Fantasy Football Daily - Drake Maye, Marvin Harrison Jr., Rome Odunze | 2026 Year 3 Breakouts, Sleepers & Busts

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

🎧 You’re already listening—now ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠JOIN THE FANTASY POINTS FAMILY!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🏈 💰 Use promo code FFD26 for 10% OFF at checkout! ⬆️ 🚨 Check out the ��⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FANTASY POINTS FANTASY YOUTUBE!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🚨 Where to find us: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://twitter.com/⁠⁠TheOGFantasy⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://twitter.com/⁠⁠YardsPerGretch ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://twitter.com/⁠⁠FantasyPts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 👾 Join the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FANTASY POINTS DISCORD!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 👾 On this episode of Fantasy Football Daily, Ben Gretch of RotoViz joins the show to evaluate 2026 Year 3 breakouts, sleepers, and fades. The discussion centers on the 2024 draft class, including quarterbacks like Drake Maye and Jayden Daniels, and whether early success sustains into Year 3. At wide receiver, the focus shifts to Marvin Harrison Jr., Rome Odunze, and other high-profile options facing pivotal seasons. The episode also touches on volatile backfields and emerging tight ends, framing which third-year players could materially impact 2026 fantasy drafts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Which year three players can break out in 2026? Theo Greminger, Fantasy Football Daily on the Fantasy Points Podcast Network and Fantasy Points YouTube. Join today by Ben Gretsch. I broke down the year two players with Dwayne McFarlane. If you want to check that one out. We did that recently. That was a lot of fun. Ben, you get the harder one because year two were always sort of optimistic if a guy failed in year one or was underwhelming in year one.

We want to give them the benefit of the thing. doubt. We always fall back on like maybe our evaluations on them as prospects. Maybe there's a coordinator change. We're like, it can happen this year. Year three, we're starting to get a little bit frustrated when a guy hasn't hit. Years and years ago, the year three breakout was so common. And it was like, let's circle this guy. It's year three. He's finally going to break out. Now in days, fantasy managers want to see it from the word go. This should be a very fun conversation. you have seen guys like Nico Collins, James,

hitting a major way heading into year three in recent seasons. Your thoughts on the whole breakouts and trying to identify players who can hit another gear in their third year in their career. Yeah, Jackson Smith and Jigba last year. Probably the biggest breakout at the wide receiver position and, you know, had been not underwhelming through two years,

but really if you look at that second year, you saw once D.K. McCaff got hurt in like week seven that from then on he had a really strong you know per route profile and there were some some metrics there that were very positive leading into year three but he ends up having the massive year three i think that's sort of um the answer to the question is this idea of understanding that all profiles are unique um there's a lot of really interesting relevant context around draft capital sean seagull years ago did great research and and work that showed that early draft capital tends to correlate with earlier breakouts.

For me, for a lot of guys that are going into year three that have gotten the opportunity, because the early draft capital means early opportunity. If you've gotten the early opportunity from day one, from jump, and you have not performed, teams are ready to move on after two years in some cases. One of the guys we're going to talk about today is Jalen Koker. He was a UDFA. That's the opposite side. You have to earn your way.

Sometimes you have to earn your way the first season and the second season. And I remember right after Sean did that research, I applied it a lot to Jacobi Myers. And Jacobi Myers' first good production came in one season. And the next year, he was basically unused for the first half of the year. And he had to basically earn his role again midseason and had a great second half of the year. And it wasn't until, I don't know if it's his third year or if it was even his fourth year because maybe the first year was nothing.

I can't remember his exact timeline. But it wasn't until well on that he had a full season where he was just treated as like an every down player for a full year. either year three, year four for him. So the difference between Koker and the other guy that came in that's a year three that you don't have on the show sheet because we're already writing off basically. The first rounder Xavier Liggett, he got the early opportunity. He got like 10 targets in his first career game in 2024, I guess it was, or maybe it was a second career game.

Those first couple weeks, they were feeding him volume all through 2024 as much as they could. And in 2025, I remember a tweet from your podcast. Go host Scott Barrett at one point during the season about just how horrible he was on a per target basis. I think he had a game where he had like eight targets and like negative receiving yardage and it was the first time anyone had done that in what I had like one catch for negative two yards on eight targets. And it's like how do you do that on eight targets? And so if you get that type of volume and that type of work, but every profile is going to be unique. Jackson Smith and Jigbo was a first round pick. He did get a lot of volume. For me with JASN, it was

that the year one under Shane Waldron, he was miscast, misused pre-bye. He had broken his hand in the preseason. This is going back to his rookie year and was basically just running flat routes. And his Adot was like two for the first five or six weeks or whatever it was. And then post by still not getting enough vertical stuff for the talent that he is. And a lot, there were people after that record that said he doesn't have that in his bag. He can't do the downfield stuff, which is so funny now because he just did a season where he's running basically nothing but overroutes and deep outs and just attacking every space on the

field and looks like the best, the most dynamic route runner in the league as well as like winning jump balls vertically last year. Jackson Smith and Jigbo was tremendous. Obviously the offensive player of the year. But we see that development probably in him from year one to three. The age is another important part. He's an age 21 rookie and it gets misused, I think, is the key that I would say for him. Year two, we start to see an age 22 breakout and I'm a little bit more willing to be like, oh, well, it took him a little bit of time because he's so young, Xavier Leggett, an older rookie and has gotten the work and has not shown it and has been under the same coach and is still going to be under that coach.

I don't expect a year three breakout out of league. When you look at the guys who do it like a JSN, like some of the other names you just mentioned, I want to see basically some stuff in the profile where I can caveat stuff. I can see good things and then I can make caveats and say, I can see why this guy could take another leap. There's a couple of you have on the list here. I'm excited to talk about where I can see that year, that year three could be different than years one and two.

There's others where I'm concerned after two years and a lot of volume that we're not going to see that next year. So it'll be a fun show. Yeah, hopefully Ben can help us avoid some landmines as well as identify some guys that we can embrace. And just a quick note, I mean, people, there's no like true definition of breakout. You mentioned JSN. Some people might say, Ben, the guy had 100 receptions the year before. He already broke out. There's some context to that, but it's taking your game to another level.

I think Drake London would be a great example of that as well. Year 3 was a huge leap in production for him. We're not going to talk about guys who have hit in a major way like a Brock Bowers, a Malik neighbors. People sort of know what they are. We will take a step back and look at two players who broke out huge as rookies. Both actually finished in Brian Thomas Jr's case as a wide receiver one. And Ladd McConkey was like wide receiver 13, but averaged 15 points per game. both those guys were two of the worst picks you could have made in fantasy drafts relative to their ADP last year. And the market has really punished Brian Thomas Jr. But Ladd-McConkey is getting a significant pass for the really poor play he's had down the stretch.

People point at the offensive line concerns. And then you have the Mike McDaniel bailout. Let's talk about Ladd-McConkey first. McConkey has steamed up to wide receiver 16 on underdog, very similar in FFPC redraft ADP. So you're talking about him going alongside players like T. Higgins, Garrett Wilson. Are you in or out on Ladd McConkey bouncing back in 2026 at this sort of a price tag? Well, it's funny. And the other one we're going to talk about here is Brian Thomas.

And we talked briefly before the show and you kind of contrasted their ADPs. And I think that I hadn't done that in my mind yet, even though I've written about it. both of them in my recent field tipper series. And I didn't really talk a ton about their ADPs because I'm just trying to contextualize their first couple years with their prospect profiles. One of the things I always try to focus on as well is I call it the long view, the element of what the players did as prospects as well. So like, again, get back to why I was excited about JSN last year. And obviously the market was too relative to a guy like what Xavier Legate and what they'll think about him going into year three. but there's another difference there as well where we have to look at the prospect stuff.

Lee Gets profile, five-year profile, didn't do much in production at all until his fifth year. Jay Assen's a guy who obviously famously had a ton of production and really crowded Ohio State, you know, receiving cores. And you had Garrett Wilson and Chris Alave there. So those types of elements are still very important. What's fascinating about both BTJ and Ladd, and I compared to them in my piece, but it's sort of funny because I didn't think about their ADPs. And I think you're right in identifying that there's a weird gap here. You kind of mentioned to it to me before the show where he's going, Lad's going as high as you just said, BTJ is really kind of sliding. And then the other one that I think is funny to

compare Ladd's ADP to, or at least, I don't think it was super funny, but I criticized Quentin Johnson's early ADP and I think it's too high. And I got a lot of feedback on social. They're basically like, if you think Quinn Johnson's going too high, what about Ladd-Baconke, could go away way higher. He also was bad last year for the Chargers. Now, again, we talk about this long view thing, Quentin Johnson's body of work, not what Ladd was coming into last year. And I do think that's relevant. But I think there's a fair point there as well that Ladd is going very high relative to that teammate relative to another third year receiver in BTJ. What I think is interesting about both of them as we look at both the profiles is there, both of them had prospect profiles to me,

that had a lot of intrigue and then a lot of red flags. And so starting with Lad, not a lot of red flags, but had concerns. Starting with Lad, the concern was just volume. He didn't run a ton of routes. Two of his seasons were significantly limited by injury. He played along with Brock Bowers. He played in a really great Georgia offense. There was reason to, I think, be, you know, caveat some of the lack of raw production by saying,

look, he's in the SEC. He's got really great teammates. et cetera, and then also the routes element. And then the good part of it would be like if you go look at the per route stuff, his targets per route were good, as yards per route run were good. While he was out there, it looked really strong. And I think if you're trying to like retrofit certain profiles and understand why guys are good, when you looked at Pooka Nakua the year prior and you looked back,

that's the profile you saw, guy who didn't run enough routes really in any season in college for whatever reason, played at two colleges. but the per route stuff showed that when he was running routes, he was very, very good, and that might be a little bit of an underrated trait. And obviously, putting a cool one of the best in the league at this moment, that's not going to be the one thing.

For every player, there's a million different factors to consider it. That's not going to be the one thing that determines success or failure. But for Ladd and also BTJ, when we talk about him, I saw a profile where you could be in on it, you can be out on it. You can really play it either way, because I do think the element of missing a lot of time is also notable. You look at a player like Jalen Waddle had great per route stuff in college, but never really ran a ton of routes.

And that's continued to plague him in the NFL. It's just a guy that doesn't really physically, I think, have the ability to stay healthy and stay on the field and play the number of snaps that you want to see because fantasy football is a volume game. What's fascinating about Laddie, he comes in as a rookie. He has a monster rookie year. He runs a ton of routes.

He has a great per route profile. And you're like, okay, this is a lot like Puka, maybe a like a diet version of it. He's not Pooka Nakua. But the profile showed good per route stuff. And it showed a limited number of routes. But he's been able to now run more routes at the NFL level. He's checked that box. And he's stuck or he's maintained the per route stuff.

And it's fantastic. And so you're like, all right, I have to ignore the stuff that I thought was a concern about the profile. And look at this guy as a stud. And then you go into year two. and part of the reason I wasn't super in on Lad in year two was offensive concerns about like past volume and early in the season this team actually is throwing the ball a ton obviously it falls apart a little bit in the second half of the year

both their tackles get hurt yada yada yada we know all that stuff but what we get out of Ladd even on a per route basis is a much weaker production profile one of the concerns that comes with it in year two is he has more competition so even just Keenan Allen coming back was a guy who's always been able to earn volume and Allen didn't run a ton of routes, but Allen's targets per route when he was out there really high. He's out there like showing that he's still an alpha at his age and a target

dominator in a way that Ladd for whatever reason is not earning the same amount of volume. And it could be defensive attention as well in year two. But suddenly Ladd has a year two that I go to the long view again. And I go back to the prospect profile and I go, man, after year one, I was ready to say I only want to look at the positives in the profile and ignore some of the negatives. Now I see this year two. I got to look at the full body of work again. And I'm going back to the prospect profile and going, man,

I'm a little bit concerned about some of the stuff that was, you know, concerning in the prospect stuff. We now have one good NFL season, one really pretty concerning NFL season. And so I do think there's a really wide range now. I think there could be a really high ceiling here. I think there could be a floor that would argue that his rookie season was driven more by a lack of target competition. and Keenan Allen being back

and the breakout of Aranda Gadsden and even just little stuff from like Trey Harris down the stretch and the fact that the Chargers look like a team that's going to have a depth of options going forward as well that maybe Lad's not an alpha when you get enough reasonable target earners

running routes around him that becomes a concern in year two so there's more of a floor there than I like to see I think his early price is probably pretty frothy. Yeah, it's a little too high for me. We throw out words like opportunistic, wide receiver one, maybe a little bit of that in year one. Just the fact that Keenan Allen was able to sap targets. I understand veterans deference.

I understand Justin Herbert's familiarity with Keenan Allen, but you're still talking about a 32-year-old, you know, dominating those targets early. Quentin Johnston also had that early success with Ladd. So for me, I think the market's being a little too optimistic about the Mike McDaniel bump. the Mike McDaniel bump's going to be really good for the entire offense and Omari and Hampton, etc. But not necessarily the smash season from Ladd McConkey. BTJ is completely beat up. I've had some really smart people who break down film who are concerned about him fitting in in this Liam Cohen offense with Trevor Lawrence. It seems like safer to embrace the Parker Washington's Jacoby Myers.

And then you kind of say that statement and you think about the unbelievable season that BTJ had in year one. And I don't know. It's such a weird player to evaluate right now. But you're talking about 133 targets, 87 catches, 10 touchdowns, and nearly 1,300 receiving yards as a rookie. Now we're treating him like a player that's sliding into low end wide receiver three category.

As concerned as I am, I feel like you have to embrace the upside when it comes to BTJ at this price. Yeah, I mean, I think when you contrast these two, you want to be in on BTJ. But a similar thing, when you go back to the prospect profile, it's a different thing. It's a three-year player where the routes, you know, per, you know, due to like injuries and those things like I was talking about with Latter, not as much of a concern. It's more that the production wasn't great. He did have some other really good players in the collegiate offense.

Obviously, Millie Neighbors was there. But BTJ, even in his third year, which was really the only good breakout year, didn't really even earn a ton of volume that season as far as like the per route stuff goes. It was really all efficiency driven where the production came from. Now, it was a fascinating thing because his efficiency was so high. His yards per target was so high. He had like eight long touchdowns or whatever. He had a matter, whatever it was, like 15 TDs.

I can't remember a ton of touchdowns. And like a bunch of them were like long TDs. And so you're like, all right, I mean, part of the reason he wasn't earning so many targets is like every time the ball is thrown to him, from Jane Daniels. He has a great quarterback as well. He's scoring touchdowns. And so, I mean, the element is like, okay,

if you never even had a targets per out over like 20%, it's not that impressive. And the first two years, he didn't even have efficiency with it. And you have one year of efficiency, but on the other side, that efficiency was so dynamic. You don't want to be out on a three-year player

with a true breakout season who's coming off an amazing final year. And especially with the target competition element with neighbors and that stuff. So you can kind of poke some holes, but you're also like this is a good profile in a lot of ways as well. And then he comes out as a rookie. He has an absolutely monster season. You're like, okay, this is a superstar. I mean, and for him, it's because of the target

competition, getting out from under it, he, I mean, McConkey had the target competition element as well with Brock Bowers, but getting out from under it and then dominating as a rookie, I mean, for both these guys, you're like, these are true number ones who were overshadowed by generational players. Like they were playing with Bowers. They're playing with Malik neighbors. And then for both of them in year two, it's like, well, now they're being overshadowed by not generational players, right? After the Jacobi Myers trade, Myers pretty immediately assimilates in that offense

and has a pretty good rest of season. Another fascinating stat is from the point of the Jacobi Myers trade, Parker Washington was third in the NFL in yards per outrun behind only Pooka Naku and Jackson Smith and Jigba. And so that's really when his breakout, it's like Jacobi Myers unlocked Parker Washington instead of unlocking Brian Thomas,

which is what maybe some of us would have hoped for or thought. And the fit with, Trevor Lawrence is a unique element. Like a thing we have to talk about it and the fit in the offense. But obviously Brian Thomas's rookie season production, the late season stuff, a lot of that came with Mack Jones. It came after Trevor Lawrence had the concussion stuff

and misses the end of that season. Lawrence has not really ever supported a wide receiver like Brian Thomas. He doesn't seem to be consistent enough with the outside and vertical skill set. He loves to throw into slot guys. I mean, I remember back in the early years, the Jamal Egg new stuff and the inflated stats for Evan Ingram, just running as a slot tight end. The Christian Kirk year.

Yeah. I mean, really the only outside threat that's done anything with Lawrence was Calvin Ridley that one year where he was sort of a, again, for me it comes down to if we really believe in Liam Cohen, uh, being this offensive genius, which I think he really is a sharp one. We've seen it for two straight years.

Do we see some like self-scouting in the building where they're going to get things going, figure out a way to get BTJ way way more involved? Is E more of a sacrificial X in this offense just doesn't make sense when he has that sort of production? Then you hear maybe some rumors about trades. So much to unpack here. BTJ, let us know in the comments what you think about BTJ, what you think about Ladd-McConkie. We're going to break down the year two quarterbacks right after this. A lot of quarterbacks have hit from this draft class. but Michael Pennix Jr. and J.J. McCarthy certainly have not.

We'll unpack it right after this. Welcome back, Fantasy Football Daily, Theo Greminger with Ben Gretch. Ben, you're putting out like, you know, when I say I have a lot of people who write articles. You write long form, very thought-provoking articles on stealing signals. Let everybody know what you're doing this offseason, where they can find your work, and what you have cooking for the month of March. Yeah, it's at Bengritch.com. It's just a newsletter.

a little bit of a different take on fantasy content. It's different than what you'll get at, like, at fantasy points and the great work you guys do with all the data suite and all the additional tools and things that I'm not doing. I'm just writing newsletters, right, to my people. But it tends to be more thought-provoking, like you said, I guess, is the thing that I get as feedback or in-depth or what have you. And so far since the season, and during the season,

I watch every game every week. I write about every game every week. That's what stealing signals as an article is for people who don't know. Talk about what's the signal, what's the noise, what trends we're going to see continue, which trends we're not going to see continue. In the off season, I like to do a lot at the end of the season when all that is fresh. When I've seen every game all year, when I've analyzed every game on a weekly basis all year, when all the storylines of the season are fresh, I want to be writing as much as I can.

So I wrote seven macro-level NFL articles in the month of January and into February. and then I started my first really big deep dives into player articles, this field tipper series that I mentioned. It uses targets per out as a foundational staff, but then layers in all the stuff that we know about a dot, efficiency, the types of offenses that are run, that per route numbers are going to be juiced when there's fewer wide receivers and routes

and some of those types of elements that we think about. We're layering in all that stuff to understand what the trajectory is of the veterans in the sport. So I haven't done a lot of rookie work yet over there, a lot on the veterans, if you're doing drafts right now, a lot on which ADPs are good and are exploitable. And then a lot also just on where the sport is going, the macro stuff that I mentioned, a lot on coaching, a lot on quarterback play.

I think 2025 is a transformative year. And right now we have unprecedented parity in the futures odds market. Like, if you go look at the gambling odds right now, people don't know who's going to be good next year. There's like 20 teams that have like legit odds to win the Super Bowl. and the favorites are lower than they've been in like at least a decade. I look at this stuff every year. And so we have a sport that is, I think it's a fascinating sport to be analyzing. If you're doing fantasy football, I think there's a lot of real football stuff that you want to be understanding.

So I've been hitting on a lot of that as well. Yeah, highly recommend stealing signals. And then as you get closer into redraft season, you do a lot of draft strategy. You do your cheat sheets. And then in season, it's just tremendous getting those long form emails as well. So highly recommend Ben's work. Always, always a fun read over there. Let's talk about the quarterback position.

Because when we look at this draft class, players heading into year three, it's been a tremendous class overall. You have Bo Nix, Drake May, Caleb Williams, Jaden Daniels have all made at least a conference championship game. Drake May made the Super Bowl last year in year two. Then you've got two other quarterbacks who were both very highly drafted in Michael Penix for Atlanta. who looks to be in a very good place right now heading into the season with Stefansky and Tommy Reese coming over, new system, but they seem to be embracing him. Kirk Cousins, most likely, is on another team to start next season.

Then you got J.J. McCarthy, and this is sort of the opposite side of the coin here, where we're hearing names like Anthony Richardson, Joe Flacco, pretty much any, Gino Smith, I read that one today, pretty much any. any veteran that's out on the market has been linked to Minnesota as potential quarterback competition. So start with either of them. Your thoughts on Pennix and J.J. McCarthy are these profiles that you're embracing heading into year three or ones you're looking to avoid?

Well, I'll start with McCarthy. And I don't think it's like a unique take or anything. But I think I'm pretty much out on him. And I understand that like the fascinating thing is I've seen some stuff out of Minnesota that's like they should have kept Arnold. But also the lesson from Donald is you don't give up on. players too early. But I don't think you can stick with players that played as bad as J.C. McCarthy did in year one forever. I mean, you can't just like, that would be a case to just

stick with bus essentially forever, right? Like for several years, because Darwin was bad for a lot of years. Even after he goes to Carolina, he was bad in Carolina. And that was like a second opportunity. And he was playing with the Jets for multiple years. The situation's not going to be any different this year. Same receivers, same coaching staff, all of those things. You, you can't really work through all of this in one off season, even if there's a possibility he could be good down the line, which I would be skeptical of. I don't think the lesson from Donald is that every player should get endless opportunities. I think he was so bad last year that you have to evaluate that. And you have to be willing to say that this is not probably an NFL quarterback in my mind.

Or, you know, more than like a long term backup or something. Like I think the comp is like Zach Wilson. Like this is and Zach Wilson to me is still backing up and probably shouldn't be, honestly. Like I think last year, I think even the Dolphins said that. Because late in the year when they got away from Tua, they went to Quinn Ewers. I mean, they wanted to develop viewers a little bit. But Zach Wilson is that bad. And I think, JJ McCarthy, we don't know a lot. There's still a lot of uncertainty.

There's still a lot of uncertainty. There's always going to be uncertainty with young players. We're talking about your three guys. But you have to be willing to evaluate on an individual basis. And there's not an argument just because Donald was this late bloomer that whatever, the Viking should have kept, which is the line right now, that you should just stick with McCarthy and I think everything you're seeing about all the rumors is acknowledging that. Even Derek Carr is not in the league and he's retired and he's saying, well, I would come back

for the right situation. And on one of those podcasts, I saw a clip. It was like, is this the team where purple and gold and he was like maybe, you know, like he wants to go play. He's openly saying I want to go play in that situation for Kevin O'Connell with those wide receivers. And JJ McCarthy was just in that situation, couldn't succeed. But the writing is on the wall when external people are saying they have to replace

him. I know this. I'm a retired guy. I know they got to do something. Let me throw my hat in the ring that I'll be willing to go play for them. So I think he's going to get replaced. I don't think we're going to see a lot of him. It's not just that I think he could start some games and then probably won't play all 17. I think it's probably

unlikely he starts indie games this year. That their week one starter is not J.J. McCarthy and that they don't go to him in season because he was just that bad last year. The Michael Pennock stuff is a lot more interesting to me from the perspective that I've been seeing a lot that's saying he's been overwhelming. And I don't think he's a great player. I went to you, Dub. I'm a,

I'm a Huskies alum. I watched a ton of him. And I was skeptical of him coming in and the skeptical of the high draft capital, particularly because I felt like a lot of what I was hearing, one of the things I heard a ton of is that he's a great deep ball thrower. And the point that I kept making was he throws an incredibly pretty ball. He's got incredible arm talent, like a huge, big cannon arm. It throws a great spiral, big hands. And he can vertically push the ball in a way that when he hits his receivers, it looks perfect. But that offense for the Huskies ran a lot of vertical routes. And as a fan when I was watching it, there was many times he missed wide open guys.

And I'd be like, you can't miss that. I would be frustrated because you have to have those explosive plays when they're there. But, man, you can't, you can't miss that. That's tough. Very next play, you'd have, you know, he misses Jalen Polk, very next play. You have Roma Dunsay wide open and he'll hit the next. guy. And I'm like, okay, well, I guess you can miss it if the next play, you got another dude open down field. And this is what the whole offense is. We're just throwing vertical

constantly. And that's, I think, I think there was too much highlight watching with him. People thought he was this perfect deep thrower. And then they've seen through two years, he's only made 12 starts. They've seen through two years that he isn't. He's inconsistent. He's inaccurate at times. Sometimes when he loads up and looks like he's got something, the ball is way off. And I think sometimes he's just sort of throwing it away. It's sort of his style. What my point is, I think people expected the wrong stuff out of him. And now they're over correcting to that because I don't think he's been bad through 12 starts.

The one thing he is really good at it is he's actually good in the intermediate range. Got a lot of production out of Drake London. Drake London had like four out of five games. The last five Pennock starts, he had over 100 receiving yards. They are really clicking for a stretch there. And then Pennix is hurt and out for the rest of the year. And when London also was hurt and when London comes back and Cousins is in there, he's not producing as much downfield.

The other receivers are not producing. Cousins is your classic checkdown guy. His AdD's a lot lower. He won more games than Pennix last year, but I don't think he was better for the modern NFL. You've got to be able to attack and you got to be able to stress secondaries and then open space underneath. And Pennix's arm talent does give you that.

And he can be accurate to the intermediate range. So for me, this is a guy that still has an NFL future. And yet I don't think he's great. I would comp him to somebody like Sam Darnold. If you got him into an offense that could minimize the negative impact on the mistakes, the fascinating thing about Sam Donald, he leads the league in giveaways last year in an offense that was constantly in Plus script and running, like had negative PROs running despite, you know,

expected pass rates that were lower because of Plus script. And yet he still turned the ball over a ton, right? So I don't think Sam Donald was somehow fixed. I think Seattle did a really good job of putting him in a situation where he didn't have to be more than what he is and the mistakes could be minimized or they could, they could minimize the number of the mistakes basically by calling a lot of runs and those things. I think a future for Pennix where he's an offense in an offense like that that has more

talent. Last year's Falcons had nothing. Darnell Mooney was really, really tough again, under one yards per route run for the second time in three years. Kyle Pennick, Kyle, Kyle Pitts has a breakout year, but at his career low A-DOT, And most of his work is like as a checkdown receiver, like a Zach Ertz. This is not the promise of Kyle Pitts as this vertical threat that early in his career, he was doing a lot more vertically.

The AdDOT was meaningfully higher, several yards higher. Last year he shows that, yeah, he can be productive. And most of it's with cousins who loves to check down. It's not stressing defenses as much as I think people maybe think with the breakout there. There was not a lot of talent in that past game. Give him some other options. give him more beyond Drake London, who he did help elevate from a production standpoint.

And obviously, Bejohn has a great season. One of the big stats of Pennix is the three starts the year prior. Bejohn had 90 plus rushing yards and two TDs in all three games, where Pennix taking over for cousins in that 2024 season where cousins really couldn't drive the ball one year removed from the Achilles. Pennix is driving the ball and opening up the space for the run game. And I mean, I think that can still work. If you put him in an offense,

that can minimize what he does. plays good defenses, a team that plays good defense as well like the Seahawks. You could have a blueprint to win with him, I think, similar to the Seahawks. But it's fascinating to me because I do think he's a limited player. I think he always was a limited player. And now people are down on him through just 12 starts because he's what I think you should have expected he was, I guess, is my point. So I think he's a fascinating one.

He gets punished a lot, I think, for the draft capital spent on him, reflective to what we've seen. If he would have just gone in that like pick 28, through 35 range that maybe Vegas was projecting him for. People would say, okay, maybe we're here. I do think I agree with you that I don't think he's necessarily a player that's going to help you in redraft, but I think as a best ball click or as a super flex, you know, low end QB2, I think he's a good value right now because I think he's got the starting spot

on lock. And I think that the Falcons are cautiously optimistic about him. I'm interested to see how Stifansky slash Reese do with this offense. but Pitts has been franchise tagged. You've got Drake London, who's an excellent player, and you've got Bejohn Robinson, who's the 101 right now. I agree with you. I think that wide receiver 2, improving it,

adding some speed, adding some youth to the wide receiver room is imperative for Atlanta, but I think they're going to do it with this draft and maybe through free agency. So I'm into Michael Penix. Michael Pennix is QB28 right now on Underdog. I like clicking that button, and J.J. McCarthy, QB30, I'm with Ben. I'm out on that one. It feels like almost a zero.

Let's talk about the running backs, Ben. This is a fun one. It's a draft class where let's just go very quickly on this one. Sort of in the light with our Ladd-McConkey question. Buckie Irving is getting like the best coach speak we've ever seen with Zach Robinson comparing him to Bejohn Robinson, saying he can do everything he did with Bejohn Robinson. you can do with Bucky Irving. He can make every sort of run, great receiver. I mean, it's about as good coach speak as you want to see. Bucking Irving was really, really good as a rookie. So it's not as much of a leap of faith here to say he could return value in or out at running back 14 price tags. And to give a sort of an example to the market here, that's right behind Josh Jacobs, right ahead of Breeshall.

Yeah, I think I'm in there. the OC element, what Robinson and what they were doing in Atlanta was able to do to help help Bijin Robinson's breakout season last year and the different usage is really interesting, especially the past game stuff. And Bucky's like yards per out run still good last year is like, so one of the big issues with him and the concern with him would be that like some of the evasion and mistackles for stuff was not as good in year two. But that's always been really high for him.

He was playing maybe a little bit hurt. it was good in his rookie year and it was a very strong throughout his prospect profile. There's a long enough track record there that I'm optimistic. And then he was still pretty good at it as a receiver. His yards per outrun, solid, much better than Rashad White, who's probably gone and way better than Sean Tucker, who they are not likely to use as a receiver.

I think this backfield's probably Irving and Tucker next year, which means Irving has been giving a pass work to Rashad White in a two-man committee, but that shifts where Irving is now probably the primary receiver and lead rusher, but Tucker is like a secondary rusher, kind of like what Kyron Williams and Blake Corum were

with the Rams last year where they're basically splitting the rushing work, but Kyron's getting all of the meaningful receiving stuff and thus still maintained a lot more fantasy value. So between the OC change and the likely receiving usage, I'm definitely willing to buy back in on year three and on a bounceback. And a little bit of the

longer view stuff I was referencing that the year two lack of efficiency and ball in hand peripherals, it's probably a one year or a one year lull, or at least it's certainly something I'm willing to bet on. Yeah, I had this conversation with Scott Barrett last week, and you can check that out right here on Fantasy Points YouTube. We took a look at early FFPC ADP, some values, some clusters of players, and we were both sort of on this.

Bucky Irving is the running back in that range we're most interested in. And he was a guy I wanted to fade last year at times. So I think I'm fully in agreement with you and Scott on that one. Let's talk about Blake Corum, who was an unbelievably good player at Michigan, very quiet rookie season. It's funny, he was overdrafted as a rookie. People sort of anticipated that this could be it. This could, you know, break Kyron Williams. And then underdrafted as a year two player and had a really, really strong season.

746 rushing yards on 145 carries, six rushing touchdowns, minimal as a receiver, as expected. Your thoughts on Blake Corum, do we see him take his game to another level this year? Obviously, Kyron Williams is a huge Sean McVeigh favorite, but if you're looking at potential regression candidates, Kyron Williams, it's really hard to keep betting against him,

but you're talking about a player who sustained a ton of volume over the last few years on a smaller frame. Yeah, I don't think you can draft Kyron in the third round where he's going. He's a really tough one. He's basically a committee back. The problem for Corum is that, I mean, I really like him. And I think he had a great year and I want to be in. They only had him run 116 routes last year.

Kiron ran 350. And his yards per route were terrible. Like, Kyrens aren't good either. Like, this is not an offense where the running backs are doing a ton. A big part of that is that like the targets per route for both these guys are low because they're able to get the ball to poop. get the ball to Adams, get the ball to where they want to get it, so they don't have to go back to the running back a lot. So both these guys have low targets per route. Yards per out is made up

of the targets per out and then the yards per target. It's kind of two different elements. The yards per target side, Kyron's slightly above average for a running back, Blake quorum in the toilet, like bottom, bottom of the barrel yards per target. He's just not a really good player in the passing game yet, probably. I mean, we have a pretty small sample there, but it would be hard for me to imagine, even though I think Kyron is a weird click in the third round, because he gave up so much work to Coram, and you look at the way that continued, even in the postseason, like, this is not a workhorse, but he does maintain all the receiving stuff. And I would be on the lookout for Corum to make Kyron's price look bad because he's taking even more work because he was so good,

as you said. But I also don't want to, like, massively go overweight on Corum because I don't know that the profile can include enough of the really valuable receiving stuff. For me, it becomes tricky because Coram's in the double digits. I think they're both overpriced, basically. Or Coram's fine there, but it's not one that I want to have a ton of because the ceiling, you know, upside is everything here, right? And that's, you know, as we're getting to. And for me, Corm is like, through two years, what I see is a somewhat limited ceiling player.

You can be fine taking him like in the right type of build as like a cost adjusted play. and best ball or what have you, but I have a hard time with the ceiling. Yeah, in redraft, it feels like you're drafting kind of a fancy handcuff where, yeah, he'll have some big weeks, but he's probably going to be on your bench as long as Kyron Williams is, is healthy. And in best ball sense, you talked about chasing upside in this range. He's going next to guys like Judarian Price, guys like Jonah Coleman, who are interesting because we don't know their landing spots.

Do they have a good landing spot? And then all of a sudden, they're ahead of Corum. He's actually going ahead of Tyler Algier, who, based on some media reports, might be in a starting position in two weeks or so. So I think Corum, a little overpriced at running back 32. Talk about a player who had a lot of steam last offseason, especially late in the off season. Braille and Allen, the Jets media was talking them up in a major way. People were, I mean, I was very high in Braylin Allen for about a month period. I argued with a lot of people on him.

Gets injured last year. still exceedingly young, and you've seen him have some success on an NFL field, heading into year three, and he's still only like 22 years old. We know Brees Hall is going to be brought back. Sounds like a transition tag, if not a franchise tag. We'll know again very soon. But when it comes to Braylon Allen, any sort of interest in year three embracing him, and I will pull up his ADP as you start talking.

Yeah, I mean, not particularly. excited. It's early off season. I probably wouldn't be getting a lot of exposure to him because like, like you just said with the Blake quorum range, I assume Alan is going much, much later, but still there are rookies in the late rounds that you can take that are more like upside type plays. If I'm taking late around veterans, I want them to be guys that I think have meaningful value gaining propositions. And I don't know that Alan really does for the reasons you said. We're getting all these reports that Bruce Hall's coming back. And I, the profile is not great.

The receiving stuff, he only ran 20 routes last year before he got hurt. They weren't really even using him that way. He's been big and physical. The rookie year was kind of interesting because he ran a decent number of routes. And then with Aaron Rogers, who loves throwing to the backs, he was catching a few passes. It was much worse last year.

He's still very young. I mean, extremely young. He's just turned 22 in January. For a guy who played two seasons of NFL ball already, there's the potential for him to, continue to be, I think, a good runner and a good secondary player. Maybe I would take some exposure to him, but I kind of want to see how the offseason goes, how the rehab goes, what they're saying about him, and then I would load up later because I don't

expect the price to be climbing anytime soon. Yeah, running back 53 actually feels a little bit expensive for him now. Trey Benson, who just saying his name gets people angry because this is a player that's done nothing over the last two years. He cost a lot of fantasy managers out on a really good. good season with James Connor. Trey Benson drafted in the third round out of Florida State, had incredible measurables at the NFL Combine, and there were people sort of betting on him to take the job in 2024. James Connor ended up being a really, really successful draft pick that

year. Then last year, it looked like Trey Benson was going to have his opportunity. It was very, very short-lived. He gets injured after like a start, and you see guys like Michael Carter, just a kind of a weird year for the running back position for Arizona in general. Trey Benson has had fewer than a hundred rush attempts in his entire NFL career. Really not a whole lot of sample size of anything here, but he is athletic. And now we have a fun head coach hire in Mike LaFleur, an offensive-minded guy from the Sean McVeigh system. Is this really a, it's as simple as does Trey Benson survive free agency?

Does he survive the NFL draft? If not, I'm sort of leaving him alone. or are you sort of chasing waterfalls here at running back 50, 43? No, I like the price for him. Because the profile does have some intriguing stuff. You mention the athleticism. You go back to the college stuff. He had really great, like mistackles force per touch numbers.

He never really was a workhorse. And I think being a workhorse is a skill. And he's shown you at the NFL level that's become a continued problem. And yet we're talking about a lot of ambiguity here. I think Arizona is probably going to bring in another running. back. That seems to be the expectation. It could be someone who could be the clear lead ahead of Benson. And Connor could potentially still be the lead coming back.

But Connor, we know, is at this stage, probably not someone that you're planning around and they're going a different direction, new regime, new identity, a quarterback. But they still have this young running back going into year three under contract under a rookie deal. To me, I, you know, I think Benson's pretty clearly ahead of Connor in terms of the expectation of like total number of reps next year. I'm not saying it's impossible for Connor to be that guy, but it just doesn't seem super likely that he's like their plan next year

under a new regime and new, they're going to have a new quarterback, all this stuff. Benson, though, I mean, I was intrigued by what I saw. It's like how much of it do we put on him? How much of it is his fault? I thought he was going to be a stud at the moment that Connor got hurt. They were already using- We all did. Fantasy points.

We were making some big statements that one week got everyone excited. Yeah, because they were. were already using him more than the rookie year. The one of the thing in the rookie year is like Connor clearly overshadowed him. Before Connor gets hurt, Benson's actually playing in the past game a lot. His snap rate is actually infringing on James Connor, which had been, he had been a clear workhorse in 2024. And you're getting this evidence from Arizona from the coaches that what they saw in camp,

what they saw in practices was a year two player that was better and was deserving of more work. And they were, they were granting that. And then Connor goes down and you're like, I'm really optimistic. He gets the one start, as you mentioned, and gets hurt in that one start. And yet he finishes with 5.5 yards per carry. I know it was only 29 carries. But this is the point.

Like on a small sample, it was a looking efficient as a rusher. He also had four plus targets in three of the four games that he played last year. They were using him in the past game, three plus catches in that stretch. They were using him in the past game a little bit. Again, like how much do you punish a guy for, you know, always having injury issues? in college and then immediately having the injury issue when he's supposed to be the workhorse in the pros, or saying, hey, he just got a little bit unlucky. It's a little bit reminiscent to me of, I thought Javante Williams was ready to absolutely

explode over Melvin Gordon, the year that he ended up having a major knee injury. And he was taking work from Gordon, and then Gordon got hurt. And then Javonte Williams got the major knee injury right behind it. And it was like, man, we didn't get to see this thing that I think was going to be there before because he was starting to show that he was taking the work even before the injury, which tells you something about what the team was seeing and practices in those things. For Giovante Williams, it's a long road back from the knee injury,

but we have seen later in the career that this guy does have some talent. I think you can be a little bit of a T-Leaf reader here and say that probably T-Benson was on his way to a decent second season, and probably right now because of that injury and because of the uncertainty in the Arizona depth chart, I mean, an ADPO 136 over on Underdog in early drafts, there's a possibility he's the lead back, like whoever they add is a little bit underwhelming

and that Benson wins that camp battle or wins more work throughout the season. And there's a stretch where he's a lead back and a dynamic one. And then you have the question of can he hold up? Can he stay healthy? But I think you have to be optimistic about the overall collegiate profile,

the athleticism, some of the things you're talking about, and some of these positive indicators that were there in a limited second season, but one where I'm willing to, to gamble a little bit. Last year we saw Rico Dowdell hit in a major way at ADP or whether you picked them up on the waiver wire. This year, Dowdell expected to move on.

But you've got Jonathan Brooks, who five days ago, Dan Morgan, the general manager, said that Jonathan Brooks is doing very well in his rehab. The Panthers are optimistic that the running back will be able to contribute in 2026. This is exciting. This is a player that we were all very, very, very. high on coming out of Texas, took over for Bijan Robinson at Texas, was extremely successful, got injured, was still drafted very highly in the second round. First running back off the board in this draft class has done nothing.

Obviously, he's been injured for his entire NFL career. Do we gravitate back towards the player he was with the modern medicine and players bouncing back in major ways? Or are you still very optimistic? I got to say I've been clicking that button, Ben. He's going off the board right now as running back 50, which feels a little expensive for a guy who really hasn't played. But Jonathan Brooks was awesome at Texas.

Yeah, I mean, that's the part of it, right? Like, if you're not, honestly, if you're not clicking some Jonathan Brooks right now, you're just not cut out for this. Like, I think, like, you're going to have misses. That's part of fantasy football. That's an element of all this. The types of stuff that we're looking for is when the, The market is mis-evaluating an actual profile for reasons that while valid,

there's always valid reasons that lead into cost. Like, we know why this guy's going outside the top 150 picks. Yeah, he's got two ACL tears. Like, yeah, it's a real concern. We have no idea how healthy he is. But when you hear the stuff from the team, you know that Dowdell's moving on. You know that Chuba Hubbard got replaced last season by Dowdell in season. And it's likely to be the other back there because they still really like him from a,

personal standpoint. Like Dave Canales had all this positive stuff about how he's a captain when they were replacing him. He's taking it really well, all this stuff. Hubbard is good in my mind and still worth being interested in, but is not somebody that Jonathan Brooks can still get back to some type of a ceiling that Brooks can't overcome. And look, Jonathan Brooks may never amount to anything. It's very similar to the Benson thing. But we are dealing with uncertainty always.

And the reason I say you're not cut out for this is that the people that are unwilling to click on this will tell you, of the uncertainty, because of all of that. What I would tell you is every player has uncertainty. The players that you think you're getting certain things from are not certain. You have to understand that there's risk in all of it. Jonathan Brooks is a player that, like you said, first running back taken in that class, a decent likelihood at this point that he never lives up to that, but was young,

turns 23 in July, was a 21-year-old rookie when he played a little bit, retours ACL, was rehabbing an ACL, and still was the first running back taken. retore his ACL. They voluntarily sat him out all of last year. They didn't even try to rush impact. They're like, look, we just want to get this guy healthy for the back end of his rookie contract. I get it. I get the concerns.

It's a little bit like a Rashad Penny to me, where when Penny finally did get healthy in play for stints, we saw that the talent was there. And that's the point here is if Jonathan Brooks plays out all this year, he's probably going to be someone who contributes in a way that the ADP looks. At this ADP with a running back, you just need a few good games. Yes. You don't need somebody who contributes some, and they're telling you from the team perspective,

they want to get whatever they can out of them physically. So the only reason not to click him here is you are way too certain that he can't get back physically is the way that I would put it. And that's where I say that you're not cut out for this, because the point of it would be you shouldn't be that certain. You should everything, like you might still be right, but everything in the history of fantasy football should teach you that that type of blind certainty is wrong.

You should be willing to be open to the idea that, yeah, he's burned everyone and he's done nothing through two years, but the profile is better than this cost. And there's a possibility that he's better than where he's going. Yeah, the need to see it first drafter doesn't usually win big in fantasy football. Brooks is a really, really fun one. We're keeping an eye on him all summer. And Ben, it's one of these players that if he just,

we just get a video of him working out and looking super athletic, that ADP is going to go up five spots. Yeah, we've got a lot. Maybe 20. Maybe 20 spots. Yeah. Absolutely. We got a lot to unpack.

the tight end and wide receiver position, and we're going to do it right after this. All right, welcome back. Wide receiver has been a spot where we've seen a number of these unbelievable breakouts. You referenced the JSN season, James, Nico Collins. We're on a really fun run here. Let's get it going. Let's talk about the big name, the name that was costing a lot of Dynasty managers,

Jaden Daniels shares, Drake May shares, and Malik neighbor shares. And that's Marvin Harrison Jr. Marvin Harrison Jr., everybody last summer, there was a lot of people saying, this is the year two breakout. And he had some very strong weeks, but sort of like his rookie season, it was the lack of consistency.

And then with the missed games, he ended up being less productive than he was as a rookie. You're talking about one of the highest drafted wide receivers of all time. Now he's going off the board. I believe he's wide receiver 33 now. I'll double check that as you give your, response. But yep, wide receiver 33 for Marvin Harrison Jr. We also frustratingly saw Michael Wilson. Michael Wilson last year was a big year three breakout in the general sense. Michael Wilson had those

amazing weeks down the stretch last year that really pushed his production up. So we have Michael LaFleur coming over. Again, Sean McVeigh system has been really beneficial to the wide receiver position. Trey McBride is what he is. Michael Wilson is not going to disappear. But is this a price tag where you're looking to embrace Marvin Harrison Jr. Or will he continue to disappoint in year three? And it's the unsatisfying answer for me is it's kind of like, me, I don't know. I mean, it's a, we go back to the process we're talking about with Ladd and BTJ, which is this idea of, you know, upside is everything, right?

Like you guys talk about it a ton at fantasy points, Scott and Ryan Heath and all the guys. Upside is so important. And that was the big point of what we're talking about BTJ and Ladd, is there's a lot of concern from year two, but there's still a lot of ups and upside in the profile and there's reason that you could still buy into either. Cost is almost like, it's not irrelevant, but it's almost, I mean, it is something that like, it's so funny to think about the Ladd and BTJ costs and there is this gap, but it's also like, I mean, I could see Ladd returning cost at that price if he is an absolute smash. And I can see BTJ not. And it really is just the,

the element of there's really wide bands there. For Harrison, I think, look, you can still say there's a wide band. This is a really good player. There's, there's a lot of profile here. He does fit more into this bucket of, hey, a lot of draft capital, given a lot of opportunity early in his career and has not done a lot. And the fact that Michael Wilson did as well as he did is pretty interesting to me. I will say that the 2026 Cardinals passing game was interesting in that they ended up leading the NFL in past volume, which is one of those outcomes that like, I certainly didn't expect. I don't think really anybody should have been weighing heavily because with Kyler Murray, they were never better than I think it was like 21st in passing.

attempts, but he only gets five starts, which is something that you, you could have thought that Kyler would maybe get replaced, but the idea that Kyle would only get five starts and Jacoby Brissette would play a ton. Again, if you were weighing that a ton in your process, you're having to weigh a ton of low probability eventualities and possibilities to the extent that you're probably just somebody who says there's a lot of uncertainty, period. But because Brissette takes over into somebody that they're chucking it around with a ton, they end up with a mass. massive number of dropbacks. Trey McBride leads the entire NFL in routes, which is rare for a tight end.

He has the most tight end routes by over 100 and the most in like 20 years. If you look back at, you know, route sources that go back that far for a tight end in a season. And I say all that because of the Michael Wilson element, he also ran a massive number of routes way up there with the league leaders. and the Michael Wilson production as a whole was driven, seems like, by more route usage, although it was also very, the splits data was a ton. Like the first few games with Kyler,

Michael Wilson did absolutely nothing. And then obviously he has some of those games where he has, I think he had 18 targets over the first four, first four games of the year. And then he had an 18 target game with Jacoby Percette. And so the whole element with Michael Wilson and what he is, I think is very important here. I have a really tough time with Marvin Harrison.

I don't know what to do with him. I think because of the profile, because there was a really good two-year body of work in college, I want to believe that there's still a lot of upside here. He's cheap enough now. At the same time, we have two pretty tricky seasons. I do think the Cardinals are probably going to come down in past attempts. The fact that they're linked to Malik Willis after all these years with Kyler

and then they have one year with all of these past attempts is crazy. Malik Will's only has six starts, but he is not throwing more than 23 passes in a game. Obviously, he would throw more if he was a full-time starter at times. But you're talking about a guy who would be a run-based quarterback, right? Your offense would be run-based. You would have bottom-based. It would be a little bit like what Justin Fields ended up being for the Jets early in the season. When I go through the projection process, I'd be projecting these guys for a really low number of pass attempts coming off a year where they led the league in pass attempts.

And so you get a massively different team environment situation. And then with McBride being a clear hit, like the one of the, if not the very best tight end, like one of two of the very best tight ends in the NFL, you know that he's going to have a lot of volume, even if the past situation goes, or the past environment goes down in terms of overall past volume. And so it's like, man, are you right back in a situation

like Harrison has been in for most of his healthy game so far where he was playing in anordinate amount of these first two years with Kyler? And volume is a big element. of it. I don't know, man. I think it's a really tricky one. I think it's a really wide error bar. I'm skeptical. I don't think the drop in price is immediately something I want to be all over. At the same time, I'm not going to be completely out on a guy with his prospect profile as young as he is. that has it hasn't been so bad through two years in terms of the per out metrics and the stuff that he's actually done on the field that I would be completely out.

And when you do the long view, when you look back at the college production, you should feel like this is still a player that has more in there at the NFL level. So yeah, really tricky one. But not a guy I'm going to be overweight on, but a guy I'll probably have some exposure to. And that's kind of doesn't matter for the cost. Even if he gets cheaper, I don't want to get like massively overweight. on him necessarily because it's really just like a binary outcome with him. Yeah, I think that's an interesting way of putting it.

Another player who was drafted very closely to Marvin Harrison Jr. in the NFL draft, another former Washington Husky, Roma Dunzee. And Adunzee for the first month of last season looked like he was going to be the league winner at the wide receiver. Besides Jackson Smith and Jigba looked like he was going to be the league winner. For the first four weeks of the year, he never finished lower than the wide receiver 20 on any given week. And he scored at least 15 points in every single week. Then the foot injury and other things started to derail him, missed the end of the year, came back in the NFL playoffs, played in that game against Green Bay, earned six targets there.

But very, very quiet down the stretch. Roma Dunze, a very interesting one here, Ben. and profile-wise, 23 years old, was the ninth overall pick again in 2024. Now you've got Luther Burden. You've also got Colston Loveland, who the fantasy community are embracing both of those guys really, really enthusiastically.

Adunze is sort of just kind of chill in there at wide receiver 30. Yeah, and I'm probably pretty out. Even as a UW guy who's a huge URoma Dunseye fan as a person and as a player as well, well, I really liked watching him. He was incredible in college. The longer view profile on him is that this is a guy who didn't really produce much until

his third year in college, you know, that you have the pandemic stuff that it, you know, influenced the early years, but it doesn't really produce much until the third year in college and then really has a breakout as a senior. And that was a concern with the profile when you looked at him as a top 10 pick was it's the age adjusted stuff isn't there yet. He's too late of a producer. He's a four-year guy. We don't have the early declare.

There's some concerns there to, to be. me the issue with him was always, and they're not that dissimilar players, was, is he going to be a top 10 pick like Corey Davis was, which is not to disparage Corey Davis. Corey Davis was a good player. Corey Davis was also a four-year collegion, but had a really good production profile

actually in college, but was a top 10 pick and was always just like a good number two and never a top 10 wide receiver. And I think through two years with Romad Dunsey, I mean, he obviously rebounds in year two, and it's much, much better in terms of stats like yards per out run, but it's still not good enough just because he improved.

doesn't mean it's good enough. The efficiency at the catch point, this is more of a film take as somebody who watches all the games, but he left a lot out there. He dropped a lot of balls while he was producing. And he was scoring a lot of touchdowns

early in the year. That was part of why people were like, Roman dudes is crushing. A lot of what I was writing on a weekly basis was like, he's having a good year in a system that seems to be working for Caleb Williams.

Ben Johnson's getting these opportunities. He's also leaving enough out there, and that's a concern. And then I think when you see the late season stuff, yes, he gets hurt, but you see Luther Burn come on. You see Colston Lovellum come on, and you think about what this team's going to do over the offseason,

there's no question to me that Ben Johnson is a smart coach. And when he goes back through and he plans out how he wants to feature players in the next season, the Roma Dunez is not at the top of that list because you just look at the body of the work and the way he's played. I think he's good. I think he's going to be good. I think he's going to have production. But at these costs, you're talking about him needing to be sort of a number one.

And I don't know that burden is necessarily that dude either, to be clear. I'm really intrigued by Luther Burden. I'm really in on him from a per route profile, but I do think it's interesting that they weren't quick enough to get him on the field more and we're limiting him. And the total routes volume for him is a little bit of an interesting consideration, despite how good as per out profile was. But I do think you're talking about burden.

You're talking about Loveland's one, I think it's hard to not be really optimistic about, you're talking about those guys as the future of what is probably going to be a run-based offense, and I think they'll have better running back play next year. I think both those guys, Swift and Menongai, were very good last year, but also that we saw that the Ben Johnson offense is just really good for running backs. And if you get an even more dynamic player back there, that that guy could be a fantasy superstar. Because I don't think Swift and Menongai are huge elevators of situation. I think situation was helping them more than the other way around.

And so you get a really dynamic. You get Ben Johnson his new Jemir Gibbs in Chicago, maybe not a player of that level, but somebody who can do more out of the running back position, and take up more of the overall offense. You talk about Loveland, you talk about Luther Burton, and I don't know what will happen with DJ more, but the potential there. A Dunezade and me kind of gets lost in the shuffle.

The price tag right now is still thinking of him like a top 10 player. I don't think he's ever going to be that type of a player at the NFL level. And he's one where we've sort of seen enough, I think, through two years. I'm pretty concerned. You know, a lot of the community mentions Luther Burden as the problem for Adunze, but I think like you talked about, it's Colston Loveland. Loveland had four straight weeks, including the playoffs, where he had double-digit targets, including a 15 target game from Caleb Williams.

I think he's the alpha in the offense, and Burden is going to be somewhat alpha-ish in a different way. But Loveland is so good. For me, Adunze, there is potential he's the number three target next year. That's not really going to cut it. So I think I'm with you. I think that the optimism for Adunzee, maybe he should. should be being drafted a little closer to like wide receiver 36-ish, not this teetering towards

the 20s. One profile that I'm really into right now, and I just can't quit the guy, it's Ricky Purcell. Ricky Purcell, Kyle Shanahan loves him. And you have this change and turnover at the wide receiver position in San Francisco starting last year with Debo Samuel. Now this off season, Juan Jennings a free agent, Brandon Ayuk, they're finally going to move off of. They could draft a wide receiver at the end of round one and sort of make this a little bit less of an argument. You also have George Kittle set to miss, I don't know, I'm not a doctor here, Ben. People get angry when I give my prediction. I think like 10 games, eight to 10 games missed for George Kittle next year is about right. So I'm looking at a potential that Ricky Purcell could start

the year as the number one target in San Francisco. We knew last offseason that this was all the beat reporters saying how Brock Purdy and Ricky Purcell was a connection that was just cooking all throughout training camp. Now it might finally happen in year three. And I'm getting him at a wide receiver 35, 37 price tag. I think this might be the one that we've talked about this show that maybe I'm most interested in. Or am I just being optimistic at a guy who can't stay on the field? No, I'm right there with you. I was excited to get to him. He was going to be the same one for me that this is like a year three type of profile where it's been improving and you want to be in on a potential year three breakout. I don't think it's, you know, like on the JSN level,

to go back to the ways that we were breaking the early part of the show, the different profiles. When you do the long view thing, Pearsall was not very productive in college. And to be a, even on a per route basis, when we start talking about like the Pukonukkah or Ladmokonki profiles, to be a legitimately every down productive player at the NFL level, it is, is tough when you have a five-year collegiate profile like Pierceall, and even on a per-out basis, even though I know he has some small samples in there, never really does a lot. Even in the advanced ages, it's tough to be a superstar. Having said that, the situation is fantastic.

You're in a Kyle Shanahan offense. He did always have after the target efficiency and athleticism, test at athleticism, really good ball skills, I think. And the selling point for Pierceall was how is they can scheme him some work and then he can be efficient on that. I was skeptical because he only had the sub 15% targets per outrun as a rookie, poor yards per outrun, all that stuff. People made the case that obviously the gunshot wound was an issue.

One of the things I argued was when he came back from the gunshot wound, he got volume early and then lost it for a long stretch. And I don't think people realized in that rookie year how many games he played a lot of snaps and was healthy and was not getting work. And then he got some in the last couple games of the year. Having said that, I think I was wrong because you look at year two. I think I dodged a bullet as somebody who pretty much faded pierceau

in that he ran fewer than 300 routes and was hurt a lot. His yards per out run shot up. His targets per out shot up. His yards per target shot up. All of it shot up. Targets per out shot up at a higher a dot. They were able to get him per route volume

further down the field. He was more efficient. I don't know necessarily if you adjust for that depth if his yards per target would be massively more efficient. But it was very, very strong on a per target basis, the yardage. He just didn't score any touchdowns.

That's one of the elements. And he didn't run a lot of routes. And so I don't think people realize that year two was actually pretty strong for him. People like me who were fading and dodged a bit of a bullet. And then you have the situations you're talking about with Kittle coming back from an Achilles. Brandon and I, you not going to be there.

Joanne Jennings, a free agent who his... So one of the big things about Pierce Slegoe in the last year, I was more into Jennings because there was a big gap in targets per route. featuring Jennings more, even though Pearsall was a rookie coming back from the gunshot wound, all of that, their targets per out converged. Jennings was still higher, but the targets per out really converged in Pearsall's year two. And that's what you would have wanted to see from Pearsall if you were in on him and trying to make the caveats after his tough rookie year.

And then in addition to that, the yards per target side of this, the efficiency, the after the target efficiency, Pearsall really, really good. Jennings was bad. So even if Jennings is back, I think you're talking about those things that being passing in the night. Jennings targets per out is coming down and he's not efficient. You don't earn more volume when you're not an efficient

player. Pearsall's is going up and he's efficient. He's the elevating player. But I do think Jennings is probably likely to be gone. I mean, you're going to have a situation where Pearsall is like the tenured player in this offense because he's played with Proc Purdy a little bit and there's no one else to throw it. The difference on a per out basis between like George Kittle

and like Jake Tongis, when Kittle was missing time. Tonjus was still like vaguely fantasy relevant, but a massive gap, like a one yard per route run, like a huge, huge gap. Kittle is an elevator.

Even though Tonj has some production, he's just a route runner that is soaking up production. So the target competition for Pearsall figures to be, I mean, I think they're going to add somebody or potentially multiple people, but it figures to be significantly worse and people that need to find their own footing and their own way in the offense.

Pearsall could be like the legit focal point of this past, game other than Christian McCaffrey, but the Christian McCaffrey thing is fascinating as well because, yeah, I mean, he's a superstar and I'm super in on him. He runs over 500 routes last year for only the second time in his career, a massive number for him, the most in the league at the running back position. And the last couple times that he's actually gone for as many touches and as many yards as he did, the next two seasons, I mean, he combined for seven total games. I'm not saying he's definitely going to get hurt next year, but he led the league in touch. last year. You add in his playoff games, he had 450 touches. And the last couple times

that he's done this, that he's had a 2,000 yard season in a regular season, he has gotten hurt the next year. So certainly at his age, you get a little concerned. I don't want a pattern match too much. But my point would be that the likelihood that McAfrey is so dominating of the past game that Pearsall can't get his seems small to me. In fact, if McAfre's healthy, it's probably just fine for Pearsall because McCaffrey does a lot more at lower A-Dots, even though he does run traditional wider sea routes, they're going to be underneath. Pearsall's a 14A dot guy.

He's downfield. You probably want McCaffrey's gravity on the field and then letting Pearsall find space downfield. I don't see any impediment to him being significantly featured next year. He's the year three guy you'd expect to potentially have a real ceiling. Yeah, I'm glad to hear your enthusiastic about him. I really am. I think whether you play best ball, redraft, or dynasty,

this is the year for Ricky Purcell. this is sort of your classic year three breakout. A little bit less classic would be Jalen Coker. Jalen Coker, like we talked about earlier, has had to overcome being an undrafted free agent. It comes in the league the same year that Carolina uses the first round pick on Xavier Leggett, has 33 catches as a rookie. Then late in redraft season, and Ben, you draft high stakes just like I do.

The NFFC drafters, the FFPC drafters, the FFPC drafters were really pushing Jalen Coker up and up and up as we got to the very end of August, beginning of September. Then he gets injured. We hear he's headed to the like the IR going to miss time. That hurt him. Comes back last year and looked amazing, especially in the NFL playoffs where he had one of the best games of his career,

nine catches for 134 yards and a touchdown in that really exciting wildcard loss to the Rams 12 targets in that one. I love Teteroa McMillan. But Jalen Coker seems like a player that is really, really good. The coaches are finally realizing it. And he's going off the board right now as the wide receiver 53. Holy Cross to Year 3 breakout. Could it happen?

I mean, I think so. This is the guy that's a lot like the Jacoby Myers. Now, his per out profile last year was meaningfully worse than the rookie season. and yet, well, that's actually, that's true if you look at the regular season. It's worth pointing out that their one playoff game, he has his best game of the year. He has a 12th target,

I think nine catch 130-something yard game, which is obviously very relevant as well. And then the per out profile, when you add that game in, it doesn't look meaningfully worse. It's still a little bit down in year two. But the relevant element of that is he gets banged up, right? And so I was, you mentioned the steam on Coker

at the end of last draft season. I was in on him all offseason. I was saying he was the best late round receiver, basically a hall of last off season. So I'm a little bit biased here, but I had a ton of him in basketball earlier in the offseason and all that stuff. But the main reason was this element I told you at the top of the show about the difference in trajectory for an undrafted player versus a first round player. And I was comparing cocker to league at, and I wrote this up in my field tipper's piece last year at the beginning of the off season last year, where I was more optimistic in Koker going into 2025, then Lee Gett, because Lee Gett was getting volume right away and had a really ugly rookie year. He's actually a year older than Koker as well because he was an older prospect, which is, you know, the earlier picks tend to be the younger dudes. But Koker was a

younger guy than him at least and has a less volume, interesting rookie season, but has a lot more per target efficiency, and we see the early career efficiency tend to lead to more volume. And so I thought, Coker, okay, late round guy who established late in the year. And the key for me with Coker,

when you think about him, he got an opportunity because Adam Thielen got hurt and he was playing in the slot. And then he got hurt right when Feeleon came back. This is 2024's rookie year. Dealin took the slot back,

and Thielen was producing a lot when Coker came back. And there was a lot of people saying Coker's not going to have a spot. Coker was good enough that when he came back, Dave Canales got rid of David Moore, I think it was in the offense,

and moved Koker to the outside. And one of the big positives about Kokor is he can play everywhere, but they found a spot for him without having to replace Thielen who was producing at the end of 2024. That to me was a really positive sign. By the end of the year, Canales said, Kekar is one of our three best receivers. We got to have him on the field when he came back from that injury.

As a rookie, in a different spot than where he had been producing earlier. Year two, he's hurt. He comes back slowly. He misses the first six weeks of the year. And then he catches just seven balls for 66 years. yards across his first four games. That's a big reason that his per out profile is limited and looked so unimpressive. This past year in year two is because those first games back from injury, he really just

wasn't fully healthy. And we see that a lot. There's this old Mike Tomlin quote that I use all the time, that it's hard to board a moving train. It's difficult in this modern NFL. And I think with more sports science and all that, teams are a lot slower with these guys to ramp them up. Anyway, Coker toward the end of the year last year does start.

doing more. It is a lower volume pass offense, but he's scoring some touchdowns. He's not putting up a ton of yards. But then when they get to the postseason, they finally have one good offensive game. They tie their season high in points. They had a 31 point game. They nearly upset the Rams who come back. Coker scores a touchdown with about

two minutes left to take the lead in that game. Rams come back. They score with under a minute left to win that game. But when their chips are down, seasons on the line, who's their dude? And look, I'm massively in a Teddrow McMillan. He's the clear number one. I'm on him totally. But Coker, the clear number two, has the huge game there.

12 targets, nine catches, 134 and that touchdown. Best game in the season, chips are down. So for the second straight year, here's an undrafted free agent who wasn't a part of the early season game plan, had to get back up the speed, but by the end of the year, had established himself in a clear role under the same coach, Dave Canales, who has now told you twice. He thinks this player is one of his best receivers. And I think in the second year, he told you he's the clear second weapon in the passing game,

alongside Tedroa McMillan. I think going into year three, you can certainly caveat some of the per route numbers and some of the fact that the production wasn't amazing. It was only a nine-game sample in the regular season, and it wasn't great in those first few. I think it was nine. Maybe it was a little bit more.

I can't remember. Anyway, the first four games were not super impressive and he was not being used a lot as he was working back from a hamstring injury that you don't want to have a re-injury or any of that stuff. And so it was an 11 game sample in year two. I knew I had that wrong. But the first four games, I'm kind of saying

are a significant portion of 11 game sample and pulling down the per route numbers. And I think people are going to look at it and be like he's not that interesting and not understand the trajectory of his year two and how it closed and really how that playoff game was the best one of, you know, best game of his career potentially. And then similar stuff in year one. and now you're going into your three.

This guy's probably a legit NFL receiver. The other thing, you talked about Holy Cross. A lot of small school guys don't have the athletic profile. Jalen Coker is an NFL athlete. He's a big dude. He's athletic. It was a combine invite out of Holy Cross should be added. Yeah, and looked great there.

And so this is a dude that I'm willing to make the caveats on the statistical profile, the per route profile, and say, look, I'm willing to say that this is a late round guy that's needed some time, a bumpy first couple years, but is on an upward trajectory going into year three. Super, super fun one. Jalen Coker, there's a hive right now. Last off season, there was a huge hive for Xavier Worthy.

Worthy was one of the more polarizing guys to talk about in the community where there were some people completely out on the profile, and then some people like yourself that were very much in on them. Then we had last year the Rashi Rice suspension, which caused Xavier Worthy. ADP to move up a little bit thinking you're going to get this really fast start. PTSD time. You're a Xavier worthy manager.

You're playing against the LA Chargers. It's Friday. It's Brazil. It's unbelievable optimism. And he gets injured on the first drive of the year. All of the Xavier worthy haters were coming out in full drops. I had Scott Barrett just DMing me awful things about it. Look at your 170 pound king just got laid out.

And it was awful. It was sort of a downward spiral. So it was terrible. You had me on last year and told me a big part of it. You're excited on school of Scott. You're a big part of it is you're excited to hear me and Scott kind of debated. We did. And he was not in on worthy.

I will say the one good thing that came from Worthy's years at one point, Scott tweeted that he was wrong, that the worthy hive was going to win that, that discussion based on, you know, when his 20, 25 season actually looked good. can't even remember when he tweeted this. I do remember him tweeting it. But I was like, thank God. That we at least got that. He probably deleted it. He probably deleted it already. Don't go searching for it. It's over. We won't get Scott to say a positive thing about Xavier worthy for the

rest of the offseason. But will we get Ben Gretch to right now? I can't say anything positive. I struggle with length, obviously. And this would be the one that I think would be the longest in terms of the caveats and in terms of the nuance and the gray area for this player. I think the people that were concerned about the hell stuff can rightfully take their victory laps. The shoulder things is a tough thing. He also ends up having an ankle injury that I don't think got as much discussion as it should have in the middle of the season.

I really seem to sap him of his speed. And at the end of the day, what we see in year two is a much higher ADD, three plus yards higher than the year one. The fascinating thing with Worthy is everybody that was out on him or the, I shouldn't say everybody, but the frequent thing I saw about him was he's a manufactured touch merchant. And people didn't love the fact that he got so much manufactured touches late in the season. My thought was always, that's a foundation.

His last eight games, including the playoffs of his rookie year, he had five plus receptions in all eight games. Five receptions, if you just average five receptions in a 17 game season, that's an 85 catch year. That's great. And that's sort of the like, Wondell Robinson thing, where people are like, well, it's just the low

low upside stuff and he can't do anything vertically. And my argument, Worthy was like, well, they barely missed on some of the vertical stuff. You hit on some of that.

You have a real ceiling. I bring up Robinson because we did see that with Robinson a couple of times. He did get some air yards. That was the promise of Worthy. That you could have some big games like Robinson did

in that game against Dallas where he had two long catches, had the long touchdown. Robinson had like a 30 plus point game. Was a freaking DFS, you know, hero and fantasy week winner. for anybody who was playing him.

And then, yeah, he still had a low A dot at other times. Robinson and Worthy are not the exact same player. I'm talking about the statistical, the way that the low A dot manufactured touches helped build a foundation when you hit the big play and it becomes a well-rounded stat line that has enough catches, has enough yards, can have a touchdown in there.

The problem with Worthy is we saw none of that in year two. We didn't, we lost the manufactured stuff and we still didn't have the vertical efficiency. And so the promise of what he was, he certainly didn't get to be. Now, how much of losing the manufactured stuff was because he had his shoulder separated on the first play, you know, one of the first snaps of the season by his teammate who later, you know, candidly acknowledged on his podcast. It was his own fault.

Kelsey said, I should have been better. It's my, you know, I've been playing the league. I got, it's his job to clear that vertical route when Worthy's looking back at the quarterback and worthy getting open on the on the drag route and he's running in a straight line is like the primary target on the play and Kelsey's basically just rubbing the defender. And yet Kelsey just lets himself like in a nonchalant way get pushed right into Worthy. Yeah, PTSD is very high for me on this one. But we knew immediately that the shoulder injury could recur, could be a problem throughout

the year. The other thing we saw in that first game was Marquis Brown went on to have 16 targets, 10 catches, 99 yards in that first game. As far as a game plan goes, it was very clear to me that Xavier Worthy was going to get most of that work and then they just had to like spam it to marquis brown but like coming into the year it seemed like worthy was going to be that guy that's how they talked about him and then potentially could hit on some vertical stuff too the issue with the vertical stuff is my biggest problem going forward with worthy which is that mahomes was able to find connections with tycoine

thornton and there's that whole one of the big things that scott brought up was that um you know brett and and and the crew at fantasy points talked about worthy being so bad at ball tracking and i was like man, but if you watch that rookie year, most of the misses are Mahomes overthrowing worthy, which seems not sustainable. After a full second season of seeing this, after knowing that there's some issues with his deep efficiency in his prospect profile, which I've always acknowledged, but I was trying to say, like, you have the fastest player ever and you have Mahomes,

who tends to elevate efficiency. He elevated efficiency for other bad receivers, like Marquez Valda Scantling, like Mikul Hardman at times. I don't think those guys are good. I don't think you have to be great to be able to score long touchdowns with Patrick Mahomes. But Xavier Worthy, after another year of this, I'm worried that there is a thing here where whatever it is,

the reason he's getting overthrown is when he picks up the ball, he slows down or something. He does stuff within his own route that impacts the timing. Because Mahomes have stoned great deep balls, like I said, to Taekwon Thornton. They're able to make connections. He's still not able to get worthy the ball. And that stuff probably should have been there.

The easy thing unworthy would be for me to just say, I was wrong and he sucks and we could move on because there's not much in the data that does anything to confirm anything other than what the naysayers have been saying. I will say this is a dude that was 21 through his whole rookie year, 22 through his whole second season. He doesn't turn 23 until the end of April this off season. He's still 22 right now as we record this. The 2025 was bad. I have legitimate concerns about the component parts and where I think the upside could come from.

And yet, man, that shoulder injury, the fact that his ankle injury sapped his speed in a big way, his big differentiating trait in a meaningful part of the middle of the season. If you were watching the games, it was clear. This dude was not moving well. And they weren't using him. The fact that they no longer really felt that they could feature him because of those injuries, or at least that would be the optimist's opinion. He's still so young.

I think there are paths in year three and he's cheap enough now when people are, the thing that I strongly believe is people are way too confident that this is yet another speedster bust. There's nuance here. And the reasons that you could have been in on him last year didn't go away because he got his shoulder separation in week one. And nobody who was in on him ever refused to acknowledge that he is a small dude and that frame could be a problem.

The whole thing is tricky. But like I said, year two, there was enough problems with some of the efficiency stuff again that I am starting to move toward the Scott Barrett and the naysayers opinion. that this guy may just not be very good. That is still an outcome, right? Like, we always have to acknowledge uncertainty. So it's, it's a really tricky one for me going into year three. Yeah, and it could be just the trend of that class. A number of these guys we saw really hit as a

rookie, you know, sort of regress a little bit in year two. And David Worthy potentially beyond. I'll also add that I think nine overall might end up being a wide receiver just the way this draft class is shaking out. Does Kansas City really fully trust Rashi Rice with the off the field stuff and some appealing names like Carnel Tate, George. and Tyson will be there for the taking. We'll keep an eye on that and we'll cover that all off season long. Ben, you've been super generous with your time and your takes. I thought this would be a shorter one, but of course, when we get together,

we always kind of rip and run through a lot of these subjects. Let's end it at the tight end position. Two fun players. A.J. Barner was really good last year. The threat of Elijah Royo was nothing. Barner was the tight end to roster in Seattle. He was free. A lot of people picked him up and used to.

him had 52 catches, 519 yards, and six touchdowns. Also at 10 rush attempts. They used them on some like Taysam Hill type looks. And Theo Johnson had 45 catches, 528 receiving yards, and five touchdowns. When you look at these two players, they're both going as tight end 20 and tight end 22, very similar ranges in ADP. Do either one of them look like guys with a lot of room to run in their profile, or is this sort of what you're expecting again heading into year three, guys that are going to be, you know, solid players, but more of innings eaters at the tight end position,

best ball type guys, rather than players you'd feel comfortable starting in a traditional redraft format? I think Barner's fun. My concern with Barner is the total number of routes. He still gave up a lot to Elijah Arroyo. There's a lot here as far as the multi-tight-end sets, the trend in the league, the different types of offenses,

in particular the literally the Mick Shanahan offenses. They did draft Elijah Arroyo. He runs 158 routes in the regular season. Barner runs 361. Barner does have the touchdown on the Super Bowl that will come to mind for people, but I think he had like two catches in the first two playoff games. I mean, I think he's a fine.

like late round high floor best ball play, I do think it's tricky for him to get near the high end of the route. So I think you're playing him as like an efficiency play on the weeks where he splashes, but you're going to have games like his first two playoff games, which I just look back on and confirmed. He played over 100 snaps and had three targets and two catches for 13 yards combined across those two games. You're going to have that type of stuff, I think, in the profile.

And especially as a Royal goes into year two, you could see Arroyo actually start to like shrink that gap in routes where Barner was actually more than double the routes last year. But Arroyo was fine on some of the volume he did see. I do think Barner was better. And I think there's a lot of reason, again, to be excited about Barner. He did. The other really exciting thing about him is he did the Tsh push stuff and he had a rushing TD and he had 10 different, you know, carries throughout the year, which is speaks to the fact that he may be able to add multiple rushing TDs next year. especially with the Zach Charbonnet,

Zach Sharbony expected to miss. And, you know, a question marks about the backfield if Walker does in fact sign with somebody else. I think that's an interesting take. Yeah. I mean, I think there's some reason to be like,

yeah, he's going to be a win at cost with the late ADP and in like a best ball play. And yet I probably won't take him in managed because I don't want to be dealing with the weekly, like this is the type of tight end that makes people think that the late

on tight-end strategy is amazing because best ball data shows that it can be good because he can have good games when um when you actually roster this guy in season you're thrown out a dartboard and you have some real issue with the floor and the reason I actually subscribe to a lot of the elite titan stuff is when you hit on a guy like tray McBride it's not so much the ceiling although the ceiling is even higher it's the combination of the ceiling on a weekly basis and the floor and the element that like you have this advantage every single week in a weekly game um a j Barner, the routes element to me is the real concern. Johnson's routes were even higher last year.

He wasn't quite as good on a pro-rout basis, but there was some stuff there that was positive. Now, they're going to have a whole new offense. He was never a huge, like, earner in college. There's a lot of talk about there was a lot of guys at Penn State and, you know, a little bit of competition there. The fact that he had a better second year and played well with Jackson Dart is actually a little bit intriguing to me.

and he made some interesting plays down the field. And some of these tight ends a little bit later, you know, developers, we get a new offense. John Harbaugh, obviously, with the Ravens often subscribe to, you know, he had different OCs, and I think there's going to be different things where they have Matt Nagy now, so who knows what will happen. But Harbaugh's offenses often featured tight ends.

I wouldn't call them his offenses necessarily, but I think he sees value in the position and in the versatility of the position. and that's where the sport is headed. So could they use Theo Johnson enough for him to be interesting? He's another one where I think for him it's more like I think the routes could be enough that he could be. This is like what Kate Otten has always been. Kate Otten has always run a ton of routes. And so he's been fantasy viable as a late round tight end.

But again, still as a floor guy because his per route production is not good enough. So both these guys are limited in different ways. I think Barner could be one that you could say is a really good player potentially and could continue to elevate his per route profile, but won't run enough routes. Johnson's a guy who may run enough routes, but probably isn't going to do enough on the per route profile to be anything other than, again, sort of a high floor play out of a late round tight end spot. But I think they're both playable. I think they're both interesting. They're both valued correctly in the market. We'll be interested to see what goes on with guys like Wondell Robinson. What does this passing game look like with New York when we get

down to it. Who's the target competition? Is there a chance that Theo Johnson could take his game to another level? Love your take with Barner. It seems like a Mike McDonald guy where he really just loves Barner and wants to use him. So it'll be interesting to see does his game take a step to the next level? Last year, sort of left for dead by Elijah Elroyo enthusiast like myself. And Barner's just a good football player who's hit in a major way. So keep an eye on those two tight ends. So many guys, we covered today. This was so much fun. Ben, let everybody know once again what you have going on and where people can find your work. Yeah, Ben, Gretchencatshotsubstack.com is the newsletter. The in-depth sort of receiving profile stuff that I talk about, I just wrote the field tippers

articles, did all the AFC in one, NFC and the other. I go team by team, and you'll get that from basically any player in the entire league. It is a premium newsletter. You got to pay to subscribe, but I think I try to make the value worth it. And then Stealing Bananas is the podcast with Sean Segal that I do most of my talking on if you want to come listen. Yeah, make sure you check out stealing bananas. Sean's been on a number of my pods as well. Really, really a fun listen with you guys whenever you drop it, especially you're going to start dropping a lot of this rookie stuff. Very relevant to hear Sean's takes on the rookies as well as Ben's whenever you get to it, Ben. I know you got a lot to write about. Stealing signals, highly recommend it.

Make sure you stick with us here, Fantasy Football Daily. We're dropping shows like this multiple times a week. Make sure you're checking out School of Scott. Scott Barrett and I, we just broke down the FFPC ADP. And for Dynasty listeners out there, Casey Myers of the FF Dynasty and I are doing a post-NFL combine dynasty rookie mock draft. That should be a lot of fun. We're everywhere here at Fantasy Points. We're going to help you crush your leagues this season.