving yards. So why is he being drafted in, in expert drafts like at the 206 and in more general drafts where we've seen the running backs move up a little bit and these quarterbacks who were drafted as backups move up a little bit. I mean, he's going, you know, 301 to 304, right?

I mean, you can't take the Giants leading receiver in the third round of your rookie draft. So I think that there are pockets here. They're very, very valuable, but they're just a lot more landmines. And so I actually like the top. for wide receivers pretty well. I think all of them have star potential. Ideally, you would kind of move to the end of that. I mean, Garrett Wilson, Jameson, William's, a lot more questions in terms of landing

spot, which is one of the reasons they're a little bit cheaper. Obviously, Williams also maybe some delayed gratification, which can be difficult, and just very up in the air. It's just massively wide range of outcomes for him. But you have a potential star group there. Then you have a couple of other guys that I like all right. I'm probably higher on Skymore, and part because, you know, I grew up in Kansas. and I will definitely put a good spin on what the Chiefs do,

at least in the short term, even if it's something like drafting Clyde Edwards O'Lear. It took me a couple days to try and figure out what was going on there. It was like, all right, well, I can get on board of him being like the 103, maybe. But he said he was, Andy Reid said he was, already better than Brian Westbrook, who was like the only guy competing with Ladanian Thomas in year over year. that he uh my model didn't like it and then i was just like 101 he's he's the hill i'm gonna die on

and redraft too yeah i mean it's difficult for NFL teams the manifold teams have even a little bit more the same problem that we have which is that you know you make up your mind on something or you can very easily get into kind of this this path where you're not taking in the right outside information you get overconfident in your own take and then obviously once you get into that it's very difficult to get back out. Anyway, that's unfortunate, right? So I'm excited about Skymore. I think you can kind of try and move down to get to him, but, and obviously you can't

move down that far because for where he was drafted, people are very enthusiastic. And I think for some of the same reasons that they're enthusiastic about Ross. I mean, those two guys could be the superstars of the future for the Kansas City Chiefs. Once you get beyond that pick, though, right, we get into the 110 range and Watson is kind of this, I mean, you can dream kind of pick. you know if you make it it's a ton of risk and you're probably going to miss but there is some upside there i mean you've got erin rogers you've got this i mean he's an athlete right just because he hasn't been a great football player it's not impossible for those guys he has been a great football player

you think he hasn't watson yeah he averaged over four yards for route run last year we so then we look at the at the 11 right to like the 206 and and And we do have a massive, massive crater, basically. And I think that if you have picks in that range, you're going to try and push yourself back to the end of that. Because once you get into the late second and then really throughout the third, you can kind of take your shot on guys who have fallen and maybe like you said, we're drafted actually somewhat early. And the team at least is invested in them. So if you like someone like Thornton, and yeah, one of the things that I think is still a flaw that people have with Dynasty. I mean, so many of the things drafters have gotten so savvy over the last, you know, three or four years.

And increasingly, I mean, people are just so good at playing fantasy football. But I do think that we look at some of these depth charts and think, well, where are the targets going to come from? How does the guy work through it? I mean, Thornton, if he is the player they drafted him to be, the fact that they have a lot of guys. I mean, it's kind of like if you have the two QBs, you have none. I mean, they've got like seven or eight wider seeders. They have none, right? And so if he's good, then that'll work itself out.

And they've kind of made that bet. They had other people in that range that they could have taken. And not only did they not take him, they moved up to get their guy there. So the fact that the team really, I think, is invested in is encouraging. There are players from the 206, 207, really even into the fourth round that you can dream about a little bit. All right. Here's what I'm going to do. All right, let's talk. We'll save wide receivers for last. Quarterbacks. Kenny Pickett goes somewhere in round one. You can tell me where. And then are you targeting anyone beyond that?

I think it's kind of fun to hit on a variety of these guys because I think that they actually are better than the NFL gave them credit for. That doesn't necessarily mean good. Doesn't necessarily mean starter. But there are teams that definitely should have taken the risk because it's a a difficult position to evaluate. We do see guys come out of nowhere. I mean, they're taking roster filler instead of quarterbacks who at least would have a shot. You can see them practice. Some of these guys, even after the teams waited, are now in a situation with the guy in front of them is bad. And really all you want in any kind of walk of life and certainly as an athlete is to be given a chance to show what you can do.

Those guys are going to be out there on an NFL practice field and the contrast between them and an NFL start who is not good enough, we'll tell the team what they need to know. I mean, if the contrast is that the starter is still better and you're not, and we know that there's going to be some inexperienced. I mean, they talk about some of these guys as being developmental. It's like, well, I mean, all you have to do is look at Trevor Lawrence and Zach Wilson. All the guys are developmental.

I mean, I don't really know what that means, right? But they've got a chance to go out there and practice and show what they can do, show that the mobility matters, show that the arm strength matters, show that they can make plays and they could develop into an upper quarterback. So I like getting. some shares of those players, especially in Superflex, we talk about, I mean, how expensive quarterbacks are in Superflex. And I just, I rarely find that I actually want to pay for them. But when you're talking about second round picks or even third round picks, that's a very different kind of story. And so for me, it's almost easier to pay for some of them than to pay for Pickett who, you know, at the 107, which if you need a quarterback in Superflex, the way that things sort of boiled out, I mean, you've got to get up there.

to get him. Otherwise, you might not. So I've had some leagues where I had picks in that range and moved down or moved out to give that pick up. Because, you know, as you mentioned, if you're willing to have some patience, you know, you talked about the 109. I mean, you need to get some other things too. So you get back a veteran or you get back multiple picks in 2023. You know, it's not just simply trading a mid-2020 first round pick for a random a 2023 first round pick. It's going to be challenging to win that, even if you love the 2023 class, or maybe not challenging to win.

But at least there are a lot of paths to losing it. But if you get more than that, which in many cases you will, I mean, you work out a trade that works for both people. You move out of there and maybe don't take that risk on picket. And that's not even to say that he won't work because he did have a good season last year and he goes to a quality organization. He probably is going to have some good targets, although there are some questions. marks with those guys there in Pittsburgh.

Yeah, my line of reasoning with the quarterbacks after him is like, well, why not just trade for Kalimond or Kyle Trask cheaper? Because, you know, it's similar to better draft capital. But like, what's the value in that? Like, I just hate holding on to a backup quarterback who does nothing to your roster. But, I mean, I think with this class, you can make some arguments where, like you said, I think these quarterbacks were better than the NFL gave him credit for. You know, not much competition.

Desmond Ritter in Atlanta, Matt Carroll and Carolina, Sam Howell, even in Washington. Like those are some mid to poor quarterbacks in front of them. Even Malik Willis, like how long is Tennessee going to be committed to Ryan Tannahill? So I think that's the bulk case argument for them. I think I think we, we do. differ in, like, where we want to take chances and the risk we want to dive into. But, like, if you hit on one of those quarterbacks, the payout is massive. So maybe that is worthwhile, just kind of holding your nose and taking one.

Well, what about the tight end position? I'm a big trade McBride guy. I really like trade McBride, really liked Greg Dulcich pre-draft. I thought he was really the tight end too in this class, but like a special. one and then we're like fairly special for like a typical round three tight end uh and then jolani woods uh you know a hyper freak athlete some upside there the coach you know clearly wants a dependable tight end uh anyone any of those tight ends give you a boner sean anyone get you excited well we did our rhodovovist rookie guide um ranking summit and obviously Curtis and the gang were we're

part of that. And we just have McBride a lot higher than ADP. And it's really difficult. Again, within the context of like 111, the 206 being bad, it's difficult to understand how his ADP in a lot of formats is going to be like at that 207 range. So it's at the, it's after that crater. And so, I mean, I think you have to love him there. It's, sometimes you get kind of locked in on a take and you've got to continually try and force yourself to think through it and make sure that you're not simply going with something that you thought in the past

and now you can't move off of it. One of the things is just that McBride and Dulcich both go into situations where they're probably not going to be a starter. And so I'm always asking myself, why do I feel so much better about McBrides than Dulcurgers? And the one thing is I'm just, I'm above the market on Albert O, even with some of the other things that are going on there. And you look at his athleticism, you look at his ability to command targets,

even within the context of what they've had in the past. And it's very impressive. There's a difference for me when you're drafted behind an older player who's clearly declining, even if the redraft thesis for him potentially is strong. And someone who is in behind a guy who was so good that the team's like, no offense, someone who if we'd ever had a good quarterback, would have been a star, we're going to let him go. Right.

And so from that perspective, I think it is an apples and oranges situation. I do have to keep trying to ask myself, like, are people letting McBride fall because you're just going to have to be so patient, it doesn't work from a roster construction perspective. I mean, you mentioned not wanting to hold on to those QBs. I tend to have a lot of young tight ends. One of the things that I'll like to do is take, I mean, if you're talking about a first round tied end, if you're talking about a Kyle Pitts, I mean, you're not necessarily going to be in position to take them.

and then if you have to be patient, you know, if you draft a T.J. Hawkins and Arnauant in the first round and have to be patient, it's a little bit different than if you're drafting, you know, the Pat Fryermuth of every class in the second round. And then you're just building, you know, someone like Cole Commet, for example, he hasn't been a star so far.

He hasn't been someone that's that exciting. But there's still a thesis he could still come through, right? And if you start to have this depth on your roster where you have that tied in in every class, then when you're going to hit on some breakouts, you've got some good depth. We know that a lot of leagues are playing tight-in. and premium. I like to score points at that position.

If you don't have a tight end star, you're basically operating with one less starting lineup spot. And so I think that McBride makes a lot of sense just continually making that part of your roster strong, building the depth there, and forcing yourself to be patient. Again, knowing it's a second round pick, you can be a little bit more patient there than with these guys that have to make that immediate impact. The other thing is just I'm probably a little bit above the market on what the Arizona offense is going to do. And maybe that's not the case. I mean, obviously the guys are fairly expensive in a lot of formats.

And it's easy to see how the Cardinals would score a lot of points. But they did melt down over the course of the second half of last season. They didn't look good in the playoffs. They've had a number of negative narratives surrounding the team and certainly surrounding their quarterback. And so I think there's potentially a little bit of a discount attached to some of their players, even with the fact that when you go in and look at it, maybe isn't immediately apparent. Yeah, I think it's tricky with McBride because, you know, typically I'll say, you know, Kyle Pitts excluded, you can wait on tight ends, you know, just trade for them the next year because an impatient owner is going to value them less.

They're going to get excited in the rookie draft, but rookie tight ends tend to underwhelm in their rookie season. Didn't work out with Pat Fryermouth, who's more expensive now. did work out with Hunter Long, who's barely being drafted. And maybe you could say that with Trey McBride with, you know, well, he's buried behind Zach Erd. So just wait a year, wait two years, depending on what the contract looks like. But no, no, I'm a big McBride fan. So at that ADP, that's super attractive to me.

Well, what about the running back position? I have a feeling we're going to disagree on this. I think, you know, Breeze Hogg, the 101, Kenneth Walker, He's good from anywhere within that 104 to 106 range, clear RB2. And then I don't see another round one running back. James Cook, to me, the only argument is draft capital. They came out right and said, like, well, we didn't sign J.D. McKissick. So we drafted a J.D. McKissick type.

And it's like, I'm never getting excited about a scab back whose touches are limited. And that was a big concern with him. His frame, his size, you know, can he handle a full workload? I don't think so. I was bearish on that point. Rashad White, I loved. I saw, you know, amazing pass catching upside. Belkow upside.

And he drafted him and said, yeah, he's a three-down back. And that's rare. And we value three-down backs. And the running-back coach compared him to David Johnson. And so freak athlete. And that got me really excited. But, I mean, he's buried behind Leonard Furnett for at least. this year. So you could say he's another guy who's going to be cheaper a year from now.

And then Brian Robinson, who I think is going to be a committee back in year one. I think Antonio Gibson is kind of dusty, which is sad for me, a guy who loved Antonio Gibson. But Brian Robinson was my pre-draft RV3, had good draft capital. And Damien Pierce didn't have good draft capital. The press conference, the only and exclusively hyped him up as a special teams player. But I mean, you look at the death. in Houston and it's it's pretty bad and then you know tierian davis price has draft capital blah blah blah but uh i think there's two round one running backs and then uh a couple might be worth nibbling on in mid round two how do you feel sean yeah i mean there's there's really nothing right i think that

kenneth walker is actually a much more interesting play in redraft because you get a price in a range that you're starting to look at some zero RB options. And again, it's the one-year thing. You don't have to live with the problems if those problems develop there. And you're looking at potential for, you know, Rashad Penny could still be good, even though he's humorously already injured evidently. Yeah, hamstring, which is a soft tissue, which, you know, not a good sign. Yeah.

So, so the dynasty is tough. And then, I mean, you mentioned white. And that one is, I think, the hardest one. David Johnson is the very obvious comparison. You have that situation where he emerges at the end of his rookie year despite being behind someone who previously had been a star. And the tricky part with Fournette is you have some contract issues in addition to the fact that just he actually was quite good last year.

And Fournette has been one that is difficult enough for me that I don't necessarily feel like taking another Fournet beating and having a lot of white at the price. because even with the upside and the upside is extreme, the price just still is not appealing to me. And that would be the case also for some of those other backs that you mentioned. I mean, one of the things is that I'm not on Damien Pierce. I don't think that he checks hardly any of the boxes that we look for other than, you know, breaking tackles and not going anywhere, right?

I mean, you look at some of the players who've been the biggest busts in the last three or four years. And that is a profile that does have some trouble. And yet I was shocked that he's not going earlier than he is because I don't know. So Houston is tricky because number one, they're not going to score any points. So maybe you don't want the person there anyway. But I mean, nobody has a clearer path to, I mean, if they liked him, if he were good. And one of the things that I was trying to ask myself is, you know, what if I'm wrong? because I'm wrong all the time.

And if I'm wrong in the situation here is perfect and he's going to have this monster workload and he's going in the second round, then don't you want to have some exposure to that? And surprisingly, he's going later than I would expect, but I still have found that I don't have exposure. So we kind of talked about this on your podcast before the NFL draft. I was dangerously high on him. And it was just, I saw the upside argument with him, where his efficiency last year was insane.

Only Percy Harvin had a better season by touchdowns per touch, by mistackles force per touch. It was an all-time great season, mistackles force per reception, all-time great season, which by my numbers is more predictive than raw receptions or reception share or even receiving yards for game, things like that. And I had Jim Nagy on the podcast,

who didn't come right out and say it, but heavily hinted. that there was some things going on behind the scenes and like everyone was aware he deserved more touches but it was like a political thing which Lance Zeerline kind of alluded to as well and so you know me I just like chase upside so I really convinced myself of that upside argument even though my model did not like him at all and then his three cone was humorously bad it was like bottom 10 since 2000. I think it was the same as Brandon Jacobs, who was like 60 pounds heavier, really, really bad three. And so, yeah, I mean, once the draft capital factored in the equation, I was like, no,

I'm wrong. I'm just wrong. And it's, it's, I should have taken, I agreed with a model, not fell in love with my bull case argument. And it's funny now because like in redraft, in our projections, he is insanely high. And it's just, yeah, that landing spot is awesome. There's, you know, do you really think Rex Burkhead and Marlon Max, Sands, Achilles is going to beat him out? I probably not. I will just say, you know, Nick Casario, who like comes from the Belichick school, so maybe we shouldn't really trust it. He, like, exclusively talked about him as a special team's player and was like, is he better than anyone else we have in the building? Certainly not. He just kind of like dumped all over him.

So, I mean, who knows? I'm a lot lower on him now than I was pre-draft, and I'm not drafting him, but I'm not really drafting probably any of these running backs. There's just a lot of wide receivers I can sell myself on instead. Do you have players that once they're into the third round? Oh, Tyler Algier is like that as well, by the way. You're lower on him now?

Yeah, yeah. I think I had him RB4. And, I mean, again, the landing spot's great, but it's like special teams caliber draft capital. Yeah, but I mean, the running back position is one where I think a little bit. Teams are wising up to not wasting draft capital, maybe. I think so. And I think that also, even though this was not a class that's going to have those second round picks, and we've gotten to this interesting area where in many years, the potential superstars going

round two and you're thinking well even if you don't believe in running backs you know perhaps a team drafting you know from 20 to 32 and you're taking shots on guys who don't project that well i mean a lot of these teams will be like well we have 15 guys with first round picks or you know with first round grades and you're like well you're picking 32 maybe you should take resall you know something like that but yeah when you're talking about the really good players going in the second round and even sometimes mid third especially when there's actually a decent group of later picks. I could see the teams kind of playing a little bit of chicken and saying,

you know, I don't care which guy falls. Now, I mean, Tyler Al Jare is probably someone that should have gone, you know, maybe a couple of teams shouldn't have gone exactly the way they did because, I mean,

he looks like a good pick. And I like him a lot with the price. So one of the things that is kind of fun is somewhat exploitable, depending on exactly how it plays out in your league, is just that if the players, do fall, then also the price falls. And if you have a lot of picks, then you can keep taking him. And so that's one of the things, too, where, you know, if you have, I mean, this is going

to sound absurd to some listeners, but if you really have done the relentless trading back, and so maybe you have three first round picks, four second round picks, five third round picks. I mean, you can still take your Tyler Aljir because now he is in the third round. And you've got enough picks that, I mean, you're going to spread it across some of those guys. The other one who's interesting there is just, you know, Davis Price with the 49er situation. where we know that they create running back value.

And I think that if you're going to win your dynasty league, along with having a star or two, it's helpful to have a group of running backs who could go through stretches where they score some points for you. Now, I mean, a lot of these leagues that we play in, and I've got some that are 20 and those have their own kind of unique challenges and enthusiasms. But if you're playing in a 30 roster spot league,

I mean, you need to have the running backs that you're going to kind of cycle through on your roster because, yeah, I mean, it's not that there's nobody in free agency, but you're going to see some very big bids early on on some of these guys that do matter. And maybe a lot of the free agent budget is really going to be saved for the backup quarterbacks when the first string guys go down because not everybody wants to have like 10 of their roster spots used at QB on all of these backups. You know, you're not even actually going to hit the right backups. But when a player does get hurt, if you're very weak at QB, you have to,

to go out and get that guy at the other positions. I mean, you need to have someone like a Tery and Davis Price on your roster because he's going to be rostered by somebody. I like it. Although I'm probably, I mean, I get it. If I'm RV needy, sure, but otherwise, I just, I thought the value in this class is wide receiver, so I'm typically loading up on wide receiver. But sure, after that Taekwon Thornton, David Bell tier, I guess, or maybe a little before that. But let's talk wide receiver then. I have it, and you can call me out when it gets interesting. I have a

Drake London one, tier to himself. Garrett Wilson, two, tier to himself. James and Williams, Chris Alave, another tier. Traylon Burks, Jahan Dodson, tier. And then Christian Watson, a tier to himself. And we'll debate, I'm sure Christian Watson versus Sky more in a second. And then the next here is George Pickens, Skymore, John Mechie, Alec Pierce, Wondell Robinson. And I, we should talk Wondell Robinson. You said you think he's going to lead the Giants in receiving this year. And he was interesting in that I had him higher pre-draft

that I had poe draft, even though he had the ideal draft capital. And in redraft, by the way, he's an insane value. He's going four full rounds behind any other rookie wide receiver. I don't know that he outscores Cadarius Tony, a player I'm really fond of. He ranked 12 in yards for route run last year as the eighth best mark of any rookie wide receiver of the past 10 seasons. And by the way, my model says there's a high correlation between we, crazy wide receivers and talent and fantasy production.

But no, no, no. I do really love Juan Dale Robinson. Like I was kind of getting trash for how high I was on him pre-draft. So it's kind of weird. Maybe I'm just not being honest is why he fell. But and the height thing too is just that's kind of bizarre where it's like, well, yeah, any wide receiver under 5'9 has never done anything for fantasy except for Cole Beasley. And it's like, all right, but add an inch and you get Steve Smith and

West Welker. And it's like, how much difference does an inch really make? But anyway, anyone, anyone you want to talk about? Anyone stand out to you? Any debates you want to have? I think that the, so one of the things that we know has also permeated the fantasy industry in terms of understanding kind of how these guys work related to draft spot is that the guys who stay for four years, the guys who don't break out very early. And those types of things are big red flags. And so you look at someone like an alabia or a dots and you're thinking, okay, well, you know, maybe they're going to go a lot later to the point where they would actually be a value. because even if you underperform or you project to underperform draft slot by a pretty wide margin, those guys who were drafted early enough that that might still be pretty appetizing in a draft

that gets weak at the end. But the problem is just that, you know, especially Olave is still expensive. And so, and you, you know, didn't have that much in the way of encouraging things to say about him when you join us on O.T. I mean, he's kind of got that mix of characteristics where you're thinking, okay, pro-ready, I mean, does that, is that even good? Because they're essentially telegraphing that they think that all he can really do, he'll probably be able to do right away. And, you know, now they have Jarvis Landry there as well.

I mean, that's one where I think maybe the floor ceiling situation is not as good as the draft slot would indicate him. And again, you'd really like to have that type of player. And you contrasted it earlier to sort of generally speaking value-wise with Elijah Moore, who was available in the early second last year. And there's a big gap there in terms of how we should be looking at those guys. And so I would probably have him down, but I can't be unbiased about Skymore. He does have some great metrics.

He checked a crazy number of boxes in Blair Andrews, sort of machine learning evaluation of the class. I mean, you would have liked for the chiefs to want him enough that they actually made more of an effort to make sure they got him. And one of the things about how that played out is that they could have very easily not gotten him. And then, you know, we wouldn't be that excited about the situation at all, I don't think. Well, they traded back and then like four wide receivers went before their next pick. Yeah. So, I mean.

So I'll give you my anti-Skymore take. Just because, like, I don't feel that confident in it. It's just like, I'm the only one making it. So I just like continually making it. But just back to Chris Alave for a second. So one thing we can have a disagreement about, and I'll admit that this may be hubris on my part and I might just be overthinking things, is breakout age is massively important.

And on some of these guys, I'm going against that. you know, Jehan Dawson, maybe, certainly Christian Watson. But on non-ear-ear-declare versus early-declare, Chris Alavi gets a pass, just like DeVanta Smith gets a pass because per sources, like flawless sources, he had a round two grade last year and he stayed because he wanted a round one grade and he wanted to win the national title. So he gets a pass on that, but early to clear thing, yeah, sure, that could be a flaw.

I had Christian Watson head pre-draft. And for one thing, definitely Athleticism played a massive role where he's, it's overrated in general, but like not at the polar extremes. And he was polar extreme freak athlete. I also think his numbers aren't that bad as people are talking about

where it's like a massively run first offense. Working back against him is high quality quarterback, minimal target competition. But like I said, He averaged 4.33 yards per route run last year. That was the sixth best season of 4,000 plus qualifying since 2014 by career yards for target, career yards after the catch per reception, career yards per reception.

All amazing numbers granted up against like the worst competition possible, um, non-fBS wide receiver. And then Sky Moore, the thing about him is, uh, His numbers are pretty good, but you just look at Western Michigan wide receivers, and Corey Davis had three seasons better by yards per route run. His season was basically tied with Daniel Braverman's best season. And D. Eskridge, who played cornerback the year prior, smashed him by yards for route run.

Wondell Robin, I mean, D. Eskridge's best season by yards per route run, smashed him in his best season. Same thing for yards per game. Even age-adjusted yards per game. It's just like that's how obscene Eskridge's numbers were. And then with the same quarterback, Sky Moore's numbers were without D. Eskridge's target competition was just good. And then there's another wide receiver who no one's talked about.

Jaden Reed. So Sky Moore does have the early breakout age in 2019. But he was playing with Caleb Elaby, who was drafted. And Dee Esprich is playing cornerback that year. But the year prior, Jaden Reed, who was younger, playing with John Wassing, who is a nobody, and was still competing for targets against D. Eskridge, had a better season by yards for game, certainly better by age-adjusted yards for game. And so, like, maybe I'm just being overly midpicking.

and like sure his his level of competition was better than christian watson's but this is still a non-power five school and my model hammers non-power five wide receivers and so like maybe i'm being nitpicky here but like when i just looked at this profile it it didn't give me a boner and when i watched the tape i was i'm not a tape guy and it doesn't really factor in but like his tape was overwhelming. I thought Alec Pierce's tape was significantly better. And when I watched Christian Watson's tape, super raw, but he also like glided and moved in a way that I've only ever seen like Randy Moss glide and move, again, against horrific levels of competition. But, uh, so that all factored in. And so that's why Christian Watson, he had the better draft capital. He's more athletic.

And I mean, like, the landing spot's arguably better, you know, Aaron Rockwell in the short term. Aaron Rogers minimal target competition. But I don't know. What are your thoughts? You want to refute that? No, I was going to say, I was worried that you were going to call it Golden Tate again, which I was going to take as extreme derision.

Oh, did I say that on your show? Yeah, people, so that's part of it. It's like, you know, you go into a movie and someone's like, this movie's amazing and it's like mediocre. You hate it. And they're like, this movie sucks and it's mediocre. And you're like, oh, that movie's great. I don't know what you're talking about.

That movie's great. It was the same thing. Before I watched the tape and really dug in, he was getting Golden Tate Combs, who was like one of my all-time favorite wide receivers, one of your all-time favorite wide receivers. He got comp to Elijah Moore. He got comp to Antonio Brown, who's my must-draft wide receiver for like the fourth year in a row. And so like that, the expectations kind of played a role. But yeah, sorry, go on, Sean. Yeah, and, and yeah, I think that sometimes, as you mentioned, the context can, I mean, it can be easy to nitpick the guys and think that maybe some specific elements knock him down more that they do. But I would have to agree with you. And I kind of have

joked with some of the Skymore fanatics, of which I am proudly joining now that he's with the Kinless City Chiefs. But I would have, I would have liked to see more dynamic highlights from a guy who is playing in a non-power five conference. I mean, that's the one thing Christian Watson has going for it. It's sick highlight real, but I mean... Like, on the handful of plays in his college career that Christian Watson was involved in the game, he looked very, very good. Right, right, right.

But again, it was like a hyper-run-heavy offense, so it wasn't super involved. And they're a very good team. I mean, they control the games. They hammer their opponents. But, I mean, he's also six, four, 208 pounds. Worst wide receiver in the class by contested catch rate. worst wide receiver in the class by drop rate. And there was another other, a number of other things like that.

It's just very raw. And he's old, which we both, you know, dislike older wide receivers for good reason. It's just very predictive. Wondale Robinson, yeah. I have him wide receiver 12 right now, and I had him wide receiver 8 pre-draft. And he had the draft capital I wanted.

So I don't know what I'm thinking there. But his numbers were unreal by Yard. for team pass attempt it was the best by any wide risk power five wide receiver in this class uh by yardage market share best by any power five like his 2021 was better than any season by anyone else in this class um all right so we can we can kill out that and just also a fantastic pure runner too i mean not that he's going to be oh my god but yeah the dude was the number one all-purpose running back coming out of high school and he converts to wide receiver and he's amazing And by the way, the Giants you're in a draft will leave us.

No, yeah, we'll leave us next year. So put in the books. They're going to pair them back up and this can be awesome. Untap potential, converter running back. What else? No, I mean, the things that you said, his age-adjusted production, his trajectory there, playing on a couple different teams, making that transition, you know, what he does with the ball in his hands,

you can fall into the trap of teams, kind of believing teams, and they're saying, oh, we're going to get this guy in space. We're going to manufacture touches. It's going to work out great. And then you see what the Cardinals do with Rondell Moore. And the very first thing that everybody thinks is, well, and that's not the type of NFL usage that will really work. Now, I'm so optimistic that Moore is going to move to the next step in 2022.

I think you should be drafting him. He's a freakish athlete. He's going to be able to make some play. plays. But, I mean, Robinson can also make those types of plays. I'm enthusiastic about how I think the Giants will use him. And it is a case where you mentioned Kadaria's, Tony. There is a lot to be excited about there, I think. There's also a lot of risk. I mean, he's got the potential to be a top 10 wide receiver or to get benched. And there aren't too many wide receivers who could do both of those things. You know, Kenny Goliday, if you could get completely healthy, you know,

if Daniel Jones plays better. The Giants are very. very interesting. And yet at the same time, so many of different pieces there are so fragile that a guy who comes in is young, is healthy, can do things with the ball in his hands. That's the type of player that the Giants are really going to be able to use. All right. So after the Wondale-Robbins and tier, I got to move them out, that way. But Tyquan, Thornton, David Bell, and a tier by themselves, where do you stand on those two guys? before the NFL draft, I gave out a free sub to whoever could accurately predict my favorite wide receivers with projected day three draft capital. So it was also, it was Juan Dale Robinson, Tyquon Thornton, and Justin Ross.

So it was awesome to see two of those guys going round two when Dame Bruegler and Lance Zeerline and Daniel Jeremiah all had them mid-day three. I mean, like, the thing with Taekwant Thornton is like the, my model loved him, athleticism loved him. It was supposedly the best 10-yard split ever. Like only Chris Johnson had a better 10-yard split. And that's like more of an urban legend than a verified time. And like you read the scouting reports. And the only knock on him was he had thin wrists.

And it's just like, okay, so why is this, if this is only knock, Why is this guy going round five? Like obviously BMI is important. But I didn't move him up a lot. Maybe that's just a hedge because these were my two guys. So were you out on Taekwong Thornton? You had mentioned that the older players and players who maybe have a little bit more of a one-year wonderish element to them, that that is a big red flag.

At the same time, if someone is going to have produced, that comes at the end, you do want it to be impressive and you do want the player to have some other unique traits. One of the things that I liked when you mentioned about Christian Watson is that athleticism at the wider CER position is massively overrated. And that's one of the reasons why David Bell, for example, and the main thing that I wanted to see about him was how big he was. Because, you know, he comes in at 212 and you're thinking, okay, Anquam Bolden, this guy is going to be a stud, especially if he falls into a situation where he's essentially competing with nobody. I mean, he could leave the rookies and targets by a wide margin, not just lead, but lead by a wide margin.

And it's going to be hard to have both that in one to leave in the Giants. But the situation with Thornton is different, but has some similarities in that he's not just, oh, but so the point then is that, but at the very edges, it matters. And we have the freak score on the site is something that the fantasy douche came up with, you know, back at the very beginning. We had Matt Spencer look at it again last year. You know, this pulls out guys who do go score touchdowns at the NFL level. It's a meaningful deal to look at the players who have this height, weight, speed, freakish nature to them. Right. And so when you're looking at the very fastest players and Thornton's speed and then you look at what he does,

I thought it was interesting that you mentioned Pierce. He did not stand out to me as much watching him play. But Thornton goes by anybody at will. And you look at what Mack Jones did last year. he had very little to work with those receivers are, I mean, they're good. It's hard to, I mean, you never want to denigrate NFL wide receivers for good receivers. I mean, these are great players. But, I mean, they're number three receivers.

So if you've got like three number three receivers out there as a rookie and you go out and have a pretty solid season, that's a good season. I mean, you've got to be very excited about that. The year that we expect most of these quarterbacks to make the jump would be year two. You think about some of the things that Mack Jones did in college when he had receivers who could celebrate, celebrate, who could separate, celebrate as well. The, I mean, what he did there was very impressive, right? And so I like that match.

I like that match for those guys. I think it could be really cool. I think you have to have some exposure to that. On the very opposite of the equation, then we had David Bell, who's super slow. But the age-adjusted production, he didn't ever have a season that was crazy elite, but just comes in and is a stud right from the beginning, incredibly consistent.

He has the size that you want. And the fact that he wasn't fast, I mean, that's great for fantasy managers because now you get this great discount on a player who, if he were even a little bit faster, then, I mean, you'd be talking about having to spend a full extra rounds. I mean, he'd be like 106 instead of the 206. That's a big deal to you when you're looking at the cost

to build your portfolio, to build your dynasty team. And obviously the Cleveland Browns as well. you would expect, and that's one of the things I thought was funny when you were talking about Damien Pierce, but you would expect the team that drafts these guys to be a team that's a believer. And so we can discount some of the things that the teams themselves say. But when a team comes out and says, we think this is basically the best guy. And the only reason we didn't draft him earlier is we didn't think that we had to. I mean, again, that's a situation where maybe you bump him a little bit in terms of how you mentally conceptualize,

even where he was drafted. I mean, this is somebody they think is going to be a star. Yeah. My only concern with Taekwon Thornton, and again, I'm pretty bullish for a player I really liked pre-draft, had the draft capital, is that he's going to be like Chris Hogan 2.0, where, like, Rich Rebar jokes, like, he was just getting his cardio in, where he's stretching the field vertically and pinning a safety back to open up things for the other wide receivers, but not really getting those high-value targets he would like. That would just be my concern there. But, like,

your point, Mack Jones might not have the best arm, but he was easily the most efficient deep passer, his final season of college. And like, he looked great in that area last year with just Nelson Agalore and, you know, Kendrick Bourne. And so overall bullish. David Bell, yeah. So I was surprised my athleticism model, like obviously crushed him. My production model wasn't that high on him, even though he ranked sixth. since 2000, among all power five wide receivers and career receiving yards per game. He ranked second in career receptions per game. Lots of great age-adjusted stuff, but not ever really with the killer hyper-efficiency

season and PFF separation rate, things like that. He wasn't overall great. And then the athleticism. Like we both said, athleticism is very overrated at the wide receiver position, except at the polar extremes and I had him within that polar extreme. And so I said, all right, yeah, again, athleticism massively overrated for wide receivers, but for like slot wide receivers, it arguably has a negative correlation. So I would, I basically said like, hey, I think the NFL should move him to the slot. And if we get word from a team that that's their plans for him, wheels up.

And that's exactly what Andrew Berry said in Cleveland's presser. They're like, no, no, no, no. He played outside in college. We see him as a slot wide receiver. I was like, that's perfect. That is the perfect landing spot just based on that. And then you throw Deshawn Watson in the mix and he lost Jarvis Landry, he lost OBJ, Anthony Schwartz is probably a JAG, Donovan People's Jones is probably a JAG.

And like that gets me really excited. I think he's going to be the starting slot from year one. So pretty bullish on David Bell. Anything to add there or any other wide receivers you're excited about? Well, it's kind of looking through the ADP as we move a little bit deeper. And you do have some of these small school wide receivers who fall into some interesting situations. Jalen Tolbert, Khalil Shakir, Romeo Dubs. I know that you are not going to be on dubs with how excited you are with Christian Watson.

But when we have a guy who, one of the things that the Packers mentioned, you know, his GPS results, he was fast at the senior bowl. That doesn't necessarily come out like when they tested him in the 40 and that type of thing. But playable speed, we know the small school guys are going to have a lot more trouble getting in situations where the NFL is going to to give them that high draft grade early. And so while we punish them for being small school players, having the poor age-adjusted production by comparison to some of the really elite guys, I mean, you can get to the point where, you know, we're double and triple penalizing them for some of the same things

are going to show up there. I like the prices and the situations for some of those players, even though I think that the overall likelihood is that they don't end up mattering to your team. but it's a fun place to have some picks and you can add it in some depth and again some contingency-based types of plays when you're playing for the Packers and the Bills and the Cowboys, it's not impossible to see situations where, especially if there are injuries ahead of you, that you can go out there and score points within those offenses. All right.

I mean, like, his number, he was on the bubble for me in terms of guys to write up. He did have the, you know, high projected draft capital quarterback and, minimal target competition behind the tight end there. But his numbers were otherwise good. But yeah, I mean, I am mostly just focusing on Christian Watson. All right, we'll end with this. This is my guy as the ultimate upside wins championships player for rookie drafts. And that's Justin Ross, who's going to outscore Skymore this season.

What are your thoughts on Justin Ross? Yeah, I mean, when you're in the situation that he's in, things have to go right, right? Because you're not going to continually get all of these second chances. You're not going to be able to get hurt. And the team be like, oh, don't worry about it. You just get well and we'll play you sometime in the future. But one of the things that is kind of amusing. Ben, Gretchen I have done so many segments on Justin Ross for stealing bananas,

even though it's an undrafted player. And so, I mean, we like him where he's going. We hope that he's successful. You look at that. He's going in the middle of round three, right? And you took him there in our draft. Nice. Good.

So, I mean, he and he and Taekwon, despite the vast differences in their draft slot, are people like them about the same, if not prefer Ross. Because, again, you're talking about this player where, supposedly only a handful of teams cleared him, but if the chiefs cleared him, if the chiefs gave him a chance, I mean, he wouldn't be relevant on almost any other team, right?

But you have a situation where you have the best quarterback in the NFL, you have a head coach who is one of the top two or three head coaches, an offensive genius, and someone who is willing to kind of work with some of these guys. I mean, he's a player's coach in a variety of different ways. And I think that someone who has been through the things that Ross has been through and has some of the limitations that he's likely to have. I mean, you want that player's coach in your corner.

And not surprisingly, one of the things that Ross said was that, I mean, he chose the Kansas City Chiefs for a reason because he thinks that that is a great path to NFL success. I'm not sure that all of your listeners are very well aware of his background and how good he was as a freshman and that so many of the things that we've seen since then really can be just chalked up to the injuries. And so we just, we want to see if he can be healthy. if he can be healthy, he's going to make the chiefs,

and he's going to stick with him, and he's going to be a star. So you have to factor in to an extent the fact that there are a lot of things that need to go right. And, but we just hope that they do, right? Because he seems like such a cool guy. And like all of these players, you know, they're, I mean, they're like us doing kind of what we do.

I mean, you're trying to make a living for yourself and for your family. You've got that path. If he can be a star, he does that. And very easy to root for, and again, as a Chiefs fan, I mean, you know I'm going to be overvaluing him. But somebody who does what he did as a freshman in college

and then gets to play with the Kansas City Chiefs, I don't see how you could not be intrigued and be in on him if you're talking about a third round pick, especially if you've accumulated a lot of picks, a third round pick that you then just have to throw away in the trash because he gets injured again or they cut him soon. You can live with that because, I mean, his college coach, who's seen some good NFL players,

has said he's going to be the greatest undrafted free agent signing of all time. There are actually some very good undirected free agents, so he's put a pretty high standard up there for him to hit. Doug Baldwin, Adam Thielen, was West Walker? I'm not sure if it was there very late draft pick. But perfect. I mean, I loved it. It just justified how I feel about,

one of my favorite guys. Yeah, West Walker was a UDFA. Thank you so much, Sean. You lived up to my lofty praise and my excitement and anticipation for this show. So thank you so much for coming on. Well, thanks for having me. It's been a blast. I mean, I can't believe. I look up at the clock. It says 150. I don't see how that's possible. It's been a lot of fun. I really appreciate having me on. Yeah, I was worried because we never clarified how long. this is going to run. I'm going to just, you blink an eye and it's been two hours. But yeah, this flew by because this was fun and it was informative. And to anyone who's listening, I hope you felt the same way. And thanks. And I'll see you guys. I'll see.

Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points podcast. Remember to subscribe, rate and review on your favorite platform. And come join the roster at FantasyPoint.com.