Fantasy Football Daily - Emeka Egbuka’s Breakout & Midseason Sleepers You Need to Know | Matt Waldman Fantasy Football Daily

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

Use code SCOREMORE10 at checkout for 10% OFF any subscription. Dominate your league. Win more bets. Level up your game Matt Waldman joins Fantasy Football Daily for a must listen episode breaking down Emeka Egbuka’s rise into fantasy stardom and a loaded list of midseason sleepers poised to swing leagues. Is Rico Dowdle forcing a true committee with Chuba Hubbard? Should you prioritize Hassan Haskins or Kimani Vidal on waivers? Waldman dives deep into Darren Waller’s Top-5 TE upside, AJ Barner’s emergence, and Kendrick Bourne’s breakout 10-catch performance. Plus, stash talk for Isaiah Davis, Kenneth Gainwell, Kaleb Johnson, Luther Burden, Parker Washington, and under-the-radar rookies Bond, Fannin, and Mason Taylor. Where to find us: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://twitter.com/TheOGFantasy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://twitter.com/⁠⁠MattWaldman ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the Discord here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.fantasypoints.com/media/discord#/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to Fantasy Points for FREE: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.fantasypoints.com/plans#/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Podcast Transcription Here: https://podsqueeze.com/embedded/transcript/cYrfety478goUCo4c44Gx6 Fantasy Points Website - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.fantasypoints.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ NEW! Data Suite - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://data.fantasypoints.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/FantasyPts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/FantasyPts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/FantasyPts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@fantasypts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ #FantasyFootball #2025Rankings #FantasyFootballAdvice #NFL Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who are some fantasy football sleepers that you should consider adding to your roster? Theo Greminger with Matt Waldman of football guys. I see Football Daily here on the Fantasy Points Podcast Network. Matt, before we even get into it, we've got to talk about one of the biggest decisions for fantasy managers this week on the waiver wire was Hassan Haskins or Kamani Vidal. If you were going to add a Chargers running back with Omari and Hampton now on the injured reserve. which one would it be? I think I'm going to roll with the upside of Kamani Vidal. I mean, I understand that Hassan Haskins is a Jim Harbaugh guy back in the Michigan days,

but he's a pretty slow dude who operates primarily on power, and I see him more being either at best a closeout back with a big lead or a goal line back. So you could possibly get some points there. But I think that the way this offense is playing, you're really looking at Kamani Vidal who out of Troy I compared him a lot to kind of like a less experienced DeAndre Swift but with better baseline vision and skills to grow with and even a little bit more burst than what um you know de Andre Swift had and I think that the problem was is that last year they had jk. Dobbins and he was kind of the same club in the bag for harbaw's. backfield. And so really, Vidal wasn't going to get a lot more play. And then when he did, it was, you know, he was a rookie. It was a bigger jump. And you saw moments that were pretty good out of him, but he wasn't able to put it all together. And I think he's been kind of the

forgotten man, obviously, because of the guys with draft capital and the free agent that they signed in Harris. But I still think that Vidal's bit of experience there, his burst, it just gives you a little bit more value in the passing game and probably maybe on early downs. Yeah, I'm with you. I think when we see the sort of production Hampton was having recently, a lot of it was the past catching ability. That doesn't seem to be Haskins. And I just think a theme with NFL running backs, we're so quick to bury guys when they don't hit as rookies. But a lot of times it takes these guys, especially day three guys, a little while to get acclimated to it. That's why we see so many backs take that leap forward.

in year two. So I don't feel great about it. I think that there is also a chance in a scenario where Haskins gets the first crack at things. But with the way the chargers are sort of looking where things are not going as smoothly as we saw the first three weeks of the year, it makes sense to go with the unknown upside, the past catching ability when it comes to Kamanovaidal. So I've, I, this show, I'm not sure exactly when it's going to air. It's probably after waivers. But in some leagues, these guys are going to be available right up until the end of the week because there's not a surefire answer. In some of these sort of shallow formats, you might be able to go scoop up Vidal as late as Friday or Saturday. So consider adding Vidal and consider holding him.

If you add him, it might take a week for this thing to get going for him to sort of separate himself. This is not necessarily a gain well situation. This is not a RICO Dattle situation by any means, but sort of segues us into our next topic. Rico Dowdell looked unbelievable. Over 200 rushing yards. Huge performance. Your thoughts on how this Carolina backfield will look moving forward. We'll do enough, Matt, that you think he could carve out a 60 and a 60-40 split.

Do you think he's going to take a back to Chuba Hubbard when Chuba Hubbard returns? Do you think this could be a 50-50? Like, what's your gut feel? hard to put that away after seeing it on Sunday with Dowdle. Well, I mean, you know, I've always liked Rico Donald. He was a player that I thought was one of the better sleepers in his draft class. And there was a reason that the Dallas Cowboys held on to him for three seasons, despite always being banged up like he was at South Carolina all the time.

But he had a little bit of that Levi-on-Bell Joe Mixon-type skill to his game in the sense that he's quick, he's creative, he can really make the lateral cuts and make. people miss, but he can also run through you. He's a hard runner, and he's also someone that catches the ball well out of the backfield. So he gives you a lot of those types of skills, and it was kind of surprising to me that Dallas moved on from him, and then nobody really was interested in him. And he winds up in Carolina, and they keep saying, well, we're going to have a role for him. We're definitely going to have a role for him after they extended Chuba Hubbard.

But now you see that on display. Now, granted, they're running to the right side of the Miami defense and Kenneth. Grant, who some people I knew thought of him as a fifth round pick, not a first round pick, you know, in grades. And some of these guys were people who've been in the scouting industry felt that way. I don't grade defensive tackles, but I'll say that they definitely were, you know, exploited. I think that we have to understand that Miami's a weaker defense in that respect, and that Chuba Hubbard is a smart runner.

But I would say ability-wise, they're pretty even. I think Chuba has more high-end speed. I think that he's really grown into becoming a good decision maker. When he came out of Oklahoma State, he was not a finished product in the least. Whereas RICO was a little bit more advanced. Chuba, I think, has grown into that. But I'm going to say it's probably a 60-40 split in favor of Hubbard still. They signed him to that big deal.

Dottle, I think, would have loved to play elsewhere, but nobody was interested enough to give him a prove-it, you know, a deal other than this prove-it deal that you can be something more. But I think that they're a good one to punch where they both run violently. They both can break tackles. They can both catch a ball on the backfield. Donald gives you a little bit more creativity with zone type of plays. Hubbard has learned to run zone type of plays, but he's a very good gap player who just smashes through there and hits that crease with violence. and can kind of work from there.

So I think they've shored up their ground game. Now we just got to get some consistency in pass pro and allow, you know, Bryce Young not to be Jekyll Hyde. And if we can, we can get more Jekyll out of him or at least hide on defenses, we might be in good shape here.

But I think it's more of a 40-60 split, favoring, you know, favoring Hubbard as the 60. Yeah, interesting because we've seen like the last, the last couple of years now where Canalus has been this R.B. Whisperer with like a high volume back, taking over everything. So sort of a split there, even a 60-40 one would be sort of a change of pace for us.

I'm just hoping that we get another doubtle week against Dallas, the revenge game narrative, doubtle in another big plus spot. Dallas's defense has just been so generous. Your quick thoughts, not really a guy that we had on the show, but your quick thoughts, of course we're going to talk about a mechagbuka i sort of have to talk about him after this

really fast start but tetaroa mcmillan your thoughts on him what you've seen through five weeks and sort of your outlook for him for the rest of the season matt so i am probably the vocal minority among the fantasy and probably the NFL brethren who of analysts who see him as wide receiver one and seem to still be arguing the fact that he's one A or one B to Amika, but I don't feel that way at all. And I had, you know,

for transparency, you know, in my draft guy that I've been doing for 20 years, I had Tatari McMillan as an instant starter. High grade for him. He had a good grade. He could start right away. But I did not see him as a primary receiver in the way that you define it,

as a guy who can beat man-to-man cover, tight press, you know, jam, high-end cornerbacks playing him. And from what I've seen at Carolina, he's a zone specialist. That's still very important. He can win contested plays, but he's not the guy at the line of scrimmage where go, let's run a timing route. Let's run a 15-yard comeback. Let's run the dig.

Let's run an out. And the best corner is going to be on you. And it's fourth and 15. And we need 16. and everyone knows it's going to you and you're going to do it. Like Antonio Brown back in the day or Jamar Chase or Justin Jefferson. Now, he's not doing any of that. And when he does get pressed or even has someone who's playing tighter,

his skills aren't there yet. And they weren't there yet at Arizona. So he's the de facto number one, but he's the guy who's there, they're scheming him open with pick plays. They're scheming him open with different looks. in zone and then he's getting open in zone and winning some contested balls and he still's got a little bit to work on with his attack of the targets he has a little bit of that Marvin harrison

junior attack issues that i talked about coming into last year with harrison that kind of bared out that he's still having he's still working on fortunately for marvin he actually you could see him working on it and doing better with his attack at least on two targets um last week which is a good sign that he's finally realizing hmm i need to do this but with mcgson McMillan, I see a good wide receiver two, maybe who can become a wide receiver one like a Drake London. Think of how London gets schemed a lot, used as a big slot, and you can match him up occasionally on the outside. But it's more ideal for him or it's optimal for him when he's a big slot. And I think McMillan is a guy that is maybe a little over, a little overhyped as a wide receiver one.

And if you're a dynasty guy, to me, if you can try. trade to get wide receiver one future value out of him, I would do it. And maybe you have to wait a little bit longer for that happen because he's going to have some bigger games. But I think people overrate the catch point stuff and they underrate what routes actually, the importance of those routes and the difference between who a top end primary is and who isn't. And like Pooka Nakua is a good example of a guy who I would say is not the primary guy, as I defined it by the players I mentioned, but he's being schemed as an extension of the run game.

And he's benefiting from having an elite rot runner next to him, whether it was Cooper Cup in the past. And now it's Devante who's even a grade higher because of his speed factor and what he can do all over the field. Nakua is an elite, the elite fantasy receiver. But Sean McVeigh, he better be given that dude Christmas presents pretty much for the rest of McVe's life. And if he outlives McVeigh, he should be giving it to McVeigh's kids because that dude set him up and made him the player he is

in terms of the way he's schemed open because he could have easily been another player that I comped him to pre-draft in a Matt Stafford driven offense which was Golden Tate, which is still very good, but more of a wide receiver two than a fantasy wide receiver one. Yeah, I love that because a lot of times when players land in great situations and thrive, it could be the flip side where they land in situations that are not so good

with maybe offensive coordinators that try to put, you know, them into situations where they're not going to excel. You see this so many times in the NFL. You're seeing it now with a lot of the, these quarterbacks who were sort of left for dead by the dynasty community get into a better offensive ecosystem and are now thriving guys like Baker Mayfield, guys like Sam Darnold, and now Daniel Jones. So yeah, I love the Puka Nakua one. Nakua right now looks like one of the players that you need in order to win in fantasy football in 2025. Another player who is a

ridiculously big return on investment at ADP has been a mecca egg buca. We're going to talk about what Matt has seen from him and what Matt thinks the rest team is going to look like right after this. Welcome back, Fantasy Football Daily. And I got to give you props on this one, Matt. You do the RSP, all the rookie analysis. Just curious, like, what is it looking like for you now where we're recording this in October?

are you starting to do a lot of work with the RSP now with some of these 2026 guys? How does that process work for you? Yeah, it's mostly a year-round gig for me. So, you know, it's the main reason why pay the mortgage and get the kids through college and that kind of thing. So the RSP right now, I'm balancing it with all the stuff I do at football guys. But, you know, today I'll watch some tape. I've probably watched about 30 running backs at this point. I'll watch usually 150 to 160 players total.

And what I tend to do is I'll watch running backs and receivers, usually during the football season. And then I'll watch quarterbacks after the season so that I can have a bunch of tape. And I do a lot of tracking of information, a lot of charting of quarterback play. So I'll wait on quarterbacks and tight ends because tight ends you can kind of get through fairly quickly. quarterbacks I want to take my time with. But generally, other than like late May through about early July, I'm pretty much watching film all the time. And even then, I'm doing a little bit here and there.

Yeah, looking forward to reading it. I'm starting to get a little bit excited about this wide receiver class in 2026, not to get to forward thinking. And certainly there's a bunch of running backs who are really appealing. Jeremiah Love, a couple of these guys are, I think, going to be very high picks in redraft, let alone. dynasty. And how about your weekly flow? Where can people find your work? What podcasts do you drop in this year, Matt? Sure. You know, on Mondays, I do a fairly profane podcast with Bob Harris,

the great Bob Harris that we'll just call it feel it or eff it. I don't know if we can curse here. So, but we've got that on Mondays. It's like a 30 minute long podcast where we just kind of cover what's going on in a very casual way. Then I write a, I write a column I've been new for the 10 years of football guys. It's called the top 10 where I take film. driven analysis of stuff that I put up on X and other social media video analysis of players. And I pick 10 to 15 things that I usually touch upon that I think have football-based analysis that will be helping you for fantasy management. Then there's the gut check, which I've been doing for since 2003, 2004.

And that's on Wednesdays. and that's a, you know, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a deeper dive examination on players. I had the roundtable over at football guys with the staff and, and kind of formulate the questions. There's a replacements column I do on Fridays where I like last week, hey, are you desperate for a player? Rico Donald probably is taken, but if he's not, you better get him right now. Kendrick Bourne is another example of a player you might want to get right now because his familiarity with Mack Jones and familiarity with Shanahan's offense is going to be a nice bridge, and Shanahan will probably feature him a ton, things like that.

And then I'll pick up, and I'll say, you want to monitor a guy like Xavier Scott or Isaiah Davis. These are preemptive guys that you may want to hold on to. We'll talk about later. And then there's the rookie scouting portfolio. I do podcasts with Brandon Angelo, of Angelo's analysis. He's a football trainer, or not an athletic trainer to pro athletes, and he's got his own site, does fantastic work.

He and I do stuff every other week. and then I do an every other week show with former FSWA writer of the year, Adam Harstead, where we talk about dynasty and theory. He does modeling stuff. And we talk about that kind of stuff. And then I'll occasionally put things up at my RSP site, you know, previous scouting reports. I probably will have a Jacori Kroski-Marit scouting report sample up that talks about him probably in the coming weeks. No, I love it all.

And Harstead is such a sharp guy. recommend all of Matt's work. I have the top 10 open of reading it before we podcasted. One of the players who's high up there that we got to talk about now is a Mecca Egbuka. You've shared a lot of thoughts about him on X. Unbelievable run from Macbuka, average in north of 20 points per game right now. Just how hot can this run? Because a lot of times, you know, besides probably Jamar Chase, Pooka Nakuwa, a lot of times where we see these rookies, it's a little bit of a slow drip and then explosion in the second half of the season. Brian Thomas Jr. last year, a really good example of that. Amon Ross St. Brown's rookie season.

But with Igbuka, we already have this incredible front-loaded production. Just looks the part of a big-time wide receiver one. Your thoughts on him. And how do you expect this situation to play out when Mike Evans does eventually return? We saw Evans as sort of a primary feed, higher, like first read rate kind of guy than Egbuka when they played together. But it seems to me like the train has left the station. And this is Egbuka as the one, maybe Evans as a really, really good too. It's very possible that becomes the case.

Because with players, you know, players play well until they don't. I mean, that's generally what happens. You don't see like a slow fade most of the time. And so Mike Evans has put up an incredible record. of production over a number of years. And I'm sure that there are a lot of people predicting that he'd fall off the age cliff several years ago. And he hadn't. And he's continued to put up a really strong run.

But also what you generally what happens with players is they get hurt or they start to have nagging injuries. And as they age, they can't sustain the level of athletic ability week to week. That takes longer for them to recover certain injuries that happen. and they might not have had incurred, you know, earlier in their, in their career cycle when they were younger. So there's always a little bit of a risk with that with Evans. I think Evans gives you, is probably the most volatile player of the trio of receivers that we'll see together in the coming weeks, which is, you know, Egbuka, Evans, and Godwin.

And so I think Evans will give you the most volatility, but Egbuka will probably give you the most consistency. in that regard. And I'm hoping because what we've, I'm a big Chris Godwin fan just as a player watching what he did. And what we saw last year on a fantasy points per game basis, the only player was doing better was Jamar Chase last year before Godwin got hurt. But we got to wonder, is Godwin healthy enough to be on the field, kind of like Tony Pollard two years ago? Or is he, or is he actually just getting into the groove and he's about to take off? And I think there's a lot of question marks there. So funny enough, it makes the rookie the safest player. Because from what I've seen from Megbuka, you know, my questions from him coming out were, is he really more than a

slot player? Is he more, is he more of a flanker slot type of combo? And what is it that, you know, is he more of a golden tape player, a Puka Nakua type of player, or can he be more than that? Can he be more like Chris Godwin, who can play everything? And I'm starting to lean to the idea that he can be more of a Godwin type of player. Last week against Seattle, I think, was a really good demonstration of his ability to separate against men, all sorts of coverage, and showed off a lot of different route skills that you're looking for as a, just from a football player, you know, you want to see how many ways can they win to derive separation.

And, you know, I did it in kind of a fun way, just talking about separation score, because I guess apparently that was a big deal. It's a big, we, and we are team separation score, fantasy points, data suite, the average separation score or ass is a big metric for us. One of the one of, it's sort of a one of our metrics, but it's one that people like because of the acronym. So this was always an interesting one. I know there's been a lot of takes on. It sort of had the analytics community versus the tape grinders versus the stat watchers, of up in arms with how can we be critical of a guy putting up all of these numbers and all this

sort of stuff. And I sort of laughed at a little bit myself because he's just been so, so good. But talk about what you've seen with Egbuka, with his separation skills. You know, you're obviously an elite film grinder yourself, Matt. So just sort of your takes on, is there any sort of coverages that are giving him problems or is he just truly complete? Yeah, it's a great question. And I'll just say that, listen, I mean, to me, you know, anytime when data offers great layers of information and we just, and just like anything else, it's all building how you use those layers to work it out. So it's a valuable component to being able to analyze a player to look at something like that. Now, if it gives you a few more questions than answers, then it's good to be able to combine

looking at that data layer along with the film and scene and putting that, within a context. And I think that Agbuka is a perfect example of that as a player who, what you can see is that he gets the separation that the route really calls for. And that's really the real answer. It's like oftentimes, you know, when we look at the combine, and I'll get to the, Agbuka, I promise. But like oftentimes when we get to the combine, we look at a score and go, it's, you know, oh, he's in this percentile of players in the 40. And really the right answer isn't whether the high or the better. The real answer is, is it at the high, is it high enough to ride the ride? Are you fast enough? Because what I'm looking for is a

whole range of skills. And if you're fast enough and you have those skills, you're better than say, you know, Anthony McFarlane who let's look at Kenneth Gainwell and Anthony McFarland. Kenneth Gainwell is fast enough to be in the NFL. He is not a, he is not a speedster. Anthony McFarland was an absolute joy running the 40. But one of them knows how to run the football. The other one doesn't do very good with blocking up front unless it's massive. So when you look at a Buka, you know, I think what he has is good enough speed to be a starter in the NFL. And he and then the skills that he has to separate are enough for a competent quarterback to get the ball to him on time and in the right play.

and we're seeing that. I would say I still want to see him against tight man coverage where there's press against the top corner. I still think that that's not the most proven aspect of his game. No team has adjusted yet and said, we're going to follow this dude around. And understandably, because Mike Evans is there. You've got to have your top corner kind of focused on that or you're going to have

your coverage rolled over to him. So I think there's a chance that we're going to see, Egbuka, you know, he's not going to have. is huge of a pace that he's been having, but I still think that he's going to be reliable and startable every week with occasional huge games because teams will still continue to probably roll their coverage over towards Evans or Godwin's going to start making people pay. And then teams have to react to that too and it becomes a pick your poison.

So I don't see Agbukab being like, I watched Chase Claypool years ago and I talked about like at week six of that toward rookie season. I was like, listen, I already watched a team roll over towards him, and they neutralized him. I think it was the Titans. And I was like, you can expect that moving forward because in the first five games, they were rolling over towards Juju Smith-Schuster.

They were rolling over towards, you know, Deontay Johnson, the top men, the corners that were playing Chase Claypool, weren't playing them tight enough at the boundary. And then after those first five weeks and team, got their scouting reports because scouts usually wait or teams usually wait about five or six weeks to even start looking at scouting reports about what they're what they've seen with the competition and then they start gradually implementing some things well that's the same is going to happen with egbuka but i think agbuka is a much better technician than claypool and he's not

and we've seen this week and the past couple weeks he's not being buffered by a anybody that you would say, oh, he's benefiting from Evans. He's not benefiting from Godwin yet. So to me, yes, I think at worst, he's a wide receiver two for the rest of the year. And I don't even think that it's going to drop that deep. It may just be low-end wide receiver one if it drops at all. Yeah, I think 20 point per game mark is a really high bar for him to maintain. But I think at the end of the day, being a 17 point per game score or something like that,

a massive, massive win. And that'll keep him right on the wide receiver one line. And the next few weeks, the next three-week schedule for Igbuka is definitely fantasy-friendly. San Francisco this week in what sort of looks like a potential shootout with the way that Mack Jones and Baker, certainly Baker-Mayfield are playing right now. Then indoor games in New Orleans and in Detroit, both of those games could tilt up. So, yeah, we're all about Emeka Egbuka. Looking forward to hearing your takes on him throughout the year.

I think for him, really the one question now is probably more from a. dynasty lens where he's steamed up just so, so high. Do you occasionally you get these situations where you should consider trading a guy like this? It's almost sickening to even think about trading Igbuka on his 17 touchdown pace with him putting up 20 points per game. But is there a certain level where you think that, well, let me ask you this. Is he a guy that has a wide receiver one?

overall season in his range of outcomes, Matt, because at his current valuation, that needs to be addressed. Because if you don't see it like that, then there are pivot options for you with guys like Malik neighbors out there on the injured reserve dynasty managers. This is more so just a quick dynasty conversation. Just how highly would you regard him in the overall wide receiver landscape after seeing him for these five weeks? I'd say probably top 15, but on the bottom half of that.

and he's creeping into that more than I'd say top five or even top 10 right now. And I think that, but I think he could continue to move there what we need to see. We need to see more before I'm really willing to go there. Now, I'm taking more the economist sort of view of like, you know, when when people are like feeling a recession and then six months later, the analyst goes, oh, we were in a recession, you know. So I don't really, you know, I understand that that's probably a little bit late to the party. But if you're going to take a chance, you know, to me, if you're rebuilding, if you're rebuilding and Agbuka is on your team and you're someone that is good at trading and you're not afraid of screwing it up and knowing that you can trade your way in and out, why wouldn't you try to do something like, hey, can you give me Luther Burden and like a first round and a second round? pick or Luther Bert you've got Luther Burden and Travis Hunter

I'll take both those guys if you can give me and give me a Buka and then maybe also a maybe a pick in exchange you know if you can soak somebody like that who's just like yeah forget it I want the burden the hand right now you might be able to get

you know you might get I'll get burden and yeah give me Cam Scada bow to or give me you know give me something like that with a player who hasn't emerged whether it's burden or Hunter somebody like that who's who's they're very good or even if you liked matthew golden maybe you can get a you know there's a combination of guys out there that might be just fine but they just haven't they haven't gotten the opportunities yet and they will um now the other hand if you're on the

edge of competing to being a contender and you've got a buca you know you're building with that you're not you're not part in ways with that dude i mean don't don't take that chance But if you know that if you know you've got more spots to fill and you can get more picks and say burden doesn't work out, say, you know, say Hunter or a combination of those, whatever two guys you get don't really work out. But you've got picks and you're still bad that next year. Well, you're probably good. You could probably trade those two picks for two more for four more picks.

And now you're like built a stash of quality picks that eventually you're going to get good. because you're going to have enough picks to be able to take shots on guys who have a reasonable chance of doing well. So that's how I would parse it out. Yeah, it's just a very interesting conversation. I think in the short term, Egbuka to the moon for sure, more of an interesting dynasty conversation.

But we're going to get back to it with redraft. We're talking about players who you should consider adding to your roster before they have their rise. And Luther Burden's one of them right after this. All right, Matt, let's talk about it. We're going to talk about Luther Burden. We're going to talk about Kendrick Bourne. We're going to talk about a number of fantasy football sleepers

that you should consider trading for right now that could end up rising either this week or throughout the second half of the fantasy football season. A lot of times with rookies, you mentioned Chase Claypool. What's interesting is Claypool had his huge breakout game right after Pittsburgh's by week. I remember it that year because I wrote about him on the waiver wire.

I even started him in a league and it was like, hey, look at Chase Claypool, getting me, I think it was the three touchdown game. Coaches sometimes ramp these guys up after bye weeks. And with Ben Johnson, we have a lot of hope for us who believe in Luther Burden that we could see it this week. Where Luther Burden, a lot of the traits in Ben Johnson offenses have been slot receivers putting up huge numbers. Amon Ross St. Brown, certainly Jarvis Landry in Miami. Talk about burden.

Your expectations for him, what we could see out of the buy in over the second half of the year. certainly you know i think first of all we should give some credit to alamede zakeas for um credit or blame um you know depending on your point of view as a fantasy gm it's blame that that luther burden isn't starting right now because alamadizu caas is an underrated receiver who is at who had a good enough camp and is reliable enough based on the three stops that he's had um that ben johnson looked at him and said you know what why am i going to rush a rookie and of this and have him make mistakes in an offense where my quarterback is essentially a rookie still because of the disaster of how he was coached last year.

So why would I put two rookies together like that? We're not going to have a veteran who's going to do what he's supposed to do and at least teach my quarterback, help my quarterback have lessons reinforced on what I'm trying to coach rather than having to contend with two volatile variables in the offense at the same time. And that's what coaches like to do. is so I think that's why you're looking that burden isn't there. But ability-wise, on tape, he is, there were some people that saw him as a gadget player.

If he's a gadget player, I'm a grizzly bear. And I may have a, I may have a beard that's looking like I'm getting closer to that, but I'm telling you I got a lot more ways to go. So I would say to you that burden is a much closer to being a complete receiver. He has that, he has the talent to be the best receiver. on that team and I don't mean any disrespect to Roma Dunesay who I thought was an excellent player, but I scored burden higher than Adunzee and Adunzee was one of my, was I think my wide receiver

two in that vaunted class or my wide receiver three. It was it was neighbors. Then a tier below was Harrison and Adunzee and those guys were very close together. And Adunzee has come along very well. But I think what you're going to see is that if there's a chance that he's just a disappointment this year, it's because Zakeas, they like the assignment soundness of what he does. But here's the thing. It's not just Zikaas. It's DJ Moore. And DJ Moore has not been a reliable route runner since he left Carolina. And probably while he was still there, you know, I was told by someone, and I wish I could give you a source.

but I'll just say that I've done some work for some people who work with quarterbacks and people know that. But I was, you know, and some other scouts and folks like that. And I've had some people who have some NFL connections who would tell me that watching that offense last year, DJ Moore's rot running was like a box of chocolates. You just didn't know what you were going to get. And we saw some of that earlier this season. So Moore's probably been coached up enough that he's probably going to be okay. but you still have two avenues where maybe you start to see burden get more touches

because of the fact that Zakaas is good enough, but not dynamic in the level that burden is, and that more is great at running after the catch. He's more Debo plus, if you ask me, but he's not as complete of a receiver as what burden probably could become, or really is right now, but with more experience, will show it. So I would say yes, if you're going to take a gamble,

take the gamble on burden now because of that by week, because of the fact that he's done enough to make good plays when he's in the game to continue to earn more. And that's the big step is that he hasn't done anything for the teams to go, for the team to go, we don't trust him yet. It's like not Trevion Henderson or some guys that we could talk about where, you know, that they keep making mistakes or they're just not effective, with processing information.

Burden's done that every step of the way. Yeah, we saw the explosiveness, again, that Dallas game, where the bottom line stats were really good, but the usage wasn't there where we can trust burden. And I think a lot of the, you know, he's a gadget player. He's a guy that you need to get manufactured touches for. I think that was an indictment of just the way that Missouri kind of ran offense for him. And it was also that people love seeing him with the ball in his hands, Matt,

where I think it's almost a positive that he is, is an explosive player that can really make defenders miss. I think that's just a positive element to it. It's a great point. And it's a great point. I just want to expand on real quick is that sometimes you have to remember where they're playing. Missouri is a mid-level SEC program at best.

They are not getting loaded down with top prospects that filter in and out of Georgia, Florida, California, Texas, and Ohio on a regular basis. They might get one or two. When a Drew Locke comes to that program, he's not competing. with Jalen Hertz behind him and Tua Tongue Viloa behind that and all of that. He's the guy. And if they tell him, hey, look, there's some things you got to work on here if you want to become a pro, they're not benching him if he doesn't do it.

So when if you're a coach and you can get to a bowl game because Luther Burden's going to be a runner in open space, they don't care about the rest of that stuff. That's up to Luther Burden to figure out. And that's how they're looking at it because, you know, they've just risen from GA or whatever where a lot of time has been spent away from their families, and they've just hit the big money, you know, compared to what they were doing. They want to keep those jobs.

And part of keeping those jobs isn't developing players. They recruit players. They don't develop players in college. Yeah, no, it's very, very interesting stuff. Burden would certainly be a player that we look at as a longer-term play for the rest of the season. There's potential that Kendrick Bourne, is going to be playing his most productive fantasy football over the next few weeks with multiple

wide receivers and George Kittal set to miss in San Francisco. But I got to say, Kendrick Bourne was awesome last week in that big win in L.A. 11 targets, 10 catches, 142 receiving yards. And Matt, it wasn't just the counting stats. It was the timely nature of when it was a big moment in the game, you saw Mack Jones targeting him. So sort of we can throw Mac Jones into discussion as well. Is there a better like short term type play for fantasy managers than just embracing Kendrick Bourne, sticking him in your flex spot and sort of riding the ride based on how he looked?

And you also your thoughts on Jones. Same argument for Jones as long as Purdy's out, he looks pretty good as well. I would agree with both. They're there. They're top end band-aids for you right now or bridges to the next thing that you need to do to keep your team afloat. That's how I would I would look at this or icing on the cake to a really good team if you happen to have biweeks and you and you can plug this guy in.

Because Bourne and Jones have that, have that chemistry from working together in New England. Bourne has the knowledge of the Shanahan offense before he went to New England because he was in San Francisco. And he's two years removed from, or he's a year removed from, no, two years removed from an ACL injury. So he's fully back. And what I really liked about it is you talked about the late game work.

You watch Kyle Shanahan and how he call his offense calls plays. The Shanahan's has always been good, as you well know, as a former Washington fan, is that, you know, the Shanahan's are very good at saying, we're going to keep doing the same thing until you can stop it. Now, it doesn't mean they're going to do the exact same thing all the time, but they're going to run variations of it. And that's what you saw. I saw three, three passes on the same drive.

to Bourne late in the game. They were all variations of slants. They came from different alignments. And they were, and he was in different spots on the field. But they just kept running slants. And I just kept laughing because I'm like, it's just Mac Jones to Kendrick Bourne slant.

And he's just putting different window dressing on it every time to confuse the defense. But they knew where they were going. And so Jones is a very good anticipatory thrower. He fit, you can see why the 49ers. wanted him originally is that he's an aggressive player who can also move in the pocket well. He's kind of like a weaker arm Joe Burrow without quite the level of skill, obviously, that Burrow has.

But he's he's kind of that level of player. So Mack Jones and Kendrick Bourne for you right now, if you need a flex spot, you're in a two quarterback league and your second quarterback isn't as strong in terms of the production level because of the talent around them or more up and down, you're probably safer with those two guys, at least for the next few weeks. Yeah, Mack Jones is like Superflex found money. It's just unbelievable how good he looks. And I'll give, I'll give Sig, Sigmund Bloom credit for this one, because I talked about it

with him on his pod. But we've talked about all these guys with like a new lease on life where you've seen Sam Darnold, you've seen Daniel Jones, you've seen Baker Mayfield, maybe Mac, Mac, Jones ends up being a guy who gets a contract. He's under a two-year contract now with San Francisco, but maybe this is a player, depending on how this 2026 quarterback class sort of shakes out. And there's not a specific 2026 quarterback where we're at this point in the year and sort of the middle of the college football season where everybody's like, this is the guy,

this is the guy, this is the number one overall pick. Maybe there's teams that call on San Francisco this off season and make an offer for Mac Jones thinking that he can be their starting quarterback. So I'm with you. Mac Jones, really, really fun spot spot starter for kind of use them as long as you can and Superflex. Kendrick Bourne, I think, is a high-end wide receiver three type for this week and for any week that these guys are missing. He just looks the part. Sort of a throwback week last week with seeing guys like Stefan Diggs and now Kendrick Bourne. We saw Keenan Allen earlier this week. These guys that know how to run routes, they know how to win at the NFL level, it doesn't go away.

Sometimes they lose it through health, but really, really cool stuff seeing Kendrick Bourne back there. Number of tight ends flashing. And Theo Johnson was added in a lot of leagues, but Darren Waller also was added in a lot of leagues. Darren Waller specifically, Matt, looks to me like a guy who could be a top five tight end rest of the season. And I think the floor would be a top 10 tight end for sort of as long as he can hold up. We saw this last year where Mike McDaniel was able to coax a ton of fantasy production out of Jonu Smith. It sort of falls in line with the things that Tuatunga Viloa is capable of

doing and it sort of overcompensates for maybe some line issues in Miami, utilizing the tight end like this, but Darren Waller now three touchdown catches the last two weeks, and he looks the part, Matt, looks fully healthy. Sort of Waller looks like we wanted him to look when he was a New York giant almost, when we were taking him high up in drafts. Yeah, without a doubt, because it's with Mike McDaniel, I think the key is how does Mike McDaniel and his offensive staff use a player? Because, you know, when Tyreek Hill got hurt, you looked at Malik Washington, you go, well,

he could have an expanded role. Well, they were so predictable with Malik Washington that I think there were like five or six plays where they threw Adder near the line of scrimmage to him. And Carolina's defense sniffed it out immediately. I mean, he had multiple targets for like practically nothing. And that's not an expanded role. But when you look at Darren Waller, they used him as the backside slant guy. They used him in line as a back, you know, on a.

backside, you know, on a backside slant. They used him on the front side on seam routes. They used him on short outs. They manufactured plays for him with schemed looks. They had him run one-on-one routes. They had him do everything in the 32 snaps that they gave him, which was double of what they gave him the week before. And then they shut it down in the second half.

They didn't use him at all. So they're being cautious with getting him up to NFL shape so that they don't incur injuries and then they're out without him because I think they see him as the big part of this offense. Because while he's not going to replace peak Tyreek Hill in terms of what Hill can offer, he might be a better fit as a tool in Tongue of I Loa's toolbox for what Tongue of the Loa skills are.

Because Tongue by Loa is not a rocket-armed dude who can fit the ball in like Stafford, like, you know, spin out. out from what we saw the other night, spin to his left tight, and then fire a deep over to the opposite side of the field to, um, two to at well as if like that's nothing or, or, you know, thread the needle in tight windows, um, you know, 30 yards down the field. But, you know, if you let him throw in the middle of the field and you have an option who can go up and get it, um, with his size and also you still have waddle threatening and,

and kind of forcing players to work deeper so that Waller can operate underneath, he might actually be a tool that he, that Tung of Llew is more comfortable with. So not only do I see top five upside, I'm thinking I would narrow it down maybe to top three and maybe start getting into the idea that if you're in a 1.5 PPR league, that he might start being that guy that you go, well, he's like wide receiver 15 for us,

you know, and one of the top three tight ends. He might offer you that. The big question is you brought up astutely is, can he stay healthy enough at his age to keep doing it? But, you know, the thing is, is he's built a little more like a wideout. I think, you know, for him to get where he did from, you know, the fact that he hasn't played for over a year tells us that he has worked seriously

at his craft and that he's avoided enough injury. to do it that, you know, if you're desperate, you take the chance. I'm in a league where I was desperate. I, you know, I had multiple injuries, including Burrow, had multiple guys on IR, and I'm in a 1.5 PPR league. And I took some shots on some guys in tight end that I waited late and just decided, screw it. I'm going to wait late and see. It didn't work out.

I bid most of my money on Waller, just because I was like, look, let's, you know, let's roll with it. So if you, if your tight ends were lackluster, but you're strong everywhere else, you take a shot on him like he could be that league winner for you. And if you're more like, if your team isn't as strong, well, there's other tight ends that are available that I think we can talk about that will, you can plug in and still have resources to continue to build towards getting into the playoffs and getting onto a run. Yeah, and I agree.

In Titan Premium, Waller was a player that I said. spent a ton of in a bunch of FFPC leagues two weeks ago. And then we sort of cleaned them up in waivers wherever we could. Waller is super interesting because, again, it's a very consolidated passing offense. I think Miami sort of showed you what they are. Waddle ticks up, but I don't think Waddle's going to get back to the point where he's a low-end wide receiver one in this offense. I think you're talking about he's a strong wide receiver two.

Then you've got Devon A. Chan's going to get about as much as he can handle six targets a game from Tua. That sounds about right if you're an A-chan manager. So Waller, yeah, I think, and again, being aggressive with Waller, despite potential injury concerns and breakdown concerns, is still the way to go about it, because in most leagues, Matt, you're able to get tight ends off of the waiver wire. And also people are not like overly rostering the tight end position. So, yeah, Waller, in a weird year at tight end where we can say, like Jake Ferguson massive hit, Tyler Warren, massive hit. But there's also been a lot of massive misses here.

Bowers banged up, McBride, not firing like we'd like to see. Certainly George Kittle banged up. This could end up being a really weird year where rest of the season, like you said, Waller might be a top three tight end, wild times. If you don't like old tight ends, we got a young tight end to talk about too. Let's talk Mason Taylor. Mason Taylor, a highly drafted player out of LSU. Jets take him in the second round.

There was a lot of buzz and enthusiasm where there's often a couple guys like this right before the NFL draft where you hear all these teams are interested in taking them. Mason Taylor was certainly one of those players, a big time tight end class, but there was a lot of teams that valued Taylor. I had a chance to see him down at the senior ball, really an impressive player physically, but the target volume is exactly what you wanted to be. And it's a team that lacks target magnets outside of Garrett Wilson. There's really devoid of anything at the wide receiver two spot. Breece Hall looks good. Isaiah Davis, he brought him up. He looks good as a pass catcher.

But Mason Taylor 19 targets over the last two weeks. Really impressive stuff. Talk about your thoughts on him and his kind of ceiling case rest of the season. Mason Taylor was my number two tight end pre-draft in the rookie scouting portfolio. I had Tyler Warren in the top five, but to me he was more of a fit-based player. and you can see that he's a great fit in Indianapolis. They're doing the Tucker crafting with him where it's like they scheme everything, where it's like we're going to take all our resources to misdirect the defense,

and then we're going to have you wide open in space. You catch the ball. Now, I think he can do more than that, and I think he's a very good player and a guy who's played strong. But what Mason Taylor offered is why I had him hire or a Colston Loveland and even a fanon higher than Warren, is that those guys win man-to-man routes that are timing routes, not just like go up and get-it-balls,

fade routes or corner routes. They can win in the middle of the field with routes that aren't just zone, where they have quick twitch, the ability to break open. And then their skill after the catch also includes a little bit more wiggle. They're not just bulldozers, in a straight line.

Doesn't hurt Warren. You can see he fits what he's doing and it's perfect. You know, it's exactly and it's ideal. You go and get him. But to me, Mason was that guy who I was excited about because he can run those high level routes. He can go up and get the ball and he's also niftyer after the catch. And then when he winds up with the Jets, you look at Justin Fields at least short term.

you go, he made Cole Commet a fantasy player, you know, a fantasy starter. And Commet to me is more of like a, you know, a long-term guy like, he's more like Brock Wright with a little bit more juice behind his name because of what he's done. But he's not a, he's a guy that you could see, oh yeah, I remember when he had those three good seasons back, you know, five years ago. But he hasn't done anything really since. That's what Justin Fields loves the tight end. He's very good at finding him the tight end as the checkdown or the second read.

And then occasionally if he's a primary option too, he'll go to him as well. And I think that that's something that Taylor has offered in the past couple weeks. We're starting to see that come to fruition, even though, yes, Miami and Dallas aren't great defenses. So it's going to be a little more up and down for him. But he's a player that if you're looking for the high up side of yardage with a potential for an occasional touchdown, he may put enough of those together that you've got a good streamer tight end based on matchups, whereas maybe there's another player that I'll just bring up right now, AJ Barner,

who is, you know, he's the understudy fantasy-wise that we think of to Elijah Royo, who is, you know, unbelievably fast and tall and can go up and get the ball. He's basically, Noah Fant,

part two in that respect right now. and they scheme him open for big plays and they can throw him to go get it balls. But the guy who's great in the low red zone, who can't run like that, but is an excellent blocker. And of course, on a running team and a Kubiak style offense that, you know, Clint Kubiak has put together off play action and guy's going to sneak to the backside and be open in the middle of the field and can take whatever you throw at him at the catch point when he catches it in a tight window.

that's AJ Barner. You know, so you're not going to get, you're not going to get the 60, 70, 80 yard or 110 yard day and a touchdown that you might get from Taylor occasionally, but you're probably going to have every other week like a 20 or 30 yard game with at least one touchdown. Like he had a 30 yard day and two touchdowns last week. You know, that's that's kind of his box score. He's that sneaky guy that you don't even have to pay money for him on waivers. You can add him afterwards when you try to get the other guys.

And you can add him as a hedge and say, all right, if this doesn't work out, the matchup doesn't look good. I'll put Barner in because he's going to get Red Zone looks and he probably will at least score one touchdown. And it gives me points. Yeah, four touchdown catches already for AJ Barner. And the fact that he's sort of holding off Elijah Arroyo speaks volumes. He was also a player that we heard in the preseason that this Seattle coaching staff

likes this Seattle coaching staff sort of has a lot of confidence in and we're seeing it. And I think with the way that like you said, we have a great deal of confidence in the Clint Kubek scheme working there. I know they just lost the game, but 35 points scored. I think we would give Kubeak very high marks. And certainly I think Sam Darnold also gets some credit for looking very, very comfortable in this scheme. All a lot of sort of naysayers and Sam Darnold faders, this offseason. season thought that it would just kind of disappear after the disappointing end during his run as Minnesota starter.

But for most of last year in 2024, Darnold was really, really good. And his numbers right now look almost identical. So I go for it. Yeah, I'll add to that as, you know, I was skeptical about how it's going to work with Donald for one reason is that I looked at pressure and blitz numbers. And, you know, blitz is at, you know, for some people, if you're not familiar, we know, what a blitz is, but the difference between blitz and pressure oftentimes is the blitz being an extra man from the base scheme coming into the trying to come into the pocket and break in,

whereas pressure is more base where it's like if you're playing a four man front, you're only rushing those four and are they getting to you? When you look at completion percentages and touchdowns and yards per attempt and things like that, production statistics for quarterbacks across the board, they're much better against the blitz than they are against pressure because, of course, the pressure's unexpected and it broke the contain quick enough that they're not prepared for that. Well, Sam Darnold's numbers against pressure were among the best in the league last year when you look at that. Now, I thought, well, Minnesota has a really strong offensive line. So let's not, you know, lose our minds here about that.

And Seattle had an awful line, but they finally decided that they're going to use early round picks on lineman. And it looks like it's making a difference in addition to what else they added to the team. And Donald still looks very strong there. And even better is the confidence he shows in Jackson Smith and Jigba. I mean, the tight window throws that he's making and doing it on the move. He could always dictate with his legs as long as it wasn't the defense dictating him to move, but him doing it on, you know, being able to do it early and enough open space to be able to create. and he can throw like that. He's like the boxer who throws roundhouses. And if he's not like in, I used to describe him this way pre-draft.

It's like he was a boxer who threw roundhouses. And they looked wild, but they connect. He's like the overhand guy, you know, that you see in MMA with the overhand knockout punch, that overhand kind of hook that looks like a haymaker and wild. But in the right situation,

it's unbelievably effective. And they've figured out how to maximize what he does well. he's learned to minimize the things that he he didn't do well because of the fact that he was in an absolute dumpster fire in New York with a with a coach that we know was just staring out ahead and ignoring him when he said he saw ghosts you know which you know NFL development of quarterbacks is awful he's a good poster child for explaining why benching players is okay it shouldn't be a death now it should be a method for development but now it's just more reclamation projects might actually work out if you could get him in a system where

he starts to learn football. And I think working with the 49ers was probably a helpful thing to him, among other stops. Yeah, 100% on Darnold. And interesting, you know, when you bring up the offensive line improvements, I think also some credit goes to Kubiak because a better offensive coordinator is able to make mediocre offensive lines look good and able to make bad offensive of lines look not so bad. So yeah, I'm a big, a big Kubiak believer. You mentioned Isaiah Davis earlier in the show. Isaiah Davis should he be considered into like the high-end handcuff range due to his

skill set as the pass catcher? Raylon Allen being completely banged up might not play another down this year. And the not injury history with Bruce Hall, but he's not zero. See Bruce Hall moved. if season goes completely south for New York like it's looking. Hall is not resigned for next year. One of the only backs from his, one of the only high-end backs from his draft class that isn't extended yet.

After we've seen James Cook extended all these guys, Hall is sort of out there right now. Your thoughts on Isaiah Davis, his skill set for fantasy, and any of the things I just said with outs to get him on the field for more of a full-time basis. Yeah, I mean, I think that that he is, at least a mid-range handcuff, if not a high-range one for sure.

And the reason being is that even though Justin Fields, you might not say as a great quarterback, what he does offer as a runner, forces opposing defenses to account for him. So then when you look at the box, the area of the line of scrimmage within the first 10 yards, that's where you start counting as a running back. How many players are in the box trying to get you? And on what side of the center are they? aligned because that tells you

should I consider a cutback? Are we running away from the meat of the defense? Are we running into the strength of the defense? And how should I be sending things up? That's what good running backs do. And Breece Hall is very good at that. Isaiah Davis is competent at that as well. But the nice thing is that when you have a running quarterback,

a guy who's that dangerous, like look at DeAndre Swift two years ago against the Eagles, there were times there were three defenders in an eight-man box who were literally drifting towards Jalen Hertz and that would leave like three blockers on one guy. And of course, DeAndre Swift's going to get big yardage off of that. Then you put Sequin Barclay in it compounds to the level of the vengeance tour that he had last year with the Eagles. And that's why we're wishcasting that or with Derek Henry last year. and parts of this year with the Ravens when you have the threat.

So with Justin Fields, he's going to occupy one to two defenders at least with his threat to run. That makes things easier for a young back to diagnose situations. And Davis is a big enough back with enough burst and tackle-breaking ability to get some hard yards. But what's his kind of ace up his sleeve is his ability to run routes out of the backfield and catch the ball. when I watched this dude, I think it was South Dakota State or South Dakota. He was, South Dakota State Jack rabbits. The Jack rabbits, yeah.

So watching him, I was, the thing I was most impressed with was his route running ability to, he had some receiver like tight end like skills with his stems to be able to manipulate defenders off their spot playing over him and get wide open. He could catch the ball like a receiver. He had really good technique. And so the fact that he gives you that and that Justin Fields tends to be a, you know, isn't a great checkdown option, but still you can design plays for Davis as a receiver and you got him as a powerful runner.

Yes, to all those things with him. That helps you. And if, if for instance, Justin Fields gets hurt again, the checkdown king of all time might be Tyrod Taylor. So if you want to get, you know, this is an old name, but Tyrod Taylor is an old dude for NFL terms. If you want to see someone suddenly be Fred Jackson at the end of the season who's just getting checked down after checkdown after checkdown after checkdown. And suddenly you've got like a guy who's on pace for six to 800 yards and receiving if he played the whole, if that expanded to the whole year and you're getting it in a in a four week playoff. You might want to keep an eye on Isaiah Davis because he might be that unlikely guy.

you start, you begin starting in December because Brees Hall gets hurt and you're like, this guy's like RB1 over the last three weeks and I, in a PPR league. And we're never going to hear from him again when Breece Hall's healthy or they drafts them or Braylon Allen comes back. But he's that kind of component. Yeah, really, really an interesting player. One backfield, and we'll sort of end with this, Matt. The Pittsburgh Steelers end up winning an impressive matchup against the Minnesota

Vikings. And we saw Kenneth Gainwell going absolutely nuts. The game was in Ireland. Gainwell puts up this huge fantasy number. People don't know really what to make of this Pittsburgh backfield coming out of the by week. But it's sort of the same argument I made with RICO Dowdell, where after we've seen sort of the ceiling scenario for Gainwell, how can you put this back in the bag and kind of relegate him? For me, Gainwell is an interesting one. How do you see? see this backfield shaking out, which back would you rather roster if you had to pick Warren or gainwell? You know, it's such a great question. And it's one of the toughest questions of the week because you look at Warren. If you put Warren and Gainwell together, you would have an every

week starter and a lead running back in the NFL who's, who'd get a second or third contract. Like, it would be that good. But Gainwell is, like I said, he's Tiki Barber. Like if you remember Tiki Barber, folks who were listening, some of the younger folks listening, who was an all-purpose back for the Giants who, at the end of his career, was literally like a top three running back for like three years going, who started slow because he fumbled the ball all the time. Okay, but he could catch, he could break away. He ran for power. He could get the high workload.

He was kind of like a, he was kind of like a late-blooming Ledainian Tomlinson, you know, or a late-blooming Christian McCaffrey. I don't know if we, you know, that would probably be the equivalent of what he was doing in terms of style of play. Gainwell is to me watching at Memphis. He was all that, but he didn't have burst. He didn't have top speed. And he was 190 pounds. And then he took a year off to train.

And I'm like, oh, I'm excited about this dude. Maybe add some quick twitch muscle. And if he runs really well and shows that explosion and he's like two, 207. 2-10 and he could maybe even add a little bit more. We might really have something here that's going to be exciting. And he came in, didn't have any more added weight, didn't run fast. And I'm like, just a really highly skilled college player who can do everything. And when you see him, that's the thing, is that the reason he's on this team right now

and he's getting starts besides the injury is that it's not so much that Caleb Johnson is so bad that we're worried about him. it's that Aaron Rogers is so good at diagnosing football pre-snap and making adjustments with receivers and making sure you want to give him all the time you can because he can pick apart a defense at an elite level. And when you have a rookie in your backfield who you're going to try and change the run to a side, you're going to try and change the run play to something different based on what the defense does. You're trying to call your way out of a run, and you know that the blitz is probably going to come as a result of that, and you need a guy to block. Caleb Johnson isn't probably at the level conceptually where it just all clicks like that smoothly, and he could get Aaron Rogers killed, and that's the problem. So they knew once Aaron Rogers signed that they're like, yeah, we were excited about Caleb, but he's not going to be on the up quick uptick fast enough to do this. So Caleb Johnson is a guy you hold on to.

and you don't get so freaked out about that, like in Dynasty. But in redraft, Gainwill does everything right. When it's blocked up perfectly, he is going to, he's going to hit the creases right. He's going to set it up well. He can block. He can catch the ball. He does everything. He just doesn't have the game changing skills.

He's like a Justin Fawcett, a thousand yard player with the Ravens when Ray Rice way back in the day wasn't there, or a Chester Taylor before Adrian Peterson, who had a. a 1,300-yard season. But the thing with Warren is that Warren is, Warren is a more dynamic player in open space. So it's going to be a split, if you ask me. And that means that Gainwell will probably see increased touches, and it will probably become more of a 50-50 split,

which doesn't make anybody happy. So I'm looking at this as it's probably more of a matchup game. But if you're going to go with Gainwell, do it over the next couple of weeks. and then you might be considering selling him on the high because it's just going to depend on whether Warren can stay healthy. If he's coming back quickly because, you know, he feels a sense of urgency after Gainwell did so well, he might be rushing back and he might not be that great.

So I'm going to give an edge to a guy. I think I'm going to go Gainwell because the team really likes him too. I mean, they talk him up. He's a football player first. he does everything we need assignment-wise. And that's what Aaron Rogers needs. He's had guys that are just like okay running backs that have been good and productive because they just are assignment sound.

And that's what Gamewell is. Yeah, he's the healthier of the two backs. And you talked about how much Pittsburgh loves him. Siriani also really loved Gainwell. Tried to use Gainwell. I remember it was ahead of D'Andre Swift to start that season. Gainwell held back Will Shipley last or even after they use the fourth round pick on him. So like Gainwell endears himself to NFL coach after NFL coach.

And he's healthier and we've seen the ceiling option. I think Gainwell for me would also be the answer, but we'll find out really soon. Matt, this was so much fun chopping it up with you. Let everybody know once again what you have coming out, where they can find your work. Sure. You can find me at Matt Waldman, RSP.com or Matt Waldman.com with the rookie scouting. funding portfolio. It will be in its 21st year of publication in 2026. It's the most comprehensive look at draft prospects that you're going to find available. It's one of the two most purchased

draft guides by NFL people, according to people like Alex Brown, who's now currently a scout with the Atlanta Falcons, who was ahead of recruiting over at Ole Miss and Rice and Houston and SMU. He worked with all those joints. And he meets with people every day and he knows what they read and what they look at and they talk shop with guys like that. And then, you know, you can also find me at football guys where we talked about all the content that I do over there in my podcast, Matt Waldman's RSP cast, where we talked about that stuff too. And of course, at Matt Waldman on X, if you like going over there, I do nothing but pretty much football takes and pictures of my dog and make jokes. So that's what we do. Yeah, your ex account is great because you break down a lot of stuff in film and kind of just break it down for if you're a film grinder, one of the best follows you can find.

anywhere. Make sure you stick in here with Fantasy Football Daily. Graham Barfield and I are going to drop a start sit show this week. School of Scott podcast with Scott Barrett every single week. Make sure you subscribe to that podcast feed as well. And Dynasty Life, my Dynasty Podcast, every single week. We're everywhere here at Fantasy Points. We're going to help you crush your fantasy leagues this season.