Fantasy Football Daily - A Dynasty Fantasy Football Rookie Class Review | FT JJ Zachariason

Episode Date: April 3, 2024

Dynasty Points brings you A 2024 dynasty fantasy football rookie class deep dive with @lateroundff JJ Zachariason. Learn about the top prospects and potential sleeper picks for your dynasty league! This Fantasy Points Podcast exclusive has what you need for your 2024 dynasty fantasy football season. JJ once again lit the Dynast Fantasy Football community ablaze with his knockout prospect guide, which you can get in the link below. https://lateround.com/ Subscribe to FantasyPoints for FREE - https://www.fantasypoints.com/plans#/ Where to find us: LINK TO HOST(S) TWITTER FantasyPoints Website - https://www.fantasypoints.com NEW! Data Suite - https://data.fantasypoints.com Twitter -   / fantasypts   Facebook -   / fantasypts   Instagram -   / fantasypts  #fantasypoints #fantasyfootball #nfl #nfl #fantasyfootball #bestball #dynasty #dfs #nflbetting #FantasyFootballAdvice --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Never has there been a bigger evening for Dynasty Points than tonight. This is a massive night for myself and our colleagues here at Fantasy Points joining us for the first time. On this here channel is an absolute legend himself. This is the third time he's joining us. We have now graduated to Friend of the Show, which I absolutely can't wait for. If you haven't already, hit the notification bell, hit the subscribe, do all those wonderful things that help. drive us in the direction that we all want to go, which is up. I, of course, I'm your host with most time on those hands.

I and Thomas, you can find me at El Nostra Thomas. My fun fact for tonight is I once toured with Jimmy Hart, and he is the only member of the Hart family that ever helped us still tear down the ring at 70 plus years of age. Jacob. My name is Jacob, and I have a two-part fun fact today. First of all, today is ferret day, April 2nd. And the second half of my fun fact on ferret day is that I used to do voice acting.

And my biggest, in major air quotes, role was Thomas on the show The Green Squad. And the reason I bring that up today is because we traveled with a pet ferret named Wi-Fi, who was my best friend in that show. So shout up to all the ferrets out there, animated and otherwise. That's pretty awesome. Hard to follow. I'm Lucas. You can find me on X at El Gilbert.

FF. My fun fact is I am now married. So that's really fun. Yeah, it took long enough a year and half of planning day came. I only cried a lot. So it was it was good. So everybody in the comments who's always asking about the handsome man on the show, you are now just referring to Jacob. It's no longer me. I'm sorry. I'm JJ on Twitter at late round QB. Fun facts. I four days ago, ran a half marathon. Hey. Holy smokes. Yeah.

Damn. That was awesome. You look up married life and you can stay active apparently. Try to, man. Try to. I didn't get the time I wanted, but I finished. There was a photo that came through, you know, how they take like race photos and stuff. And it was about like mile eight or nine.

And I got this big smile on my face. I'm like feeling good. And by 11 and a half, I wanted to literally die. I was totally totally over. Do you feel better or worse about your relative athletic? score after finishing the half marathon? Probably worse. Dad ran the you know what out of that half marathon, man.

So probably a little worse. No, that's so amazing. I hope to run one one day, but as of right now, that's 100%. I ran one when I was 13 and I'm in substantially worse shape today than then. So I think I think that that, like, I was honestly a better shape at that point that I am right now.

I got winded going up the stairs. today, so I'm feeling really good right now. I really told myself, I was like, I'm just going to do this this one time, get it done with, kind of check the box. And then I didn't really, I missed my time by about a minute and a half just because I bonged the final two miles, just didn't run very well, just wasn't my day. And then I literally got in the car, I looked at my wife. I'm like, I'm too competitive.

I got to just do this next year now and like beat this next year. So apparently I'm going to do it next year again. Nice. Already setting yourself up. Yeah, it's going to be terrible. Well, I want to get right into it. I want to remind everyone that's tuning in. Maybe it's your first time.

Maybe you haven't been here in a bit. But we are not a news show. It's not what we do. There's 4,321 other podcasts, articles, blurbs, tweets that will get you up to date with all of the happenings. Today we are here for something specific. It is to dive into a rookie class that has been tricky. There has been some, in my opinion, this draft has been one of the more challenging to get through with the declares, sizes, production, some funny money in terms of offenses. So with that, JJ, I'd love to discuss specifically your new Zapp model.

This is obviously something that you worked on for quite a while. What led you to keep tinkering was such an already impressive model? model what are the some of the big changes for people who don't know yeah so this off season uh you know i was able to find some time in january especially to do some digging and stuff and to just enhance the model that i had before the old model was called the z prospect model i changed the zap model the zacharise and adjusted prospect model uh and um you know i i i really a lot of it really comes down to the fact that like i don't know about you guys but like i have shower thoughts about this kind of stuff, right? So I'll literally just be thinking of like different ways and iterations

that we can be looking at this data, analyzing this data. And one of the things that I think was a big driver of the change with the model this off season was the way that we all talk about and sort of analyze breakout age. It's just become sort of like an accepted metric within the space, which is fine. It's not like it's a bad metric. Like you get signal with breakout age for sure. But this is specifically, I mean, this is both at running back and wide receiver, but definitely more wide receiver than at running back. But I just, I, I, I've always had sort of an issue with breakout age because it's so binary in nature, right? You know, a guy could have three catches in a season and a guy could barely miss out on a 20% dominator or maybe you're using

30% dominator regardless, whatever threshold you're using for breakout age. A guy could just miss on that and be looked at the same way as that three reception player that season. And to me, that just not very fair, right? So what I did this offseason, that the biggest change of the model, I mean, there's the baseline and the way that it's set up is still pretty similar. It's just sort of the, the analogy I used in the prospect guide was that, you know, I went from, from Charmander to Charmielion this offseason. I'm not quite a Charzard yet, but, you know, we're there. We're in that second evolution. And so what I did was with, instead of using breakout age within the model, I use what I call breakout score. And it

It's really pretty simple. It's instead of looking at this one binary metric of Dominator, which I have issues with Dominator rating too. I think that there's some problems with that inherently. But I'm just using yards per team pass attempt, and I'm looking at a ton of different thresholds with that. And it's basically saying, okay, this guy, and this guy was able to get here at this age,

and he was able to get here at this age and so on. And it spits out a score. That score is also adjusted for team strength and where the guy went to college, right? That's another really, really big issue, I think, with the way that data is sort of portrayed within the space is that we're looking at a guy like Sky Moore and attributing his numbers in college at a smaller program versus a guy who went to Alabama. It doesn't make any sense to really do that. And so I have a pretty standardized way that I adjust those numbers. And it's helpful.

It gets a lot of signal. And it's very, very important. I know that, like, Hayden Wings, who's done a lot of modeling as well, has found a lot of signal with, with, team strength as well. And I think that's that's the next big wave, I think, with a lot of these, this modeling is to look a little bit deeper than just having this like blanket way of looking at players across teams. Because as we know, you know, some of these guys are coming from these really small schools. And there's no reason that we should be looking at them the same way that we be looking at an SEC guy. I expect, well, it'll keep becoming a larger issue. I know Hayden has

talked about this especially, but like now that we're in the NIL era too, there's, there's so many more avenues for these guys to get to these big programs that you really probably value having that apples to apples comparison even more when, you know, back in the day, you know, if you weren't highly regarded recruited at a high school, so many guys would just play their entire college career with one program no matter what that, you know, if you are a Corey Davis, you end up at Western Michigan, you're probably staying at Western Michigan at this point in time. Like if there's a guy who's good enough to have that opportunity to transfer elsewhere, those opportunities are more likely to be afforded to them.

We'll see. I'm curious how many more of these round one prospects we get that actually finish their college career in these mid-major conferences. Yeah. And like to that point, you know, you could get a player, a wide receiver, let's say, especially, I mean, look, I was doing the prospect guide, right? And I profiled every wide receiver and running back who are at the combine. So I have like 80 profiles in this guide.

And as I'm going through their stories and their journey and like writing the story around them to sort of frame the kind of prospect they are. I mean, more, literally more often than not, they were transfers at this point, right? Like everyone's transferring. And I think the one big thing with that is like, I mean, honestly, Jaden Reed is not a bad example of this, even though he ended up being a hit. But, you know, like Jaden Reed goes to Western Michigan to start his career. He breaks out at a really, really young age. And then he goes to Michigan State. And I think that if you're modeling or if people are looking at things through data and not necessarily like digging into these guys' journeys as much. They might see, oh, he broke out at 18.7 or however old he was

when he broke out. And then he, oh, he played at Michigan State. And you combine those two things. You're like, holy crap, this guy's playing at a Big Ten school. And he broke out when he was, before he was 19, he must be a stud. But you should adjust that breakout, like where and when he was breaking out for the school that he was playing at. That's, that's more layers than I ever would have put a thought to it because we're so used to just, like you said, grouping it together. and seeing it as one plane, but when you layer it like that, it does make an absolute ton of sense.

There is one question. We'll move on to the next one that we have here. We don't normally answer the listener questions, but there is one that I feel like is really good and really important here as soon as I can move my mouse to click on it. Which prospect would get JJ to bike the hardest on Peloton? on. Like, as in, as in which one pisses me off the most to make me... I never know what Tyler means. If Tyler's in the chat, I'm assuming there's some sort of

hidden meaning behind this, but I don't know, maybe you're just grinding the film. I don't know if you do your film grinding on the Pelton, I'm sure exclusively, but you know, you're turning on the Just Bombs production. I guess which one makes you a hammer those kilometers up. I would imagine, I would imagine, I'd probably say, like, add. and I Mitchell for this just because he's the most like polarizing up in the I feel like just inconsistent up in the air no one really knows kind of prospect and instead of me focusing on trying to figure that out I just take it all out on the peloton there who gets me pumped up that's a different answer then who gets me pumped up who gets me pumped up probably like a Marvin harrison

jr Jr. and malik neighbors I mean let's be honest those guys are just freaks well I think we're about to talk about those guys right now aren't one one thing before that again my mouse is doing some really weird things here today but when you have one thing i wanted to ask because the last time you were on obviously we asked your favorite late rounder and it was jaden reed which congratulations that worked out really well um when you have a late round player that hits do you feel any at this point in your career any pressure to find the next quote your guy the following scenes because everyone's looking for it everyone wants that next guy.

And I know early in careers, it can be kind of pressing. But do you feel at this point any pressure to like really find your next him? I feel like, like I understand the pressure on someone who's trying to like make a name for themselves and stand out and all that in this in the fantasy space. But I think the problem with that is that's not the way that we should be evaluating whether someone's a good analyst or not. Like people, people literally will buy the pro like bought the prospect guide last year. because I hit on Isaiah Pacheco the year before.

I'm like, that's a terrible reason to do this, right? Like, the reason you should be doing this because you understand the process in which led that led me or led us to Isaiah Pacheco because it's not like I was saying, screaming from the rooftops, hey, go like, like Isaiah Pacheco first round, like get them, get them like RB3 and whatever, you know, whatever he ended up being in the class. I'm not saying that. It's just a game against the market, right? At the end of the day.

And so we're putting these puzzle pieces together and we're trying to say, you know, what's the most logical thing to do. So I would say, of course I like to be right. You know, everyone wants to be right. But at the end of the day, I don't think that anyone should put the pressure on themselves because I do think in the long run, truly audience people, et cetera, et cetera, will understand and see that you're getting way more hits than misses as opposed to just that one individual guy.

So, you know, do I want to get hits? Do I want to have, be able to spot Pacheco or Jaden Rie? or whoever before other people do it, sure. But I would rather have a pretty sound process that people overall, you know, if they do miss out on those guys, they're still winning because of the other players that I was hired lower on.

Yeah, again, just didn't expect anything other than just an absolutely perfect response. It is important. It is one of those things, though, right? We see it in whether it's in companies, discords, I know in ours, they always want, the most often asked question is, who's your late round guy?

Like, who should I be picking? up at this point, who you like the most in the late rounds. And you're right. It is important to remember that there is a process that goes into it, not just pick a guy, like a guy, which. And the hard part is it's always like, you know, I think some of the biggest hits end up being like directionally accurate hits.

Like I do my piece at the end of each year where I do my hits and misses. And I always break it up into sort of hits that I got lucky on or hits that I, like hits that I got right for the wrong reasons in some respect. And like a guy like Nico Collins was an example that I'd bring up last year. I was like directionally accurate and that I liked him more than the market. I was very wrong. Like I didn't think that he would do anything close to what he actually did. It was just like fortunate, you know, if the price was what it was.

Let's dive into this top here. I've seen sort of, you know, the dynasty market, especially in Superflex over the last while, has become very, very quarterback dominated in the first round in startups. And yet we've also seen, you know, lot of these quarterback prospects just tend to be harder to project safely as hits at the very top of the class compared to some of the elite prospects of their positions. In your view, how does this top stack up between, you know, Caleb, the consensus kind of quarterback one, these two really elite wide receivers in Harrison and neighbors, and then into

that sort of second group of quarterbacks from May and Daniels, are you more of the view with Harrison and neighbors should be up closer to Caleb? or should be back further behind or closer to those other two quarterbacks? Yeah, so I think it's a really, really interesting question and sort of debate because, you know, I did a study last week actually on the show on the late around podcast where I looked at basically how quarterbacks appreciate and value for the rookie season and their second season, right? And if you look at this is based on DLF ADP data.

So it goes back to only in 2018 for Super Flex League. I want to use Superflex too because we get a better idea of how quarterbacks actually actually fluctuate in value. If you, you know, if you look at single quarterback leagues, you're just not going to get that kind of like look, right? And so I was looking at Super Flex ADP. And over this time frame, we had 19 rookie quarterbacks entered the league

as top 100 startup picks, right? Who, sorry, in their second year, they had top 100 startup ADP, right? Of those 19, 16 of them essentially maintained value from their rookie season to their second season. And I judge maintained value by guys who they could have lost an ADP year over year and start up ADP, but they didn't lose by more than a round. So we're talking like Justin Fields, for instance, lost nine, went from like 24th to 33rd year over year from year one to year two. You really basically need like one of them, can't remember the three.

I remember the two of Dwayne Haskins was one, rest in peace. One was Bryce Young. And then the other one was someone who wasn't even that like that big. I just am blanking on who the third one was, but it wasn't anyone that was like that significant, like even a Bryce Young who, you know, obviously people were drafting pretty early the year prior.

You look at players like Zach Wilson, Kenny Pickett, these guys, Justin Fields, these guys who had pretty horrific year ones, like objectively bad rookie seasons at quarterback, they maintain value. And the main reason for that is twofold.

It's teams have an investment, NFL teams have an investment in these players where you know they're going to start year two. Like if, if a team drafts a quarterback in the top five, top 10, more than likely that quarterback is going to be starting year two. If you're looking at a wide receiver and he has a bad first year after being a first round pick, you don't know exactly how they're going to deploy that wide. Look at Quentin Johnston right now, right? Like where he fell dramatically in value. You know, there were some

haters out there, but there were a ton of people who still liked Quentin Johnson last year. And so, and now he's toast now. Yeah, he's toast. And so, but even like Bryce Young right now, he's not, I mean, he's still a fifth, sixth round startup pick. You can still get something for Bryce Young. And so I think from sort of a value perspective, going after these quarterbacks is still the safer bet than I think people generally realize and can comprehend because we look at wide receiver. And I would agree that within the position in terms of career being bus, right, I would say that Malik neighbors and Marvin Harrison have better bust free rates, if you will,

compared to any of the quarterbacks in this class, including Caleb Williams, right? Like I feel better about Marvin Harrison, Malik neighbors against their position than I do any other quarterback in this class. But at the same time, I know that Caleb Williams could have a horrific year one. I mean, injuries aside, just on field play and probably still be a second round startup, I have a second round startup ADP next year after a bad, bad season, right? Or third round, right? Whereas if something really, really goes south for one of those wide receivers, maybe you could argue

differently. But I do think, like looking specifically at this year, you can, you can make an argument for either one of these wide receivers because they are that elite in the way that their draft capital is going to look and the way that they look analytically and the way that, I mean, anyone watching them is viewing them. So I can understand, you know, usually I'm a draft for value trade for need guy. But I actually think in this scenario, you hypothetically could draft for need at the top of your rookie drafts this year. Like if you are set at quarterback and you need a wide receiver, I can understand going that direction and going with the Marvin Harrison or

or a Malik neighbors because I do think that their value is going to hold. Where I think it's going to be really interesting is when you get into the Dayton Daniels tier where people have like, let's say that Caleb and then the two wide outs are sort of tiered up together. I've seen a lot of like 107, 108 talk with more 107 talk at least with Jayton Daniels. And to me, I just don't think that's very logical because you have this year of getting a look at how Jaden Daniels is going to perform. Like I just said, you know, the way these guys, you know, the way their value holds year over year looks so good. We know that he's probably going to score a decent number of fantasy points if he's a starter because of what he can do with his legs.

At worst, we're probably looking at a Justin Field scenario with Jayden Daniels, right? And we saw what happened with Justin Fields. He lost nine spots in startup ADP. So to me, I think the discussion is more so after the big three, if you want to say Caleb and the two wide receivers, to me then is Jaden Daniels and not going after the Roma Dunzais and such that some have thrown out there, especially now that Matt Harmon has been pumping him up and steaming him up. Daniel Harmon. But yeah, I mean, I think that's where like I'm going to really lean on sort of the ADP research and go with the quarterback. Yeah, for me right now, I have to pay a love in his own tier. And then I have the other four all in one tier.

And I mean, I started out the process, but I did my first set of ranks with rookies included. I had May at two because I do tend to be more like this. I remember we had a discussion about Gibbs versus JSN last year. And I mean, I was like, I was hammering on sort of the running back reliability from an ADP perspective, too, for once you get that really high draft capital involved. And then it just kind of got to a point where like once I found out where the market was going, I have so much FOMO with Harrison and neighbors. Like if they're just going to go at two and three in all my leagues, I'm just going to take them at two and three in all my leagues because I don't,

I just like have no desire to be without them. If it gets to that point with the Dune's day, I'll be sad because I think he's really good too. But I don't have that quite the same level of FOMO with the Dunes Day. We're like, it's the problem with it too is like there's, you know, a lot of the times with receivers,

because they're a little, because there's a little bit more plentiful, I find with rookies, is you can buy high on rookie receivers, I think with some level of success if you're in a pretty active league. And that's something that I've tended to enjoy doing in the past is, okay, even if I don't go all in

and this guy's a rookie, like if he really pops right away, I'll be the one willing to send the price that looks a little hot in week one or week two or week three if we start seeing some really good things out of these guys. And hopefully that ends up becoming a profit. Like I remember having that discussion with Garrett Wilson after just like a couple of games, just being like, no, this guy's like really, really good or even Pooka last year.

But with neighbors in Harrison, like the price is so much that it's, like, if they start red hot, like it's immediately, it's going to be like, you know, you're going to see like Marvin Harrison or Jamar Chase pulls by three if he starts red hot. So it's just like you can't, you either they're bad or you have one chance to buy them. It's like, is my concern with these two. So I'm just going to end up taking them. I agree with you with May and Daniels being four and five. I think it's, I think they should be a step out of the pack.

from the rest of these guys. I actually think that once the draft is over, I'm not going to be surprised if I have J.J. McCarthy in the same tier as a Drake Mae, like right there. And it really comes down to the fact that like, you know, McCarthy,

let's do it. Yeah, like I, I don't evaluate quarterbacks the same way, like as in depth as they do running back and wide receiver because it's just very, very difficult to do analytically. The people that I talk to that do it more than I do,

you know, they don't necessarily see that dramatic of a difference between a McCarthy in a May and if the draft capital is there, especially like, like if, if McCarthy ends up going to Minnesota or something, then you're going to feel great about that situation. We know that that kind of landing spot that that aspect of things matters at quarterback. I just, you know, like, like there is a very real chance that McCarthy would end up just being 108 in rookie drafts just by default. And I think that's going to be a massive, massive value. Because if he's a starter, which he would be, he's going to be a starter next year. Like I said,

and he's going to maintain that value. That's the, sorry, I was just going to say that's the Justin Herbert 108 Superflex rookie quarterback value. And I mean, our own fantasy points own,

Brett Whitefield has been the biggest driving force to the J.J. McCarthy hype train. He is about him, bowed him. You put him in, you put him in, yeah,

you put him in Minnesota. And we might not be able to contain him on this ethereal plane. It is a really interesting first in that, like, you know, the way I set up my rankings, I give everybody a base first value in a base first. It's like a random first in the future year. And, you know, it's always fun when I put the rookies in because it doesn't always align perfectly well.

Like I have Caleb as being worth like two and a half. Then I have the other next four, my one and a half to two. And then I have Bowers and Adunzei and McCarthy at 1.25. Nobody in the one base one. and then down to late one is the next year. So it's going to be an interesting mix where, I mean, probably the cats out of the bag. I would guess for a lot of people who play in leagues

that are listening to a bunch of podcasts at this time of year. But for people that aren't casual leagues, like I would still strongly recommend if you have the one nine and the 110, like just seeing how much it would cost to get into one eight. Because I do think it's going to be, you know, where we draw those tiers, we'll see after the draft. But I think that the top eight is really, really strong. and then I think it becomes a bit of a Wild West for me personally.

But let's chat about a Dunezai is the other wide receiver. You mentioned Harmon. He's getting the Harmon bump. He's getting the N.L bump. Like Daniel Jeremiah has number three overall on his big board. So big football is extremely into Roma Dunezay. I don't think you would disagree that his profile is quite strong. But compared to the other two, it's very different.

where do you ultimately land on how much thing that you take from the NFL side of things versus some of the strict production-based side of things where he fits in? Yeah, you know, it's funny. I feel like, you know, we've gone from as a fantasy space on the data side, we've gone from people like really, really overstating early-declare status, like a lot. And then now it's almost like it doesn't matter at all. But I do think that in a Dunez case, the status, the fact that he played four years in college does matter because he got the most of his production or like the big season he got as a senior.

He got as a final year player. Like his numbers, if you look at his numbers from 2022, Jalen McMillan wasn't that far off from Roma Dunezay production wise that season. You know, like, like I don't think that he like has this horrific production profile by any means. But if you look at him and stack him up against obviously what Marvin Harrison did, like Marvin Harrison is my wide receiver one, mostly. because, you know, I have them in the, like, my model actually slightly favors neighbors,

but I have Harrison as my wide receiver one because he did it multiple years with multiple quarterbacks. Like it was just, you know the safety is there, right? Whereas neighbors just had that one monster. Like neighbors has the best season, single season in this class by far, but Harrison has the consistency to make that pick a lot safer and easier, right? But then you get to a dunes day and, you know, there are more excuse making. There, there's more excuse making, if you will, uh, analytically with,

with the Dunez. Um, you know, I have a teammate score within my model, uh, that definitely helps a Dunez out, obviously with, with Polk and McMillan there.

Um, and look, he's not bad by any means. Like I, in breakout score, I scale from zero to 100. He is a breakout score of 86, which is lower for like a potential top 10 pick,

but, uh, an 86 score, you know, 50 is the average. Like, it's, it's a good score still.

Like he's not, doesn't have a bad analytical profile. It's just that, when you look at like statistical comps for him, you know, the top three that that came out were, what was it? One of them was Drake London, but one of them was also Michael Floyd, right? So there was like there was a red flag just from that perspective with the Dunseh, whereas that just didn't exist for neighbors and Marvin Harrison. Now, there's a chance, a real chance, depending on how draft capital plays out, that the model will actually like Brian

Thomas more than Roma Dunzee. I don't think it's going to happen because what that would mean is that Adunzee probably falls out of the top 10. And then Brian Thomas goes, you know, maybe like 15thish or maybe like 15 to 19 or something like that, which is definitely possible for him. I just don't necessarily see that coming to fruition. But it just goes to show that things are looking like a dunza is just kind of in a tier of his own as opposed to being there with neighbors in Harrison. Like if people see him that as that good, I think that there's. something to that, right? Like, I don't want to discredit what Harmon's doing or what, you know, what, what Daniel Jeremiah is doing and what they're seeing. And I think that

draft capital will allow that to play out a little bit and I'll be able to react that way. You know, if he does go ninth overall to the Bears or something like that. But I do think overall, there are definitely more red flags in his profile than there are for neighbors and Marvin Harrison. If we compared him to some other players with really similar draft capital, we're also seniors in the last couple of classes. Where does he shape up versus Smith and Alave, who are the two that kind of come to mind? Yeah, so that's a good question. Smith and Alave both look better in my model than Romadunson.

You throw a Dothan in there, too, if you want. I guess he went. Yeah, he's not as good as Dotson. And I just remember the top comp for him was D'Andre Hopkins for Adunza. I had to go look at my guide. I just blanked. But yeah, like, the thing with like Chris Alave, really good example of this, right? So breakout score is trying to look.

it looks at age and not career season, right? So it's not looking at the fact that he was a junior when he did this, a senior when he did this. But I do think you need to adjust for that in some way. And that's why Declare status is still something in the model. Like it still exists in the model. The good thing with Romadunze is that he is younger. And so if you look at his breakout score,

it does look okay enough because he did these, you know, when he was a senior, he was still a decent age to get the production that he got. The difference though with him and like Chris Alave and why it likes Alave more because Alave probably has a comparable teammate score as a Dunezay does. I actually think it's a good comp from just like a situation standpoint, right, coming out and stuff. But Alavi didn't need his senior season whatsoever to look good analytically, right?

Like he got bumped down a little bit because he did go back and, you know, we have to question why he went back. But he still looked really, really, like he was still like a 97th percentile, you know, 98th percentile type player. in my last model and I think he has a score of like 98 still in this one which is better than Roma Dunzee. So I do think Alave on paper is a better, I know a lot of people would disagree probably if they're watching these guys, but I think Alave was a better prospect than a dunzae. Cool. Okay. I think that was a great answer.

Go for it, Tom. I was just going to say Rome getting that bump is going to make the kind of mid tier of rookie drafts really muffled like it was already getting there and now it's really Rome moving up this quick

I didn't expect and it's happening faster seeing it now it's reflected in ADPs if you use Dynasty Data Lab and go track Rome's ADP over the last week or two it's already moving

so I think you're right I think we're going to get to 1 08 we're going to get to a point where that feels fine but like I said, I think there's there's always a running back that tends to creep in. There's always one running back that manages to weasel his way into the back end of super whoever gets the star on their helmet, I think it's going to get a nice little and the lightning bolt.

I was going to say. Yeah, the ball and star, all the celestial running back. I don't have this guy in the show sheet. You mentioned Thomas having likely a very similar score to a Dune's Day. why don't you wax poetically about Brian Thomas? Because I think generally speaking, he seems to be like, I think mostly wide receiver four, but I've seen like kind of first of many

or tons of other people have different wide receiver fours. Is he that clear cut guy for you? Or I guess potentially wide receiver three even? Excuse me. I would say, no, he's not concrete for sure going to be my wide receiver four. And I say that not because, you know, like I said, the model right now, like this is with draft capital of him going 19th overall, which is what NFL mock draft database has. Right now he's a score

of 95.3. Dunezay's at 96 with sixth overall capital. So like I said, it can get close if those two, you know, get, you know, if Brian Thomas gets drafted a little bit earlier and Roma Dunezay falls a little bit in the draft. But with that being said, the reason why I'm nervous about Brian Thomas. It's kind of interesting because I always like whenever, like, film people, people who are watching these guys, it shouldn't say film people. It's not like I'm not watching these guys, but the people who were strictly doing that as opposed to like looking at models and stuff. You know, they look at Brian Thomas and they see like a very raw prospect and someone who might be more of like a Martavis Bryant type and someone who, you know, might not have a full

route tree at his disposal right now. And it's funny because when I go and I find matches for statistical comps, he's one of the hardest. that, I mean, like, there's just not strong matches for him whatsoever. His strongest match actually in the model is Quentin Johnston right now. And it's not like the model, the Zapp model, I went and looked year over year. The Zat model unfortunately liked JSN more year over year. So like whenever I updated the model, I was like, you got to be kidding me right now. But it hates Quentin Johnston.

Like it did not like Quinn Johnson. So at least evened out a little bit there. So it doesn't like Quentin Johnson. but Brian Thomas, you know, analytically and statistically, there is at least some relative comparison there. I hate to interrupt you. I'm just super curious.

Is that because Quentin Johnston had that kind of flat profile where it's like he broke out and then he was just kind of what he was? Is that why? Exactly. So being a guy like worthy too? Yes. No, it actually doesn't mind worthy just because his was a little bit more impressive

than Quentin Johnson's, right? But, but yeah, this is why I like looking at, at breakout score more because it will give people like Xavier Leggett this year. It's giving him some credit for what he did that final season. Whereas, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, he didn't even break out because he was, you know, 23 and a half years old or whatever. It just doesn't matter. Right. And so, but with Brian Thomas, you know, he has a pretty good

breakout score. It's pretty comparable to, it's actually almost identical to Roma Duneses. He has a good, good enough teammate score because he played with Malik Names. neighbors. Obviously the size is there. The draft capital only got better after the combine. It's just the fact that when I can't find, you know, nothing with statistical comps is really is in the model, right? But I like to find people who have been similar in the past to feel some comfortability with these players. And if I can't find that with a guy, it makes me feel a little bit of caution with that player, right? Like, I feel better about comps that I can find for Xavier worthy than I do for Brian Thomas, as weird as that sounds, because worthy is just this

incredibly unique type player. I think Brian Thomas is actually a very, very unique player. And it scares me a little bit. That's why the model is going to say he's probably like a low risk prospect and like, you know, like I have this draft capital delta metric, which looks at what a player scores versus what his draft capital is. And I just find the difference between the two. And then it ranks them as a low risk neutral or high risk player. Brian Thomas is probably going to be a low risk player. But it's, it's, you know, it's just more so what the model is seeing versus where he was drafted in the actual NFL draft.

I don't see it that way at all. I think that there's a lot of volatility to his profile. No. No, I really like him. And I really hope he goes to not just a spot, but gets draft capital capital that confirms my bias a little bit. So I have no shame in drafting him 40% of, of rookie leagues like I really want to. He's not a guy, though, because he's a guy, though, because he's,

it's it's even the volatility play to play, right? Like his season is insane. And he had what? Like, I want to say like seven 30 plus yard touchdowns. And like, I think he had like three like 70 yard touchdowns or something crazy. Right. He did nothing outside of last year.

You overthrow a couple of deep balls. And I know it's like the worst fantasy analysis on the planet to be like, hey, if you take away Sequin's big plays, actually he sucks. Um, it is, it does eject some sort of volatility. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. As I think the most skeptical person on this show about, Brian Thomas. It's nice to hear some of this, like, backed up a little bit. Like, whenever you're watching his film, he's not somebody who you get, like, the warm, fuzzy feelings about, about being super consistent in the NFL. And it, you're right. It's really tough to find a good comp for him. He is a long strider, but he makes explosive plays in college. I can't think of somebody realistically other than, like, the elite long strider of, like, maybe AJ Green as somebody who actually, like, truly broke out in the NFL. You just don't see those.

lot as these top tier wide receiver options for fantasy. That's just what's holding me back the most. Like obviously super fast, big guy, you like the ability to create explosive plays. And he's probably going to win you a couple of weeks throughout his NFL career for fantasy football. But I don't know if he's ever going to be consistently a top 24 wide receiver or even top 36 wide receiver. That's just what scares me. It sounds very Gabe Davis of you. Lucas well my my hope is my hope is he gets the mecalf route tree like that's kind of what I thought

yeah what I felt like we saw a lot of in college and like Harmon just did the stuff that it kind of bears that out is it was a lot of like slant curl go route um yeah like an absolutely insane success rate on the go route which I mean fits his statistical profile also um that would be I mean maybe the hope on the ceiling there but yeah probably more productive in college than DK though actually at least in the final season yeah I mean meckha also couldn't stay healthy. One of the comps that came up for Brian Thomas also, well,

there's the Terrace Marshall comp that is very frightening. But Tori Smith was another one. And when I say Tori Smith, people like freak out. They're like, oh my God, that's terrible. You got QJ,

Tori Smith and Terrace Marshall. Tori Smith was really productive. Like I'm trying to give realistic comps that the model's spinning out in terms of matches, right? And I feel like the Tori Smith one. Yeah, right. I'm not going to give you guys just like obscene. you know, Jerry Rice coms for all these players.

Like Ricky Pearsall is Jerry Rice. Like what are we doing here, right? He's not. But yeah, I mean, like, I think that if he has a Tory Smith like career, I would argue that's not like if you knew you were getting a Tory Smith like career, you might still spend a pick in the 20s on that player. Like if you knew that was. Yeah.

For sure outcome, right? And so, you know, I don't think it's like that bad. I just, again, I just go back to the fact that like nothing matched up very, very well for him and that scares me. I think the mind app comes from you're sitting at the 108 and you're like, I'm drafting the quarterback for Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison and then you're one pick

later and you're like, Tori Smith would be fine. And that's where you get like racked in this class. Exactly. Right. And let's not forget Tori Smith had three really productive wide receiver three seasons on a run heavy team with, I mean, let's face it, a super

elite quarterback, uh, hucking the football, playoff legend. Shout out Baltimore Raven, Tori Smith. Back up now all of a sudden. Yeah. Hey, you might end up being the starter again. We'll find out. Look, I love the program.

You guys have been here as talk straight for 40 minutes. Love that you're tapping in. We're seeing new people popping in all the time. Hit that like, hit that sub. We're going to take a quick five second break. Give you guys a break, you know, a little pause in the action. When we come back, we are going to hit the second half, the meat, if you would, of today's episode.

because we love the meat here. Five second break, we'll be right back, sit tight. Jacob, let's kick us off here. Yeah. So we kind of talked about this already actually a lot. But the trend about sort of the declare status in the age and people questioning if it matters anymore, we saw last year at least four,

these sort of older prospects that are a little bit non-traditional hitting in Rashi Rice, Tank Dell, Puka, Jaden Reed. I'm curious just generally, you know, and I think you talked on this about, is this, do you think something that's like an explainable trend that we're going to see more and more of these seniors or these older players hitting or do you think it's potentially more of a blip and are there key indicators that you're looking at to trying to determine? I mean, we talked about that a little bit with the Dunezay, but if there's anything more

you got on maybe some of these middling guys, like we talk about all the Gat, Pierceall, Mconkey, all these kind of people in that range. I think we're going to see more just for. a base rate perspective, right? Because we're going to have more fewer, fewer and fewer early declares because of NIL. It's already happened. We're already seeing that over the last couple of years.

And then, you know, in the case of this season in particular, this draft season, and I guess last one and maybe they'll have some lingering effects next year. But the COVID season, that definitely played a role in why guys, you know, stuck around a little bit longer. I mean, you look at the running back class right now. We have like six guys who are over 24 years old.

in this year's running back class when we had like that many across like 2011 to 2023 like it's crazy how old some of these prospects are. So I do think that it's unique from that perspective. Yes. And I do think that just strictly if you were to say, are we going to see more, you know, four year players, you know, 23 year olds coming out and then being productive in the NFL. My answer to that would be yes, because we're just going to see more of them in general, right? The base rate is going to be changing.

Now, am I going to look at, you know, Rishi Rice and Tank Dell and Pooka Nakua and Jaden Reed and, like, dramatically shift my process? I don't think that's necessarily the case. You know, I, you know, I think that a lot of these guys, and this is where I think people get into trouble is that they're, like, look at Twitter. People are chasing Pooka Nakuwa and the kind of profile Nakuwa had, right, where he had this crazy Yarchpera run rate. But then you look at historical wide receivers who went on day three, who had. had really good yard for our run rates. They didn't hit like Puganakua hit, right? Like you have to be,

if they still look at what's happened outside of Pukinakua. I think it's okay to say that again, this is sort of like the way that we've gone with early to Claire, how there's just this roller coaster of the way that people are sort of viewing it. I think people have done that also to some degree with landing spot in an odd way, where, you know, back in 2017, 2018, people were like, oh, you went to the chiefs or, you know, some good team drafting you, you know, 105 or, you know, when you should be a 205 pick.

And then, you know, then there's analysts like me and others who are like, guys, don't worry about landing spots so much. But it just gets taken to such an extreme degree that people then just are not worrying about it whatsoever. And Pooka Nakua is not Pukukua outside of L.A. It's okay to say that, right? Like, it's okay to recognize that. Devon A. Chan is not Devon A-chan outside of Miami. Like, it's okay to recognize that they can still be good players outside of those locations, but those locations help really make them the elite players that they are. You know, a guy like Rishi Rice, who I, you know, Nakua, I was pretty, like, relatively high on

and such. And I'm just thinking about my own process here when answering this. But, you know, Nakua, I was fairly high on. I got them in a decent number of leagues. Tank Dell was just kind of going so late in general that I was just like, sure, I'll throw that dart, even though even my new model just doesn't like that. them that much. There's just not that much to like latch on. He did the people say he has like a decent production profile, but it's not like the best age adjusted profile in the world. He went to a,

it wasn't like a, you know, Power 5 school type type profile. Um, Rishi Rice for me, though, was just a miss from a landing spot perspective because I still think, and this is regardless of what's gone on the last week with Rishie Rice, you know, I don't, I mean, I care about that, but not from the standpoint of like him as a player. Um, you know, I still don't know if Rish Rice is elite. as an actual wide receiver, right? But what I do know is they used him exactly how they should have used him in year one, right? Like he is a, we never should have ever questioned Rishi Rice's yak ability and what he can do with the ball in his hands.

It was always, what does route tree really look like? You know, is he a good route runner? And you look at how they used him in year one. You know, he was one of the highest screen wide receivers in the league, one of the lowest A-DOTs we've seen from a rookie wide receiver since 2011. And it's like, okay, they use them in that way. But what happens if they use him in different ways? And if they use him as a true X and if they use him, you know, as their true alpha in the offense.

And I don't know what the answer to that is, but I don't think it necessarily matters because he's probably, you know, again, aside from the off the field stuff, if he plays, he's in the right environment. And now he's got Marquise Brown to stretch the field a little bit and things are going to open up for him probably a little bit, even more. right and so like i i think it's okay to just look at these guys individually and say hey look this is why this worked out for this guy because as we do that you know we're focusing on the pukunakua's of the world the rishis of the world these guys that did pan out after having questionable age related profiles we're not doing it for the guys who didn't pan out who also had questionable age profiles right like and and there's and there's going to be plenty of them this year too who just don't pan out um who have that so i think that

that's where I generally stand is that I'm just trying to look at these you know I like having the model as a baseline say that every year it's still a guide for me it's not this thing that I only draft off of it's so that I don't get too high or too low on players and then from there you know I can evaluate the individual player the fit uh the scheme fit and all that good stuff um you know more on an individual basis a point that you made about landing spot being taken to the extreme is something we talked about not that long ago on the program with j j j mccarthy how you you view him is so different with his talent depending on where he goes it still matters i think you're right i just maybe not the main factor or not something that should just be completely

irrelevant uh oh my goodness irrelevant right a big thing in the in the fantasy space is talent over situation no matter what not not always the case jacob and i argue brock purdy almost on on a weekly basis in season. But as you said, he's not, Brock Purdy's not Brock Purdy outside of San Francisco. It's just, it's actual at this, right? It's not a surprising thing. The problem is with that is that like when you say those things, people then think that you think that Brock Purdy is terrible. Or people think that you think that Pooka Nakua is bad. It's like, that's not what we're saying. It's just that we recognize that scheme matters. And I do want to say just an overarching point here. it's very easy to say, oh, he went to a great landing spot in hindsight, right?

Like, we're still, there's still a layer of projecting that's going on there that you're going to also be wrong about. Like, no one thought that Tank Dell was walking into this fantastic situation where all of a sudden, Bobby Sloick did what he did as offensive coordinator, C.J. Stroud hit to, you know, 98th percentile outcome. Like, all these things sort of like fell in the place for him. But I do think that just generally speaking, like, we all saw Pukunakua, go to a place in LA where they're going to run a lot of 11 personnel.

Sean McVeigh is going to open things up offensively. Pook and Nakua can play all over the field. And they don't have a wide receiver too on that team. Right. So there's like there are objective things that you can look at and say, okay, yeah, we probably should have been a little bit higher on Nakua, you know, despite being a, you know, day three pick. We ask some questions in the chat that we will get to here to wrap.

But before we go quick to the chat, we would love to get, you know, You gave us your Jaden Reed call early last year, home run. Who would be your number one sleeper guy that you would pitch this year, try and try and hammer again? Can I give you one running back and one wide receiver? Yeah. I think we share the running back. So I'm really excited.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'll go with the receiver for, actually, I'll just go with the running back first. The running back is Isaiah Davis. Oh. Who has the second best breakout score in the class behind Braylin Allen. The running back breakout score stuff is actually not adjusted for program because it just doesn't seem to matter and get signal at running back.

He played at the greatest program in the country. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. He's got to get the jack rabbits. And so yeah, I mean, like his numbers look great. He's got a best season reception share, which is another thing that I look at at running backs. That's north of 10%. He's got good size. So I think he can be an every down back. And his two top comp for James Robinson and Hyler Al Jir. So to me, Davis, Davis like screams, get them in the fourth and fifth round of your rookie drafts and then just flip them after year one, right? Because he's going to be a day three pick. So I like Isaiah Davis a lot. The wide receiver is probably Jermaine Burton. It's weird to me that, I mean, I know that he had some off the field stuff and that's probably why he's not getting the steam that he's getting. But he has a really good profile overall. You know, he what started at Georgia,

is his collegiate career at Georgia. In 2021, when he was a sophomore, he played on that team that had pro-caliber running backs. You know, it's Mere White, James Cook. And then you had Brock Bowers on that team,

Ladd-McConkey, A.D. Mitchell, Darnell Washington. George Pickens was on that team, too, but he was banged up. So he didn't really play. But Jermaine Burton that year finished second on the team in receiving yards.

And that was, that was as a sophomore, right? and then he transfers, he goes to Alabama, you know, plays, plays there against. Probably Lucas in the head as he was rushing the field after the third Saturday at October win. Yeah. So, you know, his junior season, his yard team pass attempt was 1.55, not great.

But then as a senior, 2.46 strong. So he had good production at two of the biggest, if not the biggest programs in the country. And his is now his breakout scores top 10 within the. class. I think, you know, especially like from a best ball perspective, he's a big play receiver. he can get down the field, 96 percentile percentage of targets that traveled 20 more air yards this past season, according to PFF. I mean, you can just look at what he did throughout his collegiate career. And I just am a little confused, aside from the off of the field stuff, I get all that, but a little confused as to why he's not getting a little bit more love in the fantasy space,

at least. Lucas, I'm curious for your thoughts on them, too, because if there's two things that the Dynasty Twitterverse usually will overrate as prospects coming out, it's Alabama players and Debbie Darling's of yesteryear, and Burton is both of those, and nobody really cares. So I am curious. I mean, I don't think people really care because he never eclipsed 1,000 yards. Yes, he was on teams that, especially early on, they weren't really throwing the ball a lot Georgia. I mean, JJ outlined everything that was going on there. You can see that he was

fairly efficient with the touches he was getting at Alabama these past two seasons. Whenever they had Bryce Young, I would love to have seen more production out of him. And that really, I think, just turned so many people off of him his junior season. But it's not necessarily the volume stats that we should be looking at. It's what's he doing wherever he does have these opportunities. And he was at least out on the field consistently. I think he always ran over 90% of his team's route. So like that that's good, especially whenever he was in such talented rooms, except for

more recently at Alabama. But I think what's really hurting him so much is the fact that he just has that lack of volume stats. And he just never really had that coming out like performance to make everybody really pay attention to him again. I have a theory, by the way, on the Bryce Young stuff in particular, not with Bryce Young Burton, but just in general. I haven't studied this or research this because it's just a big, big project that I would have to take on. But I wouldn't be surprised if, you know,

transfer numbers are not as strong when you're going at least from a small program to big program or big program to big program. I'm not talking like Javon Baker, who goes from, you know, Alabama to UCF because obviously you're going to you see a downgrade in terms of who you're facing and the competition you're facing. But Burton going from Georgia to then Alabama and, you know, learning a new system and being on a new team and not seeing the production that we would necessarily want to see as a junior. I do think that we could probably, and again, this is totally subjective, but we could probably subjectively just give that somewhat of an excuse, right? Like we can understand because think about anything that you,

do in life, whether you're changing your job or if you're transferring schools and going to a different school. Like there's a lot that there's a lot of baggage to that kind of thing. There's a lot of stuff going on. It's not super easy to just maintain the same performance, right? So I do think that it's good. And the reason I bring this up is because it's good to see that his junior season, yeah, was not that great. Like he had a 1.55 yards per team pass attempt rate. But his senior season was pretty good within the context of what the offense did. And to me, that at least could could create and allow you to create that narrative about Burton. And that's a great way to put it.

It's nice to have that little, maybe that use it as a little bit of a beacon, if you would like you mentioned. Like it's not easy. It's easy for us that they're, well, you transferred. You should be in a better spot.

It's not that easy, bro. That's, it's those playbooks, tough. Oh, you're going from one like pro style system. Enjoy this one.

Good luck. It's, it's tough. Jay, do you want to hit some of these questions? Yeah. I got two. questions.

Oh, two audience questions, and Lucas has a question. So the first one I was going to ask, and I know I'm about 99% certain that I know your answer, so I'm going to change the audience question. The audience question was JSN or a Dunez. I know, and for anyone who somehow doesn't know that you have a year two model,

you have a year two model, I'm going to change the question and say, at what rookie pick would be the lowest that you would take for JSN? Oh, God. I'm assuming it's lower than a dune say yeah yeah definitely lower than a dunezay i mean i think that you're getting like there's going to be some guys in that next tier that we were talking about with that drop-off tier right into the 109 to like i think that you could argue that jsn true value

in terms of like what like jsn's difficult because value wise there's going to be so many truthers out there consistently that I don't think he's going to fall in value nearly as much as he probably should if he has another season like he did last year. Right. So I try to embed that in my analysis at least a little bit because I think it's important. From that perspective, he's probably like a late first-ish, right? But from the perspective of how I think production could go down and where I might value him is probably more early second as I mean, maybe that's, I just, I'm looking at like some like straight up right now. I mean, I'd probably say, I'll probably just say late first.

I'll probably say after that tier is up just as a pretty safe answer. I'll say I traded JSN away during a live rookie draft that drafted in March, pre-combine actually, true degenerate league. And I traded him for the 203, the 208 and the 307. That ended up becoming Xavier worthy of 203, which felt pretty great when like three days later you had a four. 2-1. Yeah.

And then the pants were off, as you would say. And then I think I ended up trading the 208 into 3-1 and 3-9. So it ended up being four guys. They ended up being worthy, Pierceall, Shipley, and McMillan. Yeah. And just hope that one of those guys ends up hitting above where JSN is. The other audience question in Lucas, he can close it out with your question. Curiously, do you have any thoughts on this?

I thought it was interesting. BV says, would love to hear JJZ's thoughts on how. the NFL doesn't really develop players. He cites Adam Harsad. I know other analysts have talked about how it's not a development league. You come in where you are. Coach is too busy with schemes. You have to be good already.

Curis, you have any thoughts on that and how it potentially relates to like some of these, some of the age of these prospects and if we care where they are in the development curve, so to speak. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of development is probably intrinsic with these guys. And, you know, they either have it or they don't. Like a Chase Claypole, for instance, like just didn't have it, right? and he's just not someone who is going to be self-motivated enough to go. We know what he does have is a contract offer from Saskatchewan Ruff riders.

So welcome home, Chase. Yes, exactly, exactly. But I do think that, like, if you look at data with this, yeah, I mean, it would make sense because what we see from players during their rookie season is generally what we see moving forward, which is why, like, the year two model and such is pretty predictive. I mean, you're going to see Nico Collins type stuff happen. But even Nico Collins was on an upward. trajectory from year one to year two. It wasn't like he was terrible and not getting any better.

There were at least like signs of him getting better. So yeah, I mean, given the fact that we see these guys, like whoever doesn't do very well as rookies, they generally don't do very well later in their career. I think that's definitely signal in showing us that there's probably not as much development as we think with the NFL. When we see turnarounds, I wouldn't be surprised if it's more scheme turnarounds than it is actual player turnarounds. It's a lot of sense. We've got to close us up, buddy. All right.

So you were talking early on about your breakout score, and it immediately made me think of a couple of wide receivers, but I wanted to wait until we were a little bit later on in the show. And the first one that comes to my mind is Jacob Cowing, and how does your model view him with going from? I think it was U-TEP to Arizona, and then also DeVontes Walker with North Carolina this season, also on much lower sample size.

but some of these more successful wide receivers that moved up had some good seasons at the higher levels and now we're declaring. Yeah, I actually, I think Walker within the fantasy space is a little bit overrated. Like, he's, from what I've seen, what I researched, seems a little one trick ponyish, you know, just deep ball guy can stretch the field. Not necessarily the kind of player that I would want to invest in in fantasy so much. like he might be a better real life player than fantasy player. But from a breakout score standpoint, I'm looking at it right now, he has a breakout score of 78.7. So despite the fact that he did have early production,

it didn't get the same amount of weight as it would have gotten, had he gotten that at Carolina, right? And then Jacob Cohen, you know, I think is interesting if we are able to, like, he to me is the potential tank dell of this class. Like if you were to frame it that way, right? if you want to see the higher end outcome.

I think Hoing makes some sense, given the size profile and such. His breakout score is 74.3. So again, it's not bad, but it's not like elite by any means. I know that these numbers are semi-arbitrary, but then you can get a general idea of 50 is average. You know, he's above average at least. But yeah, I mean, like the end of the day, a slot guy like that, you know, Tank Dell, everyone thought was probably going to play the slot in the NFL as

well and then he found the right coordinator, the right system to really trust him on the perimeter. And he's great on the perimeter, right? And I think that we need to be a little bit open-minded about stuff like that happening more. And I'm guilty of it too. I say we as in me mostly. I'd like to go back in time and find myself saying somewhere that I wasn't sure if Tank Dell would play much because they had Robert Woods to play the slot and just like smack myself in face. Right, right, right. I mean, like I think that we typecast these guys a little bit too much, especially in today's game, these smaller guys. So like if,

if Cohen right now, like Cohen right now has a score of 65.7 in the model, which is pretty average, like not great, not like, you know, you wouldn't expect him to give you wide receiver two seasons. But that's with 137 overall draft capital.

So if he ends up sneaking into day two pick, then all of a sudden, you know, he'd become a very, very interesting player to me. Like I think that he's got a more complete profile. I mean, obviously totally.

totally different players, but a more complete profile than a guy like Walker does. Awesome. It does make me really wish that Malachi Corley had a year at a higher level. That'd make me feel a little bit better about drafting him. Yeah. It's what it is. Yeah, I could talk about Corley for like 30 minutes, I feel like. That's one of the more.

I feel like, give it three. Yeah, I mean, I'll talk about it. It's fine. I'm just, like, I think that when we, like, like, we, I feel like people assume that a player who can do Debo Samuel like things is just automatically Debo Samuel. When we get Debo Samuel comps every year from a different player. And what's funny is, you know, he did comp in my model to Debo to some degree just because of size mostly. But his number one comp for me was Amari Rogers.

And if you guys go, anyone listening to this right now or you guys, go to you guys, go to Twitter or go to Google and search Amari Rogers Debo Samuel, you will find people comping Amari Rogers to Debo Samuel because it happens all the time. And if you look at Corley, the thing that's really, really strange and interesting is that at an inferior program, his top season in yards per team pass attempt was still really bad. Like he never put together this like massively good season and within that statistic. You know, I do think that we have to be a little lenient there because of the way they used them. You know, obviously, tons of screens, tons of targets behind the line of scrimmage.

I think that's how he's probably going to be used in the NFL to start as well. And just strictly from that perspective, he might be semi-fantasy relevant because, you know, like if you're just going to get cheap dump-offs and stuff and get four or five touches that way a game, you know, you can be viable in fantasy. But I just don't know if, like, it's okay to say we don't really know. Debo Samuel was a great prospect. Like, despite, I know he's a little bit older. He was over 23 when he came out.

Like his breakout score was like 90. Malachi Corley has a zero breakout score because he went to a smaller school and he couldn't really hit the thresholds that based on the adjustments that I would want him to hit, you know, given the small school they went to. Like he just doesn't have nearly the complete profile that Debo Samuel had. Debo Samuel was great. And I feel like when we make comps like that, we really downplay how good those other players were when they were coming out. And it's not fair to those other players. to something. It's not fair to our analysis. It's not fair to the way that we're talking about these players because it gives people the wrong idea about who these players are. And the other thing about Debo, Debo Samuel is not Debo Samuel without Kyle Shanahan probably, right? Like the chance that Samuel will be used in this identical way and get 40 to 50 carries a year, like, who knows if that would

happen, you know, in a separate offense? Who knows if he'd be the same type of player? So, you know, I think Corley can be fantasy relevant in the right spot, but there's just a lot of things that have to sort of lean his way and go his way to really get there. I found someone as recently as March 31st, 2022, talking about Amari Rogers' abilities to do some of the Ebo Samuel running back stuff. That's, I mean, you nailed it. Ebo gets it always at the receiver. Alvin Camara gets it at the run, every single running back that catches,

This is Albuquerra. It's like there's, there's like a few. It's always the guys that are unique is the problem, right? It's like they actually, it's kind of the universe, right? It's like any of the guys who are like conventionally good prospects or conventionally good NFL players, like don't ever get these. Don't ever get subjected to this. But if you're like, you know, if you're Tyree Kill, if you're Debo, if you're Albubac,

if there's something about you that makes you a little bit different and then you've seeded in like a very elite and specific way, then like everybody's like, He's got a little bit of, you know, this guy in his game, which is... Yeah, like, look, I get it. Like, he's a bowling ball type wide receiver. Like, he can, he's got that dog in him. Like, he can... But then the other thing that I go back to, I'm like,

dude, he's playing against these, like, inferior defenses. He should, to some degree, like, how do we know for sure that's going to translate to the NFL against legit defenders? One thing I would say is, like, in this, I mean, the most raw statistics, but, like, Debo-Saniel's worst season in his college career at 13.3 yards per reception. People always think about Debo's this low A-Dot guy and he is, but he's always very efficient because he's so good after the catch. But he actually has always had like reasonable yards per reception and yards per targets despite having to ridiculous A-DOT.

Malachi, Corley, at Western Kentucky, you know, for, uh, for his career, career high was 12.8 yards per reception. Has a season on his record under 10, right? So it's like he's not like he's getting a lot of that stuff, but he's not actually bringing it in. Um, if you have time for one more guy. We just got a Malik Washington question. I could talk all night about these guys. Yeah. I love a little. I'm very concerned about your East Coast dad lifestyle. I mean, yeah, this is, look, I'm already past, like, I'm already way, way past the bedtime, so it just doesn't matter at this point. My, my, my, my, my, my wearable will be yelling at me in the morning for my bad, my bad readiness score. Uh, yeah, look, Malik Washington, I love. Um, he's,

he's, he's one of those guys where, again, a transfer, Northwestern had a horrible, horrible, uh, passing attack and, and, uh, and pro, uh, uh, uh, offensive attack there didn't really do much, which I know, you know, we're looking at market share statistics. So like, you know, that gets embedded to some degree. But, you know, we all know that if you're in a, in a position where you have a great quarterback and accurate quarterback, and still enhance those numbers, right? And then he goes to Virginia and he completely dominates last year, just an unbelievable, like almost like a like a, not to the degree of Xavier Leggett, but like it's similar in that the first four years were just not great. And then he,

he has this monster, monster year five. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that he's going to be just like this, like, powerhouse type slot guy in the NFL, you know, just a very, you know, one of those just thicker bodied slot guys who can, who can break a lot of tackles. I like him. My model right now has a pretty good pick, huh? He said he sounds kind of like Debo Samuel. Yeah, yeah, it's another Debo, say, you know, that's what we should do.

We're just going to make every guy turn into Debo, Samuel. Actually, he sounds more like Curtis Samuel, but yeah. I mean, look, his, Malik Washington's comp, so looking at it now, it was like Devin Duverne, Michael Campanero. Apparently, he's just going to go to Baltimore. Dee Eskridge was another one for, but those are all like, you know, like bigger body like tackle breakers, which, you know, I could see, I could see that being Malik's game at the next level.

Sounds great. Absolute pleasure to have you on. As always, thank you. We apologize for breaking your aura ring. You know, no, or the ready to score. But anything where, I mean, everybody knows where to find you, but anything you want the people to know about what you got going on? Yeah, man, check out late round.com.

Got the prospect guide. Like I said, I wrote up profiles for all these running backs and wide receivers. And then there's the year two stuff as well in that. And then I'm going to have the tight end scores because I do have a tight end model now. of the tight end scores after the draft. I just didn't want to write all those profiles, just too much to do the tight end stuff. But you can check it all out over on late round.com.

Right, and that link is in the description. If anyone is wanting the quick spot, head down the description, pop that up and like I said, enjoy everything JJ's putting out. It really is top tier. I've been going through the guide since it released. It is an auto buy every year into my inbox.

truly incredible. Jacob, obviously thinking about thinking is buzzing and going or do you have dialed up? Yep, it'll be all rookie content

until the draft. It's been a bit crazy in my real life work the last couple weeks so it's been a bit slow. I'll have probably more of an update on that. Some potential changes.

But yes, I will definitely have everything Ricky wise just going up leading up and we're sort of working through our big draft guide right now. and excited to keep pod

and we have million guests lined up on here all the way through the draft. You bet. I'm going to hit that right away. Of course, we've always taken pride in our guest list. That's not changing now. Obviously, we couldn't do Scott last week.

Scott has moved to a bonus episode this Friday at 9.30 Eastern Times. So Scott Barrett joining us. We have Graham Barfield April 9th, Danny Kelly, April 16th, and the boss man himself, John Hanson stopping by the week of the draft to get a rundown of the vibes as as John likes to dive into. Can't wait for that again, JJ, friend of the show.

We love to have you. Welcome back anytime. As always, of course, remember to check in on your loved ones, even if you're not sure that they need it. Remember that clear hours and full hearts can never lose in your best days. Well, hot damn, they're always spent tilted. Good night, everybody.