Fantasy Football Daily - 2022 Franchise Focus: Kansas City Chiefs

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

Joe Dolan (@FG_Dolan) invites The Athletic's Seth Keysor (@realMNChiefsFan) to discuss the upcoming season for the Kansas City Chiefs. The Franchise Focus Podcast series is brought to you by Underdog Fantasy (@UnderdogFantasy). New users can sign up to Underdog using promo code FANTASYPTS for up to $100 in bonus cash on their first deposit. Visit fantasypoints.com/underdog for more info. The podcast series is also sponsored by Evan's Sports Cards & Collectibles (@evanscards). Follow @EvansCards on Twitter for weekly updates and card releases, Like on Facebook, and head to evanssportsnj.com for more info, including the always-updated eBay store. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fantasypoints.com and the 2022 franchise focus series is sponsored by Underdog Fantasy, the best and easiest way to play fantasy sports, with no waivers, trades, or lineup setting for season-long drafts. New users can sign up to Underdog Fantasy Fantasy. For up to $100 in bonus cash on their first deposit. That's promo code FantasyPTS. Head to FantasyPoint.com slash Underdog for more information. Now let's get to the show. It's time for the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by FantasyPoints.com.

Top level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. Welcome back to the franchise focus podcast here at FantasyPoint.com. My name is Joe Dolan. And guys, one of my favorite things about this podcast, nay, my favorite thing about these series of podcasts is while I've talked to a good number of people who I've known for years, I've also reached out to people essentially blindly on Twitter and via email. And it has really opened my eyes to just fantastic people, fantastic analysts, just fantastic folks doing

incredible work covering the teams from a variety of angles, people who are watching tape, people who are doing beat writer, beat writer day-to-day grinding, all that stuff. And I'd like to try to bring you all those angles. And some of the fun stuff that I've been doing is talking right before we come on air. And one of those people who I really never interacted with before, despite following his work, is today's guest. His name is Seth Kaiser. And Seth just comes into the Zencaster room where we record the podcast. And I swear to God, I just talked to him for three minutes and it felt like I've known him forever. He knew exactly what to do on this podcast. He says he's excited to talk fantasy. So I'm excited to welcome Seth Kaiser in

to the podcast. You can follow him on Twitter at real MN Chiefs fan. I think that means he's a Chiefs fan, a real Chiefs fan from Minnesota. Correct me if I'm wrong, Seth. His work can be found at the athletic Kansas City, but he's the writer of the Chief in the North newsletter on Substack. If you have any interest in the Kansas City Chiefs whatsoever, you need to get this high level analysis. Seth, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me. I know you switched around. a lot of things to just record for us. And I really hope this gets you a nice little following. And I know you're excited to talk fantasy.

So we're excited to have you. Hey, I really appreciate you having me. I'm always excited to talk chiefs. And I'm excited to talk some fantasy. So this is going to be awesome. I'm here for it. So I have to do a little bit of a read from our sponsor. But just to kick this off, I think what's really interesting about this podcast is for the first time in a handful of years,

there's a lot of unknown with the chiefs. I'm really excited to get your take on it. I'm sort of excited to talk about that because it is weird the amount of unknowns. There's just, we're not sure what we're going to see on the field. But I think in terms of the fantasy community, that does leave some opportunities in terms of swooping in and with a little bit of luck and a lot of homework,

maybe finding some edges there. Well, you are singing my song and hopefully I'm singing the song of collectors because the franchise focus series of podcast, is brought to you by Evans Sports Cards and Collectibles, which is the best place for cards, collectibles, autographs, and more. When we do a memorabilia giveaway at fantasy points,

it's from Evans. And Evans always has the latest boxes and releases from Panini, Upper Deck, Tops, all the top brands. And it's not a super store. It's a family-owned small business. So you know you can go in there, learn about the staff. It's knowledgeable, it's friendly.

You love supporting Evans. And if you're in the Philadelphia area, it's great for an in-person visit. but if you're not in the Philadelphia area like me and Seth, just go to the eBay store. It's easy. You can follow at Evans cards on Twitter, get their weekly updates and card releases. You can also do that by liking Evans on Facebook and heading to the website Evansportsnj.com. And that includes the always updated eBay store.

That's Evansportsnj.com online and at Evans cards on Twitter and tell them that the guys from fantasy points.com sent you. So, Seth, obviously, there's a lot of turnover in the Kansas City offense this year, personnel-wise. Mike Kafka moves on. He goes to the Giants to be the offensive coordinator under Brian Dable, so there's some coaching turnover. But I almost wonder, not to put too fine a point on it, if Andy Reed and Brett Veach in a way felt like this offense needed a little bit of an enema. Not like you expect them to be bad, but last year, We saw career low A dot for Patrick Mahomes, career low A dot for Tyree Kill, who's obviously not there anymore.

The offense felt just a little bit more vertically restricted than we've seen, obviously, in basically the entirety of the Reed and Mahomes era. And heck, even dating back to when Alex Smith was playing with Tyree Kill for a little bit, a lot of verticality. Based on the offensive moves that they've made, what do you expect this offense to look like from that standpoint? do you think the chiefs believes things had gotten just a little bit stale? I think those are both really, really important things to look at in terms of what happened to them last year. Because people have come to expect certain things from the chiefs in terms of having an absolutely elite offense. And last year, their offense was good, but it wasn't quite what had been expected. So losing Tyree Kill creates a certain amount of unknown, right?

the chiefs have had a lot of continuity on offense, um, other than having to like, you know, fiddle with a few things here and there. And then last year they obviously had to switch around the entire offensive line to start the year. It was a lot.

So something that I would know what they seem to be trending towards in terms of personnel is a little bit more of, of a, a committee approach and a little bit less of a, of a stars and jags approach. In terms of coaching. staff. I think by, you know, Kafka, they had hoped to keep him around. They wanted him to eventually be offensive coordinator. He's a future head coach. We know that. Yeah. Yep. Everyone, everyone knows it.

Unfortunately, you know, it just didn't work out. I think bringing it back, Matt Nagy, I think you're going to see a little bit of a return to some of the things that you saw, some of similar concepts to what you saw in the 17 and prior era. But it's always worth noting this is Andy Reed's baby and it always will be. He is the guy. Yeah, sorry, continue on. I thought, I thought you were going to take a pause there, but no, this is Andy Reid's baby. And, you know, what, what did Andy think maybe this offense was lacking last year? Sure. And so something worth noting, you, you talk about that lack of depth of target. So the chiefs, I actually just got done writing a summary of one thing I do for the newsletter is I chart every snap by Patrick Mahomes to look at things like, you know, accuracy of target.

depth of target, whether he had happy feet in the pocket, things that actually measure quarterback play as opposed to counting stats, which kind of let you know kind of what was going on. And you can see actually two noticeable moments in the chief season, the first three or four games where he was adjusting to a completely new offensive line. And then mid-season where he had a couple of terrible games, really uncharacteristic for him. And this is when teams basically stopped blitzing, right? And then if you watch film, it wasn't just that they stopped blitzing linebackers never took a step forward at the snap against the chiefs at least very rarely they were always backtracking basically daring them to run and andy reed doesn't take that dare and so

they they had to adjust to being played completely differently than than you see teams play anyone else and they struggled with it they eventually adjusted over time but they became a very very plod down the field dink and dunk rarely if ever taking deep shots and no matter how efficient they were with that and they were very efficient by the end of the year. They were still a top three offense in DVOA. They were still very efficient, but teams said, we don't care.

You can have all the 12-yard drive or 12-play drives you want. We are not going to change how we're playing you. But what they were missing, in my opinion, one way that they started to adjust, they had a little more running, not a lot. It's still Andy Reed. They ran the ball a little bit more. They had a little more heavy formations.

And they had Patrick Mahomes on their center a little more for traditional play action rather than their RPO stuff. And all of that was in an attempt to break up what teams were trying to do in the intermediate and deep zones. So we know they're not going to run it a ton. That's never been. Look, I'm an Eagles fan. I'm from the Philadelphia area. I know what the sports radio is like. Now, I don't know if it's as crazy in Kansas City as it wasn't Philly. Why don't we get a bigger back? Why don't we run the ball? You know, like, by the way, is sports radio like that in Kansas City? Not even a little. It's a much smaller market. And so anyone who does the talking has to look, Andy Reed in the eye at some point. And the chiefs aren't shy about being, let's call it passive

aggressive about access. Right. And having the Super Bowl title, which alluded Andy in Philadelphia, probably helps quite a bit in that regard. It does. But let's talk about Clyde Edwards-Alair. And because as you all know, we're talking fantasy here, kind of underwhelmed, not kind of, has underwhelmed the first two years. And I think part of the reason of that, ironically, we talk about the chiefs. They're not going to run the ball a ton. Part of the reason he's underwhelmed, Seth, is because, heck, we thought, oh my God, Claude Edwards-Layer, this guy was a great receiver in college. He's going to come in. Heck, he only needs 170 carries if he's going to catch 50 passes. And he hasn't really been the passing down guy. But Darrell Williams is now gone,

the guy they trusted in that regard. Ronald Jones, certain kind of player. Not exactly known for his hands, Seth. I think you're probably well aware from that. Is this the year Clyde Edwards-Layer gets that LSU level work in the passing game? And how much was his health an aspect last year? I know he's talked about that quite a bit this offseason. Based on his quotes, his health has been a major factor both years that he's been a pro. Now there's a good and a bad to that, right? The good is, okay, well, hopefully now he's finally healthy, and we can really see what he can do.

The bad is, if you can't be healthy your first two years, is that going to happen, especially in a position like running back, where guys rarely get more healthy as their career goes along. I would say this, he's going to get every chance to be the third down back, but the fact that they brought back Jerich McKinnon, who in a limited capacity as the third down back last year, did pretty well with it. Like it wasn't life altering or anything like that,

but he was competent. good pass pro has a little bit of burst that Edwards O'Lear really doesn't have. And so he did the job competently, which means if Clyde Edwards O'Lear doesn't show out, he could very easily be replaced by Jones on early downs and McKinnon on late downs. It's a tough situation because Ronald Jones, at least to date, as a pro, has been a better runner of the football than Clyde by a decent margin. So I do think the Chiefs love Clyde. They really do.

They want to make it work with him. but by grabbing Rojo and bringing back McKinnon, there's some safety nets in place for both roles. And I think that makes it tough for Clyde unless he shows out early. And also, I mean, as you probably know, his ADP, he's got, it's collapsed. I mean, he's getting drafted around the seventh round, which I think for somebody who's got the upside of Edwards O'Lear in this offense,

it's defensible. He is my Lucy football guy. I was in on him two years ago. I was in on him last year. I'm going to be in on him again this year. And if I miss the football again, I guess that's what's going to happen. And I don't think he's a terrible risk there because he's going to get a significant chance to do it. He's going to get the first bite at the apple.

Andy Reid tends to let guys lose their jobs rather than letting people win them away from them if that difference makes sense. and so I do think he's going to at least get a few games in the season to start off or he's going to get a chance to show out. And given the style that they're playing and the new style of offensive line that they finally started switching to a little more power gap, the type of running the ball that he's good at as opposed to outside zone after outside zone after outside zone that they've traditionally done that he's not as good at because he lacks the speed. He's got a good chance to do something with it just because the offensive line is so good.

you talked about how now they have the safety nets in the backfield, but one of the key things that you mentioned at the top of the podcast was this is not a, it's funny you mention the Stars and Scrubs approach because often that's talked about as a fantasy strategy. Hey, I'm going to spend a lot of money to build the top of my roster and then I'll figure out the rest. That's kind of what they've done with their receiving core. Look, we know Travis Kelsey's going to be number one this year.

But no Tyreeke Hill to Marcus Robinson, who was. one of those scrubs has moved on. Now you've got Juju, Sky Moore, Marquez Valdez, Scantling. Those are the guys getting drafted first, the first three wide receivers being drafted here. They all offer something different. How do you see the target tree kind of shaking out among those guys? And what do you think their roles are going to be? Because it feels like those guys are a little less interchangeable than some of the other depth receivers that the chiefs have had in the recent past. Absolutely. And looking at the lack of interchangeability, especially when you compare MVS and Juju Smith-Schuster, completely different kinds of receivers. Both of them are kind of niche guys.

They're good at their niche, but they're not really going outside of that. MBS is a deep threat, maybe some intermediate stuff. And Juju Smith-Schuster is a shallow, maybe some intermediate stuff. he didn't do much deep at all for the Steelers the last couple years. Really, it's going to, it looks like what they're trying to do to replace Hill is replace his skill set piecemeal, right? Instead of just having one guy that threatens all area of the field, grab two or three guys that threaten every area of the field and hope that that spreads out defenses a little more to where you can't just,

you know, run too high and have one of those two high safeties, you know, shade over to Tyree Killside, and then Halo Travis Kelsey, which is what teams were doing. And the rest of their guys could not beat press man coverage. They couldn't beat physical coverage, couldn't gain any sort of separation. So I do like that you point out that Robinson's gone because people might kind of ignore that. But between him and Byron Pringle moving on, there are like 1,100, 1,200 snaps for the Chiefs up for grabs all of a sudden. In addition to Tyree Kill, who played almost every snap being gone.

And so the targets are there. They're just going to, I think, do things a little bit piecemeal in terms of role. So the important thing is figuring out what guy's going to do what role and who's going to benefit the most from that in terms of a fantasy perspective. Right. And so from a fantasy perspective, who do you view as maybe the guy who might benefit the most year? Just for the listener's sake and for your sake, Seth, on most sites, this is most sites. going in order. Travis Kelsey's going in like the first or second round. We know that. But, Juju Smith-Schuster, then a couple rounds to Skymore, and then a round or two to Marquez Valdez Gantling. Personally, for me, based on cost, Valdez Scantling has been far and away. My favorite chief receiver to draft. Yep. I'm interested to hear what your take is there.

I love that take. And the reason for that is a couple. One, Baldes Scantley has impressed so far. They've liked what he's done. No. They feel like he can do a little more than what he was doing in Green Bay. They feel like they can unlock a little bit more with him. And so that's a big deal, especially that late, because, you know, that late you're looking for guys with some value, maybe a little bit boom or bust, right? And with his particular role with the Chiefs, you are probably, if he stays healthy, going to have at least a couple games where you might get two big touchdowns, you know, one was 50 yards, one was 35 yards, right?

and that type of thing can be a game swinging performance. One of my favorite receivers, and stop me if you've heard this one before, I think McCle Hardman and half of you just stop listening. They said, nope, not doing it, and they're done. Here's the thing. McCle Hardman, I understand the fantasy community. Speaking of Lucy with the football, by the way. The fantasy community has a couple times because he had a pretty good rookie season.

and he's got a clear role in the offense. The problem is that role in the offense isn't super, it's just not enough. It's not consistent. Here's what I would say with McCull Hardman. Right now, his value is, like you say, he's probably the fourth chief's receiver people are taking, including with a completely unproven rookie and Sky Moore.

By the way, loved Sky Moore's college film. Loved it. We'll see. You never know. Andy Reed's offense is tough to learn for a rookie. And so to me, grabbing a rookie there could pay off huge. but it's a huge, it's a massive risk too. Here's the thing with Hardman.

All of the receivers they currently have on the roster, he's the one who makes the most sense to suck up those quick and easy targets that Tyreek Hill feasted on last year and McCle Hardman feasted on. It might make sense to give McCle Hardman another 25, 30 of those this year. And that alone, you know, that could bump up his targets to something like 100, 110. and they're like if you're at a PPR league those are cheap targets they're cheap catches they're how they they it's a substitute for the run game and he's one of their best guys for that probably their best guy for that because he has unnatural speed and he's the natural guy to take those quick you know those little pop passes that count as a catch when it's essentially a glorified handoff those things are going to go to hardman and you know he's going to get a role in the offense so. he also is another guy where he's a few big touchdowns, whether it's a run, whether it's a deep ball, whatever, from tilting a game similar to MVS, and you could probably draft him like

five rounds later. And so he, again, I know people are sick of McCall Hardman, but you're not going to have to take him in like, you know, the seventh or eighth round this year. Right, right. So I got to close out because a rookie picked in the top 50 or whatever, Sky Moore was picked, got to be asked about. and especially when the chiefs have so many vacated targets. Right. I think because the fantasy community is out on me, Cole Hardman, and you just alluded to why, hey, maybe reevaluate that position, they're kind of viewing Sky Moore as he's the fast,

kind of quick PPR guy. Juju's a different kind of PPR guy, as you alluded to. Yes. So he's the fast kind of quick PPR guy, maybe get those yak catches that Tyree Kill got last year. Skymore is like what, 510, 90, but he's got mitts, man. Like his hands were like two inches bigger than mine or something like that. What did you like about his tape when you, when you watched it? How do you think he fits?

Absolutely loved Sky Moore's film. And it can be kind of hard to come by. And the thing, the thing, though, to watch with a guy like him in a small school is you're looking for traits. And he does a couple of things that translate at the next level that might help him translate quickly. he runs through contact much better than most smaller receivers do. He doesn't get jarred from it as easily.

He's willing to fight through it. He's strong and he's quick. He also gets really good releases at the line of scrimmage. Those are two things that you don't commonly see with young receivers. Now, this is all with the caveat. We'll see if he can do it at the next level. But he could consistently in college. And like you said, Mitz, he catches everything, absolutely everything.

And when you combine those things, those are things that ideally translate at the next level. The biggest thing with him is there's a bit of a buyer beware there because it is Andy Reed's offense and there aren't a lot of receivers that have jumped into Andy Reid's offense as rookies and done incredible things or had huge stats. You've had guys like Jeremy McLean and Deshawn Jackson came in and played pretty well. But it's tough to have those big years to justify a higher draft slot. and the problem for him is there are bodies in front of him that have proven they can operate within the pros or within the system in Hardman's case.

So if he doesn't really catch fire right away, it's real easy for him to get buried as the fourth receiver and really the fifth behind Kelsey pretty quickly. And the team will be fine with that. But if you drafted him in the fifth or sixth round, you won't be fine. Well, let's hope he doesn't become the next Mikul Hardman, Lucy, with the football kind of guy on the Chiefs. offense. No, I'm a big fan of Sky Moors tape. You guys know, John Hansen's ranked him aggressively. He has him ranked higher than any other chief wide receiver over at FantasyPoints.com. Go check out our article, by the way, our franchise focus article about the Kansas City Chiefs

to get all of our takes. But this was wonderful having Seth on. Seth Kaiser at real MN Chiefs fan on Twitter. Make sure you subscribe to the substack, the chief in the North Newsletter. He'll also be back on the Athletic Kansas City this year, contributing the occasional article. Seth, this was awesome, man. Thank you so much. You might have set the longest runtime for a franchise focus pod because, heck, I just like talking to you. So I was going to have you on while you were comfortable talking. Hey, I really appreciate you having me. This is fun. It was great talking to Seth. It's been great talking all these teams.

This week was good for the AFC West talking chargers, talking Raiders, and now talking Chiefs. We'll be back tomorrow with John Shipley talking Jacksonville Jaguars. I appreciate it everyone. My name's Joe Dolan for Seth Kaiser, I hope everybody has a great rest of the day. Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points podcast. Remember to subscribe, rate, and review on your favorite platform. And come join the roster at FantasyPoint.com.