Fantasy Football Daily - 2022 Fantasy Football Draft Targets, Avoids, Strategies with JJ Zachariason

Episode Date: July 19, 2022

Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) and Nick Skrip (@P2WFantasy) welcome in JJ Zachariason (@LateRoundQB) to discuss draft strategies, targets, and avoids, as well as his new 2022 Draft Guide. Taken from Livestream on July 6th, 2022. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Eligibility restrictions apply. See Golden Nuggett Casino.com for details. responsibly. And welcome into the Fantasy Points live stream. I'm your host, Nick's script, and we have a great one for you guys today. As always, I'm here with Scott Barrett. Scott, how was the fourth

weekend? It was good. Saw some fireworks. Just did the token the 4th of July thing. I mentioned earlier. It was like a back-to-back day. Had my daughter's birthday party straight into the 4th, so it was a bit of a long weekend, but just back

into the actual swing of things here. but should have a great show for you guys here today. We have an awesome guest with us who is below us. You say that every time. That's true. That's true. I try to give everybody some good credit, though. But JJ Zacherson, JJ, Late Round Fantasy Football website.

On that website, you can find your Patreon guides, the newsletter links to the podcast. The podcast itself, which we're going to talk about today, the late round fantasy football podcast. You also have the Living the Stream. And you just released, which we'll talk about as well. a major, major guy that is awesome. But JJ, thank you for joining the podcast today. How are things going? Things are great, man.

Things are great. I'm glad to be past the fourth. I'm not the biggest fireworks guy in the world. But now I have a kid, like you got to kind of like them. You know, you just kind of have to deal with it. But glad that we're past it. I feel like now we're finally like in to fit. Like people are like finally getting into fantasy football and they're like really

ready for the season. I'm pumped for it. Yeah, I think as soon as July 1st hits, it's like that switch. that we're getting closer to redraft season. Everybody's starting to look a little bit more, especially the guys that are not as degenerate as the rest of us here. But before we get into things, Scott, you mentioned before this OG article. I wanted to ask about that because it has to do with JJ.

I'm not too familiar with it, but it sounds like something that we need to bring up here. But it has to do with the legendary Frank Gore, which I think last time I checked he was boxing or something like that. but he played in the NFL for about 30-ish years. But can you talk about that? I'm curious. Yeah, before we get in, JJ, we need to talk about your coaching tree. Like, you know, Andy Reeves coaching tree is legendary. JJ has a legendary tree, you know.

He spawned so many of the best fantasy analysts out there, myself, Graham Barfield, Chris Raybon, I think Rich Rebar. Who else is on there, JJ? Justin Freeman was one. that was there. I know I'm going to, Brian Jester, who went on and is crushing the DFS scene now. I mean, there's a lot of people. I mean, obviously people were still at Numberfire, Branding Adula and Jim Sannis who do awesome work. Yeah, I mean, it's been, it's been cool to see, see all that sort of like, makes me sound like I'm like this like 55 year old, like,

fantasy analyst that has been around for a super super, I've been around for a while, but not that old, I promise. Yeah. So I got my start at Number Five with JJ. I started as a baseball writer. My first ever article was about Masa, Hero, Tamaka coming over to the majors. And I did a deep dive into his stats in whatever country he's from and how that translates. Yeah, and I wrote a bunch of, my second article was about why Archie Vaughn was the greatest shortstop of all time ahead of Derek Jeter and just like a bunch of weird pieces like that. And I just really wasn't great. Like early on, maybe by my fifth article. I was like, no, no, no, no, I'm going to do this for a living.

I'm going to be a professional fantasy analyst. I feel it in my bones. I had no reason to think that. I was, again, really painfully mediocre. No one read my articles except for JJ who spent hours, hours handholding me, walking me through the editorial process. Here's what's wrong. Here's eating the fix.

And I had a number of pieces I would submit and it just wasn't up to JJ's standards and he got rejected. and I didn't get paid anything for it. You know, JJ wasn't happy about that. You know, he always pushed to get the writers paid, but it was sort of out of his control until maybe a year or two. Or maybe like right after I left, I think. Probably right after you left. Yeah.

It was the startup life. And like, you know, I had only so much say. And like this is the way things kind of like were back then too. But yeah, I mean, it was a kind of crappy situation. From my perspective, because obviously I'm a writer and content creator myself. and I know that that's important. Yeah, I think I was paid so handsomely, far more than I was worth, because again, my articles were garbage, but JJ really took the time to hold my hand and to help me become a better

analyst and writer. And so it was just absolutely crucial to my success within the industry. And I really do owe so much of what I've accomplished, maybe all of it, to JJ, because without him, I'm not sure. I mean, I probably wouldn't be here. So huge props to JJ for that. Thank you, man. Too much credit, but I appreciate it.

Yeah. So I don't know how it is for like most people. Like when you talk about like getting good at something, it's like incremental progress where you get one percent better each day. Like for me, that's just not the case. Whether it's, you know, playing sports or competitive gaming or writing or whatever, like I just. start off at like this level and I just stay there for a really long time. And then just like one day, I just go up to here where it's like, you know, like I'm a soccer player. I'm like the worst guy on the team for three years. And then one practice, I just like wake up and I start playing

and I'm like the third best guy and the second best guy and the best guy. And that's exactly how it was as JJ knows with this infamous piece where like I was I was probably one of the, you know, like one of his least favorite people or just one of, oh, another article I got to spend hours editing from Scott. But not this time. I wrote an article on why it's maybe my third ever football article. My first one was like 5,000 words and why Legerrett Blunt was the RB to own in New England's bad field.

This one was why Frank Gore was undervalued in basketball leagues. And I just like felt like it like it felt good off the bat. and JJ like email he was like oh my god dude you you get it now you get it this is like a perfect piece you crushed it and it was just smooth sailing from there it was all downhill and my only concern is now that frank gores retired like did i do i lose some magic is this like like is the magic gone i did i lose all my talent so i i don't know but uh any any any memories from from from back in the day yeah i mean look back then it was literally me editing everything that was going in and out of number fire there's a big team there now and

um you know i'm not there anymore but you know there's a great team that's there right now and um handling a lot of that stuff but uh yeah back then it was it was me just like you know i had a certain standard that i appreciated and wanted like on the site and i was going to work with whoever was willing to to work on their content you know it wasn't really a situation where like you know i don't think it ever like got to a point of like the people i was talking to to like we're mad at me or anything. It was more so just that I was, uh, you know, trying to find people like Scott who were willing to just like work on what they

were doing, work on their craft a little bit. And as we, you know, we work together on it. And, you know, I saw a lot of people leave and go and do bigger and better things. And it sucked from my perspective because I lost good, good writers and stuff. But I couldn't do anything about it because, you know, we were a startup at the time. And then, you know, later on, we were able to retain a ton of people, which was great. but, you know, there's some of those OGs like Scott and Graham and Raybon and stuff where I look back and I'm like, man, we could have had this dream team if we were able to pay everyone, yeah. That's super interesting.

And Scott, I know even now, I think Joe, Joe's editing your articles and you at the beginning of some of them have to apologize is because some of the massive pieces like following the draft. I think the wide receiver guide, I think the first like paragraph you're like I had to give my editor. or a heads-up of how this piece was going to go. Yeah, yeah, I tend to overwrite stuff, but I definitely maintained JJ's attention to detail and perfectionism, especially when I edit pieces like Jake Tribes or Jeff Henderson's. And yeah, I just think with my own stuff, like, very few edits that Joe has to make.

And really so, and at PFF, too, like very few edits ever on my pieces. And a lot of that was because JJ took, the time to teach me how to write. I wasn't a great writer in the beginning. So speaking of pieces, obviously, JJ, you just released this late round draft guide. I want to talk about that, but not give away too much because I think it's 100% worth checking out. I know Scott and I have taken some time to look at it and go through it. And it is awesome to say the least. But within that, again, not giving away too much, but you have some fantasy topics looking at regression, variance rankings with important quotes. I like that piece of it.

some good quotes of what you're trying to emphasize and then good details kind of surrounding that. And then you go into some positional strategies and players to target, players to avoid dark throws. You have a cheat sheet at the end. So it's a massive piece. It's well put together. Scott has mentioned a couple of times. Loves the graphics of it. But I wanted to make sure you can take a little bit of time here just to talk about the benefits of just the average fantasy manager to invest in the guide and what makes it different.

because we see a ton of guides out in the space, but from myself, myself just speaking, just checking this out, it is extremely different than what I've seen in the past. Yeah, you know, I mean, nothing against anyone who's ever, like, created a guide or puts guides out there. There's a lot of good stuff out there.

I just really approach my content. Usually, you know, I try to double down on, like, what I know I'm good at doing first off. And usually that's looking at the strategy side of redraft and digging into some concepts that others might not be digging into necessarily and asking questions and trying to, trying to answer questions that others might not be asking and answering. And so, you know, instead of approaching this draft guide from the perspective of like,

here are my top 200 guys, I'm going to profile each of these players. And, you know, you're going to know generally who I like and who I don't like. You know, my whole approach to fantasy football. And as an analyst is to teach people to fish, not just give them the fish and give them these answers. You know, it's just, it's important to me, you know, to allow people to see that higher level and have a good understanding of the game itself and the game theory components of fantasy football because that's what's fun about the game.

That's why we love it and that's why we talk about it, right? Because we see these like really small details where we can find edges. And when we find those edges, it's so much fun, right? And I want to share that with other people and make them realize and have them see that they can do that themselves. They don't need to necessarily, you know, just listen to an analyst that's just saying, draft this guy, draft this guy, avoid this guy, avoid this guy. I have that in the guide, you know, it's there.

But the foundation is what's more important. And that foundation is strategy. And so, you know, the whole guide is really me just digging through strategy that's pretty evergreen in nature, to be honest. But I do sort of morph it to speak to the 2022 season in particular, just using data and kind of going through historical ADP trends and such. Yeah, you just spoke to, you know, these small edges that we could find and then maximize. And that's, you know, in every single game, it's in poker. The best players are aware of all the smallest edges and combined. those to have a compounding effect to lead you to victory.

And you made me think of one edge that like everyone is aware of and no one's exploiting it again. I think it was at number fire, Rich Rebar's landmark piece on the Konami Code quarterback and how hyper-mobile quarterbacks are such a cheat code in fantasy, regardless of how talented VR as a passer, you know, Tim Tebow, the perfect example. And one of my all-time calls was Lamar Jackson in his sophomore season. I had 90% exposure. Jalen Hertz last year in his sophomore season, I had 90% exposure. And now we're seeing Tray Lance and Justin Fields being drafted as high-end QB2s. And from what I remember in your draft guide, you highlighted both of those quarterbacks's

top values. And I couldn't agree more. Yeah, you know, the thing that's really interesting about the quarterback position is that if you look at like a typical VORP formula or like some way of looking at, you know, best starter versus worst starter, however you want to really look at it. The edge that you're finding at the quarterback position isn't necessarily more significant than it was five, six, seven years ago when looking at postseason result, right? So where a guy, you know, the QB1, the QB2 versus the QB11, QB12, that edge really actually was pretty small last year. all things considered on a points per game basis. But the difference is that because of this Konomico, because of rushing, because of the mobility aspect of these quarterbacks, what's happening is that they're becoming a lot more predictable, right?

And the market is finally catching up and realizing that mobile quarterbacks are better in fantasy football. So they're drafting them higher. And the example that I kind of shared in the guide that I think is really relevant and like should, you know, hopefully let people really kind of see why mobility matter so much. much in terms of predictability is if you had Jalen Hertz versus Tom Brady and I were to tell you, okay, of these two guys, who's going to throw more touchdowns this year? I think we'd all probably say the greatest quarterback of all time would be throwing more touchdowns this year. But there's

a, there's a chance. There's non-zero chance that Jalen Hertz could throw more touchdowns than Tom Brady this year. Like it's a, it's a possibility. You know, we understand that touchdown variance is real, that touchdown rate fluctuates, all that kind of stuff. But if I were to sit here and say, who's going to have more rushing yards this year, Jalen Hertz, or rushing touchdown. touchdowns even, but Jalen Hertz or Tom Brady. And everyone would sit there and say, there's no way that Tom Brady is ever going to have better rushing production than Jalen Hertz is. And if you break up a quarterback scoring from a passing standpoint and a rushing

standpoint, quarterback rushing in terms of fantasy points per game, rushing fantasy points for game, so much more stable year over year because we're seeing the same quarterbacks run the ball year over year. So that's contributing to this really, really strong correlation when looking at preseason expectation in ADP versus postseason results. So what's really happening at the quarterback position right now, it's not that Josh Allen and these guys are necessarily giving you this big edge and points per game.

It's that it's more predictable now. Like now we can feel very good about a Josh Allen, about Lamar Jackson, all those guys really finishing as a top six, top seven quarterback. Whereas back in 2015, there were two years, 2015 and 2018,

if you looked at preseason top 18 quarterbacks by ADP, and you looked at their correlates, a correlation between preseason ADP to their points per game, the correlation was zero, meaning the QB 17, the QB 18 was just as good, essentially, as a QB2, QB3, because it was just throwing darts among those players. Now that correlation is very, very strong. So really, if you're drafting quarterbacks early these days, it's because you want that predictability, you want that stability, but there are still some guys that are slipping through the cracks. And I think two of those guys, as Scott alluded to, are Trey Lance and Justin Fields.

So is late round QB dead, JJ? What are your? So yeah. You know what's what's pseudo annoying about like the the fact that I'm so tied to this strategy is that three years ago when a lot of the shifts started happening? I wrote about it. Like I talked about it, how the market was becoming more efficient with mobile quarterbacks.

And as a result, we're going to see a lot more efficiency. And we might see a little bit more difficulty in terms of finding. you know, these these quarterbacks late that have this dual threatability. And we started to see that. I mean, there's not as many. But what we are finding, I will say this too, what we are finding is that the QBs that are ranked in that like QB10, QB12 range over the last couple of years, they've been really, really good values.

I mean, we had that with Josh Allen a couple years ago. Last year we had that with Tom Brady. We had that with Aaron Rogers a couple years ago. I mean, Aaron Rogers kind of last two, but a couple years ago, Aaron Rogers was there. And that's the sweet spot, I think, right now. because you're sort of towing that line of like, you don't have to go all in on early round quarterback, but at the same time you're recognizing that the stability piece is important.

And all the while, these QB9 to QB12s are still giving you pretty good value. And that's, that I think is continuing to be the sweet spot this year. Just get the guy who falls out of that group that, you know, that top 12, top ish, top top 12ish group. Get the guy who falls into that range. And you should be good, whether that's like Russ, you know, Russell Wilson obviously has some upside this year, whether that, is Trey Lance.

I mean, that Trey Lance is like the easy go-to because that's where his ADP is. But yeah, I mean, that's kind of where I'm at with things. And what's crazy, too, is that when I published the late-round quarterback e-book back in 2012,

that was what I considered a late-round quarterback was just be like the last dude to draft your quarterback, the last hypothetical starter because you're not getting that much of an edge by getting the guy early. And I feel the same way now. Get that QB-9 to QB12 guy. And that was a great time to do it, too.

Again, with fantasy football, ADP always fluctuated. It's optimal in one year is going to be different from what's optimal in another year. But I remember at your peak of, you know, whenever you release the late round QB PDF outlining the strategy, I was in a football guy's players championship draft. And one team literally didn't draft his quarterback until the last round. He ended up either winning that league or losing to me in the championship.

So he took Joe Flacco, your doppelganger. Oh, man. But I just wanted to give a quick plug to Jeff Henderson. one of our writers who's one of the best data guys, one of the best meta-strategy writers in the space. He wrote an article, is Josh Allen worth a first round pick? And by his numbers, he is.

And he makes an extremely compelling case for him. He said his backup plan is Justin Herbert round three or four because Herbert, Allen, Mahomes, whoever QB4 is to him, they all should go in round two, but they're not. Like this is now where, the value is. And I'm, I'm sympathetic to it. Again, he makes a really compelling case,

but I just can't stop. Like my strategy was always the JJ Zacharison strategy. Let me get like the cheapest QB12 because the first 11 go off the board and then there's a lull because no one wants to draft their backup before like a running back or wide receiver. So you get like a good discount on the QV12 or QB 13. And I'm just looking at ADP again. And it's like, Dak Prescott, QB11, Matthew Stafford, QB12, Trey Lance, QB13. Tom Brady, just short of that. And then a backup plan would be Deshawn Watson or Justin Fields as late as QB20. Yeah, you know, the other point that I made in the guide,

and another reason why I think going after that like 9 to 13, whatever range, you know, the low end QB1s is, you know, we're seeing that consistency. Like I said, when you look at top 18 quarterbacks by ADP and how they finished in points per game, if you want to look at the R squared, I have the R squared in the guide as well. The R squared in, like I said, 2015 and 2018 was literally zero. I mean, it was nothing. It was irrelevant. It didn't matter where you drafted your quarterbacks.

The last two years, it's jumped so dramatic. It's been 55% the last two years. Yeah, so I saw that in your draft guide and I was like, I don't think that's correct. Because the last time I ran it two years ago, quarterback had the worst correlation at ADP. But yeah, and maybe it's just, you know, now the production's far more practical. Exactly. Exactly. So like you saw like part of the reason why, for instance, you draft an early

round tight end or you can and it's more sort of, it's easier to do that from a strategy standpoint is because there's more consistency from those guys in terms of how we're predicting them, you know, entering the season. We know that Travis Kelsey is probably going to be pretty good. We know that, you know, Mark Andrews is probably going to be pretty good, whatever. But at quarterback, it's just been such a crapshoot. But over the last two years, it's been so consistent. The top quarterbacks have been so good. And you could sit there and say, oh, that means that getting Josh Allen is really safe, which yes, it is going to be really safe. But I do fear that there's going to be some regression with that stability eventually, right?

And whether that hits this year, whether that hits next year. I mean, we're going to get to a point where there are a lot more dual threat quarterbacks that are entering the league that are good. Like what happens if both Trey Lance and Justin Fields both hit from a fantasy perspective and their long-term starters? Now you're going to have like nine or 10 legit dual threat quarter. Why would you draft one early in that case? you know, because you're going to have a guy that you can easily get that has literally QB1 upside that you're getting that late.

So I do think that there's going to be some regression there about maybe that doesn't hit this year. Very easily could not. But that's why going in that like QB9 to QB12 range makes sense because you're kind of playing both sides there. You know, you're playing the side of like, yes, those guys have been really good the last couple of years. But also if there is regression from that from that really reliability and predictability standpoint, then you're still good because you're getting that, you know, a player that's not in the early rounds. Yeah, so tons of positional and other strategies, which I feel like doesn't get talked about enough when just looking at content. It's very player focused versus actually playing the game and having these strategies for drafting and how to view and separate players. So I think that's one of the more standout things about the guide outside of obviously some great player talk too.

So if you guys have not checked it out, it's in the comment section there on the website. JJ, I want to talk about some topics from your podcast. I was, I joked with my wife and then it wasn't much of a joke, but I was just like on the highway for a week, just taking down notes, audio notes on my phone from the podcast. So I got, got yelled at about that, but more player specific questions that I kind of came up with and Scott as well. But before we jump into that, big news today,

Baker Mayfield is going to be a Seattle Seahawk. And, you know, as soon as we get the chef, the tweet or, you know, one of the, yeah, yeah, for the, for the seat. Oh, I'm sorry, the Panthers. I'm, I'm mixing things up. The Panthers. Sorry about that. But as soon as we get the news, everybody's mind goes straight to the phone and breaks

down how that affects every person in the system. We got guys that are ranking DJ more. Is it top five wide receiver? We have guys that say it doesn't affect DJ more as much as we think. People are looking at Chris McCaffrey and just down the list. So I'm curious what your guys' thoughts are. how Baker-Mayfield's presence affects the rest of the guys within this system for fantasy. You guys can just jump in as you want here.

Yeah, I mean, I can kick things off. I mean, I think it's an upgrade, you know, at the position. The thing with DJ Moore is obviously, you know, he hasn't gotten a lot of red zone looks over the, basically his career. And a lot of that is not necessarily like red zone share, but more so that they just haven't had sustained drives and they haven't been in the red zone a lot because the offense hasn't been as good. And so hopefully, you know, they get their a little bit more efficient offensively

with a better quarterback. But I just, you know, if you look at like the top 12 wide receivers and fantasy, top 12, 13-ish, what have you, it's just really hard for me to squeeze in DJ more, you know, into there. You know, I updated my projections when it all happened. And obviously, Carolina got a little bump from a pure touchdown standpoint, overall touchdown standpoint, you know, with the move to Baker. But DJ Moore was still wide receiver 15 and my projections on a points per game basis.

So it's not like he's this like full blown stud wide receiver one. And a lot of times, again, you got to keep in mind too with projections. They kind of favor guys like DJ Moore. They kind of favor guys like Keenan Allen because it's not going to recognize these like outlier touchdown seasons that inevitably some higher end wide receiver one is going to hit like Mike Evans had last year and could, I mean, maybe even have this year. And so, you know, it won't recognize that as well in a projection. So, you know, take that with a grain of salt.

I just, I think DJ Moore is still more of a high end wide receiver two, mid-range wide receiver two. Like in that like McLorrin, Jalen Waddle tier, kind of had him are like close to there already. So I'm not really moving him dramatically up. I think it's a little bit of a bump, but I don't want to overdo it. Yeah. So he's a tricky one for me. We were just debating this, uh, when it came time to update projections based on this

this news and ultimately we moved him up to wide receiver 11 but uh like my personal stance is I'm agnostic and I'm going to basically value him the same as ADP. He's he's tricky because everyone's like oh well he's so good and he just needed a more competent quarterback and now he has a competent quarterback but I also think sometimes we tend to overvalue these players where it's like oh he's so good like he just needs a quarterback when when sometimes like that quarterback uncertainty and just the raw volume of minimal competition for targets could be making him look better than he is. Maybe he's just like mid, you know, and yeah, he had bad quarterback play, but still just like mid. Yes, a positive touchdown regression. Yes, he's probably really good. But I mean,

he hasn't finished top 25 in fantasy points per game in either the last two seasons. Two seasons ago with Teddy Bridgewater, Curtis Samuel and Robbie Anderson both scored more fantasy points. And so he's just someone that there's a lot of uncertainty here. And it's like a big question mark to me. And like I don't really, you know, like to take players that are this uncertain to me. I like to gamble on Nomes where it's like, okay, James Conner's ADP is garbage. I'm fading him. Adam Fuland's ADP is amazing.

I'm going to draft him everywhere where DJ Moore, it's like, yeah, maybe he's really good. I don't know. He just hasn't proven enough to me. So I'm probably just going to rank. him just about perfectly in line with ADP. Would you say the same about guys like Robbie Anderson or a Terrace Marshall or, you know, there's been a little bit of camp talk about guys like Tommy Trembl that have been coming out. Is everybody still around the same range?

Like I'm looking at Robbie Anderson. ADPs around wide receiver 74. Like, I mean, I don't know if that. Well, part of it is, you know, he had great volume last year, but Christian McCaffrey's coming back. And Matt Rul is an absolute donkey who fired Joe Braves. Brady because he wants to run the ball 30 times per game. So I have a serious question marks. I sure Baker's there now and things look better,

but things didn't look good before that happened. And they don't look too much better now. So all of those are concerns. I think Terrace Marshall is like vaguely intriguing as a last round pick and a basketball tournament. I think the masses have finally woken up to rookie wide receivers being undervalued. But I think sophomore wide receivers are still undervalued. valued. You know, we saw like DJ Charks sophomore season coming out of nowhere, him being a

massive league winner. And I think that could be in Marshall's range of outcomes or Amari Rogers' range of outcomes. The problem with Marshall is like my model didn't really love him. He's a freak athlete, but otherwise not super impressive. But you might have, did you like him, JJ? I liked him subjectively. It was my biggest like mistake that I made last year. My model didn't like him nearly as much as some of the other guys. And I'm like, no, this guy's going to be good. I know he's going to, and I subjectively shifted him up and, you know, had him. I mean, I still had him in the same tier that, like, everyone had him in and stuff.

It wasn't like some, some insane, like, I didn't have him over like some of the studs, but like over Waddle or anything like that. But, you know, I mean, realistically, though, like we know based on history that guys who are as inefficient as him and as unproductive as him as rookies, the chance. I mean, like, like you said, he's a last round. pick so whatever you know but like we know that the chance of him doing something is still very very slim i want to give him just a little credit because he's such a freak athlete that oh okay maybe steep learning curve but then you know lives up to his athletic potential but no i think that's

that's absolutely right and the guy i did that uh with this year was damien pierce my model hated and i just made this like whole case argument i found love with but i might get bailed out just because it was the the perfect landing spot but no yeah i mean i get that that. Yeah. So with the late round fantasy football podcast, what I like about that as well is it's like 20 minutes or less than 20 minutes vary to the point. I feel like the very casual fantasy manager can listen to it fully understand. I feel like somebody who's a diehard can listen to it and gain something from it.

So one of the recent episodes, team level regression. You talked about how team level regression typically, you know, trickles down to players. talked about the Eagles, Giants, Ravens, and Bucks. So I kind of wanted to dive into some questions about those teams here. Starting with Scott's Giants, you talked about. They struggle with the touchdowns last season. That was a massive factor. But looking at this season now, new head coach, O-line improvements,

hopefully healthy, better schedule this year. So I did want to ask. What's that? Pays supply. They're going to pick up the two-s-of-play. So I did want to ask, like, player specifics, because I feel like if you look at the current ADPs of you go down the list of Daniel Jones and Saquan Barclay, Tony, Wondale Robinson, you just go down the list and you can say,

hey, these guys might be a bit of a value right now where they're going right now. But I wanted to ask specifically who should we be. I know you mention often, JJ, Cadarius Tony. Is that the guy that stands out the most to you is somebody that can be impacted for fantasy for these factors? Yeah, I mean, look, like I don't think people realize how bad. that the Giants offense has been the last two years. Like, like, I'm talking like, like, tied for last in the league in touchdowns two years ago,

last in the league in touchdowns last year. I mean, it's been a very, very bad offense. And so to me, you know, we see natural regression every single year with, with offenses that are that bad. They usually score more touchdowns the following year. A lot of that has to do with the fact that teams score poorly one season because a lot went wrong with, like,

the quarterback position, whatever, or things just went bad. and they switch things up like we're seeing with the Giants with the hiring of Brian Dable, they switch things up and they just get better. So naturally there's these fluctuations year over year. And so we're going to see that. I mean, if you look at how teams that have scored as poorly as they have and how they've done the following season, if you just average that out, we're looking at like probably

potentially 14 more touchdowns for the Giants this year, which is a huge, huge jump just based on where they were. And so, you know, a lot of people, as we know, will draft based on last year's numbers and such. and that's why ADP is reflected that way. I think the entire Giants offense is a value right now. I mean, Sequin right now,

I've been gobbling him up, especially when he was in the third often, which was insane. So, you know, Seekwon obviously gets a huge bump. You know, with Brian Daibble there,

I think they're going to be more pass heavy, as we know, targets are a lot more valuable than rush attempts are. It's a great thing for a guy like Seqwan who could capture 15 to 18% of the team's targets pretty easily in this offense. Cadarius Tony is my highest rostered

one of my highest rostered players right now in best ball. You know, we've seen his ceiling already. We saw that last year, especially that Dallas game, really, really good on a per route basis last year at a really high targets per route run rate, really elite, I should say. It wasn't just like really good. It was like top five in the league. And so, you know, we saw that ceiling hit.

If you're getting them past wide receiver 40, that's a value. You know, just because we know the ceiling is there and we should be chasing ceiling at all parts of our draft, especially at that point in the draft. And then Daniel Jones, you know, to me, is someone who, you know, you don't need to rely on him in a single quarterback league as your QB1. There's no reason to really do that. But if you're in a Superflex league or if you're in a deep league and you need like some QB2, QB3 type depth, I mean, he had three fewer rushing yards per game than Kyler Murray last year. He threw 10 touchdowns and 11 games. And he averaged

just as many fantasy points per game as Derek Carr did last year. And if we have, if we look at what Brian Daibble was able to do with Josh Allen, I'm not saying Daniel Jones is anything like Josh Allen or we should expect that kind of jump because Josh Allen may be the big. biggest jump that we've ever seen in NFL history at the quarterback position from one year to the next. But the one trait that they share is this mobility and this sort of like just kind of loose canon attitude in the pocket. And if Brian Daible sort of allows Daniel Jones to just run wild, we could see that really be reflected in fantasy points per game. So I'm into Daniel Jones. It's sort of like a QB3 kind of dart, especially in Superflex. But even if you want just a backup quarterback

in a deeper format, I'm cool with that too. Scott, Scott, same sort of question, obviously, with your Giants. Who stands out? I know they all seem like JJ seem to be a value right now, but do you find yourself maybe drafting or looking at one specific guy in baseball more than the rest of the group? Yeah, so this is probably my favorite team stack for underdog tournament leagues.

I talk about anatomy of a league winner where I just look back at all of the top league winning players over the past four seasons. and at every single position again and again, you see people underrating offensive play caller changes, especially when the offensive plate caller has a proven track record of success. Per sources on Brian Dable,

what I heard like two years ago was like widely respected as like one of the greatest minds in football, but just like an absolute weirdo, so no one wanted to make him a head coach. But yeah, proven track record of at least fantasy success. and he's going to increase the pace of play that's not unsubstantial. Then, I mean, the Giants, they did a QB sneak on third and nine. We're just like forfeiting games.

Like they're at least going to like try this year. The Giants have a massively upgraded supporting cast in terms of receivers, finally healthy. You know, receivers always either bad and or hurt throughout the Daniel Jones tenure, offensive line. And then, you know, coaches is is really huge. Jones himself for best ball has, you know, some of the highest percentage of spike weeks of any quarterback. Again, they have the best quarterback schedule, the second best wide receiver schedule.

Saquan Barkley, I'm in love with because we know is upside. You know I chase upside. And when do you want to target oft injured running backs? It's the year following the ACL injury. I made a mistake drafting in last year. I didn't listen to Dr. Chow's advice and like this is what you do. I feel really good about him as an upside wins championships pick. Cadarius Tony, ankle, hamstring, quad, oblique, thumb, shoulder, and knee injuries.

But he ended the season ranking 12th in yards per route run as the eighth best mark by any rookie wide receiver over the past 10 seasons. As JJ alluded to with Tyrus Marshall, like that is the most predictive stat for, you know, measuring a wide receiver's future success following a rookie season. Just massive upside. and we saw that. We saw that in some of the few games. He was totally healthy. You can make a case for Kenny Gallaudet, just based on he finished fifth and total fantasy points in 2019 and then dealt with injuries, but I'm not going to target him.

Sterling Shepard, I think he's dust following the torn Achilles. Daniel Bellinger is going undrafted, even though he's running with the ones. There's a case there, but I think I like Wondell Robinson the most. Just a player, my model, absolutely loved. the NFL mock draft cognizanti, you know, didn't love that. But the model just like really loved him. I think there is there's potential there. And to me, it's two things. Again, per sources, Cadarius Tony likes football about as much as I like Macromay.

He cares about football as much as I care about Tomogachi or something. I don't know, like which is not at all, which is a concern. And so he sort of just drafted this paid high draft capital. They drafted him really high, and he's going four full rounds later than any rookie wide receiver being drafted ahead of him in underdog drafts. And it's this slot role. And so it just like sort of looks like a knock on Cadarius just by drafting him. And it's a new regime that's invested in. This regime had nothing tied to Cadarius Tony.

And so I see them having a plan in place for him. And again, this is the team. I like more than any for game stacks in Underdog. Next close, this would be Arizona or maybe some like full of Yolo Deshaun Watson teams. But that's it. Another team mentions same podcast episode was the Bucks. And this one really stuck out to me because I feel like, you know, you mentioned that we shouldn't fit in last year's or try to fit in this year's

personnel in the last year's personnel. and I feel like that that happens pretty often. We say that, you know, Tom Brady went and requested Russell Gage to be on the team. Now we got Gronk out of the mix and we're thinking about the tight end position. Chris Godwin's timeline. We're not, you know, completely sure of. So I think that is important just to understand that it's two different offenses. It doesn't mean that they're going to be a team that maybe completely changes the way they play.

But I feel like it may just based on what you were saying about that, have an impact. on Tom Brady. Obviously, he performed above expectations last year as a QB3, but JJ, how do you, from your points made on that show about, you know, not trying to fit this year's personnel in the last year's? How does that affect Tom Brady? Is it have a massive impact on his fantasy stock? Or how do you view that? Yeah, I mean, look, they threw the ball 731 times last year. They had one of the highest pass rates that we've seen over the last decade. Those numbers regress. Like, pass rate

regresses year over year. It just, it happens because either it's very difficult to sustain that high of a pass rate, either it could also be due to game script. It could be due to a lot of things. And when you combine that with all the changes that have gone on with Tampa Bay, this offseason, you have Gronk retiring, you know, maybe he comes back halfway through the season, whatever, but you have Gronk retiring. So you have question marks a tight end. You have, you have Cameron Brade, who's nothing special at the position. And then you have some, you have, you have a rookie in Otten. I mean, there's just, there's not that much going on at the tight end position. Chris Godwin is likely not going to be back for a good,

a good while. I know your boy Edwin Porras is very bearish on, on his situation. And, you know, they replace Antonio Brown really with like Russell Gage. That's what it comes down to. And say what you want about AB. He still was last year, still one of the best wide receivers in football when he was active. So there's a lot of change going on. And then on top of that, Bruce Ariens isn't there anymore as on the coaching staff. And they've already talked about how they want to run the ball a little bit more than they did. last year just given philosophy. You know, the one thing with quarterbacks and fantasy with these pocket passers,

in order for them to have seasons like Tom Brady had last year, or even like a Stafford to some degree last year, you need some sort of like outlier season in some way, either in touchdown rate or just pure volume. We saw that with Tom Brady. He had a 6% touchdown rate, which is relatively high. You know, he had good weapons, so we should have expected that to some degree. But again, they threw the ball 731 times. So I think when you're projecting this Tampa Bay offense, especially like for anyone who does like vacated targets and looks at things from that perspective, can't really do that that well with a Tampa Bay offense whenever they're probably going to throw the ball like 80 fewer times this year than they did last year.

And so it's just a really important context to have. So, you know, I'm not really that bullish on Tom Brady this year from a fantasy perspective. Maybe that comes back to bite me because it's Tom Brady. But I just think that there's a lot of intrigue with lower end QB1s right now outside of him that aren't just pure pocket. thousanders. Yeah, he threw the ball 719 times last year. You want to guess where that ranks all time? Uh,

with Stafford 727 with first. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how old is he? He's turning 45 in a few days. Yeah.

Like, is his arm going to be stable? Like is he like, it's just, it's crazy, right? Like, it's just, it's a very, it's a very hard thing to buy into. Um, and it would be, it's a lot easier to buy into if he had the exact same weapon. is last year, right? But the weapons are, I mean, Russell Gage is fine. Like, Russell Gage is not a bad wide receiver. It's just he's not Antonio Brown and Chris Godwin's not healthy and Rob Gruncowski's not

there. It's like, what is this really going to look like for him? Scott, I know you guys, you guys had your consensus rankings come out. Looking at Tom Brady, was he, was he tough for you to rank? I mean, what was your thoughts about where you ranked him this year? No, I like him. I was just looking at a fantasy calculator ADP and I don't know how much to trust that, but he's their QB12.

I'm like, it's Tom Brady with the bucks in this, this offense. I'm actually higher than that on him. I've met, I've met 11, so I'm higher than ADP there. Yeah.

I like Russell Gage a lot. I liked him a lot more when he was like wide receiver like 50 by ADP. He keeps jumping. I mean, he sustained three fantasy wide receiver ones by fantasy points for game last year. Something interesting is like,

I really think Rob Grunkowski might be the most valuable offensive player, non-quarterback of all time. And if you look at Tom Brady's splits with and wet without Rob Gromkowski, I've tweeted out a number of times, it's like legitimately insane where like the team scores five fewer points. He takes 37% more sacks. His yards per attempt drops by. His like pass-a-reading falls from like top five in any given season to like Ben

Rathesberger last year levels. it's like really maybe not that bad but it's it's pretty crazy um but yeah i mean like i like evans he's gonna score a shit ton of touchdowns uh i still like gauge at adp uh i don't like great uh Leonard fernett i really love uh i mean he was getting christia mcalfreys workload at the tail end of last season that was that was crazy so i don't know those are my thoughts and godgown's fine for like a tournament style league where you know you really want those uh points in the bonus rounds So based off of those splits, we were thinking there's a chance we see a remake of that video where they were like in the park district or whatever. And Tom Brady had a conch and Grant came out of the woods there.

So that's that's something we might have. I mean, there's a really good. I'm still drafting him. I just, I just took him to lead. I mean, there's a really good chance. You know, he just, you know, missed me with that practice shit. I'm going to party in Miami and call me in week, week seven. It's like the guys playing college soccer.

There's always like a group of guys that were like very. very good, always hurt in preseason, but come regular season, they were good to go. They didn't want to go through the camp. But Rams, another team mentioned, obviously won the Super Bowl. Correct me if I'm wrong, I believe you said on the podcast, 80% of the Rams' touchdowns came from passes in 2021. So there's the potential for regression in the passing game. Some people are getting pretty excited about Alan Robinson.

Some people are a bit hesitant, due to the last season. maybe some people got burned. But just based off of that regression, Mark, you talked about JJ, are people being too optimistic about Alan Robinson? So here's the thing. You know, the Rams have that crazy split last year. A lot of it was driven by Matthew Stafford throwing the ball a ton at the goal line. He probably still will throw a decent bit at the goal line, but it's likely not going to be

like the exact same as what we saw last year. And the way they score touchdowns, when teams score that many touchdowns, you usually see like a 13-ish percent drop where they're at. year over year, which is a significant number of touchdowns that you're going to see go to the rushing department as opposed to passing. The thing with Alan Robinson, though, is that I'm, I'm still into him, regardless of, of this, like, regression that's coming. You know, I, I know that Robinson's, there's a split for sure within the fantasy space. People who just think he's done, like, this could be it for him. He's going the Des Bryant route. But to me, you know, there's

enough evidence last year that the Bears just really were faced, like, just didn't care about a Rob If you look at his like PFF grade and stuff, it's really not that much different than some other white, like Marquis Brown and Jerry Judy and guys that are going in that range to begin with in drafts. And so, you know, I don't think he's like totally, totally dust. But at the same time, you know, you have to just kind of roll that dice when you're in the fourth and fifth round anyway. These are where where league winning wide receivers come from often. And I really think that that in this LA offense, you know, if you look at Deshaun McVeigh era because they run so much 11 personnel, the lowest wide receiver target share from a team standpoint that they had was six,

has been 63%. And that's top, that would have been top 10 in 2021. So basically they throw to their wide receivers all the time, as we know. Over the last four years, the Rams have had at least two wide receivers at a pro rated target share per game of 21% or higher. So if Arob is healthy the entire season, chances are he's going to hit that 20%, 21% range.

And in that offense, given the way they operated last year, he could walk into if he's healthy again if he could walk into 130 targets um and so you know given that offense given that system you know i'm buying from a redraft perspective because i think people generally overstate their ability to hit players in that range of the draft especially if he goes into round five i mean it's just a lock city for me but like you know i think people overstate you know what busts are in those rounds and what that can do to your fantasy squad it's really not that big of a deal if a guy does completely bust as long as you are not just throwing him into your fantasy lineup week and week out like people were doing with Alan Robinson last year after getting him in round three.

So, you know, I'm into Robinson at ADP and just got to hope that last year was just more of a blip as opposed to the start of a trend. And the Ravens also mentioned on the podcast, I want to turn to Scott on this one because I know the Ravens offense a bit different than last year. I think there was only 12 games of Lamar Jackson. and now there's no Hollywood Brown. We're hoping JK's healthy, but it's another team that's very different than it was last year. And it kind of draws the question with Mark Andrews. He was the tight end one.

Are people too optimistic about Mark Andrews? Because I feel like you have a bold opinion here on him. Hey? Yes. Yeah, yeah. So I'm fading Mark Andrews. This is like one of my favorite players in all football. I have on a million dynasty leagues.

Like really love him. But the last three seasons, he's finished fifth, fourth, and then last year first in fantasy points per game. That was a 43% jump in fantasy points per game from last year to the year before. And so you have to ask, like, what was the catalyst behind that? He was just as efficient as he's always been, actually like below his career average, but still like really high. It was only his third best season by targets per route run. Route percentage was basically the same. The main catalyst then was a massive increase in Rouse run per game.

It was 23.3 to 38.9. That's a 67% increase. And I just think there's no way that's sustainable. The Baltimore Ravens have finished first, first, and then last year 19th in point differential. And then they lost their RB1, RB2, and RB3 to season-ending injuries in training camp. So you just kind of had no force, but to lean atypically pass. heavy and like clearly the results weren't great. He finished below 500 for the first time since 2015. I just think like Lamar Jackson is sort of one of those quarterbacks where you,

the more he passes, the less great, less you feel really good about your team's chance of winning. I think they just go back to sort of that bully ball that they've always ran with, you know, hopefully a healthier, J.K. Dobbins, Gus Edwards, Tyler Batty, Mike Davis. And yeah, so I see a massive regression for Mark Andrews and just about everyone, except for maybe Lamar Jacks, like I said, maybe it's just one of those things where the fewer dropbacks he has, the higher his fantasy points for dropback and like quarterback unlike the other positions is one driven by efficiency and not volume for the most part. And I guess, I guess Rashad Bateman's probably a value.

You like him, right, JJ? I do, yeah. And I agree with everything you said, you know, with regard to Andrews. you have to keep in mind that like, it's a huge opportunity cost to get Mark Andrews in the second round. Like you're passing up on some really good running backs and wide receivers. And Baltimore last year, you know, you mentioned the routes run number. They ran so many plays. Like they ran an obscene amount of plays, which was really, I mean, they've always run a little bit above average from terms of plays with Greg Roman and with this offense with Lamar Jackson.

It was like five more per game than what they typically had seen. And we usually see that regress year over year. And just to give you some perspective on how many plays they ran, they rank, 23rd last year in pass rate, but they were ninth in total pass attempts because they were just running so many plays. So they were still a fairly run heavy team. And that was with, you know, injuries of the defense, with no running backs. I mean, with literally everything came together for Baltimore last year to be probably as pass heavy as we might ever see them with Lamar Jackson and Greg Roman together. Right. And so, you know, to me, that's just the sign that they're

almost definitely going to probably finish the season once again with more rush attempts and past attempts, which is what they didn't do last year. But I do think a guy like Bateman, you know, where he's going, you know, he's someone who can at least capture a pretty large target share to offset that. I wouldn't be shocked if for Shaa Baitman, like, has like a sort of like a Darnell Mooney type situation in season like he had last year where he's seeing 27, 28% of the team's targets. The difference is that, you know, he's getting them from Lamar Jackson as opposed to

Darnell Mooney getting them from Andy Dalton and Justin Fields. So hopefully the quality of targets are going to be better for a guy like Bateman. So I'm still high on Bateman. Um, you know, his ADP might rise a little bit, but there's just a lot of good wide receivers sort of in that range. So it might not rise nearly as much, even with hype over the next couple of months. Um, so I, you know, I think Babin can capture a pretty large target share, but Andrews just given that opportunity cost. And, you know, I, I like a lot of late round tight ends this year. I like throwing darts at them, uh, and going with, with those types of builds.

Um, you know, I'm, I'm cool or just going with like a pits or something. But I, you know, I would much rather just like get Kelsey a little, a little bit earlier than Andrews or just wait on pits. I'm going to go with an early round Titan approach than going with Mark Andrews. You're a Piss guy? Yeah, I like Pits. I do. Yeah, me too.

Graham keeps fighting me on it. No, man. The volume there is just, I mean, regardless of the situation, he's just going to gobble up targets there. Here's my take. I'd love to hear your thoughts because I think I'd say you, me and Mike Clay, if I could put myself on the list or like the best like X's regression guys. But there's something to be said about when you're a slave to regression, to the mean and all that stuff. Like, you're right 90% of the time. You're definitely directionally right.

But, like, the players who really swing leagues are the true outliers. And so, like, Jonathan Taylor, you know, every single beat writer was like, yeah, he's not going to get anything more than 55% of the snaps. And, like, 65% of the rushes, if you're lucky, they just love Naheim. Heinz and all this stuff. Or Jamar Chase, you know, he's like a rookie wide receiver who took a year off. But my model said he was the greatest wide receiver, the only perfect prospect I've ever seen. Christian McCaffrey and same thing. You can always just look at those guys.

You're like, oh, there's no way this is sustainable. This is going to regress to the mean, you know, Jamar Chase's fantasy points for deep target last year, all that stuff. But like, there are outliers. and this is a game driven by outliers who really just swing leagues and are head and shoulders above everyone else. And to me, that's Cal Pitts. I don't know that it comes next year, but I know it comes. And so, like, I like betting on those, you know, it's just a matter of when, not if. That's my take on it. But maybe you have a better analytical argument. The way I see it is you should be drafting good players, especially a wide receiver in tight end and

such. Like, I know it's so simple. But like, and I'm far, I'm the last person. that says just draft the just draft the right player and you'll be fine. Strategy is the backbone of everything that I do. But from the standpoint of like player eval and player analysis, you should be striving for elite players themselves, right? And, and I think ADP then is then fluctuate, it fluctuates a lot based on situation. And the only reason why Kyle Pitts is not like a late second rounder in a lot of

these drafts is because of situation. Otherwise, he would be. So if you're leaning in on two things. One, we generally overstate situation in terms of what we know what we can predict. You know, there's teams that we get wrong every single year, and it's all reflected in ADP. This is why there's been great studies done where if you stack in season long,

it's not so much that you're getting that high variance spiked week in that given week. It's that if you're stacking and that quarterback ends up hitting, that means the rest of the offense is hitting. So you're getting a lot of value across your team, right? And all that's driven by is our evaluation of what that offense just generally is going to look like entering a season. And so the way that I view Kyle Pitts, Number one, he's going to walk into probably the second best, maybe the third best target share, you know, at tight end this season.

And it's very, maybe the best route share. Yeah, right. Yeah. Wide receiver routes. Exactly. And but the assumption right now is that everyone just assumes that it land, and understandably so. I'm not saying that it's not going to be the case, but everyone assumes that Atlanta is going to throw 16th passing touchdowns this year. And so, you know, if that is 25, if something goes right, or if like the, you know, some of the, you know,

some of the past, past a rush touchdown ratio stuff that I look at, you know, if that ends up going in the passing department more than expected, then all of a sudden, Kyle Pitts is a eight touchdown guy and, you know, seeing all this volume and has a stability and the spiked weeks, and he's a godly talent. I mean, like, why not just go after that at that point in the draft? I like that, I like that bus meme where it's like one guy who's like, yeah, Kyle Pitts is 1.37 an in-line yard per route run regresses at a and then there's the other guy who's like you got a dog in him and it's like you in fantasy football you really do you have to be down the middle like john last year i was like yeah i don't know that i can get on board with jonathan taylor in the first maybe at the turn

and he's just like no he's a freak and it's like yeah that's right right so you need to you need to blend those yeah yeah all right yeah i do want to shift over to the ambiguous wide receiver episode. I thought this specific situation I wanted to ask about because you mentioned middle round true breakouts, likely not having another wide receiver on the same team also going in the middle round based off your study there. So I wanted to ask, does that apply to the Jerry Judy and Cortland Sutton situation? Obviously, now with Russell Wilson, with both of them going what seems like pretty close to each other in drafts. And I wanted to see your thoughts on that if it applies to them or if you are leaning to one of those guys more than the other for having a

big season. Yeah. So, you know, I've looked at like what I call ambiguous backfields and ambiguous wide receiver and cores and stuff. Just a bit, all it basically is is, you know, if you're drafting a middle round wide receiver, which I've defined or running back, which I've defined is round six to nine. So pick 60 to 108 or 108 in a typical redraft league, which, you know, Judy and Sutton don't fall in that category. So I haven't analyzed them in particular. so they're not necessarily part of the, quote, ambiguous, you know, wide receiving group. But yeah, I mean, I found running backs in particular, if you have like a very standard handcuff that's going in the middle round round. We don't see it as much these days as we used to when like Ben Tate was drafted in round eight every year when Aaron Foster was a first round pick and stuff.

But those guys have literally never exceeded expectation by three plus points per game in a season across an entire season. You're going to see spiked weeks from them, I'm sure. when there are injuries and stuff, whatever. But we just don't see those RB2s pan out ever. There's a little bit of a better case for the wide receiver twos when they have wide receiver ones drafted early. But it's still not like sensational. And, you know, it's the only reason and the only thing that's like scares me off of like

Devante Smith a little bit or like Adam Thielen a little bit. Like objectively I look at them and I'm like, man, they're, they're good pick. Like they're not bad picks at all here. But historically, ADP trends have not favored. those kinds of wide receivers who are wide receivers who is on their team by ADP and have an elite wide receiver on their team that are going early. And so, you know, there are other things that trump that, like for Devante Smith in particular, like second round middle round wide receivers or second year middle round wide receivers just slay.

I mean, they crush. And we're going to have a ton of them this year. And you should be targeting those guys in the middle rounds because they have insane hit rates. But, you know, when it comes to the Broncos in this wide receiving group, you know, I'm leaning Cortland Sutton over Judy right now, mostly because, you know, I like Jerry Judy coming out. I think my model had him as the wide receiver one in that class even, like ahead of C.D. Lamb. And so, you know, I liked Judy coming out plenty. It's just one of those situations where we've seen Sutton ball out before. Like, we've seen it. Whereas we just haven't gotten there

yet with Judy. And it's, you know, I'm going to, I do enough drafts where I'm going to have both and have exposure to both. But I'm throwing darts to this entire Broncos team right now. I mean, I love KJ. Hamler I've gotten so much of in the late rounds. You know, Tim Patrick, even before the spike that we've seen a little bit over the last like few weeks, I've been drafting Tim Patrick. You know, there's been talk from like Cecil Lammy out of Broncos, the Broncos world saying that Tim Patrick is a better bet to just be better than Jerry Judy this year, which is bold and strong. But just another reason why why it's a little bit safer and easier to go more of that Cortland Sutton route. But from the standpoint of the ambiguous wide receiver stuff,

they don't really fit that mold just because they're going more in round four. I just want to say Cecil has a tremendous hit rate when he said something like that. Yeah, exactly. That's why I've been, yeah, it's scarier. It's scary. Just given that, like, you know, you can take what beat writers say with a grain of salt, obviously, but at the same time, like it's not nothing. It's not like he's just saying things to say things.

And it's a scary thought that like, like people were drafting Jerry Judy. And, you know, there's been a little bit more of a separation between Judy and Sutton recently. But there's still very close in ADP. And, you know, the fact that we have that statement and the fact that we've already seen Sutton ball out before with bad quarterback play and Judy did what he did last year when he came back. I know Sutton was really bad too last year. But, you know, there's just, there's just enough reason for me to just play it safer.

Because I think that both of them have reasonably the same upside. like if things click and hit for them. So it's not like, you know, I'd be going favoring a player who has a better floor and not as good of a ceiling. I think they both have a good ceiling in the offense. Just a real quick background on Judy. My like go to PFF film experts who watch every single play of every single game, Judy's first year, he said like this is one of the best wide receivers in football.

He is getting open at will. He is an absolute freak. And he said last year he did not look good at all. And so there's a question, like maybe. it's that that lingering ankle injury or you know maybe we all just like overstated his his ability but yeah it wouldn't wouldn't shock me if like much to my and everyone else's chagrin tim patrick and kj hamler with the with the guys it's just it's just so interesting looking at where they're going on i mean it's going to be a little bit different site to site but uh what i'm

looking at 27 a wider receiver 27 for sudden and 29 for judy so it's it's literally a hair away and obviously a lot of people want to say it's going to be this guy or that guy when in reality it's just going to be a good good offense we're at least hoping for but same same episode you also mentioned a good hit rate for wide receiver twos and systems where they're going late in drafts and their wide receiver one is going early and I wanted to see if if anybody stands out to you as somebody that kind of fits that mold that you might be looking at in drafts. Yeah, so it's kind of like counterintuitive whenever I looked at the data. I was like, this doesn't make any sense.

Like why does, why do middle round wide receiver two? So team wide receiver twos with team wide receiver ones that are going early, why do they not hit very well? But once you get to the late rounds, the double digit rounds, those team wide receiver twos that have early round wide receiver ones, why do they hit so well? And what I realized was it's all age related. It's all related to them being these like younger inexperienced. we don't know these ambiguous wide receipts like think justin jefferson his rookie year right like like he was

he was he was a wide receiver too with adam thielan as an early round pick and you know we thought that just jeperson could be good sure um but he was going later in drafts and hitting that like 10th round ish um in drafts and uh he ended up breaking out and coming through and we've seen that like alshan geoffrey back when he was a year two guy with brandon marshall in chicago we saw him breakout and really it just comes down to these guys that are going later who we just the reason that they're going later is because they're inexperienced that we don't have that much information on them. And I've really realized through doing all these studies that that's one of the biggest edges that you can find. Like even when like trying to beat the running back dead zone,

you should be finding young players that are in the dead like rookies in the running back dead zone actually have insanely good hit rates. If you can find a like, Bruce Hall right now in the running back dead zone is not a bad bet just because, you know, the reason he's in the dead zone is not so much like situation per se or anything like that. Sorry, it's not talent per se. It's situation, right? Whereas, you know, if he had a situation where he was like with what Najee Harris had last year, Breece Hall would be a second round pick. So draft on talent. And that's basically what this data is saying is draft on talent. Get these young guys who have shown something that were drafted highly. A lot of them had had good draft capital as well that have those. early round wide receivers with him. One guy that sort of works for this, there's not many this year, I would say,

but one guy that it sort of works for is Jahan Dotson this year. You know, you got Terry McLaurin going a little bit early. Maybe he doesn't get to the third round, so maybe this doesn't necessarily fully apply. But Jehan Dotson, the wide receiver two by ADP, and the reason why he's not going any higher, it's because we just don't know totally what's going down in Washington. It's more situation-based than talent-based,

because he was a 16th overall. pick. And a guy that I didn't really invest in at all from a dynasty standpoint, my model didn't like him. He was an athletic freak at wide receiver, but his production wasn't quite there was Alec Pierce. But he's just another guy who, again, he's the wide receiver two by ADP right now. Paris Campbell's kind of inching up, but he's the wide receiver two by ADP behind that stud. He has that opportunity, but people are just a little bit skittish with them and scared off by them because we just don't know. So look for guys that, you know, we just don't have this full story on. and that's the reason why their ADP is where it's at,

as opposed to these like random veterans that have been the league for six or seven years that are going to double-digit rounds, those wide receivers are not worth it. They very, very, very rarely hit. Scott, does somebody else stand out to you that kind of fits that mold? Maybe somebody that wasn't mentioned. Yeah, I'll just agree with John Dotson. I wrote him up last week.

He's one of my favorite targets, one of the most mispriced wide receivers in all of of drafts, I think. Alec Pierce is the same thing for me, Jay. my model hated him, loved the athleticism, but everything else was riddled with red flags. I watched the tape, and he really wowed me. I thought he was incredible on tape. But, you know, the GM, when he drafted him, said, well, he has some things to work on. His route running needs a little polished, could be more nuanced, all that stuff.

But when Washington drafted Jahan Dodson, he said, no, no, no, we drafted him so he would play right away. We love that he's NFL ready today, and he's going to be. going to be our starting outside wide receiver who can also move into the slot to get manufactured touches. And he's QB proof. He's QB. And he basically, Ron Rivera almost literally said, listen, I don't want to knock the guy, but he's ass. And Jahan was awesome. So, you know, Carson, not the most accurate quarterback, but Jahan Dotson made it work with far worse quarterback play. And he's been the star of camp, just like Elijah Moore was last year. So head in the positive direction like the the jahan dots and stuff because it's it's been in dynasty too like people have

been taking like david bell over like i like david bell fine it's just like it's been very strange because it seems like the pure reason and the single reason why jahan dotson and super flex leagues is like at times been like a mid second round rookie pick is strictly because he's not an early declare wide receiver like that's what it comes down to for people but there's there's still so much good to him he's not like is like if you look at the early declare bus that or the non-early declared bust that we've seen in the first round, which is many, you know, over the last like decade. A lot of them just didn't have the same profile and production profile that Johan Dotson

had. He was a very, very good wide receiver. And I think he's going to make an impact in redraft right now. He's also one of those guys where, you know, I did a study on rookie wide receivers and how valuable they are in redraft. And he's one of those guys that's likely going to be in that pick 100 to 150 range where the first half of the season, you know, their hit rates are pretty average. But if you look at only their second half,

average points per game, their hit rates are out of control. Like there's so, I mean, we saw it with Amin Ross A Brown last year and stuff, but we see, we see that with rookie wide receivers every single season and Jahan Dotson definitely fits that mold. So I'm in total agreement that he's a huge, he's a huge value in all formats right now. Yeah. So I'm seeing the same thing. I'm seeing what I'll call hubris, intellectual hubris when it comes to how redraft players are

ranking these rookie wide receivers, thinking that they know more than NFL teams. And I think a great, yet, like you said, there's the early declare thing, but, but I, I think that's super overblown. You have to look at it on a case by case basis. Like, it's super important. Like the, the track record in that is like hard to deny. But really all it's saying is, like, be wary of older wide receivers who only have one good year. But you have to look at Devontz Smith and Chris Olbe, who both had high round two grades. And he just chose to stay in school because they wanted to compete for the championship. He wanted a round one grade.

Travis Etienne, it was the same thing. And Jahan Dosset, like, all these wide receivers, it was like a weird COVID year where, like, he didn't get to play as many games as they wanted. It was a shortened season. But yeah, back to, like, the hubris I'm saying, like Sky Moore, like my model didn't love Sky Moore, though a lot of people did. But he's being drafted as the rookie wide receiver three. He was the wide receiver 13 in the NFL draft.

and Kansas City could have taken him. They traded down and like five wide receivers went off the board and then he took him. And so it's just like, why is he going so far above John Dodson? Why is Wondale Robinson going four rounds later than any rookie wide receiver who went above him? And it's just, I don't know. So typically, as we know, like draft capital is the most predictive variable you can have. And so, yeah, again, John Dodson's awesome. Yeah.

Just to wrap that up. It does relate to a degree to your rookie wide receiver episode where you did talk about the hit rates of different guys. And one of the hit rates you mentioned was the guys that went in the top 100, exceeding expectations, but fantasy managers undervaluing them in redraft, which kind of draws the question for someone who might be listening right now and saying, you know, I kind of struggle to understand when to take rookies in my redraft. and when to feel comfortable reaching for certain guys. What would you, what would you suggest to somebody that kind of has that,

that, that ifiness to their draft saying, you know, I don't want to overreach and be, you know, rookie feverish here, but also I've seen, you know,

the likes of the Jamar Chase and Justin Jeffersons of the world, which are more of asterix. But what, what's your, what's your thoughts there? I know you talked a lot about that in your rookie wide receiver episode. Yeah. So basically,

if you, if you look at top 100 picks in redraft leagues that are rookie wide receivers, you know, you're talking like the best of the best because this is redraft, right? I mean, we're not talking startup drafts. We're talking like redrafts. So like you're talking like first round picks. And oftentimes it's like the top 10 picks, like the Mike Evans, the Jemar Chases, all that. And so, you know, you got Drake London this year as he's a lock to go in like a casual home league, whatever, to go in the top 100.

You know, I think that, you know, Traylon Burks is slipping and, you know, we can't lock in anyone else. But Drake London is someone that we can probably confidently lock in as a top 100 pick. And basically the way that I work all these like breakout studies and stuff like that is I look at historical ADP and I chart historical ADP by points per game. And then I find a trendline that basically tells you expected points per game at ADP. So if a guy is drafted 60th overall, he has some sort of expectation from a points per game standpoint. And if you look at top 100 rookie wide receivers over the last decade, there's been like 15 to 20 of them. There hasn't been a ton, but there's been a decent amount of them. they exceeded expectation at like an 80% rate,

just exceeded expectation. And then I call guys who exceed by three points, moderate breakouts and by six or more points, true breakouts. And both of those rates, the moderate and true breakout rate, are exceedingly better than the typical sample of top 100 wide receivers. So based on that,

and those are season long numbers, right? The other thing to keep in mind is that rookie wide receivers do a lot better the second half of the season and they do the front half of the season. So if you only look at the second half numbers, those numbers can even better. And not only that, but that's when we play fantasy championships and we're in the fantasy playoffs where we need that production even more. So definitely like wherever Drake London is going and whatever ADP you're using or whatever platform you're on, bump them up like five or ten spots.

And that's where he probably should be drafted based on historical ADP. And we should feel confident in that. I mean, he was a unbelievable prospect, ended up getting confirmed by, you know, all of our pre-draft question marks that we might have had. He goes eighth overall so you can feel good about that. And he's walking onto a team that has zero wide receiver competition. He can see a 20. He can realistically hit a 25% target share this year and none of us would flinch.

I mean, that's what the competition looks like for London. And so, you know, he's someone who I'm targeting heavily. And then the other thing that was really interesting is what I mentioned earlier with the guys that go pick 100 to 150, which is usually like day two guys, you know, round two wide receivers and stuff, but in redraft. So those players traditionally get off to pretty slow starts because, you know, like in Alec Pierce, a good example of that. We're like, you know, we don't know exactly, you know, he might not have a role right

away, but, you know, the Colts might say, oh, Paris Campbell, you suck. We're going to throw Alec Pierce out on the field. Maybe they signed Julio Jones and he got hurt or something like that. And so, you know, they'll throw those guys in the field and give them more opportunities as the season goes on. those players that like pick 100 to 150 players, the difference between front half and back half numbers is like obscene historically. Like you're going to see a massive, massive jump with those guys.

Whether that means you want to draft them or not, you know, maybe you want to trade for, maybe you want to add them off the waiver wire. Like we saw that with Chase Claypool and T. Higgins historically, you know, as examples, but don't ignore rookie wide receivers. Like we, I remember like back in the day, there would be analysts saying like, you don't, you know, don't draft rookie wide receivers.

they don't do anything the rookie year. It's not that at all. It hasn't been that. That's the thing. It hasn't even like necessarily changed just in the last few years. It's really been a trend that you should be targeting these rookie wide receivers, especially because of what they do the second half of the season. So, so hearing that, Scott, what would you, what would be your strategy?

Would you, would you draft guys and stash them on your benches? Obviously, in redraft, we don't always have the shortest of, or I'm sorry, the longest of benches. or would you say just duke it out later on the waiver wire? I mean, it depends on the player. But yeah, I just wanted to echo one point. It's also like the talent that we get doesn't come in at like a perfectly even rate. We had like one of the worst stretches for wide receiver talents.

Yeah. There were 28 wide receivers drafted in round one since 2015. Only four have made the pro bowl of those 28. Amari Cooper, Justin Jefferson. Jamar Chase and C.D. Lamb. So the last two years were good with Jefferson, Lamb, and Chase. But for a long time, it was just Cooper. And like the Kevin White's Prashad Paramonds of the world. We're all mega-buss. But yeah, this is what I'm seeing. This is what my model is showing. It's like last year was an insane wide receiver class. The year before that

really good. This year was was really solid. So yeah. And we see that with draft capital too. like so many part of that's due to the contracts. But I think there are a lot of exciting wide receivers, rookie wide receivers to gamble on. Like even like I just drafted Justin Ross in a tournament style, FFPC league. I just like YOLO because he's one of my guys. But like you'll know right away whether he's going to be a thing.

Like it's just like, hey, is he getting meaningful staffs in week one? No, you could drop him at a cost of nothing. So but the upside's there. And that's usually what I do. I like to load up on, you know, cheap wide receivers late in the draft, particularly rookie wide receivers. In my best ball guide last year, I said, Wes Huber thinks Amon Rae St. Brown is a superstar.

I think Elijah Moore is going to be one of the best picks he can make, and they're going undrafted in 90% of basketball leagues. That was before the NFL draft. And, you know, Amon Ra's price barely budged. So, yeah, a lot of value we had there, and he was, you know, the league winner of all league winners last year. And I did want to ask one more question about a recent episode because I think there's a difference between how you guys see this specific topic, which should be interesting, but ambiguous running backs. So we talk a lot about wide receivers right there.

JJ, I know you're a fan of targeting running backs in ambiguous backfields. Scott, I think you're, you might be the opposite way. So I kind of want to ask you guys your thoughts on that. And somebody, JJ, who kind of fits that mold of what you're talking about on that episode. Yeah, so really, again, it goes back to what I was talking about earlier, where I was analyzing round six to nine guys. So middle round is what I dubbed middle round. And then I also looked at late round guys as well, but basically just looked at ADP trends. And what I found was, you know, the guys who broke out were moderate breakouts, like I said, or true breakouts, whichever way you want to look at it. Those guys, the average ADP of the RB ones on their team was like pick 62 overall. And so what that tells you is that a lot of these. guys are either the RB ones on their team that are being drafted in the middle rounds or from an ADP standpoint or they don't have a running back going on their team that's being drafted very

early and like I said earlier on the show you know we we don't really see we don't see a ton of them anymore but we don't really see middle round RB team RB2s with team RB1 teammates going in round one and two they just don't pan out which makes sense because they have a stud on their team right but what I did find is twofold so number one uh the market's pretty good at knowing which running back is going to emerge from a backfield. So if you have two running backs from the same backfield in the middle rounds, last year, Leonard Fournett and Ronald Jones is a good example. You know, the ADP sources, it's going to fluctuate.

Like this is just like a general trend based on the ADP source that I'm using. But the RB ones from those backfields are hitting at a much, much more substantial rate than the RB2s are. So, you know, last year you had Leonard Fournet and Ronald Jones, the source that I'm using had Fournet as the RB1 there. buy a couple rounds. And then, you know, the one that people would say is like, oh, what about James Connor? You know, so James Connor obviously broke out in a big way with Chase Edmonds going ahead of him.

But Edmonds technically, again, according to the source, was a dead zone running back. He was going in round five. So he wasn't quite, he got bumped up to round five. So he wasn't quite in that middle round territory. But to that point, if you can also find a team RB2 who has a teammate that's going in the dead zone, those guys also pan out at a very, very high rate in terms of ceiling. And the reason for this, there's a lot of logic to this, I think. The reason why that's the case is because think about it this way, if you have two running

backs going in the single digit rounds from one team, that likely tells you that the backfield is a juicy backfield in some way, right? But if the, if the RB2 is, you know, if the RB2 has an RB1 teammate that's going in round four, round five, but he's still going in round seven or eight. or something like that, then that RB2 teammate is probably pretty good. And then if we think about the dead zone and why the dead zone exists, it's largely because people are forcing their running back selections in that area of the draft. And they're taking inferior running backs that aren't very talented, just forcing it because

they want volume, right? Or I should say they want perceived volume. It's not really, you know, it's like the Mike Davis situation last year where they think that he's going to see a lot of work, but he's not talented enough, he's not good enough. And they force their ADP up. And so what happens is we see situations where, you know, like Jordan Howard when Tariq Cohen was, had his breakout year. Therick Cohen had a good year the previous season. But he, you know, hadn't fully broken out, but he was a good pass catcher.

And he had a role. And Jordan Howard didn't have that role in terms of past catching. And so Tariqone was able to step in and do something. Another example is Austin Echler when Melvin Gordon was suspended to start that season. And Echler carved out a role and was able to sustain that role. And so those RB-2s are actually really, really valuable in terms of ceiling because you have the situation where they can have some sort of role. But if the RB1 gets hurt for some period of time, which was the case for a lot of the guys who did break out, you know, in Austin Neckler's case, it was a holdout for a mendic suspension. But hold out for Melvin Gordon.

You know, if there is an injury, then obviously they have some sort of ceiling. And so from that, that's one of the reasons why I think this could be finally Tony Pollard season. because it really fits that mold entirely and completely. And I was someone who was not against like Zique and where, and I'm still not like totally against it. But I do think that that historical ADP, if you're looking at that, if you're looking at what you target in the middle rounds,

which is a pass catching back, up to year five running back. You don't really want to get any older than that. You know, a guy who has an RB1 going in the dead zone, obviously a decent offense. Like this could really be it for totally. Tony Pollard, just based on what we've seen historically. So that's really what that data was all about.

I'm still very much a start your, you know, like, like if you, if you are going to try to, if you are going, if your goal is to get an elite running back and fantasy football, you got to spend up to get an elite running back. It's just the way that, that we've seen historically. It's just very difficult to get sustainable production at running back, elite sustainable production late. But if you're drafting the middle rounds, target RB1s, or if you're going to get an RB two get an RB one or an RB2 as an RB1 going in that dead zone.

So I didn't want to debate you, JJ, but then you brought up Tony Pollard. So I think I will. I think Tony Pollard is like a huge fade for me at ADP because Ezekio Elliott played through a torn PCL for 75% of the season and Pollard still couldn't get a dozen touches per game. They have all this money devoted to Zieg. So I feel like if it didn't happen last year, it's probably never going to happen. people like point at Zeke's declining efficiency and it's like, okay, it hasn't been great. But he also missed Dak Prescott for 66% of the 2020 season and then last year the injury and then, you know, just take those two things out.

And he's just been the monster. He's always been. My, I don't want to like say this is wrong because I don't think it's wrong, but it's like a stylistic difference where I'm willing to pay that premium for running backs drafted in the first two rounds. you look at the hit rate, it's incredible. It's better than any of the other position. And like when it hits, it hits far more than any other position can hit. So it's like that's where the players with the highest ceiling, the highest median projection, the highest floor, the most predictability, week-to-week consistency. That's where those players live.

So I'm fine paying that premium on the running backs and then just like avoiding the uncertainty because I think a key component to it is like those running backs who are there, like, what is the most likely outcome? I think it's probably a gross running back by committee situation where one running back's getting 60%, the other is getting 40%. But even if it's like 70, 30, that's still typically not great. I think people overvalue how valuable an RB 15 and RB18 finishes. Like to me, that's like borderline worthless.

I want those highest end RV1s that swing leagues. So my question to you, JJ, would be like, one how are you defining a hit and then and then two it's like uh let's say it is a hit is and like let's say the hit rate is 50% and it's like a really really good hit it's like due to drafting two ambiguous backfield running backs in like the round eight and nine and one of them hits does that beat out like a round three running back those are my yeah so i don't want to be misunderstood here my my i don't go into draft saying I'm only draft I draft running backs in the first two rounds like that's I that's what I'm saying I don't really actually disagree with you at all like all my research

and my guide and in general says to draft running backs in the first two rounds because of exactly what you're saying right like the the work that I've done is your RB uh disciple yeah no it's not yeah I'm I'm I'm I think anchor R be in a lot of formats and or here RB whatever you want to call it is very very viable because it depending on format uh just because outside of bestball because I think that's optimal in bestball. No, it's great in best ball. I think outside of best ball, if you're in like a full PPR,

Star 3 wide out and a flex type of format. So yeah, I mean, like I approach like a ton of drafts that way and redraft. The ambiguous backfield stuff is more so like we're still drafting running backs outside the first two rounds. Like when we get, if we start RBRB or get a running back in the first round, me approaching the ambiguous wide or ambiguous backfield stuff and trying to find, it's all based on. finding running back breakouts. It's not, it's not that I go into a draft and say,

I'm not getting running backs until the middle rounds, right? It's that I know that I'm going to get an RB3 at some point or an RB4 or even an RB2. And so yeah, I mean, like the data that I'm looking at is no, I mean, it's saying the same thing. Like, like, you know, the running back dead zone, you know, round four running backs generally from a ceiling standpoint are the same as like a round seven running back historically, right? But when you're, talking around the first two and a half rounds before the dead zone really starts those running back that's the way that you get elite production at the position period like it's very very difficult to get it outside of that the tony pollard stuff though uh you know i don't disagree like like i've

talked about zik and that from that perspective i still talk about him from that perspective on my podcast all the time my thing with it is he still is a year a year older than he was last year you know he's still moving forward on that age curve um you know and at the very least the way that with like Pollard is still going to get some production. He's not going to get. Because I agree with you. Like you generally wants a top 13 14th running back on your as your RB 2 or else. It doesn't really matter that much.

You know, but you all at the same time, if you go with more of like an anchor RB approach, you're still from a, from a point scoring standpoint, you're going to need to fill that RB2 spot. And if you can get flex production from that RB2 spot while owning other. positions and destroying those other positions. That's still viable enough. But then at the same time, you still have the upside them with Tony Pollard of what I talked about earlier with like the Echler example and stuff like that of if Zeeke misses time. Because, you know, last year he did have that injury, but he like refused to leave the field. So like we've seen Pollard when Zeeke does miss

time, like at least show off that ceiling, right? Like we've at least seen that. And I should also preface, I haven't been a Pollard guy. This is the first year that I'm like, jumping on the Pollard train because a lot of it is driven by these ADP historical trends. And a lot of people say, oh, it's just ADP historical trends. It's not that big of a deal. But the market repeats itself all the time. Like studying the market is so ungodly important in this stuff because people behave the exact same way year over year in fantasy football. So that that really like boils down my running back approach and draft strategy. I'm 100%. I don't want to be misunderstood. Like I am not only drafting running back from

ambiguous backfields. I'm just saying that if you're getting a middle round running back or a late round running back, you should be targeting ones that are in these very ambiguous situations. Like I used the example earlier this week where a lot of people were out on Twitter this week and they're like, I'm not drafting Chase Edmonds because that backfield is so muddy. It's like, yeah, well, it's all reflected in price. Like you're not drafting Chase Edmonds at RB20 right now because there are those other running backs and it's driving down his price, right? But historically, a guy like Chase Edmins, who's a pass catcher, who's the RB1 on his team by ADP, they exceed expectation the most in those back-up. Maybe it's not Chase Edmonds this year, but those kinds of

examples are the ones who end up exceeding expectation most. Yeah, I just want to apologize for shramming JJ into a zero-r-r-b argument he wasn't making. Yeah, definitely not, yeah, but I'll fight, I'll still fight you on Pollard. We'll see. It reminds me of Joseph Randall, who played for the Cowboys. He was to Marka Murray's backup. He averaged like seven yards per carry one season. But like time and time again, we see these typically smaller running backs who are hyper efficient on their touches,

but like coaches just don't want to give them more touches because they don't think they have the body type or to withstand the bruising nature of the position and like what comes with all those touches. And that's just my vibe. And then also like just all the Jerry Jones being Jerry Jones and all the money they have tied to Zieg. So Zeke is a guy, I'm drafting.

I'm getting so much shit for it. So I just had to look, I don't, I, I, I view fantasy football in a very, like, fluid way. Like, as you know, like, I'm a very gray area thinker with this stuff. And I think in terms of probability. So, like, I certainly, like, I've still drafted Zeke, even though he's like a dead zone back and you don't want to go after the, whatever. You know, I still understand it. But at the same time, like, I can't, I don't want to ignore what has really shown and

hit from a high ceiling standpoint in the middle rounds historically, and that is these RB2s associate with these R. Because Tony Poller is going to have a receiving role in the offense. Like he's going to see a double-digit percentage target here more than likely if he stays healthy. And so he's going to get some production out of that offense. And then if this is finally the year that Zik wears down or breaks down or gets injured, then that's where the ceiling would come from then with Pollard.

So I like, so Zeek actually is like just killing. me because I like David Montgomery more, but Montgomery is going a full round later. I love the dead zone running backs. We'll talk about your favorite in one second, but I keep drafting Zeke in round four, hoping Montgomery falls to where his ADP is in round five. And instead, like, I lose out on Montgomery. And I'm like, fuck, I liked him more than see. But your favorite, I believe, is Travis Etienne, who's going in between them. I do love E.T.N, man. Um, again, it goes back to the, I, I did a study on what break, like, what, who, who, what kind of running

back's beat the running back dead zone historically, right? I will say this too, like all of this stuff is ADP based. And a lot of the ADP data that I work with is August ADP data. And so like, like, like right now we're working, we're, we're working with like sharper ADP generally. Like if we're on underdog or whatever, like, like, people have drafted in May and June are degenerates. Like, like, they're the, they're the, they're the one percent of, uh, of, of fantasy football.

But yeah, I mean, like if you look at the running backs that have traditionally beat the dead zone, I've mentioned earlier rookie running backs do a really good job, but second year running backs also do a really good job of doing that. Those are the two best cohorts from an age perspective. But the rookie running backs end up exceeding expectation by three plus points per game or moderate breakouts at a 29% rate when the general population in that range is like 16%. like it's pretty low and that includes rookies. And then the second year guys is like 22% or something like that.

And so you want those types of players. You want those younger players. Then on top of that, I found that players who break out, as we know, like targets are very valuable to running backs in fantasy football. They have a large proportion of their touches that go through the air versus on the ground. And that's exactly what we're going to see with ETN's likely not like a more than 160 carry kind of player. he might see a decent bit with James Robinson banged up and such.

But I mean, we're drafting him for the hope that he sees like a 17 or 18 percent target here on that offense. And it's in an offense that, you know, could trail, you know, a decent bit. And we'll see some dump offs there. So ETN's a guy that I like. And based on some of that the historical ADP trends, Brees Hall, I think is still kind of intriguing because I think that he's being, again, you want to target these guys that are being pushed down more so by situation

and not talent because you want to be drafting these talented players. And, you know, Brees Hall is a very, very good prospect. Yeah, so I agree. And with him at two, it goes back to, you know, wide receivers tend to, rookie wide receivers tend to be more productive in the second half of the rookie season. That's the same thing for running backs. I don't know.

I had the stat up somewhere, but it's like a 54% increase in snaps per game and fantasy points per game, all that stuff. Yeah, I, Graham asked me about ATN. a week ago and I was like I just don't have a good read on him and then I read your piece and it like really brought me back to him and it's it's like yeah you said like he he maybe he's just a 16 touch guy but he was a belcal in pallage he's excellent receiver there's no competition and it's like no I was just too low on it I thought you made a great case for him yeah I mean he was a really good prospect of my model too like he he was right there with nausea um you know in terms of prospect score in javante

in terms of prospect score. So like, he's a good player, like, period. And again, if he didn't have the injury that he was coming off of, and if we had seen him even play two games in the NFL, like I think he would be easily a third round. I mean, you know, he's usually like, he's climbing a little bit, but he could be like realistically in some formats, a two, three turn guy just because of the volume that he could see through the air.

So I think he's still a value. And he's one of those players where I highly doubt, he's going to rise, like, dramatically in, like, home leagues and more casual things and stuff. Is it fair to say, like, what we saw before the injury out of DeAndre Swift on a team that was trailing games and got a ton of passing work? Maybe not tons and tons of rushing work. Is that a good kind of mirrored situation of Etienne going into this season, you think? Yeah, you know, I got a question for my mailbag this week and then I answered and it'll be on the mailbag. But it was basically like, you know, this person said that he taught or he read a lot of film people.

people's analysis on Travis E.N. He knows that I look at try to merge both and look at stuff more subjectively and not just through the lens of my model and stuff like that. And they said that ETN was someone who they just tried to get the ball on his hands, but wasn't necessarily an elite pass catcher, which, okay, that's fine. Like if you want to approach it from the standpoint that, like, ETN's not Trish McCaffrey out of the backfield from a receiving standpoint. I still think that he has a ceiling that's pretty crazy as a pass catcher. But even if you just accept that as fact, you know, what would we call like Aaron Jones or D'Andre Swift in the way that they score points in the way that they play out of the backfield?

I think that that's the kind of archetype that we're looking at with Travis E.TN. And similar to what we saw out of Detroit last year, them trailing them sort of, I mean, Detroit ran their offense last year before those injuries threw a tight end and a running back, really. I mean, from their passing offense. And I mean, we could see something pretty similar in Jacksonville with not a lot of strong and reliable weapons necessarily there. So, yeah, I just think, I think ETN's a good high floor, high ceiling pick. Scott, was there anything else as we have JJ on the show that you wanted to make sure you asked him about an hour and 36 in right now?

What did we miss that you wanted to ask unless we've covered the world of fantasy year? Any other must draft targets for you? Other than that, just thanks for coming on. I think JJ has the best podcast in the space. It's like perfect for everyone in the year 2022, which means you have ADD and short, quick hits, gets to the point. Really respect his analysis. Really a leader in the industry, all of his success is well deserved.

Check out, he started his own thing. So check out the draft guide and everything else he's doing. And now that I've buttered you up, give our listeners one or two much draft targets. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I mentioned earlier that I, I really dig some of the late round tight end builds this year. Like I'm going, you know, like three tight end builds and even four at times if I go super, super late. A guy that I've targeted a ton that's been pretty, pretty accepted throughout the space, I think, as the go to, like one of the go-to late round tight ends is Cole Komet. You know, it's a situation where if you look at, you know, if he really

should be able to walk into like a 20% target share this season. And then, And if you look historically at tight ends, uh, that have been able to hit that mark, even a pro rated mark as long as they hit eight games, uh, there's been 67 of them since 2011 and 63 finished with at least double digit PPR points per game, which doesn't sound like a lot, but at the tight end position, that's basically him already exceeding where he's being drafted right now. Um, so I think commit is an easy go to. I mentioned cadarius, Tony. Um, you know, I've gotten a lot of Wondell as well. I'm just, I'm high in the giants to just from like a, a value standpoint overall.

Drafting a lot of the, the other thing, too, I should note is second or year two, I mentioned this earlier, year two middle round wide receivers, even if the projection doesn't look phenomenal for like an Amman Ross St. Brown or an Elijah Moore, because the offenses they're in from a projection standpoint and the weapons that are around them,

those types of players dominate in terms of hit rate. They exceed ADP expectation by three plus points historically at a 41% clip, which is out of. control compared to the general population of middle round wide receivers. And there's a lot of them this year. There's a lot of those second year wideouts because that class last year is really strong and people are pushing them up.

But even Devante Smith and, you know, Rashad Bateman's another one. So I'm really, really heavy on a lot of those guys. All right. All right. I know you mentioned before too, like not hiding your secrets as an analyst and just putting it all out there and having that process. So appreciate that in general. but you guys have not checked out the late round draft guide.

It's a must check out with the podcast as well. But JJ, thank you so much for your time, man. I know we kept you for a while, but I think this podcast had tons and tons of good stuff on it. So really appreciate that. Yeah, I appreciate you guys having me.