Fantasy Football Daily - 2022 Off-Season Injury Landscape

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

Graham Barfield (@GrahamBarfield) and Dr. Edwin Porras (@FBInjuryDoc) discuss the state of injured players, timelines, and more. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time to the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by FantasyPoint.com. Top level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. Yo, welcome back to the Fantasy Points podcast. Got a special show today. My good friend, Dr. Edwin Pores, is on the show. Before everyone starts speaking, I want to give this a little bit of, a podcast, a little shout out here.

Check it out. Injury prone podcast. It's no longer a fantasy football podcast. Everyone gave some news on your feed this week saying that you're going to be interviewing like, you know, athletic trainers, doctors, all the smart people. Listen and talk to interview on all those guys. So yeah, make sure you check out on this podcast. Not only is he doing fantasy stuff.

He's going to be talking through to some way smarter people than me about injuries and all that cool stuff. So make sure you're subscribed to Edmund's podcast. Also, we were just talking about this. Make sure you're checking out Edwin's injury insights. This is something that we need to do better as a site. It's just marketing. I'm not great at it.

But Edwin is doing free injury insights on the site right now. Just go to fancypoints.com slash reports. If you just go to the research and news tab at the top, click the drop down, hit injury insights. He's providing insights on pretty much all these guys are going to be talking about today. And all throughout the off season. So that's a huge tool. that I look at every time he provides an update. And I base a lot of my rankings off of Edwin's insight.

So make sure you're checking those out to free on FantasyPoints.com. But Edwin, how's it going, man? How's Florida life treating you? How's baseball life treating you? Like, give us the update. Graham, that was a very nice intro. However, I was expecting a Coors Heavy Diesel ad read here at the top of the script. For those of you don't know, Graham, Barfield's not.

only, Yards created extraordinary fantasy football genius, a kid prodigy from the age of like 17 writing fantasy football articles. He also drinks Coors heavy banquet beer. Now, it takes a special kind of person to drink those. I have no idea how he puts them down. There was one evening, the evening that Graham and my wife and Graham's wife, we all got together the first evening we all met. We brought, my wife and I brought an assortment of beers. We brought craft beers. We brought local beers. We brought, you know, big box beers. We brought a ton, right? We brought quite a bit, Graham. We actually were like, wow, we probably brought too much. So halfway in the evening, I see Graham reached to his own little mini fridge, pull out a Coors banquet. And I have never been

more confused about all the options and him choosing beers make a little. But yes, Graham, I'm doing well. I just needed to give it that little tidbit about you. It was the most confusing aspect of your personality that I've ever seen. I know that I'm doing well. Well, as long as that's the most confusing bit, then I think we're up to a good start, dude. But now, listen, two things. You guys did bring a ton of beer, which we all hammered, and I needed to change it up. But also, real men drink Rocky Mountain Diesel. Like, this is an unrefuted fact that real men drink Rocky Mountain Diesel When did you start drinking this at 12? When did you start drinking this?

It was 10. 10 and your eye. Yeah. Instead of milk, once I turned 10, my mom stopped giving me milk and just handed me quartz banquets. Okay. Well, that makes a lot more sense now considering everything I know about you. True.

But I, I, uh, we need to have another one of those evenings. We've been talking about getting back together, man. Like these podcasts are fun because we're friends first and I guess, quote unquote, co-workers, whatever we'll call it second. And so these conversations. go a lot more smoothly. But I appreciate you point out all my work. Yeah, Injury Prome Podcasts, the tab over and under Research's News, I think we should push that a little bit more. I'm not sure too many people are aware of it, but it's basically

a rip, the injury version, we'll call it a rip off of the old, you know, Roto World or whatever NBC Sports Edge blurbs. It's just an injury version written by me. So that's something that I think has been pretty useful for people. In addition to everything else we have, going on at fantasy points, which is just, you know, a ton of stuff we could go on for days and days. In terms of baseball, yeah, I love it, man. This is the life. Other than living in Florida, which I'm not the biggest fan of, I love the job. So it makes it makes life a little easier.

You know, what's funny, too, is it's not funny. I don't want to say it that way. But what's interesting is I write about high ankles, I write about ACL, I write about all these different specific injuries. and within like the first month, we saw all of those, which for baseball are kind of obscure, we saw a high ankle, we saw an ACL, we saw some pretty obscure injuries. So I don't see, we don't see those often in the fear, if you're not in the athletic population. And so seeing them was kind of interesting to me because then all of a sudden my mind was like,

oh yeah, man, now I got a little bit of experience. I can, I can put on the back of some of those injury fantasy related, fantasy related blurbs. So it's been fun, man. Well, now you have like both things bleeding into each other. which is great, but every time I text you, you've become like a full-on baseball guy. You hated baseball so much when I first met you a couple of years. I didn't hate it, Graham. I didn't hate it.

Oh, no. I didn't understand it. No, no, no. Not only did you say you didn't understand it. You actively made fun of it. Don't try to change anything. Okay. Here's the deal.

Here's what I stand by. Baseball players and baseball fans are weird. And I'm not going to back up from that. So any baseball, I'm sorry. It's true. Graham, you were a baseball player. Now you're right about fake football. That's different.

You're eccentric. It's okay. It's not a bad thing. It's just different. Baseball players are just different. I, no, I fully admit that. And growing up around baseball, I'm playing it all throughout middle and high school between middle school teams, high school teams, travel teams.

Yeah, baseball, baseball guys are some of the weirdest. but I don't know. I say they have the most hobbies too, right? Like hoopers, first of all, you look at hoopers. Hoopers want to hoop. Football players, they don't tend to have a lot of hobbies other than just like hanging out with other football players and playing football games.

Yeah. Golfers hunt. Golfers, I mean golfers. Baseball players hunt. Baseball players play golf. Baseball players play video games. Like baseball players are, by the way, also I'm learning huge into fantasy as we saw. Oh, yeah. With a few different events going on to Major League Baseball games.

Yeah. They just have this wide array of hobbies. And now that I've sort of seen the inner workings, I can identify the things that I thought were weird. I can kind of see like, oh, okay, well, that makes a little bit more sense. Now that I know more about baseball players and baseball in general. Well, dude, listen, I mean, there's a shit ton of just standing around time when you play baseball, right? Unless you're a pitcher, which I was, unless you're a pitcher, you're standing around 90% of the time. But that's a lot of time to, like, occupy your mind and start thinking about different things. So yeah, I think that's a big part of it. is there's just, it's just like a natural crossover, I guess, between just like having empty time and like filling that with hobbies. But speaking of empty time, nobody's listening to us for our weird baseball guy takes. Let's talk some fake football. Edwin, I'm just going to hit you up for like, I've got a big show sheet here. We're going to go through, you know, positions and just talk through some of these guys.

Quarterback, luckily, is like the one spot where there's not a ton to talk about. So we'll knock that out first. And the first guy I want to ask you about is James Winston coming off an ACL tear. He also had some damage to his meniscus. It came out like a month ago. I saw from a beat writer. I'm sorry I'm not remembering who the beat is. But Winston ACL plus meniscus.

So that kind of complicates things a little bit. James has always known for his weird workouts, man. His weird Instagram workouts. I guess they're working for him. I saw one of them a couple weeks ago and he was moving around pretty well out there, even though it's one of those weird ones again, but where are we out with James? Do we think a week one return is possible?

One final thing is like James was pretty mobile last year. He's been sneakily mobile in his career, moving around quite a bit. Where do we think Winston's at? And how do you think this injury affects his mobility? So I'm currently trying to pull up my own injury insets because I'm pretty sure that I had him coming back the first, I'm sorry, the last week of July with the added component of the meniscus that does sort of push things back a little bit for him.

But again, how does that push it back? Like when you have an ACL plus meniscus, what does that change for the re-have? Good question. So depending on the extent of the damage in the meniscus, well, I guess we have to back up, really. the function of the meniscus is to create space between the shin bone and the leg bone. And when you have that space in between there, when that tissue, the meniscus gets damaged, you need to go in there and sort of fix it up. Well, when the function is to create space and be a shock absorber,

the problem that you run into is that you can't put weight through it in order for it to heal. When you can't put weight through it, you end up delaying. a rehab for depending on the damage, the extent of the damage, for about a month because you just need to sort of wait it out. So it's like the entire, you know, backwards logic of he's ahead of schedule. These are the ones that you'd never look at and say they're ahead of schedule because in theory, compared to a regular ACL, an isolated ACL, they're already a month behind the eight ball. So basically what you would look at for Winston is, for a mid-August return to probably a mid-September return,

I would anticipate this still would mean that he's ready for a week one. I don't anticipate him missing more than a couple of games, especially since it was roughly around the time Joe Burrow had his ACL. And Joe Burrell came back, and Joe Burroughs was a mess, man. Joe Burroughs knee was not great. It came back, and he came back nine months, I think two weeks. This, I think gives James, especially since he's not super mobile, he should still be back in the first four weeks of the season.

I want to say like worst case scenario. I still think he's back by week one. Great. Yeah, that's great. Great insight too on the meniscus thing. Yeah, he tore his ACL and hurt his knee on Halloween. So, yeah, that should be, you know, what, nine, 11 months removed. So, yeah, well, nine and a half.

Nine and a half or so, I think. So, yeah, I think he's good. I think he'll be good to go. That's pretty much, like, right in the pocket. So yeah, it's good news, man. I'm actually like sneakishly excited about the Saints this year. Like, you know, we saw Michael Thomas doing things on the football field yesterday. There was a videotape of him running at Saints camp.

We'll see, man. I have no clue on Michael Thomas. But Chris Olbe, you know, Jarvis Lander in tow. There's some good weapons in the States offense, man. And, you know, Winston, in a small sample, was really efficient last year. Second EPA per attempt. obviously a lot of that was fueled by touchdowns. He had like that one big touchdown game.

He had five touchdowns against the Packers. At a four touchdown game against Washington. Still, I think there was enough to be excited about with Janus. For sure. Makes me feel even better now that he's going to be back by week one. Ten months, 10 months from October 31st. If we say that, you know, that's the latest that we expect to return is 10 months from the injury,

which, again, got to give or take two to four weeks. That puts him at October, or I'm sorry, August 31st is 10 months. So worst case scenario, he misses one to two games. But yeah, man, I actually just saw our report today. I know we might get to a Michael Thomas still not an OTA, still not able to. Not great. I don't know what the hell is going on there. I'm not sure what's going on.

Yeah, Thomas is at the top of my list for wide receivers. So we'll talk through when we get there. But one final quarterback, one to ask you about is Matthew Stafford in this kind of like tricky elbow thing. I know next to nothing about this injury is why I'm bringing you on. So Stafford, I'm assuming hurt this elbow in the middle of the season. It just played through it, had to have some sort of cleanup surgery. Is it anything we should be concerned about? Did he have a cleanup surgery or did he have an injection?

I do not know, honestly. I'm relatively certain he had an injection. And I'm currently Googling that. Or maybe you can Google that for me as I talk about this. So I think that... Yeah, he received an injection in his right elbow on May... Well, this is when it came out in May 23rd. Yeah.

LA Times had it. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, you'd be a lot more concerned if it was, if it was sort of, you know, surgery-related. If it was like a debris, you'd be more concerned. It sounds like it was something that was dragging on for a long time. Maybe something like everybody's gone to tennis elbow before, right? Something chronic, like a chronic tennis elbow, or potentially worst-case scenario,

something that's inside the joint, like some inflammation, inside the joint, which you wouldn't love to hear that. But you don't, don't panic yet. This is something that has been drug on for a little bit. I know Stafford has had some elbow issues in the past. Typically, you don't see that unless they're baseball players. I don't know of what you think, Grammar. If you've ever even analyzed quarterback mechanics,

I don't know what you think of his mechanics when he throws the ball. But that might contribute to part of the reason why he's having some elbow issues late in his career. That makes sense, man, because Stafford is like, He's a magician in terms of just his arm angles that he gets to. You know, everybody loves Patrick Mahomes for all the right reasons. Mahomes is just, he's a magician too. But, you know, all those years in Detroit, Stafford was making the same no-look throws, weird arm angles, off-platform throws.

So there's definitely some sort of correlation there. He's now 34 years old, so probably has some wear and tear. Just clicking through this article a little bit more, it was because of an issue and some discomfort he had throughout the season. So you're probably spot on. It was just discomfort and probably nothing to sweat. But Graham, if this was Patrick Mahomes, everybody would be losing their minds. I know.

I'm so tired. I'm so tired of those. I was one of those that tweeted if this was Patrick. I've probably done that. And then it just got so old, so quickly. And now it's slowly transforming into irony about if this was Patrick Mahomes. But I just, can we please, can we please stop? Like, yeah.

I have a whole soapbox about about. Matthew Stafford and how he basically, Graham, maybe you disagree. Matthew Stafford, in terms of meeting and exceeding expectations based on where he came out of from high school, has been fine. He has been a good, above average, sometimes great quarterback. He does a good job when he's given the weapons around him. I just don't think that he deserves this incredible. He's gotten so many, he's got so much benefit of the doubt that it drives me nuts that to this

point, Lamar Jackson, whose career is at least 10 years younger than Matthew Stafford, has gotten way more criticism than Matthew Stafford has ever gotten. He's always gotten the benefit of the doubt. And he's never had any type of criticism despite the fact that he was like a number one overall pick. He was like the best football player in Texas today or wherever he came out of high school. I have a whole soapbox about a gram. I'm sorry. I'm excited. You just got on your soapbox. But no, dude, Stafford's a weird one for me too, because like he was. on just some absolutely terrible teams in Detroit. But he's also like, you know, he's in his 30s and he's getting better. Like, if you look at all of his efficiency metrics, he's getting better as he's

getting older. You know, even in 19 and 20 of those last couple years with Detroit, those teams were atrocious, but Stafford was better. I think if you want to, if you want to pick a fight with Stafford, it was like, you know, maybe he like kind of flatline from like 2012 to 2018, but, man, That's a long time, Graham. That's a long time. We're looking at the last three years now, man, and he's just gotten back. Listen, again, and I think when I make this argument, people think that I'm saying Stafford's a bad quarterback.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that he's gotten so much benefit of the doubt that at times is so annoying because no other quarterback that's been on the projection, on the, you know, the projection that he was coming out of high school. Like the hype around Stafford was huge. And to date, he's, I mean, objectively underperformed. Like somebody like LeBron James, which is hard, it's difficult to, you know,

compare him to probably the top two basketball player of all time. But like somebody like Stafford and where he came from in high school, you would just have expected a lot more. That's all I'm saying. And he's gotten too much benefit of the doubt. Well, he's a Super Bowl champion now. And I'll say this without a shadow of doubt that there's no way that Ramstein goes as deep as they did last year with Jericho.

Without Cooper Cup, I agree, Graham. Oh, you know what? Let's just make this podcast even more high. I could have made this hot take, this hot take debate you had with Scott yesterday. You should have it with me. Oh, God, I know. Yeah. Well, let's have it.

Saquan Barkley. He's now a year removed from his knee injury. He's coming off a super fluky ankle injury. I stepped on a defender's foot against Dallas and, like, what was it, we five? I don't think that ankle injury should be held against him whatsoever, but it did impact his season last year. So you and I have talked. through text way too much about Sequant, so now I'm excited to actually talk to your face about Sequan. But yeah, where are we at? You're removed from the knee. Maybe take us through

the time machine and kind of recap what that knee injury was and why maybe last year wasn't the best time to bet on Barclay at like six, seven overall where he went in fantasy grabs. Ah, that is where we differ in opinion, my friend. Last year was the time to bet on Sequan Barkley. I had a whole 2000 word article on Sequin Barclay discussing all the historical literature and data and historical comparisons even looking back at running backs in the past with an ACL and what their injury history looked like after the ACL. Everything we knew about Sequin Barcl last year after the ACL and partial meniscus was that he was teed up and lined up to smash. We don't like making generational arguments here at fantasy points we don't like throwing that term around we don't like making every

rookie that comes out of the draft every wide receiver their comparison is a combination of jerry rice and you know lynn swan or you know every running back is what's that day that old david montgomery meme right like feet of sayquan what was it you know the yeah it's like it's like athleticism of sayquan the vision of levi on bell the juke right and it's like in me a point we're Literally you would have thought David Montgomery was created in a lab to play football. We don't want to do that often. But quite literally, the only historical comparison for Sequin Barclay coming off of his ACL is Adrian Peterson coming off of his.

The only athlete better by a percentage point, at least according to that Nike Spark rating, in the last 10 years or whatever it has been 10 to 15 years, better than Sequin Barclay is Adrian Peterson. And they're separated by like a single percentage pool. All of that information, in addition to the last 10 years, or whatever has been 10 to 15 years better than sayquine Barclaylor is Adrian Peterson. to the 10 months, two weeks that he had to come back from the ACL was exactly the reason why he was on a projectile to just absolutely smash. And I know he maybe didn't look great weeks one through four from like a true football perspective, but it didn't matter for fantasy. So even though they said they were going to quote unquote ease him in, he started with 48% of snaps in week one. And then in week two,

he jumped to 84%. Week 3, 86%, week 4, 89%. His targets weeks 1 through 4 went 3, 6, and 7. His fantasy points, Weeks 1 through 4 went 3.7, 8.9, 2,1.4, 29.6. Graham, you pointed this out in your stat pack article. Sequin Barclay, despite the fact that he played only 48% of snaps in week one, was the RB10 and PPR points after week four. Roll in, right, he was going to absolutely smash at his ADP. I was going to be a very rich man. I was going to retire, Graham. You guys were going to have to find a new injury analyst. I was going to be on an island somewhere. And then he somehow, some way, in the worst possible twist of fate, stepped on a defender's foot,

rolled his ankle, had a lateral ankle sprain. Since then, you also noted this in your stat pack article, he played like 60% of the snaps, and I can't deny, you're 100% accurate. So I had, it's interesting you said this, I had the same thought. There were times where I didn't know

who was running the ball, 26 or 28. I'd have to wait until they got up out of the pile. And that's the worst part, right? That sucks. But that probably had to do with the lingering ankle injury and less to do with the ACL. But even if you're on board with the idea that this is year two removed from the ACL, and we know year two running backs can, and most athletes can just perform better,

he's also a year removed from the ankle injury. And I can't predict a soft tissue injury. I can't predict him stepping on another defender's ankle or foot. But I can tell you that. And you'll be the first one in Ogram. You can vouch for me. When I'm wrong, I will tell you, like I was wrong. That was incorrect process.

This was my where I failed. The process on Barclay last year was correct. We should have followed the historical data that we have in the literature in addition to the historical comps, knowing everything we know about Berkeley. And we would have known that he could have smashed in fantasy football. And the process was correct. It just didn't pan out. This is year two to absolutely hunker down on Saquan Barclay and your shares of Saquan Barclay and just shoot him to the moon. Man, he's going to the third round right now.

So I think I've been able to maybe convince you a little bit. I don't know. I kind of have your thoughts. No, no, you have. I've bumped Barclay up quite a bit, just talking to you. and talking through the whole process and stuff. And, you know, that ankle injury, you know, if you're holding that against him, like, just stop.

Like, that was such a fluke, true fluke injury. My, I guess my biggest contention with Barclay remains is like, man. And this is something that, you know, you've definitely changed my mind on. But, like, you know, he's 25, but he's still playing the most violent position on the field. he's getting hit more than any player on the field. Like, is there any, is there any actual science behind, oh, the injuries are piling up for him? Or is that just bias? Now, there is something to the idea of, now he's got this injury, now he's got that injury,

and where they might be mentally and how they might be feeling physically every night they go home. You see that with something super severe on the end of the spectrum of Todd Gurley. He had arthritis in his knee. There's no way around that, right? You can say he's had a couple of ankle injuries and you wonder how much juice he's got left because he's got to tape him up or whatever the case may be. But really, if you view injury-free mileage independently and isolated, why do running backs fall off the cliff? It's not so much because they take hits and they get injured. It's more so the natural aging and declination and a new wave of faster, more agile,

the lead athletes coming into the field of positions. Typically you don't see, and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, you don't see running backs usually just fall off the face of the planet. Maybe we view it that way, but what you see usually is like a top five RB will fall to like overall RB 15. And oh my gosh, they're a bust. No, they're still a productive NFL running back. But I think that we sort of catastrophize these cliffs and these age cliffs running backs,

when in reality it's a gradual decrease. we're seeing it with Derek Canary right now. Derek Henry's efficiency by all metrics has slowly started to decline, but he's still being propped up by his usage, right? So that's sort of to bring it back to full circle. I'm rambling now. Running backs typically don't fall off the cliff simply because they take hits and they take touches.

They start to fall off the cliff because their athleticism peaks at the age of 25, 26, and then they start to decline because, holy shit, they've been athletic since they were 18 years old. you know, some of the best athletes in the world. And once you don't have that, the defensive lines are not getting any older and they're not getting any slower. So you have to take all that into account and recognize that ankle injuries and a two-year removed from an ACL when he's shown that he could stay healthy should not be held against him.

Okay. Yeah. No, that's good stuff, man. You know, my thing is just like, you know, Barclay, when he came out of college, I was actually just having this conversation with Scott a couple days ago. Like, when he came out of college, Barclays. was a true home run hitter, like incredible percentage of his runs, you know, gain 10, 15, 20 yards at Penn State.

But he was always like kind of a boomer bus player where he's going to take a lot of like negative plays just because he was that guy. Last two years, man, Sequin Barkley has generated a 10 plus yard gain on 5.4% of what his 181 carries. Edwin, that ranks 85th out of 8.5th out of 8.5th. 86 running backs in that span with at least 100 carries. Only Joshua Kelly is worse. And Joshua Kelly is like, he's like, should be in the U.S.

No offense to Joshua Kelly, but he really is not an NFL player. When I watched him in college and he's not been in the NFL. What was that time frame? I'm sorry, say that time frame again? Yeah, last two years. So it was 20-ish carries he had in 2020 plus all last year. And obviously the ankle injury was. Selection bias.

A big part of it. No, I know. but I'm just saying, I mean, we, we have not seen Barclay beat a home run hitter. He once was, of course, obviously, it's probably a bad stat because the ankle injury was, was truly detrimental. And he admitted. I mean, he said multiple times last year that he didn't feel right coming off the ankle. So, yeah, I'm with you, though.

I've bumped Barclay away up in my rankings. I had him in, like, the mid-30s. in May, now I've got them pretty much right in line with ADP. I had a James Connor. I have him right below Nick Chubb and Javentzay Woodham still, though. You have an ADP in front of you, Graham? I do not, but I can't. If you were to pull up an ADP, and I was saying this the other day, let's say you're, I don't know.

Who's your top receiver, Justin Jefferson? No, Cooper Cod. Ooh, spicy. Okay. Let's say you go, let's say you go strapped out of the six or seven hole. You go Cooper Cup and then you go, who's your top receiver in the second round? I mean, Cooper Cup won't be there at six. So Justin Jefferson probably in mind.

Imagine going Justin Jefferson, maybe like Travis Kelsey, who's going to get all of the targets, third round coming, bringing the third round up with Sequin Barkley. or Justin Jefferson and Tyreek Hill and then Seekworn Bart. Like, imagine that. No, I'll give you the true nuts. I have a draft that I did in May. Out of 101, I took JT, obviously.

It came back to Aaron Jones and then Sequin. R.B. Heavy. I'm that testosterone, buddy. I know. I'm a total R.B. Dumer, I guess now. My draft was. just dripping in testosterone.

I like it. I mean, if we're going to do this, like, I mean, Barclay is an RV3 attached to Jonathan Taylor. I mean. That's wild. That is wild. That's in best ball? Yeah.

It's out there. Those starts are out there, man. Maybe not anymore. You know, I think, I think the market is like wisely realized that running back should going too late in the first three rounds on underdog. I've not been able to do that start since then. But yeah, it's wild. All right, we spent too much time on Berkeley.

I got to ask you, this is arguably, I think the bigger debate is J.K. Dobbins. You and I had a whole conversation months ago about ACLs and just kind of like the differing nature of the injury itself, like the mechanism of the injury. And I want you to kind of explain to everyone what you kind of explained to me. So like, J.K. Dobbins injury came from a hyper extension. he had his foot in the ground, then he was hit and his knee hyper-extended. He has an ACL injury plus, I'm assuming, significant nerve and other living advantage. We can only assume. The way you explained it to me is like running backs need way more power than receivers

tight ends do, and that makes their injury timelines a little bit trickier. So Dobbins had a contact ACL injury. How does that differ from a not? contact ACL injury. And as it pertains to running backs in particular, why might that make Dobbins rehab a little bit harder? Yeah. So when you have a contact injury, in theory, theoretically, you're going to have a lot more damage. Like, that's what, that's, I think, the starting point with where we want to be. And we mentioned earlier with James Winston that when you start behind the A ball, if you have meniscus injury, if a meniscus repair, you're going to be a month behind rehab to begin with.

So that's where the initial issue might begin. Now, when you are discussing power and what that means, right, all you need to know, if you're out there, you're not a physics major, it's easy to understand. Power is just work over a period of time, right? Newton's over seconds or whatever the unit ends up being, right? You need to be able to go hard and you need to be able to go fast, quickly. Change a direction, power through even just like a unit, like a, straight sprint through a defender, or you need to be able to create velocity,

acceleration, deceleration. All of that is handled by the knee, the quads, and the hamstrings. They need to be coordinated perfectly. That gets knocked offline after surgery. It's extremely difficult to bring it back. And oftentimes you don't really get it back until sometimes 12 to 15 months after surgery, which is why you see that outcome measures, which are basically returned to play criteria, tests that you do to make sure that a player can come back safely, is they go from they basically plateau at 18 months. So you can actually continue to make progress until 18 months. That has a lot to do with the brain shutting down the quad,

et cetera, et cetera, a lot of nerdy stuff. But basically what you have is this athlete who might take a year to get back to where they are. So that's where the argument actually begins for for J.K. Dobbins. Even though he may, we don't know, may have had a pretty significant injury, maybe had some meniscus involvement. He's going to be well over a year. at a time week one hits, and he's going to be potentially ready to start at that point.

The other argument, and I would be, you know, I try to be as consistent as I possibly can with my, with my FF hot takes is this is like a mini Sequan Barkley comparison from last year. High draft capital, super long leash by the front office. We don't know how complicated it was of a surgery, but those are the three indicators of a running back who can come back and perform at a high. level. If there's any gap that exists between the severity of the injury that Dobbins had and Saquan potentially had, it's the fact that Dobbins has had these extended two extra months that Barclay did not have. And so he'll have that time to create rehab and condition that

knee to get back to where it needs to be, create that force to create that power. So even though Dobbins isn't quite Saquan in every aspect, the time might help bridge the gap to the point where Dobbins could have a pretty decent year and exceed expectations where I ask your opinion here, Graham, is like, but what does that mean? Like how much volume is he going to see? How much volume is Lamar Jackson going to take away? And just how, you know, how fast is that offense even going to be paced? Yeah. The one thing I'll say about Dobbins and just overall confidence in him is like the Ravens ran out of running backs last year and they have not been in a hurry to bring really anybody in. I mean, they brought, you know, they drafted Tyler Bady late

in the sixth round. You can't really count on six-round running backs, man. I mean, the hit rate on those guys is like about the same as a UDFA on draft and free agent. And they brought in dusty ass Mike Davis. So, I mean, Tyler Bady is probably- Remember Mike Davis? Huh? I said, remember Mike Davis? well, he's going to be on this camp roster at least. But, I mean, that's the one thing that I keep coming back to is like, you know, the Ravens are really, really sharp organization, truly sharp. And they've not gone out of the way to really bring any insurance in for Dobbins. And I think that's probably a good sign.

I guess for fantasy, the decision you have to make with Dobbins this year is like, what's your roster construction look like? because if you're going to go receiver heavy early, Dobbins in the fourth or fifth round, is it a fantastic upside bet? If you've already got two backs on your roster and you're staring down the barrel of like Tara McClure, Amarra Cooper, Mike Williams, Cortland Sutton, taking a little deeper Brandon Cooks versus Dobbins, then that, you know, that equation changes because Dobbins is now going in the dead zone.

He's, you know, he slipped from when it started doing the basketball on May 1st after the draft. It was like 45 overall ADP. Now it's double to like not double, but gone up by 10, 12 spots, 55, 56 ADP. He's going to the same range as like Travis ETN who had one I want to talk to you about. I think Travis ETN is one of the most fascinating bits of our players to try to analyze in that fifth round because the upside man is super clear to me. James Robinson is hurt. they really don't have much behind ETN to begin with. And this team still desperately needs playmakers in the past game. Look, I think Chris Kirk, Christian Kirk is actually a, you know, he got overpaid shirt,

but he was a really, really smart pickup for this team. He was an explosive element out of the slot for the Cardinals last year. And I think he can provide something similar for the Jags. That being said, man, ETN is still a game changer in the past game. I have found myself bumping up ETN, like, daily in my rankings. We've heard nothing but good news out of OTAs. Where should he be at coming off the Jones fracture? And by week one, like, is it truly just like a mental thing with him?

Like, will his body truly be back to 100% by them? No, so I think you've got to look at this in a couple of different ways. And the first way that I think we should view it is just the natural, there are two articles out there that track the natural progression of NFL players after a list rank injury and both of them show a negative drop in production drop in production year one after this list frank injury so that's the first thing you have to look at and you cannot ignore like that's simply not something you can ignore the second thing is more is he going to have hardware in his foot which it probably sounds like he's going to have that hardware in his foot

to play through and if you remember correctly marquise brown in 20s. 20, I want to say it was, he played with that same hardware from Melissa Frank in his foot. And he was on the injury report seven times with foot or ankle. And we know that his, he seemed to be a little limited in that year in terms of his explosiveness. So you have to take that into consideration. And then the more indirect factors that are more football related, functionally related, you have to remember, too, he's still a rookie. And he hasn't played football in, at this point, what, two years, right?

So I think that he's a guy that if he falls to me as my RB2, I'm pretty stoked. Like I'm pretty excited. If I take him in the late rounds, I'm sorry, not the late rounds, like the middle rounds, and he's my first running back, I'm a little nervous about that. So I think that in other words, I view it as he is to me potentially high end RB2 with RB1 upside. And I'm happy if I get it, but I'm not necessarily going to expect it from him, if that makes sense. Yeah. The thing with ETN, unlike Marquise Brown, is, you know, Hollywood didn't get a year off, right?

Or he had that injury his last year of college. He did. Yeah, last year of college. Yeah. So, yeah, he didn't get the year off. My thing is like, man, I can make an easy upside case that ETN is like discount DeAndre Swift. That's fair. five, six targets a game, 10, 12 carries a game on a pretty bad team.

I don't really care that the game script's going to be bad because I want, I argue we want it to be bad because I want ETN to catch the ball more. Jacks have to throw more, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't know, man. I'm starting to not really see much downside in ETN at all in the fifth round. That's fair. That's fair. I think the fifth round is fair. Yeah.

And it comes down to the same thing I just said with Dobbins, like, you know, where you're at with roster construction, you know, if you started with, you know, know, just one running back in the first two rounds and you have one running back for your receivers, man, like, ETN is your two is pretty nice. Even ETN is a three is real nice too. So I think by the, I think by August, maybe mid-August, I think ETN is going to be a third round pick. I think everybody's going to be on board and the time to buy ETN is now. All right, a couple more running backs I wanted to get to before we talk through receivers. The big one is, Cam Acres.

Obviously, you know, he came back six and a half, seven months removed from an Achilles injury. Pretty much made medical history based on everything that you've told me. You know, now he's going to have nine months or so, eight months to try to get some of his burst and explosion back. You know, I was talking about this on the last two bars show with Sky. Like, you know, yeah, sure, on the one hand, Acres average 2.57 yards per carry in the playoffs last year, which obviously wasn't great. He faced two really tough defenses, run defenses in the bucks and the Niners in that spancy, which I think says something. But you know what the bigger point? The bigger point is Sean McVeigh made him his workhorse back, six, seven months removed it from an Achilles tear with basically no practice time, obviously no game time. And he got 75% of the carry. in the playoffs. Meanwhile, Sony Michelle was running pretty well last year to close out the season.

I mean, Michelle was the bell cow to close out the year. You know, man, like, that's a lot of confidence in the middle of a Super Bowl run. You're going to give Acres the majority of the carries. So all of this is teeing me up for like, you know, Acres is now slipping. It's been the complete opposite of ETN. Acres is now like a locked-in fourth-round pick. I have him rank like 15 spots ahead of ADP just because I feel really strongly about his workload being So you have him in the third. So you have him in the third. Yeah, I have him in the third. Is that stupid? Is the,

is the Achilles truly a death now? And where is Acres at in terms of his recovery based on all of your research? So a lot of good points have been made about Acres. And you bring up a lot of things that are definitely important. that I don't necessarily think should be discounted. I also think that, again, my job as an injury analyst is to give context and paint the floor. And if I had to sum it up in a question to anybody who would be super backing Cam Acres to an absolute, you know, into the ground pounding the table for them,

I would simply ask, what if what we saw in the playoffs is just him now? Because there's plenty of data Graham. By the way, by the way, not to cut you off, man. What if what we saw from Sequin is in now? Maybe he's not the same thing. Ah, but you bring up a good point. And this is the difference between an Achilles and an ACL. In Achilles, physiologically, for those of you out there who might not be aware, physiologically in Achilles is connected to the muscle that creates power for the foot and angle. When you sever that connection, even if you repair it, it's never the same

again, the tendon needs to transduce force, which in turn creates power. Once you have that Achilles severed, it is not the same thing as replacing an ACL, which is why those two injuries are so different, which is why Achilles hasn't been able to catch up to where we are with ACLs. So even though it's a fair question, I think that's apples to oranges. So when it comes to the rest of what we can expect for him, I do think that the floor is like, yeah, this is acres. And I looked at some of the things that I actually asked you. I think I asked you at one point, like, what would you look at in terms of efficiency numbers to indicate maybe what would be the most reflective of an individual running back in the playoffs for him. And so in the playoffs, among running backs with at least 20 attempts, he was last in EPA for

attempt, last in points above replacement, third to last in expected points added above average, third to last in plays, I'm sorry, third to last in points earned per play. So I know none of the Rams running backs were good. And I know he had a handful of runs called back. But that's a grim picture to me, man. That's a grim picture. And is it a reflection of just that this is who he is, or is it a reflection of he came back too soon? I don't know the answer. What I do know is that there's plenty of data to indicate that this could just be him. Or this is just simply a step below where he'll get to and he can't quite get back to where he was in the past. It doesn't mean that he can't be a good NFL contributor. It doesn't mean that he can't

get a good amount of volume and handle it. But all I know is that from a strictly objective historical standpoint using data and the concepts of physiology, him coming back from an Achilles tear and hoping for him to get to a top 10 status is more conjecture and hope and sealing and best case scenario thinking than it is, in my opinion, logical thinking. But that's still to say that in the third round, I'm not necessarily out on him. I think the third round is totally fair. Yeah. Well, I mean, you don't even have to pay a third round pick, man. It's, it's, fourth round now on Underdog. Obviously, Underdog is a lot more receiver heavy than NFFC and even to FFPC.

But yeah, I guess my thing is that the whole discourse around Acres to me is just kind of come out from a negative angle. Like, why is everybody so attached to the negative angle? Oh my God. KMakers popped his Achilles. And he came back six months later and averaged two and a half yards per carry. What? Like the people are saying like, oh my God, that's unbelievable.

Like, yeah, no shit. Like, no kidding, his mistackle numbers weren't great. They weren't terrible for what it's worth. He forced more mistackles on his carries than Sony Michelle did in the playoffs. He actually forced four times more mistackles on his carries than Sony Michelle did in the playoffs. Nobody focuses on that. He also focuses on that. He had two huge fumbles in that Tampa Bay game, and Sean McVeigh kept going back to him.

The Rams love Cammakers. Cammakers clearly put the work in to get back within, six, seven months and being, you know, seriously, a part of medical history. All of that being said, I, you know, I've been wanting to get your opinion and talk to you about, you know, Killies and Acres and stuff. But like, to me, man, the whole thing is like, I think people have just been way too attached to the negatives with Acres and not just looking at it like purely from a standpoint of the Rams love him, gave him a workhorse role when he came back.

And we shouldn't be that surprised that he didn't look amazing. I watched all 60s of his carries. Of course the burst, the explosive. Damn, couldn't give him one more. Yeah, I know. It would have been real nice. But no, I watched all of his carries.

And yeah, of course, the burst and explosiveness wasn't what it was at Florida State, but we should have never expected that. That's not a bar we should have expected him to cross yet. Fair. Absolutely. I guess that's my whole question then boils down to, is there any chance he gets back to that,

to that level we saw it, for a state? Because K-makers is one of the most elusive, running backs come out of college recently. Is there a chance? Yes, there's a chance. I said initially when this happened before he made his incredible comeback, that I think in a best case scenario world, Cam Acres is 10 to 15% worse than we thought he would be coming out of Florida State.

And I still kind of stand by that. If you look at lower caliber running backs, Deont de Foreman, Marlon Mac, guys like that, I think the closest comp is like Mike. Michael Lashore, Ashorn, I think is his name from back in the day. Unfortunately, even he, like, he fizzled out, right? And that was before we were where we were with medical technology, obviously. And the same thing can go for Marlon Mack.

And now you have James Robinson, right? So really, Graham, I think I don't want to discourage anybody or paint worst case scenario only. But the reality is, for me, when I look at Acres, the, there are more ways for for this to go awry, then there are paths for him to be successful and smash, right? Because we're looking at values to smash. I think in a probably realistic world, it's somewhere in the middle. And I think he ends up going in the third and he performs like a third round pick. Like ultimately, that's probably where he ends up. Now, where he goes from there in terms of

his career, uh, career sort of arc, I'm not entirely sure. But there's just, there's no objective evidence that we've seen yet that he can produce numbers that we want him to produce in order to be an absolute smash. I know, and I hear what you're saying, and I always appreciate you always come out from like the data and logic side first and no bias. My one pushback, though, is we've never seen a player like Akers before. All the other running backs that have popular Achilles were either, you know, they're the Deonti Formans.

Deonti Form is probably the best prospect-wise. He was probably the best out of the group of backs that have popular Achilles. Yeah, now we got another one with James Robinson. But, all right, we've already spent a lot of time talking through backs. The one last one that we can hit on real quick before we talk to some receivers, everyone is Derek Henry. Got to ask you about him. Coming off the foot injury, he's going to be 29.

You know, obviously he came back, but, you know, again, it was one of those things just like with Cam that he just didn't look right. Is he going to be playing with the brace? Do we know this yet? That I don't know and I don't necessarily anticipate. Okay. I don't think so. All right.

Well, yeah, he ended up missing basically what amounted to three months. I remember talking about it at the time. And you basically said that was like the exact timeline. Maybe the Titans pushed it at Scosh. But, yeah, was that the right timeline? And, you know, obviously Henry has a ton of touches on his oenometer. he's going to be 29 at the end of the year. Where's Henry at in terms of timeline?

And should we anticipate generally speaking him to be back to 100% by week one? Yeah, I mean, it's hard to tell. They did bring him back at the 10 week mark. That's exactly when you wanted, I think that maybe like 10 days they pushed it. There's essentially a huge increase in re-injury rates if you wait before the 10 week mark. And luckily the Titans did wait until the 10 week mark brought him back. But I think that one of the biggest dissonance, gram for people, and I think that I'm starting to sort of recognize this to be able to highlight it a little bit more too. Or maybe I'm just being able to communicate a little bit better.

It's one thing for a guy to miss two weeks because of a hamstring. It's another thing for a guy to miss 10 weeks because of a fracture, to miss seven months because of an Achilles, to miss 12 months because of an ACL. Like there's a difference between return to play and return to performance. and there's an entire world that, shameless plug again for my podcast, I'm trying to dive deeper into. What are the factors, characteristics,

and personality trace even of players who can come back and perform, not just come back to play? And when you look at Derek Henry, he's a freak of nature, one-of-a-kind athlete, and looked totally human when he came back. So I don't think that him coming back

and his performance when he came back is necessarily fair, you know, a fair assessment of what he'll be next year. But I do think that, like I mentioned before, his efficiency is coming down every year. He's getting older simply, again, he's aging, right? Everybody as they age, that tends to happen.

You honestly, I think, would be a better judge of where you project to see Derek Henry with the understanding that, you know, what is his touchdown going to look like? What is his usage going to look like? And overall, how much are the Titans going to continue to use him? Because when I look at a 29-year-old freak athlete, I can say, yeah, maybe he can pull it out for another year or two. But if you are hanging on to him in Dynasty format, I think it's time to let go. Yeah, yeah. This is the time to sell, Henry, if you still can in Dynasty.

For what it's worth, full disclosure, I am lowest on the staff on Derek Henry in basketball ratings. I have him at 10. I guess my thing is, man, is like, you know, we're getting an injury discount on Dowvin Cook and all of his chronic shoulder issues. We're getting an injury discount on Sapon Barclay. We're getting a discount on Cam Acres. We're not getting. No discount on Henry.

On Henry. And I get it. You know, like I get it. Henry was honestly one of my biggest positions in the last two years. Like I for years faded this guy. And then the light bulb came on in 2020. And I was like, hey, I actually like wedding money. I'm going to start drafting Derek Henry more.

And that worked that well. It worked out real well. It worked out real well last year, too, until he got hurt. This year, man, it's like, I feel like we should be getting a bigger discount on Henry, because we're getting a big discount on some of these other backs who are younger and Barclay and Acres. And Barclay is a one-of-one athlete as well. Man, you know, I've had a number of, I've done, because I'm a sick puppy ed one, you know what I feel comfortable. I've already done like 50 best ball drives. Absolutely. I have not taken Derek Henry at ADP once.

I've been taking Najee Harris. I've been taking Austin Eccler. I've been taking the receivers, Jefferson Chase. I think there's a lot more risk in Henry's profile beyond the foot issue. This Titans team, man, they're lucky in there in the AFC South and get to play the Jags and the Texans twice a year because, you know, maybe they're- disrespect the name of the Jaguars franchise. Oh, I can because I've,

You are unfortunately a Jaguar's fan. Yeah, yeah. I've had the unfortunate misery of being a Jacksman my entire life. You don't say that enough. You don't say that publicly enough, Grim. I can't imagine why. That's not something to be proud about. Well, actually, a funny side story.

I was wearing an old Jags sweatshirt into an elevator. I was going to meet up with a buddy and got in the elevator. And the guy in the back, there's just me and this other guy. He goes, oh, man, you're a Jacks fan. I go, yeah. And he goes, nothing says nothing back. He goes, you poor bastard. I just started dying laughing.

I was like, yeah, I appreciate that, buddy. He's like, you've got some nerve coming in here with that and supporting that team. I was like, dude, you got to. But yeah, no, the Titans this year might be a lot worse than we were expecting in previous years. Derek Henry's extremely game-script-dependent averages like 26, 27 fantasy points per game and wins. It dips to like 12, 13 fantasy points per game and losses. Titans win total is a lot lower this year than we've seen in previous years. they've been like a 9, 10, 11 win total team.

They're now down around 8 and a half. So the markets are expecting fewer wins for the Titans this year. I still think they'll be on like the borderline for ASC wildcard teams, but they're one injury away from Traylon Burks from having literally dust at wide receiver. I don't know. I think the wheels could fall off for this Titans team this year. Yeah, I agree. I think the wheels could fall off for the Titans.

I think the wheels could fall off for Derek Henry. And I know this, I've just been sort of data-driven. objective driven. It's really hard to project for a, I hate using the word, generational, because he really is like just one of a kind running back like Derek Henry. It's hard to project their future moving forward because there's not a lot of precedent to go off of. But I'll just say that the foot injury doesn't make me feel any better about his usage. That definitely, and I don't necessarily advocate for this and you know this, but like I don't necessarily think that usage is, I think usage is overblown, but I do think that for a guy of his size,

his frame that that foot injury definitely could have been contributing his volume his usage could have contributed to that and if it happened now at 28 you know there's no reason why something else can't start to fall off like i just think he's the riskiest of the guys going in the top 10 you flip a coin um and i'm probably leaning away from henry in the top 10 yeah yeah well good i'm glad we see i die on that um let's talk through some receivers here because we're getting close to an hour um two really big ones first one i'll start with michael thomas you kind of alluded to it earlier i truly have no idea what to do with michael thomas um honestly i i've had him ranked at adp all summer i've taken him a few times as like is there three or four uh if i do like a receiver

heavy bill and i kind of can insulate myself from from thomas maybe missing some more time And where the hell are we at? It's an open-ended question. It's seriously. Where are we at? I have no idea. Yeah. I really have no idea.

I don't know if he had, you know, this is the only logical explanation without a setback that I could feasibly see happening. He had the high ankle type entry. They go in. They put hardware. They fixed it and they repaired it. He opted to take the hardware out. So he had another procedure recently because he's had, when was the last time he even played a game? Was it 2020?

Yeah, he did not play at all last year. He didn't play it all last year. So at this point, he's had almost two years to have this hardware taken out if that was his choice. So in reality, the best case scenario, since they're saying that he's still rehabbing, Graham. He's still rehabbing. I cannot wrap my head around that unless he chose opted to have the hardware taken out after the fracture was healed. Because then that is a whole other rehab. The worst case scenario is he's,

now got some sort of systemic or not systemic, I'm sorry, some local inflammation, i.e. arthritis in the foot from the specific injury from years of playing football and pounding and grounding or he had a setback where he had a refrapture or something happened where it just didn't hold or he didn't get enough range of motion. And so he needed to go back. There are more negative ways to paint this picture than there are positive ways. Like there's no other way to say it. Nobody should still be rehabbing the same ankle injury from two years if it was a straightforward injury. So all of that to say, Graham, if Michael Thomas falls to me in like the eighth and

and ninth round, I'll probably going to take him. Yeah. It's just league winning upside. That's fair. I mean, on underdog, he's going sixth round pretty consistently. It was fifth round that slid back to the sixth and he's pretty much held steady in the sixth. Just for some background on the timeline.

So he hurt his ankle in week one of 2020, tried to play through it. Um, well, actually, he didn't play through it. He, he was on IR for six weeks, then he came back. And I'm assuming re-injured or tweaked his ankle, ended up on IR, came back for the playoffs, uh, had a good game against the Bears and then did nothing against the Bucks. And that was the last time we saw him was, was that Bucks playoff game, the divisional round of 2020. So the timeline was this. Like, so he came back, needed an additional surgery, but he put it off until June. I don't know if you remember this. So he put it off until June of 2021.

Sean Payton came out and said, look, there's kind of like nothing he could do. He just had a setback. There's nothing Thomas could have done. And that setback, whenever he had it in the time frame of January, 2021 to June 2021, we don't know what happened. But he had an additional surgery that he really couldn't have done much behind. And yeah, man, like the fact he's still rehabbing, the fact that the Saints traded up for Chris Olabe, the fact that the Saints traded up for Chris Olabe, the fact that. that they just went on got Jarvis and Andre. I don't know.

I've got six humongous red flags around Michael Thomas. I've, like I said, I've sniffed around a few times when the builds right. If I've got, you know, three really good whiteouts I feel great about and I can kind of insulate it. But man, I can't take Thomas as my two or three on. No, no way. No effing way. I wouldn't do this.

I wouldn't, I wouldn't either. Yeah. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see where Thomas ends up by August. I think his ADP is going to keep slipping. One ADP I'm really interested, and I'm really interested to hear your opinion on. It's Chris Godwin towards ACL. I saw there was a report out, though, that he had some MCL damage to. I wanted to clear this up with you, too.

He had an ACL plus MCL. I heard from Adam Kaplan that was a clean ACL, and that's a big part of the reason why the Bucks, you know, obviously signed him to a new three-year deal, or three-year extension, I should say. What, to your knowledge, what was Godwin's injury? And, you know, he had it, week 15, I want to say last year. So he's going to be right on that like nine to 10 month return to play. Yes. So both things are probably true.

When you have an ACL, oftentimes the MCL is implicated. And what matters more is was there meniscus damage? We have some data to show that collateral ligaments. So the LCL and the MCL, the two ligaments on the inside and outside of the knee. don't actually impact return to player, return to performance in any meaningful way. And so oftentimes you also don't repair them. You let them scar down on their own and they heal. The MCL has a really incredible way to heal itself.

That's part of the reason why they wait for some guys to have surgery until that is achieved, until that's done. And so the reality is it's probably reported as an isolated ACL repair, but it might not have necessarily been an isolated ACL injury. So that's probably the confusion or the thing that slip between the cracks. I have for Chris Godwin a projected return time of October 3rd. That is because there's some vague reporting that he had surgery in those really vague like mid-February is what I was told.

And so or what I read, not told. I'm not a reporter. I'm not having Kaplan. So that is where we're at with Godwin. I think here's the thing with ACLs and like long-term injuries, man. there's so much advantage to be taken. There's so much ground to be gained from the fantasy player that just pays attention to timelines, listens to people who have those timelines.

If you know Godwin's not back till October, you can push Godwin down your board. If you know Michael Thomas is going to be, you know, maybe not even play again. Who knows, you can push them down your board. If you know that, you know, Dobbins should be ready by week one. if you know, like I've been saying for several weeks now, Jameson Williams isn't going to be back by week one. You can push him down your board. There's so much cumulative ground to be gained just by paying attention to timelines. And I think Godwin falls into that bucket. It's unlikely to see Godwin back before October. And it's unlikely to see him back to 100% until November. Doesn't mean that he can't

contribute and give you some spike weeks every now and then. But he's probably not going to feel like his foot, his feet are under him until the end of October. Okay. So there's two things I want to follow up with you on that response. The first bit is he actually had surgery on January 3rd. He tore his ACL on December the 26th. So he had no meniscus damage, which is good. Like you were mentioning, that complicates things. So he had pretty quick turnaround from surgery.

So from January 3rd to, you know, obviously week one, it will be nine months. If you're saying October 3rd is the target date, so it would be like, what, week 3, week four, week 5? You're sure about that? Are you sure about that? Am I looking at somebody else? Yeah, I'm seeing a tweet from Rapsheet, for what it's worth, not the Dunk on Rapshue, but he's been wrong quite a bit.

But he's, I mean, for something, a big prominent star getting surgery, I don't think he'd be wrong about this. Ah, okay. I might be, you know what I might be doing? And this is totally on me. I think I'm confusing a couple of different guys that have had surgery. Okay. So.

For what it's worth, dude, it's impressive that you don't, you can keep everything straight. because if I were you, I would be screwing up everybody's time on, left and right. No, I mean, I just did it. No, I actually think that I projected from that day anyway. Like, it's still going to be that date. It would still be that October date. So I would just had it.

I think I said it wrong. I think I said it wrong, but yeah. But yeah, October is where we're thinking. Yeah. Sorry, if I just clicked on the wrong thing. So if we're thinking October and he only misses four, five games, Chris Godwin's a smash in the fifth round. Like, in my opinion, total smash in the fifth round.

And when I got a stat from you from my stat pack, okay, let's do it. 13 games over the last three years, two years, that Chris Godwin has played without Antonio Brown. We got a 13 game sample size. In that 13 game sample size, he has averaged 18.9 fantasy points for again. That would have made Godwin the wide receiver six over Marge Hace. Without Brown, Godwin's targets increased by 21%.

And last year before injury, Godwin was the third most efficient receiver from the slot in terms of yards per route run. Number one was Cooper Cup, big shock. Number two was Tyler Boyd, kind of a shock. Three was Godwin. You take Antonio Brown out of that offense. Man, I think Chris Godwin has like top six, top seven wide receiver upside and you're getting him in the fifth round. I don't even really care if he misses three or four games. I want that upside. So you're definitely making me feel even better about Godhorn. Let's talk through another ACL tear at receiver, Michael Gallup. Kaplan said that this was an ACL plus another issue, so maybe it was the meniscus. I guess we would know if he delayed the surgery. But yeah, Michael Gallup is,

going in the 10th round now. Noamari Cooper. The only only. the other real depth options that the Cowboys have right now is Jalen Tolbert, third round pick and James Washington, who they picked up off the street from Pittsburgh. So yeah, they are really heavily relying on Gallup to get back to form quickly. Gallup hurt his knee earlier than I think it was a little later. I actually have that he had surgery in quote early February is all I could find. Yes. Yes. Yeah, he actually, it was. later. It was January 2nd. So yeah, Michael Gallup, 10th, the lungth around 80p. You know, you're getting a pretty big discount on the player that the Cowboys are obviously

relying on. They're going to be relying heavily on. Absolutely. And, you know, we probably are looking at mid, early to mid-November until we seek Gallup. So, I mean, I'm not entirely sure where you would project him with that, Graham, but he's definitely a guy that if he had surgery in early February, we're not going to see him until November at the soonest. Yeah. Yeah. So that puts us week eight, week nine, probably, maybe week 10. Midseason a ship.

Yeah. Yeah, I've not taken Gallup hardly at all. I've just been taking C.D. Lamb a bunch in the second. Stack him up with DAC. Is C.D. Lamb a good pick? This is off topic. Is he a good pick this year? He's getting really gassed up on Underdog.

I mean, it makes sense. I mean, if Gallup's got a good pick. to miss 10 weeks, let's say. Let's say conservatively he misses eight. Yeah, man. The only other guy getting targets there is Dalton Schultz, who I also, I also love. I've been taking... I was high on Dalton Schultz last year, bro. I love that. I love Dalton Schultz. He's in contract disputes now. He's big time. Did you see that? Yeah, well, he got tagged and he doesn't want to make like $18 million this year or whatever. Obviously, he wants it. What a way to phrase that.

Yeah. So imagine going. I'm being facetious. Imagine going, Graham, this is my dream right now. Imagine going Justin Jefferson, C.D. Lamb, Seekwan. I don't know. Mark Andrews or another top top, top, top is a second round pick this year. Okay, okay, okay, okay.

Another, I don't know. He's probably going on earlier too. And then bringing up the. rear of those top five picks with the J.K. Dobbins. Yeah. Chef's Kiss. I would do that. I would do that in a heartbeat. Yes. No, I've been taken, I don't have CDLAM above ADP, but I've been definitely taking him right at ADP. I don't think he has the same upside as Cup and Jefferson and even Chase maybe to a certain extent, but like, yeah, he could finish as the wider seeker three or four for sure. And he's not being drafted there. And I think the Cowboys know he's going to be a superstar. And that's why,

that's why they're relying on him, even with Gallup's injury. All right, a couple more things. I want to talk through here, and I'll get you out of here. Did you ever do that podcast on T. Higgins? Because T. Higgins had shoulder surgery this off season. I didn't. Yeah. No, it's okay.

He had shoulder surgery this off season that's gone under the radar. Joe and I were talking about this, and it sounds like it was like the same surgery that Alshon Jeffrey had, whatever it was, three, four years ago now. Is it something we should be concerned? about because Higgins is like a locked in early third round pick right now. It's not not a concern because he's not a guarantee to be back by week one. So I actually have the specific injury he had back in September of 21 and he landed. I tweeted it's a tough angle.

Higgins landed with his left arm outstretched. Typically results in being jammed backwards towards the back of the joint capsule. And essentially that's I think what ended up happening is he had that shoulder that was jam towards the back of the capsule itself. And he had a little bit of tissue damage and potentially some instability where it was sort of sliding in and out or subluxing. And what they did, what I'm assuming again, is they went in, they sutured it down, they cleaned it up, they tied it down and they made it a little tighter.

That is typically a four to five month recovery. And we know that he had surgery in March. He's playing it, cutting it really close. Like I'd be surprised if he's at, like, yeah, I don't even know if the Bengals have had OTAs yet or where they're at. But I would be, I would be shocked if he wasn't back by week one because that's through September. But I think he's definitely going to be playing it pretty close because what is that August? Like March to August is five months. And I think if he has any complications, you can push it to six.

And then you're really starting to get, you know, be in the danger zone. But I don't think this is any reason to push him up or down quite yet. but if he's not out in camp if he's not out there by august then i'm like uh little nervous okay yeah uh for what it's worth yeah higgins is not been an oka's no surprise there and you know what evelyn coaches never lie they never lie we've never we've never we coaches have never gone to the podium and told a lie about an injury hit rehab once never especially zach taylor especially never exactly oh god no he would never that guy but zach taylor did say teagan should be back by training camp. Obviously, we're taking that with a humongous grain of salt.

But yeah, yeah, real interesting. It should be pretty close, like you were mentioning. And like I said, it's been interesting. There's been no, like, I've not seen fantasy Twitter talk about this at all. He's a pretty significant injury he played through as well. All right. Two tight ends I want to ask you about real quick. Robert Tunyan Funion coming in off baseball. I like that. You wrote about him and your injury insights that you think it should be, pretty clean and we should be back by week one. Yeah, I think he's ready to go. I don't know if you heard, I don't know if you heard, Graham, this receiver I've been

tracking for a while and I'm not sure he's gone under the radar a little bit over the last few seasons, but he's had sneakily a couple of thousand yards seasons. His name is Devante Adams. Yes. So he sneakily has been kind of a target of mine in fantasy football drafts in draft rooms and over the last several years. And this didn't get a lot of headlines, but he was. was traded to the the Las Vegas Raiders.

Oh my God. Yes. Yeah. And so if you take his targets and you spread them out to the rest of the Packers, then they're obviously all going to go to Robert Tunyon. So that's what I want. I think isn't he going like the 12th? Like Robert Tanya is going in like 12th, right?

He's going even later than that. If you're going punt strategy, which I almost always do, I think he's a great option. Yeah. I just took him in the 14th round of an NFL. Beautiful. Draft champions. Beautiful.

My tight end too. Yeah. He's going to get 65 targets this year, score 32 touchdowns. Come on. Give him four more. Give him four more. Average 12 yards per game.

It's going to be great. I like Tony in quite a bit when I take Aaron Rogers for some. A little stack. Yeah. Some touchdowns. All right. Last one, dude. Earth Smith had a pretty catastrophic injury.

You could talk way more about this. But my understanding. him based on reading is just like it was a meniscus plus um he's obviously super young he came out of college really young i think he's only 23 right now which is i think he's uh yeah he's i know he's really super young yeah he's gonna start the year at 24 so right so he's only what is that like a couple years older than amari cooper um so yeah he is specifically um he yeah so this is a he had a whole year to recover you hope that these intracicular issues don't continue to flare up, but they can. Once you have a meniscus, it's just a really

crappy injury because it's an inside-the-joint injury, intra-articular injury. And he had it repaired. We're going to hope that doesn't lead to constant frequent inflammation, constant frequent, issues. If you see that he's still on, because he's going to have a full year to recover, didn't this happen last year on training camp? Yeah, it did. Yeah. So if you're seeing him pop up on the injury report still in like September. and that bleeds into October and he's not doing much for you, I would just, I would not plan for him to really do much of all of anything. Like that needs not going to get any better as the season wears on. But I do think that there's been enough time that's passed to give him a little bit of

of some leeway there and a little bit of grace if you want to sort of throw what you, I don't even know what race, probably free at this point, isn't he? Maybe not quite free. No, he's going in the same range as Tunyan and like tied in 15, tight in 16 range. But what it's worth, And I don't think enough people have really accounted for the fact that Tyler Conklin is gone. They have nothing else at tight end. Like, Conklin was mainly a blocker because Erbsmith was like the move guy. They don't even have Conklin anymore. Like they've got Ben Ellison, who was apparently on the Jags practice squad and Johnny

Munt, who was on the Rams practice squad for like a million years. That's it. So they're going to be heavily relying on Irv Smith. Yeah, he tore his McCann. Achilles, Taurus meniscus in August, late August of last year. So it was like two weeks before we won or week before week one. Yeah. I would say that the biggest thing for the Vikings is that Mike Zimmer is gone.

I think that what was the quote, dang it, Graham, now that we're talking about Vikings, somebody's made, one of the players had a quote that literally straight up called Zimmer out. And he said something like, yeah, we're not running an old school type of offer or something like that. Like we're not running an ancient offense or something like something. One of the players said something to that effect. And I said, oh, man, shots fired. Yeah. Well, Kevin O'Connell is a McVeigh disciple.

So. Yeah. The old McVeigh covered. The old McVeigh covered. Yeah. He's going to be another one of these McVeigh disciples. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be the complete opposite of. Well, I don't know about complete opposite, but it's going to be a lot different than what we're accustomed to with this Vikings team.

Dude, this was awesome. Thank you so much for the time. We talked through a lot of good stuff here. There's a lot of digest. Yeah, I appreciate your time, man. Why don't you plug anything that you're working on specifically? I know we talked through the injury insights, which is free on fantasy points, but you've got anything cool coming down the barrel? Yeah, man, I'm working on my injury tiers.

Just getting started on running backs, going to hit running backs, receivers, and tight ends, and probably just do profiles for any quarterbacks that I think are relevant. But those injury tiers, I think they do okay and get some clicks. I think people like to have a little bit more context in terms of relativity and where they should be viewing their position players from an injury perspective or performance perspective. They've done okay. The verdict on these tiers over the last two years has been generally red light tier guys have been good to avoid from a game's missed perspective and or a performance perspective.

And so you can check those out once they're published. It'll be a while. I'm trying to get those done as quickly as possible. The last thing I'll say, Graham, Jameson Williams is not going to be ready by week one. I just need to get that across. Everybody, there was just an article published today confirming that fact. I've been saying it for the last several weeks. There's no such thing as ahead of schedule when it comes to an ACL.

Please stop saying that. The last thing I'm working on is get Graham to, I don't even know what I don't have anything fancy. Sign this petition. I'll put it in the show notes to get Graham to finally get his ass up and come see me for a few beers and some liations, him and his wife. Wherever that may be, get him off his ass sign this petition. I'll put it in the show notes. I'm sorry, you're the one who always connects through Denver and then doesn't stop for. Bro.

You're the one who always flies through Denver. back to Sacramento. It's a two-way street, my friend. It's two-way street. All right. Thank you again. This has been awesome. If you were not signed up for FantasyPoints.com, you should do so.

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and kind of like just in the general overview of the class and kind of where things stand now and for some filler. Scott and I will probably be back for a show next week as well. So be on the lookout for that. Guys, thanks for listening. I'm Graham for Edwin. We'll catch you next time. Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points podcast.

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