Fantasy Football Daily - 2Barz: 2022 RB and WR Draft Strategy

Episode Date: August 27, 2022

Graham Barfield (@GrahamBarfield) and Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) discuss some of their targets and avoids at the RB and WR position, plus general draft strategies for those positions. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One foot of money, two bars on the show. Let's go. Yo, welcome back to another two bars podcast. We're double up this week, baby. Double it up. We're doubling it up. Two bars is back. I'm your guy Graham.

Scott's here too. I want to say off the top, if you haven't subscribed to fantasy points.com, you need to get your head examined because this is by far the best value in the fantasy football space today. There's a lot of people doing a lot of good work, but it honestly, guys, And look, I mean, I'm the biggest fantasy points fan of all time. Scott is number two. We're all in. But this is, you know, by far the best value out there.

With any code, I'm even going to shill for Barrett 22 today. For any code, Barfield 22, Barrett 22, save you 10% off any subscription package. And, guys, a standard package these days during the season will cost you 33 cents per day, a premium package, which includes our DFS and gambling advice, all of Scott. That's great work. Our live stream on Friday night where we dissect the entire slate, that's included in premium, and that is 83 cents per day during the regular season. Again, use code, Barfield 22, Barrett 22.

We all know your favorite bar. Feel free to use either one of those. Save yourself 10%. But Scott and I talked about quarterbacks and tight-ins talked off the onesie positions yesterday, some general strategy, just kind of how we're thinking through the position, some guys we'd So if you haven't listened to that, make sure you go back, listen to it right after you listen to this one. But today we're going to be talking through running backs and receivers. And we're going to go round by round.

We're just going to go through rounds one through 10 to kind of give some general strategy thoughts, a few of our favorite plays in each of the round. But first, Scott, how's it going, man? I haven't talked to you in like 16 hours. So it's good serious. Well, yeah, you haven't seen my face in 16 hours. but we were DMing on Discord trying to talk up

our strategy for today's show and I was being an unwilling participant and you were getting a little salty with me so I think we might be late stages Opie and Anthony here where you secretly hate me but the show's never been better. Bro, I can never hate you.

I have so much love for you. I've just been running four hours of sleep and need a day off. It's all good, man. Edwin just DM me is like, hey, hey, buddy, how's it going? And it's like, oh, I just, you know, you want to die a little bit. But it's that time of the year, you know? It's just that time of the year.

If you're not running on four hours of sleep and drinking six cups of coffee and, yeah, wishing it was January. Is it truly August? But no, in all seriousness, I've never been more excited for football season than this one, man. like um finally got rid of the whole COVID situation we don't have that hanging over our heads anymore there's so many great storylines this year too i mean the afc's loaded the nfc's wide open and honestly i i can't imagine i i can't remember like a more fun year for fantasy like after the first two rounds it's like are any of these guys good like it's wide ass open from

picks like 30 on so i think we have a big edge and we're going to talk about our edge a little bit today let's get it started with round one scott you and i are pretty much a lockstep on this every single year we want backs early and then we want to hammer receivers in rounds three through 10 this year is in particular man an extremely good setup and just more broadly like can you remember a year where the second round was better for running backs like i i genuinely can't no it's it's wild it's so i'm the guy who's always like r b rb is optimal in a vacuum blah blah blah blah lot, which is true, but I mean, like, is it optimal this year with some of the value we have? I don't know.

I, like, there's round two running backs I love, round three running backs, I think should be going in round one. There's, you know, a few other must draft picks we'll get to a little bit later. But yeah, so I think what we're doing today is we're going round by round with just giving one player we really like relative to ADP. And of course, I, I, again, was the unwelcome. willing participant. I just like spent weeks and weeks on my guys, so I didn't want to give away too much for free without a paywall. So what I did was I cheated. I cheated a little bit.

So I looked at, you know, like NFL.com has like the most egregious ADP ever. And like ESPN and Yahoo, there's some like really stupid ADPs. So I cheated a little bit. But, but yeah, you want to dive in? Yeah. By the way, just off the top, I have no idea who's doing NFL's pre-draft. rankings. It used to be me. And before that, I, bro, like some of these ADPs in that sheet I put together are like

just nonsense. Like Gabriel Davis goes in the 100 range. Same with Sutton. Like, if you want to just like, if you want to just be that total dick of a friend, put your league on NFL.com and take advantage of your friends. I was

just going to say, I am that dick of a friend. Are you kidding? Yeah, I know. I am so Machiavellian, or even better yet, I'm Belichickian, which is like taking that up 10 degrees. So, yeah, I'm looking to maximize every edge possible. So if you're one of those people, yeah, host your league on NFL.com. The layout sucks. It's going to be like maddening to be the commissioner for that and have to like log on every single week.

But I mean, the edge is just so insane. Yeah, I will say the app is much better. I do my family league, like with my brother and aunts and uncles on NFL, mainly just to keep up with my guy, Marcus, and just see what he's doing on the app of man. It's, yeah, these pre-draft rankings are pretty rough. All right, let's get into it. First round, while you kick it off, I know who you're going to go with.

You're going to go with your guy, Derry. My guy. Oh, Derry Sanders? Yes, is there. Yeah, so like I said, I'm going to cheat. Who's my number one round one guy? that's going to be Christian McCaffrey. I mean, when he's healthy, he hits like 20 fantasy points every single time.

No one is touching his volume. I do believe he's one of the best pure runners in football. And then on top of that, if he tomorrow was like, hey, guys, I want to be a slot-wide receiver. He'd be around one caliber slot-wide receiver in the NFL. He's just such a cheat code. I get the injury reservations. Edwin's helped. our injury expert, Edwin Porris, has helped dissuade me of some of those concerns.

And just in a game like fantasy football, he has the potential to be worth more than the second and third most valuable players in fantasy combined. At least that was literally true in 2019. And he could just single-handedly wreck leagues. And so when Frank Reich is saying, oh, if I was in a fantasy league, I'd draft Nihim Hines. he literally said that, wants him top five, top three at the position and targets. Yeah, I mean, I just, he's the archetypal belcow. And I'm, you know, give me those bellcows.

You play every snap. His coach, Matt Ruhl, is the heavy favorite to be fired. He's fighting for his job. He's going to give the ball to his best player as much as possible. And yeah, that's Christian McCaffrey. I have a question. How much did your pants tighten when you saw Christian? McAfree absolutely dusting Patriots linebackers on Twitter the other day.

Oh, boy. Yeah. Yeah. You take a breather after that one? Yeah, rendered speechless, clearly. I think it's, dude, I think it's pretty simple. Like, you take McCaffrey 101 in PPR, you take McCaffrey 101 in half. And if he stays healthy for 15 games this year, like you have a 50% chance just right there with

him staying healthy of winning your. Like literally, like literally, it's just, it's that simple. Yeah, he's the 101. My round one guy, I'm not going to go with the top back. I'll go a little further down the board and go with Najee Harris. You know, just like you, I want bell cow backs regardless of how good we perceive their offense to be. And Najee Harris is like the bell cow of all bellcows, led all running backs last year. And snap rate handled 74% of the Steelers.

carries inside the 10-yard line, which was only matched by Jonathan Taylor, who had about 80% of his teams inside 10 carries. And Naji doesn't come off the field in passing situations. He was one of the top three backs in Rout Chair last year as well. He was also 10th all-time in rookie fantasy points per game among running backs. And that list is littered with just repeat RB1s of fantasy. It includes Sequin Barclay, Ezekiel Elliott, Alan Camara, Clinton Portis. Matt Forte, Kareem Hunt, Adrian Peterson, James Robinson, Leonard Fornett, and then Naji.

So, I mean, we have just a number of huge data points pointing to Naji being just an absolute smash and fantasy. And honestly, you know, I'm one of the guys that just like, I want to chase volume. I want to chase touches. I don't really get too much into the weeds of like, oh my God, this quarterback might suck, this offensive line might suck. But Kenny Pickett might be legitimately 10 times better than Big Ben was last year. And if Pickett is even, I'm being suspicious by saying 10 times, but if he's even 10% better, then Najee is going to smash. Let's take it a round two.

We've got two backs here. I'll get a started here, Scott, and I agree with your pick here, too. He would be my second one. But I don't have your guy rated as a second round pick. I haven't been the first. And I have my guy rated as a first round pick, too. D'Andre Swift has the archetype of a league-winning pick. Last year, before he got hurt, Swift was winning leagues.

And Scott, I messed this up last year, man. This was bad process on my part. I thought, two things. I thought Jamal Williams would be way more involved, which he was, but not to the degree I thought. But more importantly, I thought the lion's sucking would hurt Swift. In fact, it actually did the opposite. I remember Wes and Discord last year tried to convince me that my process was wrong. He was right.

But Detroit sucking helped Swift life. year. In the games that Swift played before he got hurt, here at his shoulder in week 12, Swift was averaging 18.6 fantasy points per game, which would have made him the RB4 over Leonard Fournett last season. His 6.7 targets per game led all running backs, and he was top five in routes run per game. Frankly, Scott, he has like a Christian McCaffrey, Austin Eckler, kind of usage, like, right squarely in his range of outcomes. And, man, if the Lions take a step forward this year, which I believe they will, I'm betting the Lions over six and a half once in a total. Man, Swift is going to take a big step forward. Frankly, all these Lions guys are.

Yeah, so I'm with you on Swift for sure. You know, I've written a lot of articles, weighted opportunity, about how targets are so much more valuable than carries. And so he's really sort of Austin Echler Esk, Alvin Kamara-esque, even if he's capped at, let's say, 60% of the snaps with Jamal Williams getting the other 40%. But I also think he's going to be a belkow near the end zone. Every beat writer is saying, yeah, Williams is going to be involved, but they know this is maybe their best playmaker, especially inside the red zone. He's going to get so many touches there. And that's key. That was a big thing with Aaron Jones, who was always inexplicably capped 60% of the snaps, but inside the 10-zone, he was at, you know, 85% of the snaps. And so we've seen that

double-digit touchdown upside from him. And he's getting script immune, like you said. So my round two guy is just so easy. Alvin Kumar is going 209 in Yahoo Leagues. That's my RB3. I think he gets suspended six games and like I'm still taking him round two every single chance I can get. I I wrote about this in the Belcow report, but basically like every criticism people are making of him, it just like holds no weight. It's like, oh, Sean Payton, the running back whisperer. He's gone. And it's like, okay, when Sean Payton was suspended, Pete Carmichael's running backs led the team and catches receptions, receiving yards, receiving touchdowns by a landslide. All nearly franchise highs.

You want to talk about, oh, Drew Brees, targeted running backs at one of the highest rates in the NFL okay when James Winston was on the field, Kamara's target percentage was identical, et cetera, et cetera. He's also just flat out one of the most efficient running backs of all time. He dealt with injuries last year and then two years before that. But outside of that was only ever putting up top 15 fantasy point per touch seasons ever. Yeah, I just, and his usage was never better than it was last season, especially when James Winston was on the field.

So, yeah, that's my RB3. And you're getting him in round two. That's like the sort of value that I only ever see once every four years. So make sure you scoop him up. We are locked step on that one. He's my RB5. I have him in that tier with actually beat my RB6 after Natchy. But, yeah, I mean, he has been nothing but a top of a running back in his entire career by points for game.

It's, you know, I said a minute ago, like, this is, this is, this is never, there has never been year where the second round is more loaded with backs um last night i did a roto wire oc uh from the 10 spot so it's third round reversal but my first two picks were naji and camara so we are off to a screaming start as it pertains to this pod let's switch over round three um i'm going to talk up a receiver here in michael pitman um you know his adp man has been on the rise all summer long i think it's well deserved now. He's now at a point where he's priced correctly. I think in May and June, when I was doing underdog drafts, he was just like a smash pick in the fourth round. He's finally priced correctly, like 29, 31 overall, but I mean, he is just so set up for just a monster

season. You know, not only to Pittman, kind of have like a mini breakout last year with 88, 11006, Matt Ryan is just so far and above. Carlin. Carson Wentz as a passer. I've tweeted this out. If you look at some of the accuracy stuff, which I still, we'll have some more info on accuracy stuff here actually in the next couple weeks. I'm really excited about it. But Matt Ryan was by far a better passer than Carson Winsler was last year. And in his career, Matt Ryan has done nothing but elevate receivers on his team. Ryan has supported at least one top 12 receiver by points per game in 13 of his 14 career seasons. And you can say, yeah, okay, sure, he had Julio Jones.

But, I mean, he also did it with Ryan White. He did it with Calvin Ridley. You know, he's had some great secondary receivers as well in his career do well with them. So it's an easy pick. But Pitman is, I think if you start running back, running back, you get Pittman in the third. You still got an alpha wide receiver one that you're going to feel really good about starting. every single week. And Scott sticking with theme here, some of this ADP is not sharp.

NFL Pittman goes way too late. He's like a fourth round pick. Sleeper too. I've gotten Pittman in all of my sleeper drafts so far. He's like a late third, early fourth on sleeper. So just be cautious. Be wary of where some of these mid-round wide receivers are would be my main advice because, you know,

depending on what site you're drafting on, some of these guys are ranked just all over the list. Yeah, I'm with you. And, you know, you wrote up in stat pack that Matt Ryan has had a wide receiver one in 13 of 14 seasons. Like, that's just, that's just crazy. And you can't, you can't understate the upgrade from Carson Wentz to Matt Ryan. I think that's, that's a great pick. My round three guy, again, cheating a little bit, but Saquan goes round three on ESPN. And that just, you know, he's basically like a round one guy for me. Just wild.

He's the closest thing to Christian McCaffrey when he's healthy. So again, this is another, all right, let's chase that potential injury discount. And what I've always said, what I learned from Dr. Chow, a pro football doc on Twitter, is that you really want to be fading running backs their first year back from the ACL, so like J.K. Dobbins. And you really want to be targeting the following season. going to be 100% no risk of compensatory injuries, things like that. And so Saquan really fits that mold.

And, you know, Uber Belkow, insanely high snapshot. And when you have that, you don't really care too much about the offensive line or game script or things of that nature. So easy, easy pick right there. Yeah, I'm with you. Joe was texting me. He was doing like a CBS mock yesterday. And he said that Barclay was like 27th in their pre-draft rankings.

So it's still out there. Mark my words, man. One of these teams, whoever wins the best ball in any of this year is going to have Barclay either in the third round or second round. Because he was a third round pick in May and June. Like if somebody hit the nuts with all the values, Barclay in the third round is going to win people. Win people of those leagues. All right, let's pivot over to the fourth round. This is kind of how I'm setting up all of my drafts, actually.

I want one or two runners in the first two rounds. And then I'm just going to go nuts on receivers in rounds three, four, and four. My fourth round target in all of my leagues right now is Mike Williams. And I get it, you're going to say, oh, Mike Williams has never been consistent. He's never really had a full breakout season. Sure. But let me put this to you. Last year, Mike Williams hurt his knee in week six and was never the same.

But before then, he was a league winner, legitimately a league winner, especially where you drafts him. He was averaging 23.6 ppr points per game. he had 51 targets to Allen's 53 in the Charter's first five games. So they were co-wide receiver ones. Just got a huge contract extension this offseason. And Scott, like, the thing is, like, everybody expects just Justin Herbert to take, you know, that final step forward to like superstar, you know, upper echelon quarterback status. And I'm 100% on board with that. But if he's going to get to there, you know, someone is being under.

drafted here. You know, Keenan Allen is a third round pick, but like, Mike Williams is still floating out there in the late third, early fourth. You can sometimes get him in the fifth of a 10-team league. Josh Palmer's really, really cheap, too, and I like him quite a bit in the late rounds, but I mean, someone is going to take a humongous step forward here. And my got, my bet is on Mike Williams is like the deep threat end zone guy. And frankly, I think there's a chance that he takes over as the wide receiver won this year over Keenan Allen. I mean, if you look at, like I said, their first five games together last year, their target totals were basically the exact same. And you could make an argument that Williams had the more valuable role because he was getting

most of the downfield stuff. So I'm all in on Mike Williams. Scott, you got to take a, you got to take a receiver here, right? Like you've started running back, running back, running back. You got to get a lot. Yeah. So I'd like to talk about Mike Williams for just a second. So I was all over him last season. And he was being hyped up by Joe Lombardi as their version of Michael Thomas. And I was grabbing him everywhere. And so week six or week five, he was a top three fantasy wide receiver. I was doing victory laps.

I felt like a genius. And then like you said, there was that one game. He was questionable with a knee injury. And then his production just plummeted. My thing is like I kept trying to go back to him in DFS. after that. And it's like, okay, well, now we're four weeks removed from the knee. He should be good. He was not on the injury report at all. He was practicing in full every single week. And those boom games just disappeared. There was none of that. And so, like, I understand the instinct of,

oh, yeah, he was, he was hurt and he was amazing before that injury. I made the same arguments with Kyler Murray and some other guys. But like in this instance, I just don't know. And so I'm a little bit lower on him than certainly you are and maybe even the rest of the staff. But that argument, I get it. It's compelling. The wide receiver I'm going with would be DJ Moore. And again, he's 510 on NFL. He's 501 on CBS. But like, you know, if he's there in round four, he's an auto-click. And yeah, he's going to have maybe the best quarterback play of his career. We know this guy is a superstar and this is the only thing holding him back. You can make the same argument for Terry McLaurin. The problem is I don't think Carson Wence is an upgrade on Taylor Heineckee. I think

in this instance, we're seeing a clear upgrade and massive volume last year. So I think he smashes. I think you're getting a wide receiver one, low end wide receiver one at like a mid wide receiver two price tag. Yeah, the big thing with Moore, man, is just the touchdowns. But if Baker and fingers crossed, but if Baker's much, much better than Darnold, and I think he will be, you know, Panthers are going to have way more scoring opportunities this year.

So, yeah, I honestly, man, I think DJ Moore and Pittman are kind of like in that same tier. And if you can get DJ Moore in the fourth round, you're even in the fifth round in some of these, like, less sharp drafts than, yeah, all in. Fifth round, you're going to hate my pick. I really, I love some Gabe Davis this year.

I think he has like the lead winning Ipid archetype we want to chase. My comp for him all offseason has been he is what Mike Williams is to the Chargers. He's their deep down field threat who gets a ton of end zone pauls and he has a ton of touchdown equity. And in half PPR, man, like outside of the top, you know, after you go first 15 picks at receiver, I want to chase touchdowns in half PPR. And honestly, very few receivers have the touchdown equity that Davis has. You know, Josh Allen has 40 touchdowns in his range of outcomes. Stefan Diggs can't catch every one of them.

Dawson Knox can't catch every one of them. And last year, Davis had 10 end zone targets, tying Dawson Knox for the second most on the team. And keep in mind, Davis was not a full-time player. I get the common refrain. He was behind Manny Sanders. And if he can't beat out Washed Manny Sanders, then why are we drafting them in the fifth? round. I don't know. I really can't speak to that. I don't know why Sean McDermott played Davis behind Sanders. But what I do know is that there's no one in front of them to take those

snaps. He's going to be a full-time player. I'm projecting like 80 to 85 percent route share in this offense and any receiver on the field 80 plus percent of the time with Josh Allen. I don't even care if it's Emmanuel Sanders. We've seen Emmanuel Sanders do that, have some good games as a full-time player. I'm all in on Davis in the fifth round. This is another one of those guys, Scott, where again, you've got to be cognizant of where you're drafting because Davis's ADP is all over the place on all these apps. On Sleeper, he's like a six-round pick. On NFL, he's like buried. Yahoo. He's too, too cheap as well. ESPN, he's priced about right. So again, just be super aware of where these guys are. Go into your draft before the draft starts and kind of earmarks.

say, okay, like, I know where Gabe Davis is at. Like, you know, I know where some of these mid-round receivers are at because, man, you know, there's a lot of pricing difference here. But Gabe Davis is my guy. Tell me why I'm wrong. He's just someone I struggle with. He reminds me a lot of 2019 Chris Godwin, one of my highest own players that year, 2017 Adam Thielen, one of my highest own players that year.

The issues are I'm not really seeing a discount on him. that's already priced in. I mean, like, I really think he's a very talented wide receiver. I think he's going to score 10 touchdowns, and still I can't really get totally on board with it, in part because there's other wide receivers I like, in part because, I mean, hey, Dawson Knox really came on down the stretch. He started seeing more targets. Josh Allen targeted slot wide receivers at the fifth highest rate in the league last year.

And it's just, I don't know. know. At that price, I'm not getting on board, but I mean, every single person on this staff disagrees with me and says, no, no, this is a must draft pick. So I could just be wrong on that. The player I went with, and this wouldn't make sense with my build, but it's just an unavoidable value. Travis Etienne is going round five. And that's not just like, oh, one site is really stupid. is going round five on ESPN, CBS, NFL, and Yahoo. And again, you know, I talk about RBRB optimal in a vacuum, but I mean, if you can get Etienne in round five,

plus Camaro round two, Sequin, round three, it boosts those, you know, round one wide receipt. Like Cooper Cup was the most valuable player in fantasy last year. And yeah, so worry about Jacksonville being really dumb and playing James Robinson when he's back. But I mean, like, following that sort of injury, I think you're looking at Cam Acres like efficiency. So it would just be stupid not to make Etienne your bell count.

And even in a worst case scenario, I think he has enough pass catching upside with his former college quarterback that, you know, even in a worst case scenario, he beats this ADP valuation. Yeah. Yeah, my only thing with the ETN is the touchdown upside. You know, if they're going to plug him, you know, pull the plug on him near the goal line, then, you know, maybe he doesn't have the upside of like, you know,

Diora Seventh or Austin Eccler type usage that we want. But that being said, yeah, I mean, nothing has changed with E.T.N. man. Like, we expected J. Robb to be back by, you know, October-ish. He's still on track for that. I think everything that you saw and analyzed and read, you know, this offseason by ETN's still in place. So I'm starting to see ETN slip a little bit. You know, he was trending towards being like an early third round pick in a lot of sharp leagues. And now I think he's trending backwards to being like a, you know, solid early fourth round pick.

So definitely with you on that. All right. Moving on. Sixth round. I'm going to come back and take another back. And guys, listen. Again, if you want to be aggressive and get your guys, this is the spot where you have to be. Start getting aggressive is the sixth, seventh round.

Damien Pierce is my guy in the sixth round here. And look, I mean, I know if you've been drafting underdog all year, you've been, maybe you can draft it a couple weeks ago and you got Damien Pierce in the ninth round. This is where he's going to have to go. In that draft, I was talking about earlier last night, Pierce went in the sixth round. It's exactly where I was expecting him to go. I was actually talking to Brett a little bit in DM. because he was on Pierce before I was, like back in March,

and we were just kind of rehashing that a little bit and talking about his runs last night. And I told him, like, bro, I got a draft in a couple hours. I think Pierce is going to go in the sixth round and he did. But it makes sense, man. Like, we want to boost up these guys who have Belkow potential in the range of outcomes. I think Pierce in the sixth round is not bad value. I actually think it's the correct value for his archetype.

Marlon Mack and Rex Burke had these guys were never, we're never really in contention, in my opinion. And now we especially know they're not in contention. Scott, I've been calling Damien Pierce, Kareem Hunt 2.0. He's Kareem Hunt 2.0 on a really bad Texans team. But to me, that's still a super, super valuable role, especially if he's going to be a BALC out

and getting all of their goal line work. So I'm bumping Pierce up significantly in my ranks. And if you want to get him in six, seventh round, That's where it's going to have to be this weekend. Yeah. So Pierce is really interesting in that the only people who were, you had him top five were you had him RB3. Brett Whitefield, one of our newest hires, had him RB3.

I had him RB5. Danny Kelly had him easy top five, maybe probably even higher than me. So we all loved him. I just worry a little bit. I mean, you're talking round six now. usually like preseason hype is wrong usually like victor cruz is maybe like the one hit but like last year there were so many marquez calloways the year before and so um like i said you had a mary 3 but you could draft your rb1 round 10 round 9 and so it's like at that do you forego pierce

i i do think belcal usage uh leans more towards peers and so it's like at that do you forego pierce i i i do think belcal usage uh leans more towards peers, but I mean, like, Rashad Penny can never stay healthy. And you had Kenneth Walker as like an elite elite talent. So this is just the questions I'm asking myself today because this is a player I loved. He was must draft for me. But I don't know that he's must draft now that he's jumped 10 rounds by ADP. So my round six guy is Amun Rae St. Brown. You can get him round eight on NFL.

You can get him early round seven on Yahoo. Happy to just go around early on him. And last year the NPC take of the year was Naji Harris has a bad offensive line. Najee Harris, his quarterback stames. And I was just saying, listen, that doesn't matter he's going to get, he's going to lead all running backs and snap percentage. And that's the most important thing. This year, the NPC take is, oh, Amun Rossin-Rossin-Brown was good at the tail end of the season, but only when Dandre Swift, and T.J. Hawkinson were hurt.

And it's like, listen, this guy averaged 26 plus fantasy points per game over his last six weeks of his rookie season. Doesn't matter how many disclaimers you want to put on that. That is just insane. Like that, the only wide receivers to ever score more as rookies were OBJ and Randy Moss and like no one else over 21 fantasy points per game. And so I just see massive PPR cheat code potential. If this guy was drafted in round one instead of, what was it, round four in the NFL draft,

he'd be going five rounds higher. And guess what? West Huber said all offseason, this was a round one talent. So, yeah, just love me some Amun Rae St. Brown. Yeah, I mean, you're exactly right. And it's like, you know, it's just attaching yourself to old information at this point with Amman Ra. You know, it's a three-headed thing.

It's the draft capital. It's the Lions. It's, oh, DeAndre Swift and Tjah Hockinson, we're out last year. Like, no, maybe Al-Man Ra is just good at the game. He's going to get 100 or 150 targets on a team that's going to have a ton. And, yeah, he's a smash pick. Again, one of these guys, Scott, were like, be super aware of where these guys are at

in your pre-draft ranks, man, because, like, on Sleeper, Amon Ra is a little bit higher, but you can get them to your point. To your point, you can get him, you know, round seven, round eight on a, on Yahoo and NFL makes a ton of sense. My guy in the seventh round is another one of these guys that's getting hyped up. Remandrew Stevenson, I think just with the way ADP is set up this year, I think it makes a lot of sense to get one or two guys, one or two runners in the first two round and then come back and just get aggressive on your guys in the sixth, seventh, eighth rounds.

Again, this is one of those things where it depends on your league, it depends on if it's 10 teams, 12 teams, depends on how sharp your league mates are, how sharp your buddies are. But I'm just getting aggressive on some of these backs that I want. And Ramandre is one of them. The case against Ramandre as well, he's going to get pulled at the goal line against Damien for Damien Harris. And that will most likely be the case.

But the case for Stevenson is the case against Harris in that we know Harris is never going to play on passing downs. If Stevenson is going to play in this kind of like, I hate calling it the James White role because it's not going to be the James White role, but he is going to be one of their primary passing down backs. And frankly, anytime you get the Patriots primary passing down back, it usually is pretty good for fantasy. You know, last year, the Patriots had a ton of backfield touches. In fact, if you just sort my team PPR points, the Patriots had 30.2 fantasy points per game among the running backs last year. That was second most, only to the Colts at 30.3 fantasy points per game.

Their backs caught 93 balls last year. And if Remondra even gets like a 60% share of those backfield, of that receiving work, like he'll well pay off AEP. And then you mix in the fact that maybe he takes over for Damien Harris on early downs. Maybe he turns it into a 50-50 split near the goal line. Stevenson certainly has league winning upside. Again, he's one of those guys just like Pierce, where you're going to have to pay a premium to get him.

But I think in general, I want to be aggressive on these guys, especially after some of these mid-round receivers that we both like, like, you know, I'm on Rod, DJ Moore, Mike Pittman. After those guys are gone in round six, six, seven. I'm, you know, clueling around eight, I want to be aggressive on some of these backs here. So, yeah, what's really interesting about this backfield this season is Valichick coming out saying he wants both running backs to be every down running backs for the team and they're just going to rotate drives. So rather than this being like a blunt James White sort of committee backfield, it's a lot like Green Bay or Denver where it's, you know,

50-50 on paper, but they're just rotating dries. But what this does is this means one of these running backs now has league winning upside. They just need to dramatically outplay the other. And I mean, that has to be remandre, a player I loved coming out since 2015, there's only four power five running backs to average at least 100 rushing yards per game and 35 receiving yards per game in a single season. Christian McCaffrey, Dalvin Cook, Joe Mixin, and Ramandre Stevenson. And then you in your staff pack article highlighted,

Stevenson wasn't just better than Damien Harris as a runner in every single way, but he was top five in every key metric you want to look at. And so really the potential for a league winner has to be remandre there. The only problem is, you know, Belichick is as old school as it comes, and Damien Harris probably is the better. protector. If you're in a keeper league, draft Ramandre in every single league. I think he goes nuclear next season. Does he go nuclear this season? That's like a bigger question mark. But no, no, no, no. Love me some Ramandre. My round seven guy is Chris Godwin. And he's going 811 on Yahoo.

So tail end to round eight. Happy to grab around seven. I really didn't want you to bring this up because Godwin is by far the biggest edge on Yathus. So I do actually. So before his injury, he was the clear wide receiver one. He was leading the team in Target chair. He's been a wide receiver one each of the last three seasons despite many, many injuries. And okay, yeah, he's injured. And it's a bad injury. Like, I'm not expecting much at all until midseason.

But then I think midseason beyond the fantasy playoffs, you've got yourself a fantasy wide receiver one who's being drafted as a fantasy wide receiver three on Yahoo. and, you know, upside wins championship. So that's just a must draft pick. Yeah, dude. Yeah, Godwin is free money on Yahoo. I've done a couple of a couple of leagues on Yahoo so far. And I've just missed on Godwin both times, but he went in like 80 overall range.

So 100% with you. Let's do one pick from rounds 8 through 10, and we'll call this a wrap here, Scott. I'll get us going. Again, it's one of those things where, like, I'm a big fan of conditional drafting and tiered drafting. So let's say you do start with one or two runners in the first two rounds and then you don't touch the position until now, until round eight, round nine. That's when I'm getting, you know, ultra aggressive on some of these picks. If Stevenson slips into the eighth, if Pierce somehow slips into the eighth in your drafts this weekend, like obviously smash pick those guys. but again conditional drafting is very important so if you do go running back heavy this is the spot

where you're going to want to take some receivers one guy i do love in this pocket is out in lzard i think at this point man like you know you can throw out kind of all of past season analysis with lzard like he's never been a high target per route run player yeah of course because devonsa adams gets 30% of the targets per route um you can throw out that he's never really been a breakout guy sure of course comes back to adam's getting all the targets nvs getting all of the the downfield stuff like at this point scott like i know lizard's been a guy that you're on too but like you know his adp's risen but i don't think it's ever going to get to a point in the next two weeks where he's not a value still and you can still get lizard as your as your wide receiver four or five

and feel really good about it um you know romeo dobs is still out there playing with with jordan love you know i know erin rogers is talking him up but that's going to be a slow and two. I think Luzard is just walking into a massive target share this, this season. And, Scott, you know me, man. I'm a big fan of just getting out of the gate hot. I want to get rolling early. I want to score points. I want to start the season three and one, four and no. I want to be on a roll. And I think Lazzard is like the guy to have his wide receiver four or five in this ADP bucket to get going early. And, you know, maybe he falls off late in the year. Once Christian Watson gets going, Romeo Dobbs gets going. That's fine. But at least,

I know I've got secure points from Lazard as like a flex player, wide receiver three, four play early in the year. All right, one guy, round eight through 10, where you pick? Michael Thomas, he goes round 10 on NFL.com. It's just as easy as it is with Lazzard, where it's like, hey, maybe the guy who's the presumptive wide receiver one for the back-to-back MVP, who has been saying all year that this is the wide receiver one. Maybe he shouldn't go round eight. Maybe that's just dumb. It's like maybe the guy who was the overall wide receiver one last time he was healthy

shouldn't go round 10 on NFL. And so both easy smash picks. Yeah. For sure, man. Yeah, guys, thanks for listening. This has been a lot of fun again. I mentioned at the top, if you haven't listened already, go back and pop in the quarter.

back tight-in show after you're done wrapping this up. Scott, you and I are wrapping up the, excuse me, we're splitting the preseason games this week. So we're going to have all of our preseason usage review up for free on the site this weekend. And yeah, man, it's that time of year. It's getting down in a crunch time. We're about, what, 11 days away now?

No, 13 days away from week one. So anyway, yeah, this was a lot of fun. Scott and I will be back for some sort of show next week. We might have a very special game. guest to talk to. So until then, I'm Graham for Scott. We'll see you. A swamp rat got to do I'm chasing all of this cheese Even if my competition grew

Deuces to the mean Your boy is never regressing Off season through the season 365, 247 And there's one for the money Two bars on the joints But then they