Fantasy Football Daily - Fantasy Football Lessons Learned from 2024 with a Look Ahead to 2025 | School Of Scott

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

Welcome to School of Scott, the ultimate fantasy football masterclass hosted by Scott Barrett of FantasyPoints.com. In this episode, Scott and Theo Gremminger break down the "Fantasy Football Lessons Learned from 2024 with a Look Ahead to 2025." You can read the full article referenced here - https://www.fantasypoints.com/nfl/articles/2024/scott-barretts-fantasy-draft-guide Where to find us: http://twitter.com/ScottbarrettDFB http://twitter.com/TheOGFantasy Find Our Podcasts Here - https://www.fantasypoints.com/media/podcasts#/ https://www.fantasypoints.com/nfl/articles/2024/the-everything-report-week-4#/ Use promo code SCOREMORE for 10% off your subscription. Subscribe to FantasyPoints for FREE - https://www.fantasypoints.com/plans#/ FantasyPoints 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This week is a little different, though. Every year, Scott drops an absolute banger of an article, usually sometime in August, where you basically basically give your your draft guide, your draft report. It's one of the, like, it's one of like the appointment reads of the summer when it comes to draft preparation. And we're going to take a look back at what Scott got correct, what he got wrong, some things he wishes he could have a do-over with, basically looking at some hits and misses. Scott, how are you doing today? I'm doing good for now, for now. I refer to this as my annual self-flagellation. session where I go back over my draft guide, I go back over my rankings, I look and see what I got

right, but more importantly, what I got wrong. So, you know, after the fantasy championship in Discord and Twitter, I got a million DMs, hey, you're the man. I won all three of my leagues. Draft guy was on point. I love you. You're the best. But this is a tough year. There were plenty of people where, you know, it didn't work out. And so, you know, I'll play your savior. That's a fun time for me, but a crucial part of my job is I'm also the scapegoat, right? And I'm not going to get everything right. And so this is an effort to see, you know, which predictions were good process, good results, good process, bad results, bad results, and then an effort to learn from that. And so this podcast, in conjunction with the article I'll co-write with Ryan Heath, you know,

key lessons, key takeaways from the 2024 season, all in an effort. to be that much better for yeah and and to your credit you had a lot of hits we're going to talk about those we'll talk about maybe if the misses were process based uh we're going to talk about those as well but this is this was a year where i had a very solid season uh made some money uh this was not a perfect year this is a year where there was a lot of attrition there was a lot of guys kind of failing at ADP at the top of drafts, where a being able to hit in multiple rounds really did matter. A lot of the win rate guys were coming from, you know, outside of round two and beyond. So I think, you know, when we look back, I think this is one where you really did do a good job

with this report. So looking forward to going into that. And if you want to get a head start on your 2025 fantasy football season, there's no better time to sign up for everything fantasy points related. right now you can take advantage of our early bird special. It's going to get you 20% off. It's a fantastic way to get started. Plus all of the content we're dropping right now,

getting you ready for your dynasty rookie drafts, getting you ready for the NFL draft. It's all right here at fantasy points. And you get early access to Scott's articles all redraft season. So take a look at that one. That is going to save you 20% off of the best fantasy football content you can find anywhere. So let's start off at the top. The quarterback position, Scott.

This is one where you have coined the term upside wins championships. And I think that's sort of the way you approach your quarterback plan. And this is one where you got it very, very right. This is what you wrote in your guide. Jaded Daniels is an exodia. He is one of the circle your draft sheet players at any position. In 2024 drafts, your entire quarterback strategy can just be draft Jaden Daniels around earlier than he typically goes.

And you'll be off to an amazing start. And a huge hat tip to you on this one. Daniels was fantastic. And what's interesting is at the time you wrote this, you were able to get Jaden Daniels around QB13, QB14, QB15. Then the preseason happened. And of course, people were like, oh, my God, I got to draft this guy. And he got pushed up, but he only got pushed up to about quarterback 11.

So this was a major. hit for you. Was this a, was this a you looking at the profile of the player or this was chasing upside? Like what came into your strategy with, with attacking Jane Daniels? Yeah, well, he got pushed up to QB11. He was QB6 in my rankings the entire time. And this is like a big reason why a lot of people subscribe. Like my track record on quarterbacks is insane. 2019 Lamar Jackson, must draft player, every single league, 100% ownership, like same level of conviction as with Jaden Daniels. The next year was Josh Allen, his breakout year. Then Jalen Hertz, his breakout year. Then Justin Fields, who was great.

And then 2023, Anthony Richardson, who was nice until the injury. And then this year, yeah, Jaden Daniels, like, best possible pick you could have made at the quarterback position, sort of just, you know, draft him, log out. You're done with the position. You're good. And he really was the prince who was promised. If you exclude that four-week period where he was dealing with a rib injury, so he was running. He was run. running less. And then he also had an open wound to his throwing hand that had to get super glued closed against the Eagles, his worst game. He was, he was right there with anyone best, you know, like Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen levels of insanely good. And so like this is the

easiest thing I do every year is, yeah, get me the cheap guy who runs, who has upside or is in a good offense, right? And so this one just felt so insanely. easy. I was talking to Chris Wecht, who is our projections are an absolute genius. By the way, we crushed everyone in projections this year. We crushed stochastic. We crushed roto grinders. We crushed the blitz. Dude's a genius. But yeah, we were talking about this and I'm like, I know I'm going to be higher than anyone. How high do I go? How high is too high? I think I'm going to put him QB6. And he was like, I think that's fine. I think that's exactly where he should be. It wasn't just that he runs.

It was also Cliff Kingsbury, we know, is a high volume, pass heavy off. And it's not just that. It's also the dude was awesome in college football. He won the high as men. He's like really underrated passer. And there's this element to what a hyper mobile quarterback does. It's not just a fantasy cheat code where 10 rushing yards is equivalent to 25 passing yards. It's also this added strain it puts on the.

a defense. If you allow me to navel gaze for a second, I'm a big UFC fan. I'm not a great UFC analyst. I'm a big UFC fan. And so you have this thing where there are elite wrestlers, right? And they'll go up against an elite striker. And the striker looks like absolute dog shit. They're knocking everyone out. But against this guy, they can't land a punch to save their life. And it's when you're an elite wrestler changes the entire equation because you have to account for that. You're worried about, you know, missing a punch and getting thrown to the ground, and then you're on your back for the next four minutes, right? And so it's something similar where being able to run makes it easier to pass with its, you know, whether a QB spy or its line

backers, you know, they're biting more often or they're, you have to play closer to the line of scrimmage. It opens things up. And so it was just like a perfect storm for Jaden Daniels who, like I don't know what it is from a dynasty perspective, from a fantasy perspective, from like a real NFL perspective, I think he can move the needle in the same way Lamar Jackson does, if not more so, which is an insane thing to say for a guy who's probably going to win MVP for the second straight year and already has another one under his belt. I think he's a more accurate passer. I mean, granted, Lamar, Lamar played extremely well this year.

This is by far his best year. But like, keep that in mind, Jane Daniels is also a lot younger. you know, this offense is really getting started. They didn't have much more than Terry McLaurin. We saw like, you know, Noah Brown, Diammy Brown, Alamedi Zakias, put up numbers. Zach Ertz, the corpse is Zach Gerst. This team is only going to get better. I think he is the overall QB1 in Dynasty right now, I think.

And I think, yeah, this was a great pick. I don't deserve too much credit because it was an obvious one, or maybe I do, because for some reason, no one else thought it was as obvious as I did. But yeah, love me some Jaden Daniels. Made me look really good. Yeah, I agree with you. I think that you're right there with the Dynasty QB1. I made a prediction about a month ago that I think Jaden Daniels is going to win the MVP in 2025.

It's been a track record here. It sort of repeats itself. Patrick Mahomes, MVP in year two. Lamar Jackson, MVP in year two. Jaden Daniels, MVP in year two. And you nailed it. Terry McLaren was a guy that we trusted. beat his ADP. We'll talk about him a little bit more, a little bit later.

But Zach Ertz was his second most reliable pass catching weapon, 34-year-old. So I think that they are going to very much invest at the skill positions and build around Jane Daniels as much as possible. They know what they have. It was also Year 1 offensive coordinator with Cliff Kingsbury there. So he had the second most fantasy points all time by a rookie quarterback right behind Cam Newton. and he was close to getting them, Scott. So that was a fantastic call. We're going to take a quick break.

When we come back, we're going to talk a little bit about some of your other quarterback rankings, some of your hits, some of your misses. We'll be right back. At Capital One, we're more than just a credit card company. We're people just like you who believe in the power of yes. Yes to new opportunities. Yes to second chances. Yes, to a fresh start.

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we are reviewing Scott Barrett's draft guide from 2024 to help you become a better fantasy manager in 2025 and hopefully find some lessons learned that can help you every single season in fantasy. Before we talk about another player you were high on that had big hit rates, let's talk about a player that you were high on. I was also high on and was a big miss, Anthony Richardson. Lessons learned here for me, Scott, before I pass it over you, is the day. Daniel's argument was sort of always an arbitrage argument for Anthony Richardson. You were getting a very similar profile several rounds later without spending that premium

draft capital. You want to chase the rushing upside. And this was a player that was much better than Anthony Richardson as a collegiate, similar rushing upside, and was a much, much better pastor. I think this is one where I'm kicking myself for anywhere that I took Anthony Richardson ahead of Jaden Daniels. but I think that the process should have always been there. Your thoughts on that. Yeah, I think, well, you know, I think we should have known. I think, like, it wasn't just an arbitrage.

It was just Jane Daniels is the better passer and has more upside as a runner. You know, there were some insane stats looking at the small sample we saw from Anthony Richardson, like fantasy points per four full quarters was like 30 fantasy points per dropback. It was like 25% better than Josh Allen. And I think the big thing that went wrong with him was just there was no improvement. And so, like, I'm not really a sources guy, but I have friends who are legit connected and they tell me things. And one thing they told me before Anthony Richardson ever got benched is like, he's not

putting the work in. Like, he's not, the wide receivers are asking him to stay after practice and, you know, throw the ball around for an extra hour and he's refusing. And he's, he's not doing. X, Y, and Z that he should do. And then you saw the benching, and people were so flabbergasted by it confused. It kind of made sense for me.

And then you also hear, like other reports, like Peyton Manning flew out during Thanksgiving to meet with him. He wasn't available. And so you have a guy where, like, part of it was, okay, he looked great as a rookie, but then you're projecting in an improvement. Because remember, he barely played in college.

You only had like a 13 games. started sample from him in college. And, you know, part of, you know, my hit rate on, or what you were talking about with like Jaden winning MVP is like the sophomore leap with quarterbacks. And you saw a sophomore regression. And so a lot of that was on him. Yeah, I mean, it was shocking. We, maybe we should have thought about the floor is like this dude had a horrible completion percentage in college. And what did we see from him this year? The worst completion percentage since Tim Tebow, the fewest completions per the third fewest completions per game in like 50 years. And why is that? They don't trust him to pass. So it's low pass volume plus

poor efficiency. And yeah, it's not looking great for dynasty. This is one that seems more obvious post hindsight. But yeah, looking at where I had him, I had him, I had him QB5. That was bad, probably not as bad as where I had Patrick Mahomes, QB4. But yeah, it was, it was a rough year. I think, I think the lesson learned from that is, is, you know, there are a lot of assumptions being made and, you know, upside wins championships, but downside risk is important as well. And, you know, post hindsight, probably pre hindsight as well,

Jaden Daniels should have been the better pick, the higher ranked player. Now, we draft a FFPC main event team together every year. Maybe we'll draft a few this year. And we split that team with Abe Agbatoba, a good friend of both of ours, who's a fantastic high stakes player. And I remember the three of us having a conversation where you were talking about the ADP value of Joe Burrow. And this was like in July, Joe Burrough is such an ADP value, such an ADP value.

Then we ended up all sort of listening to the beat reporters in Cincinnati. And you certainly did as well, where you had him as high as six, and then you'd backtracked because of the beat reporters who panicked over the wrist this summer. Specifically, they said this does not look like the same guy. He'll go four practices in a row without attempting a deep pass. This was so overblown. I thankfully had a ton of Joe Burrow in my dynasty teams, and I was able to cash a bunch of of those.

But like you, I listen to these sort of reports. So shout up to the Cincinnati beat reporters for putting that out there and costing people money. So good friend of the site, Codespeak Index is going to do a beat reporter index. He's going to launch that this year. And so now we're going to know which beat writers really to trust and which not to. But this was actually sources for me. So I was talking to a guy who was out at Cincinnati training camp multiple times, is friends with multiple the beat writers.

And they're like, none of them are putting this out because it's, it scares the crap of them to say this. And like, you know, they don't want to demoralize the fan base. But like every beat writer there is worried about the wrist. And they're seeing diminished performance in play. And they're seeing like in not even attempting deep shots. And so I had it was, it was Jane Daniels was, you know, far and away the guy to target. My number two was Joe Burrow.

The stat I had was like, if you look at his last 25 fully healthy games, he was averaging the exact same amount of fantasy point game as Josh Allen, or he's right behind Josh Allen and no one else. And I just like love Joe Burrow. But the last week, you know, before week one, so I had him that high the entire time. And then the last week, I kind of nuked him down to, I think, QB9. QB9, yeah. And so, yeah, I regretted that.

I think it's only the final rank that that counts for me. But luckily a ton of our subscribers had Joe Burrow doubles and did really well. But yeah, this is another lesson learned is like, if I look back at my hit rate on changes I made the last week, it hurts me way more than helps me. It's like it's like 80 to 20. And so it's like, don't get sucked into rumors and sources. and beat reports, because those guys are frequently wrong. And a lot of times you're talking about just like, so another one was Ladd-McConkie.

Like, if I knew DJ Chark would start the season on IR, I would have been all in on Ladd-McConkey. I would have had them on every single team. But beat reporters were saying, you know, right now he's just the wide receiver four. And like halfway through the season, the role is going to grow. So I'm like, where do I rank Ladd-McConkie? You know what?

I'm not even going to mention him because you or I'm going to have a throwaway line in the article because you could just add him off waivers in week four and so that I'll save that for the everything report and for the school of Scott podcast. But the thing is like that that kind of shit doesn't really matter like the first four weeks like pale in comparison to everything else. And so you can get lost in the sauce on these like every year we say the same thing with rookie wide receivers is it's such a value. Draft as many rookies as you can. And then it's like nearing week one and we're hearing all the beat reporters saying, oh, they're not going to play for a few weeks. And it's like, even if that's true, the next 12 weeks matter so much more than the first four weeks or things can just change on a dime.

And so you got to factor in the full season upside. And so, yeah, I'm going to make a point next year to like really stick to my convictions and not get swayed by rumors and sources as much as I've done in the past because it's really mostly hurt me more than. Yeah, I've had this conversation with. some high stakes managers that I respect. And it's sort of like I think we're at our peak drafting wise in terms of like the guys that we should be all in on like around like mid August, like August 15th. And then those late drafts you end up sort of getting in a little bit of trouble. Because it sort of changes your mentality.

So that I think that's one to remember for me like I want to keep it kind of locked in. once I get to like that sweet spot August 1, August 15, after that, it's going to take something dramatic for me to really change too much on a guy. I want to say, I want to say like I factor this in every year. Like when I read when I'm doing my rankings, I have like a sheet that like tracks, you know, lessons learned from past years. And so like in bold, in yellow highlighter is is like fade late season noise. And so like that does factor like I'm capturing it.

But it's just every year it's like, I need to like underline it this time and I need to put it in like triple bold or because it's just that. It's just every year I factored in and every year it's just I factored into. So we also recorded a school of Scott recently where we went over my initial top 25 rankings. Scott had some pushback, some agreement. But we talked about then, which is you can go find that right here on the podcast feed about the value of Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen. And the early quarterbacks, those two guys also provided a great deal of value. So it was really those two guys, Joe Burrow, Jaden Daniels. But then when it all came down to it, if you look at like the very pinnacle of high stakes,

the FFPC main event winner was a Joe Burrow, Jamar Chase, T. Higgins team. The NFFC prime time, which is sort of their version of it, a little lower payout, but still the same sort of magnitude of a contest. that was also a Joe Burrow team. So you had the borough really delivering in the high stakes, but Allen teams, Lamar Jackson teams, they also hit big time. Your thoughts, you shared some of them last week about the win rates

associated with embracing the big two, potentially as early as next year. Yeah. So we have a stat called wins above replacement fantasy war. It's free on the site to access. It just tells you how valuable each player is. You know, it factors in positional value. It factors in like if a guy hits, you know, scores 80 points in one week.

That really doesn't move the needle as much as like 40 points because like if your quarterback scores 40 points, you probably won the week. So there's just like diminishing returns on that. It's a really cool stat. But looking at this, said Lamar Jackson was the sixth most valuable player in three wide receiver leagues. Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, both and Jane Daniels, all top 25. And so there's really, like, we, J.J. Zacharisen and I are always like, you know, late round QB is king, late round QB is king. But we've both kind of slowly stepped back from that these last few years. And this year in particular is like, you can take Lamar Jackson around two. You could take Josh Allen around two. The only caveat is if there's a Jaden Daniels this year. Hopefully there's a Jaden Daniels this year. And then you just take Jaden Daniels. Because, you know, war right now is not factoring in cost. We could do that or, you know, if we wanted to. But just.

ignoring cost. So yeah, like, you can't make fun of your, you know, your league mate if he drafts one of those quarterbacks in round two this year. Like, I think the data supports it. Spoiler alert, there won't be a Jaden Daniels this year in terms of like a rookie impact. And when we look at the free agents, it's difficult to find that as well. I mean, it's just Jaden. It was also like, look at what Baker Mayfield did.

Mayfield's a great one. For sure. The problem is like, this is why I can never fully, like, this is why you, you, you, can take a quarterback round two, but I'm never going to, like, tell you to. It's because our, our, Bo Knicks is another one who I loved, maybe my highest own quarterback in basketball, um, is, is because I'm really good at identifying late round quarterbacks. There's probably not a Jane Daniels this year, though. I'm with you. Yeah, that was a, that was a great run. And yeah, Bo Nix is one who we're definitely going to be talking about all summer long. I'll be

interested to see where his ADP settles in in early ADP, but he does. have that that sort of Konami code to him as well as a runner. And we fully anticipate that Denver is going to improve their skill position players, much like Washington will for Daniels. But 2024 was the year of the running back. We're going to take a quick break. And we come back. We're going to see how Scott did at the running back position.

Isn't it funny, Theo? Isn't it funny how the more zero RB everyone is, the more likely it's going to be like RB as king sort of year? It's sort of a really punishing the community from going too far to like embracing, to embracing zero RB. I mean, there's so many people, and I love a fun zero RB build. But this year was sort of like the revenge of the high volume king back, Sequin Barclay, Derek Henry. So, so many of that of those guys hit at such a high level. And when you look at the overall number of scorers at the running back position that just provided such an edge.

to you, you really had to nail running back. But before we dive into the, like, the upper level guys that everybody wants to hear about, I want to give you your props because you really nailed. You also, you don't just tell everybody like what to do round by round. This is really a great article because you'll also talk about some of your later round targets. And you had a number of hits. But running back was one where if you just listened to Scott and you made sure you exited your draft with one of his value running backs. All of these guys were drafted, let's call it round eight and below.

Most of these guys, though, were in the double-digit rounds. You're walking away with a ton of value. Scott, you were on Rico Dowdell, Bucky Irving, Chase Brown, which was the league winner for many, and the way that you could have gone

zero RB and thrived was Chase Brown. And J.K. Dobbins, and then you also had Tyrone Tracy. So you basically, you go five for five on that. one. And with Irving and Chase Brown, you hit the nuts on the two running backs that provided the most value to you, sort of if you were willing to wait. Any lessons learned with these guys? Was it chasing sort of an open situation at running back? Was it the athletic traits? Was it the potential

for some of these guys as past catching weapons? Is there something that all five have in common for you that sort of led you to these profiles? Yeah. Well, I think, I think like the rank, order I had them and two was pretty great, where it was like, I was like, Rico Dattle, strong best ball value. He's, he's okay. Bucky Irving, I said, quote unquote, is this year's Kiron Williams? And he's better than Kiron Williams. He's objectively better than Kiron Williams. He's not, he wasn't better for fantasy.

But, and so he was majorly impactful, especially down the stretch. Chase Brown, I was like, league winning potential, league winning potential. And because, you know, a lot of this was, you know, training camp reports of like the team really likes him more than Zach Moss. I also thought he had a lot more upside and juice than than Zach Moss. We also got a little lucky with the Zach Moss injury. I just saw exactly what happened. It's like a Belcal workload in a potent, high-powered offense should something happen to Zach Moss or should he beat him outright. J.K. Dobbins was the other thing.

It was like, I think there's, I think there's some juice here. I, you know, probably not going to win you some league, but he's just like such a good. He's, he's, if he stays healthy, he's going to, you know, beat his ADP. So easy. Tyrone Tracy basically exactly what happened is like, this isn't a great offense, but, you know, Devon Singletary stinks. I think this guy's better. I think, you know, they want to get a good long look at this rookie and all that stuff.

So, yeah, this would have been sick if this was more of a zero RB year. But I think even so, like, these guys were on, like, the winning, you know, best ball mania teams and, you know, players you needed to have an FFPC. And so, you know, we'll get to like CMC and stuff like that. We're like, okay, if you lost him, you still could have made up some ground by having any of these guys. Yeah. And I think that there's a couple, when I look back on your article and I look at sort of your

recommendations and the hits, there's a trend here. When there's ambiguous backfields, you want to chase, usually I want to chase the younger player with the past catching ability. So it's simple one here. Like Rashad White, the yards per carry were low. A lot of his production last year was driven, you know, by touchdowns and volume. Bucky Irving, we love the profile. That kind of makes sense. Chase Brown won. It was Zach Moss versus Chase Brown. Pretty self-explanatory there. J.K. Dobbins, it was Gus Edwards ahead of him, which was a player that, again, thrived on touchdown score in the year before. Devon Singletary, ahead of Tyrone Tracy.

Singletary never a guy that's really provided Belkow-type usage ever. And then with Rico Dowdell, obviously, you were fading the older Zeke Elliott. So I think that, like, if you're trying to take a lesson away from Scott's recommendations, and JJ's talked a lot about this as well, ambiguity in backfields creates potential ADP wins. it's rarely that two players end up getting 50-50 on the production, Scott. Would you agree on that? Yeah, I think you said this better than I did. Well, I think that's...

We're trying here. Now, the top of running back was a little bit mixed results, but I think you're being difficult on yourself here because the CMC one, this is one... Let's talk about this. Yeah, let's talk about CMC. So I'm going to sound defensive all throughout this. Maybe you need to be harder on me, Theo.

feel free to be as hard as you want. But this isn't one I beat myself up on too much. It's just what we've seen from a healthy CMC, particularly as recently as 2023, is he was a player where it was harder to win without him that year than it was to win with him this year. As much as a disadvantage it is to have the 101, it's just that's the power law impact.

A fully healthy CMC provides. And we could talk about the injury risk. Like this is where most of my misses come from is like is being too optimistic on injuries. That's another note to myself. I read every year. And for whatever reason, it keeps happening. But I mean, we have the best injury expert in the space. I think Dr. Edwin Porris, the most Billy Waters, the Walters, the most profitable like NFL better of all time shouted him out in his autobiography.

That's how good Edwin Poros is. Edwin wasn't worried. But it was also. know about the arthritis thing. Like that was like a secret that Kyle Shanehan kind of screwed us all over with at the last second. But so maybe I get a pass with like even, even post hindsight, I'm still comfortable with CMC one.

Yeah. So and we, this is one where we're already sort of arguing about him for next season. I had him a little bit lower in my early rankings than you would have. You said you'd have 10 spots higher. So I get it. I think that the one sort of takeaway for me not to get to. off schedule here on the show sheet because we're going to talk about a little later was the CMC and the big three in in FFPC made events were Tyree Kill, Christian McCaffrey,

and Cidee Lamb. The majority of drafts, one of those guys went at the 101. The two guys who did not hit, well, all three of them technically didn't hit. But the best pick out of the three was C.D. Lamb, because the two older players, both not necessarily regress, but in terms of, in terms of their talent, Tyreek, I would argue that was a regression there. We found out he was injured. CMC obviously got injured, but the two older guys sort of failed, and the 25-year-old ended up giving you more impactful weeks. So maybe, maybe nitpicking on that one a little bit. I don't think that's going to be an issue next year. It sort of could be. It's Jamar Chase versus Barclay, and then Bijan Robinson, Jamir Gibbs, whoever you want to include in your 101 consideration.

It's going to be mostly youth at the 101 next year. So that would be my one little pushback. Anything to say with that, Scott? Yeah, I'll just agree. Like you just kind of always lean more towards youth when it's that close. Lower risk, more upside. So, yeah, I think that's one area where, you know, dynasty guys such as yourself, it like translates to redraft in a way that maybe. redraft players might miss you don't want to go too overboard with it but that's generally a great

rule yeah chase the unknown upside upside upside wins championship scott so there you go uh and ryan heath does a lot of work on age curves and like the the key point with that is like it's not like a steady downward client it's just sometimes guys just randomly totally fall off a cliff and die and like you know for for some players that's age 28 for other players that can be age 33 and you just kind of really don't know. So another player you listed as a miss was Kyrin Williams. And I think it's more of a, you can't really call him a true miss, though, Scott, because the guy averaged 17 points per game.

And if you used them in the fantasy football playoffs, you had a 19.9 point week in week 16. You had a 16 point week in week 17. A lot of his production was kind of front-loaded where he had a big couple of big games early and then he had that odd stretch in the middle of the year. I think if anything, you want to kind of call Kyran a purgatory player this year. And maybe you can make an argument that the opportunity cost of selecting Kyran in his range cost you drafting Derek Henry, Josh Jacobs, and Devon A-chan. But I don't think you can officially call him an L. I think

he's more of a kind of a, I'll call it a tie. Did I call him a miss? Because I probably have worse misses than that. I had Derek Henry over Kyran. I was one of only a few people who had that for PPR. I mean, you got the snap. Like honestly, it was surprising. He didn't score more fantasy points than he did because he got the snapshot we were hoping for that, the Uber Belkow snap share. He just didn't get really many targets, probably no need when you had Pooka and Akua balling out to the degree that he did in Cooper Cup until he fell off a cliff. I did have him above Saquan Barclay. So maybe that's where the miss was. And that was a bad miss. You know, I struggled with it where it's like him versus Jonathan Taylor, who I had pretty high. And it was like, well, he, Sequan's into better offense.

Sequin, if he's fully healthy, is probably the better player. But to me, it's just, we know Jalen Hertz doesn't target running backs. And we know Jalen Hertz vultures a lot of rushing touched. But I think with Barclay was Jalen Hertz vultured a ton of touchdowns. And it just didn't matter. And like this was the player he was in his prime. I remember talking about maybe his rookie season, how he was due for a regression because so, such a high percentage of his yards came on explosive runs. It was like the highest we've ever seen from a running back.

And if you took out all of his explosive runs, he averaged just like 1.8 yards per carry, which is so bad. But if you included it, he averaged like 5.0. And so like it was the biggest discrepancy we've ever seen. And so like when I argued that at the time, that was wrong. But that's exactly what we saw in 2025. Insane ceiling where it's just like nine weeks. It was just you had Seekuan Barclay on your team. You won you won your week. You know, him and Jamar Chase really the biggest needle movers in underdogs format, just to advance to the

first round. And lesson learned there is just yeah, he's on the better offense, the offense that scores more points. He has the Konami quarterback, which is a rushing efficiency boost. He's good. The offensive line is great, et cetera. And so that was probably a worse miss than Kiron by far. Yeah. And I'll give you props. One player won't dive into too much because we talk about him pretty much every week here at the school of Scott is Devon A-chan. And you also don't just go positionally. You also present a round-by-round plan. some rounds you'll give multiple options. Some rounds you'll give, you know,

this position is the one you're looking to draft. But you simply for round three wrote draft of on A Chan. So like you, you definitely hit that one. That was a guy. He was a major target for me and he was a smash home. And the crazy thing about it is like, I knew we were going to get an efficiency regression.

He regressed too much and now he's due for a positive regression. And so like we, we did not get like an elite yard. for carry out of him. And like if he had just, you know, somewhere in between this year and his first year, like, he would have been such a, such a league record. Yeah. And I think that there's more upside there. I ranked him very highly. We discussed him at length last week. I think he's in the mix to be the RB1 overall next year because I think there's, like you said, a chance that we see more explosive runs. There's a chance that we see him take an even bigger step forward as a

pass catcher. The past catching ability was amazing. Let all running. running backs and receptions, receiving yards. Touch it. We could talk about Devon. We should just have a Devon A Chan appreciation day here at School of Scott one day and just talk about them for like an hour. But that was a major hit for you. Let's talk about one where we've talked about this recently, where one of the questions I had for every guest I had on my pods last summer was Brees Hall or Bijon Robinson. because these were the popular argument for who is RB2 in the class fell to Hall versus Robinson,

a year two player versus a year three player. Breeze Hall led all running backs and receptions in 2023. The idea being Aaron Rogers makes the offense better. The offensive line is going to be improved. Therefore, Brice Hall takes this big step forward. Bejohn Robinson, we had the offensive coordinator change. We also had a quarterback, a quote unquote improvement with Kirk Cousins. So both of these guys sort of had the, they have RB1 overall upside.

But Scott, just like it comes down to in many years, people who only refer to tears, it's a little bit like a halfway of doing it. And I know you give your overall rankings, so you're definitely not one of those. But Bejohn Robinson, taking him over Brees Hall, gave you 20 points per game. Hall average 15 points per game. And when we talk about their impact in the fantasy football playoffs, Bejohn was fantastic, where Breece Hall, we were dealing with all sorts of problems. So in retrospect, is this one where you could have made the decision to Robinson?

Is there any part of your like process that you wish you would have changed other than just getting this one incorrect? Yeah. So I would like you to kind of tell me, I'll lay out the process that went into this. I will just say they were neck and neck in my race. rankings. With Breeze Hall, it was, I mean, like, he ended the 20, 23 season with eight plus targets in like seven of his last eight games. There was a game there where he had 16 targets. And so, like, that upside relative to like Bijan, it's kind of hard to compete for that.

But I was also expecting the offense to make a big jump. Aaron Rogers replacing Zach Wilson. I knew the offensive line would be really bad, but that was the case in 2023. And we just didn't see a dramatic bump from Ann Rogers. And he did target Brees Hall less than Zach Wilson did. But I think one of the biggest sneaky things is so I was just talking about Sequin Barclay's, you know, breakaway run ability, ability to generate explosives. And you did not see that from Brees Hall. And like, Brees Hall had, you know, three of the top next gen stats, mile per hour runs in 2023. And he was far ways off that. He's, a player where I suspect might, you might hear whispers that he was dealing through something

all year. And if it's not that, then one of our subscribers DM me in like week three, because we were talking about this, like, because Brett, Brett and our data, our film charters in their article said, Breece Hall doesn't look like the same guy. He looks like he lost a step. And it's weird. And so one of our subscribers DM me and was like, hey, I, uh, my, uh, my, uh, my buddy was at the club, this club, he goes there all the time. He saw Breeze Hall there like seven different times this summer. I don't, I don't know that he was putting the work in. I mean, that's all, you know, like, I take that with a massive grain of salt, but that, like, that's a, that's a variable that you don't know about. You don't know, like, the conditioning of players in. I think

that's really what tanked Debo Samuel. And that's also what heard in, what was it, two years ago, when he had his contract year, like, you know, beat reporters were kind of just bled. bluntly like he looks fat he looked fat this year um but yeah i so i don't know you tell me how bad was that miss i mean i know the results were bad at how much can i beat myself up for it it's one where i think like i was on team bejean but i certainly drafted my share of breese hall as well and i have a ton of exposure to him on some high stakes dynasty teams this was a super weird year for him we had those that two week stretch where he was like four points seven points uh they were He did that in 2023, to be fair.

He was very boomer to me three. I just hoped, you know, the offensive upgrade would kind of solve that. I think that the Aaron Rogers, in retrospect, we were trusting an offensive coordinator we didn't like. And we were trusting a rebound from a quarterback who'd been sort of out of football last year. We really didn't have any idea how Aaron Rogers would do with the Jets. And we sort of amplified him. Rogers lost a considerable amount of mobility. So really.

And he was playing hurt all year too. Like I really don't think he was that bad given the offensive line. And like, you know, he was refusing MRIs for various, you know, maladies. And so, but I mean, it's also like you should bake that in. You should bake in that injury concern for an old guy coming off of an Achilles who hadn't played and played two snaps and two years. But yeah, yeah, sorry. I'm maybe I'm getting defender. No, no, no.

It's good to get defensive. you certainly did have a lot of hits of the running back spot. Another big props you got were fading Travis E.TN, which was, I think that was one where that was very good process. A lot of his scoring the year before was very touchdown driven. He was still sort of an enticing player. It's one of those guys where you would get into the third, fourth round, and you'd see Travis E.T.N. on the board, and you'll be like, oh, look at how much he scored last year.

I know I got into that. not a whole lot of exposure, but I certainly wasn't fading him as much as you were. And then Isaiah Pacheco, that was one you were also fading. And again, you had Derek Henry and Achan. So you were on Henry and Achan, and they were going around similar ranges as Pacheco and ETN. So definitely, definitely big props for that. Well, my call was, was don't draft those guys. Don't draft Etienne and Pacheco.

Draft Kenneth Walker, who's going, you know, in some formats like two rounds later. And that didn't really work out. But I like the process. I mean, he behind, well, the offensive line was arguably like the worst in football. And so that kind of held him back. And he also dealt with injuries all year. But like we saw him get the role I was hoping for the team hyping him up like crazy. Early on in the year, he was having some great games.

But then, of course, he was dealing with injuries. And the guy always deals with injuries. And, you know, maybe that's a blind spot for me. I need to continue to work on. I don't know. What are your thoughts on Kenneth Walker? I really think if he stayed healthy, even with that shitty offensive line,

which is so much worse than I thought it would be, he would have been at least like a really good ADP beater at the very least. Well, I mean, Zach Charbonnet's incredible stretch run where he had this about three weeks in a row where he was giving you high-end RB1 production, that really kind of said it all. By the crazy thing about that, like our film charters were like, Kenneth Walker must have been fuming because, you know, The one game where he went super nuclear was like the only game their offensive line was creating, you know, giving them giving the running back good lanes to run through.

And yeah, he went off in that Belcow role. Maybe that could have been Walker if he stayed healthy. And then you saw, you saw Charbonnet start to kind of lose it at the end to Kenny McIntosh. Yeah. And I think we are going to be talking a lot about Kenneth Walker this offseason if our guy, Clint Kubiak, gets hired there in Seattle. So yeah, I agree with you. Ken Walker, that was one where you had a number of weeks where he looked like he was going to be one of the league winners, still averaged over 16 points per game and had a massively forward as a pass catcher. Shody could do it.

Shout out to pour one out for Ryan Grubb. I know he got fired, but he did a lot of fun things for us fantasy-wide, including Jackson Smith and Jigba. We're going to talk about some of Scott's hits and misses at the wide receiver spot after we take a short break. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice, and we can talk your ear-off about transferring your business when the time comes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do.

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Hulu on Disney Plus is your home for the holidays. Celebrate the season with Hulu, available on Disney Plus in Canada. So, 2024 was the year of the running back, but there was still a lot of huge wins at the wide. receiver position. This was a year, Scott, where a number of wide receivers broke through in scoring, and you were on several of these guys. So this was not a year for the need to see it first drafter when it came to drafting wide receivers. You had several players who were first time wide receiver ones, and you were on a number of these guys. So let's start out at the top.

Cooper Cup, you were on. And this one where it looked like for, a short period of time to beginning of the season that you were going to be spot on. You had sort of the perfect storm where Cooper Cup had the insane usage to start out the year. Then Pooka Nakua went down. This was sort of a injuries derailed it type argument. Is anything else to add with Cup? No, this is just bad. I think this was bad, bad process, bad results.

Because it wasn't just I was too high on Cooper Cup, who gave you a zero the first week of the fantasy playoff. and then did nothing from there. It was also too low on Puka. And this was a big sources thing. You heard like Greg Rosenthal was on a show and like it was clipped and it went viral where he was like I would not draft Pooka. And so my sources were like Pooka's not healthy basically.

I heard the same thing. You weren't the only one here, Scott. Okay. And it was also Cooper Cup looks incredible. And even when Puka was out there and fully healthy, like he was being targeted. you know, three times as often as Puka. And so it just didn't work out. I think we're going to find out in a week or two. They're still in the playoffs right now, the Rams, that Cooper Cup has been seriously hurt. It was weird the bench their starters in week 18. He's seriously hurt. Or maybe

he's just over for him. But like this goes back to what we were just saying is like lean into the younger guy. You know, you have the option one v one, older Cooper Cup, younger coming off of injury. You know, he's always hurt versus Puka. You got to go Puka. So, so this is a, this is a miss for me. Luckily, I think, I think a lot of the rest of these were, we're pretty good process. But yeah, I need to stick to our rules of, you know, gravitate towards the younger player. There's less downside injury risk. There's more upside. And dude, I said on the last school of Scott, like, I don't think it's crazy to take Puka 101 in, in 2025 draft. So, yeah, bad miss by me. But hopefully these,

these other wide receiver calls made up for it. Oh, absolutely made up for it. So you were heavy on Malik Neighbors. You had him ranked as well, you had him as a huge target of yours. He was an exodia wide receivers. Cup was one. Malik Neighbors is one. And just to stay with Malik Neighbors, I'll also give you props that you had Marvin Harrison Jr. at wide receiver 18. A number of people were pushing him up into that wide receiver 10 range. So if you just simply use Scott, rankings to do your draft, you would have had zero exposure to Marvin Harrison Jr. because he never fell down to that wide receiver 18 range. So getting back to Malik Neighbors. I said all offseason. I don't know if I wasseyed out in my rankings. I'll have to check.

But I said like I think Malik Neighbors easily outscores Marvin Harrison. So I was on a Malik Neighbors is going to be a wide receiver one tip where I was said that on literally every podcast I went on. Malik Neighbors was one that we actually discussed when we were discussing prospects. Such a great profile. I think that what got some people in trouble, Scott, was looking at what the Giants wide receivers had done recently, looking at Daniel Jones's sort of inefficiencies and not factoring in the Malik Neighbors was this insane target earner. We both came away with that. You were very much on him. So big profit of that. I mean, like, imagine if they're left tackle. state healthy. Imagine if he had Daniel Jones the whole year. And like he did all this despite like the

worst circumstances minus like minimal target competition. Yeah, I mean like what happens if Sam Darnold goes there. I don't I don't think Sam Darnold's anything special. But like then are you talking about like a round one player in redraft? Yeah. I mean, I think we're already there with Malik neighbors. I had him right at the turn. But when we talk about the ability to absorb targets, We talked about this last week. You just referenced Pukina Kua. Malik neighbors set the wreck, broke Pukinakakua's record for the most receptions by a rookie wide receiver ever with 109. And target-wise ends up with 170 targets.

That was the second most targets among any wide receiver this year. And Scott, he only played 15 games. So what happens if Malik Neighbors doesn't get concussed? Because when Malik Neighbors, we had, so again, take advantage of our early bird pricing. But when we're talking about fantasy points data, it's something that you really want to have to access to become the best you can be in 2025.

One of the great metrics is, is, is, is, is, is, uh, first read rate. And Malik Neighbors was the number one wide receiver in first read rate, number one wide receiver in target share and it's got a fantasy points data history, the most ever. And, and you, you just cited as targets, his, his 17 game pace, would have been better than Cooper Cups record-breaking season. Just we're going to talk about this, his target earning ability in, in just a moment when we talk

about it different. Yeah. And just to add one more, he was like number three in Air Yardshire. So perfect storm. But we referenced, you know, Puka, and we've talked about this last week, where the wide receiver one overall has led the league in targets, led the league in receptions for four straight seasons. So with Malik Neighbors, this is one next year. I'm sure we're going to be pushing him up as high as we can.

Another player you really, really hit on, and I'm going to give you the win on this one, because it's painful. Rashi Rice, this is a player where we had him on our main event team. And when he went down, that certainly hurt our team because he also was a usage king. The way they were using him in the slot, the way they were using him on first reads, his target share. Rashi Rice really looked like the offense had completely shifted to a Rashi Rice dominant offense. We recall that Baltimore Kansas City game where it felt like he had 100 targets.

And then when he went down with his injury, that was one that cost a lot of fantasy managers. But you get the props on that one. Your thoughts on Rashi. Oh. It's pure pain. If God turned injuries off, this would have been one of the best picks he could have made. he basically only played three games. You got hurt season ending in that fourth game.

29 targets. He had 103, 75, 110 yards, a PPR cheat code. Absolutely heartbreaking. Absolutely, like just, dude, he would have been such a league winner. And so fluky injury where he got tackled by Patrick Mahomes. Like, how does that even happen? And so yeah, good, good, good, great process, bad results. He was, he was really a guy I was, I was all in on. And, and a lot of the credit goes to Chris Wack, by the way, because he, you know, he was

looking at projections. You could factor in a four game, Rishi suspension. And he still looks like he should go five rounds high. And like, that was just so true. And so, I don't know. Yeah, that, that one stings. And there's going to be another one or two that that stings in the second. Really, really kind of bad luck with these wide receivers, good process. Yeah, and Rashi averaged like, he was averaging like 19 points a game when he went down. And the week three against Atlanta, his last full game played 12 targets, excuse me, 12 receptions, 14 targets, 110 yards and a touchdown. I literally wrote about him being the league winner in my article for the athletic,

heading into week four. And then this happened. And then I had to, this again happened with a nine. another wide receiver, Chris Godwin, where I did the exact same thing. And I had to basically write, I'm afraid to write about any of these wide receivers. And you certainly were on Chris Godwin. This is one where the two of us podcast and another article that you get access to when you subscribe to fantasy points is Scott takes a deep dive into the offensive coordinators.

And this is a really, really fun article to read. But you talked a lot about Chris Godwin filling in as the Cooper Cup. role essentially in the Liam Cohen offense in Tampa Bay, how excited you were about that role for him and how you wanted to draft him everywhere. And if we look at the sort of the ADP discrepancy between Mike Evans and Chris Godwin, Godwin was really dominating the fantasy scoring. And Godwin averaged 19.7 points per game this year. This was another great process and really unfortunate result for you when it comes to Godwin. And this one. one maybe heard a little bit more than Rashi because Godwin, you had a couple of extra games played.

He had a 36 point game against New Orleans in week six. I mean, you were on top of the world with that one. And then, of course, goes down against Baltimore in week seven. Right at the end of the game. And I'll add, it was at the end of the game, too. This is one where, just to add a little pain, this was a 41, 31 game. And it was almost like Todd Bowles was trying to like, cover the spread or something because he had all of his starters in down 10 at the it was it was with like a minute to go uh correct me if i'm wrong in the in the chat here everyone but i believe it was with like a minute to go godwin went down for the season literally there's a pain in my stomach it feels like a toddler is like punching me really hard and because it is it makes me sick to

my stomach like literally um only one wide receiver outscored chris godwin this year jemar chase and that's it. This was the best possible pick you could have made. This is a player I caped up for to draft everywhere you can, extreme value. It was the play caller piece, the Cooper Cup role. And you just ran bad.

And it's one of those things where it's like season-ending injuries. Rishie Rice is like maybe like the worst pick you could have made in that round just because you only got three games out of them, even if they were good games. But like if he stays healthy, if Chris Godwin stays healthy, like how many Godwin plus Rashid teams are in the championship? So many of them. Because how many of those teams that I have?

A ton of them. And also when it comes to Godwin, the offense got better when they embraced Bucky Irving. So you could have also had Godwin down the stretch of the playoffs putting up a few more of these spike type weeks. So we all saw the success Mike Evans had in the fantasy football playoffs. you could really envision Chris Godwin making some of those huge grabs. So this is pure pain for a lot of you listening to it. One other player who you were on, I actually won a big bet on this with Billy Muzio, another fantasy analyst.

We bet on a JSN bet. And I was sort of with you where JSN year one, this was a guy where it wasn't an all-time bust. It was more that people were being kind of punitive to him based on where his ADP was as a rookie. But this was a guy where I loved the profile coming out. I know you had made the Keenan Allen comparison coming out. And you stuck to your guns and you drafted JSN. This time we were actually able to draft him in year two considerably lower than we had to pay in year one.

So you get a big, big props as well on JSN. Any thoughts on your process with him sticking to your, was this a matter of sticking to your guns? Was this a you embracing the Ryan Grub? or was this simply anything else that I'm not I'm not really referencing yeah so he he wasn't in exodia but he was he you know he did get his own section and bold as a player to target and really it was just like hey my model said this is keen and Allen reincarnated when he was coming out and then he sucked in year one and like the OC also was probably an idiot and so like what if what if he just you know the original assumption on him is right and now it's looking right it took me a while to get back into

to it to really believe in it just because it broke my heart so much as rookie season, at least like on our on our podcast School of Scott. But yeah, I mean, I feel great about that now. I think there were two more Exodia tier wide receivers to talk about. Let's first let's first talk about the Deonté one. And then we'll, because I will tie in some other stuff with the other one. But your thoughts on Deontay Johnson, this is a star crossed season for him. but you did get the sort of usage you were looking for.

You just couldn't really factor in Carolina moving on from him so quickly, then him having the worst possible second chance landing spot, third chance landing spot. It's been what a wild ride for Deontay. Yeah, well, he had that stretch where, like, I thought I was going to be, you know, dead on right where I think the first two weeks were rough. The offense just looked non-viable.

to get Andy Dalton in scores 26, then 21, then a down game, and then 20 points. And I'm like, okay, here we go. I think this is, you know, the crazy hot matrix? Yes. I think he just tilted too far into the crazy this year. So like this is something I love about Malik neighbors, right? He's like he's a bit of an asshole. He's a bit of like a self, not I don't want to say selfish player, but like if, if he doesn't

get 10 targets in a game. that the Giants lose, he's going to complain. He's going to throw Brian Dable under the bus. So they're going to get him his 10 targets every game no matter what. And so Deontay was always like that. Like you heard that after the Texans lost or no, Texans win, upset win. He was pouting in the locker room, had to be consoled. Everyone else is celebrated. And so like you like, you like, when you're good enough and the team placates you, you know you're going to get your targets. You know you're going to get your fantasy points. But yeah, our film charters, the guys, who are grading ass are like,

this was really weird. Deonté was just totally checked out of this game. I forget which game it was. He wasn't even trying. Devante Adams actually did that too before his trade. And so eventually you're just too much of an asshole and you're just gone. And like other teams don't want to deal with the headache.

And that's really what happened is. And so like I did not see, you know, him getting cut from three different teams and no one picking him up as a possibility. But yeah, guys, I guess, can just, you know, go crazy. And we knew he was a bit of a weirdo. I didn't have this on my bingo. Yeah, Deontay Johnson won. I'm going to go ahead and go out on a limb. He will not be an Exodia player heading into the 2025 season for you. And this might be the last time we talk about Deonté Johnson on School of Scott. He's going to be a, he's, this was such a weird year. It was one of the weirdest years ever that I can recall for a guy who actually

had fantasy production. Just completely weird one. Another player where it's sort of the complete opposite. This was actually like sort of a heartwarming season. Terry McLaren's been one where for years. And a shout out to Brett Whitefield, who's been a Terry McLaren guy for a long time. Brett speaks glowingly about his skills. I know you have as well.

And it's been sort of a player where every year this guy gives you like 14 points per game. like a thousand receiving yards, like 70 catches, but he could never take that next step because of just awful quarterback play. But this year he had his dream season. He ends up scoring exceptionally well, ends up making big plays in a in a playoff victory. McCloren ends up breaking the Washington commanders slash football team slash Redskins record with 13 touchdown receptions. Just an amazing year for McLaren. you also had him as a player you were targeting your thoughts i think the results were good i don't know how much credit i can give myself in terms of process um so like a part of why i was high on him was because

you know i'm high on jaden daniels right um but the other thing was in like chris and i chris wecht and i our projections are talked about this a bunch it's like where else is the ball going to go we're we're predicting like this massive target share and he never got that um he He had six, he averaged 6.7 targets per game, which, you know, was right there with Marvin Harrison Jr. Right there with Jonu Smith, Khalil Shakir is outside of the top 40. And so like the targets weren't there. But that was like a major thesis and why we like McLaurin. And it was a really weird year for him where it's like he never had any like major boom games, but he was just like constantly within, I don't know, 12.5 to 22.5 fantasy points.

And yeah, and like, and I think since week 11, I'd have to double check, but since week 11, something like that where he was below Zach Ertz and tickets per game. He was below Noah Brown and targets per game. He was below Olimidi's Z. And so it's just very weird. He just got there on raw efficiency. Maybe Kingsbury was intentionally picking his spots and like that was a good role for him. But I still don't even totally know if it was good process because it hit,

but not for the reason I thought. even if so, it's like, did we just get lucky? Because, you know, contrasting fantasy points with XFP is like, it kind of looks like he just ran really, really hot. And that's something we should expect to regress to the mean. But I'm really just curious in your thoughts because I don't have a good, good feel for this situation right now today in January. No, I think that he's, he was a massive win for you. I mean, it was the second highest process. We're talking process here, Theo. Well, listen, okay, so process wise. It was still the where he was being selected, he ends up being a big ADP win. And I think that there is something to be said. A lesson is wide receiver ones.

Sometimes even when if even where the offense is sort of beat up slightly by ADP, which Washington's was a lot of new moving pieces. People weren't really embracing it. The wide receiver ones sort of, I think this is a Adam Hartstead. I want to say he was the one that had this one where it was sort of embracing the wide receiver ones and quote unquote bad offenses. Those guys hit quite often. And I think McLoran really was one of those this year. You were able to identify him as the clear piece of the Washington offense that was a non-Jad Daniels piece that you wanted to draft. So I think that counts as well.

So I'll say that process and results sort of merge into one another. and just getting back into the wide receiver ones and sort of the offense, nobody wants. Cortland Sutton, also another sort of ADP win this year. So I'll give you the win on McLaurin. And I'll say just for me, looking at your wide receiver hits and sort of some of the lessons that I've taken away is I think this has been multiple seasons in a row where rookie wide receiver ADPs, even when they seem inflated, a lot of times the guys have beaten expectations. Malik neighbor, as we discussed. Ladd McConkey, you talked about you wish you would have drafted more. Brian Thomas Jr.

is one where I said at the beginning of the summer, he's going to outscore Christian Kirk. I said it tons of times, and I wish I had more exposure to him. But all of those guys hit. And then one other trend that we've seen, Scott, back-to-back seasons, DJ Moore gets a new quarterback, a quarterback improvement with Justin Fields in terms of fantasy. takes a huge leap forward. Terry McLaren gets a quarterback improvement, takes a huge leap forward.

So I'm sure there'll be some player that we can circle this coming year and say this is this year's DJ Moore, Terry McLaren. So for me, it's looking for that archetype and then looking for rookie wide receivers. And I actually think it's going to be a perfect storm because you have a number of people saying that this is a down class. But at the end of the day, there's going to be several of these wide receivers that land into better than expected situations with enough profile that they can return fantasy value for us. So for me, those are the sort of the lessons learned. Anything to add on quarterback improvement and the rookie takeaway? Yeah, I really think like that's just such an obvious win every year is drafting the rookie

wide receivers. The caveat being, I think they're rookie wide receivers like I have to like. My model likes at least like round one, round two caliber. because this past draft, there were a lot of round two wide receivers. I didn't think were round two caliber. Didn't really work out. And yeah, and you're going to see every year there's value there. And for whatever reason, the decline in ADP value because, you know, you have beat

writers saying, oh, you know, maybe they're the wide receiver four, they're going to ease him in, or there's not a lot of targets to go around. And just no cream tends to rise to the top. And there's just so much upside. because like what if a Brian Thomas Jr. really is just that freak. And that was a big miss by me. I could I could do a whole show on BTJ. But Ladd McConkey was an absolute superstar. Malik Neighbors was insanely valuable. And then with Marvin Harrison Jr. is just there's a rule now. Don't ever draft a rookie wide receiver in round two. And I think I think you're good to go on that. And yeah, I will say for this year,

I think I think there's going to be a role it's like draft as many rookie running backs as you can. I need to dig into my model and do all that. But like this looks like a really special class to me, sort of rivaling the Alvin Kamara, Kareem Hunt, Aaron Jones, where just like that class was insanely stacked. And if all you did was just draft as many of those as you can. And I think, so I think, I think this year is actually going to be a pretty good zero RB. year. And it's always good to Zag when others are zgging. But yeah, I know there's going to be at least like three wide receivers I'm really excited about. And then it's always worth just kind of gambling

on the really cheap ones just in case. But yeah, I think this is a good rule. Like, yeah, rookie equals upside. So hell yeah. And that's why we do. That's why I write all my words in my model article. This is why you do a million shows and you're going to do. a bunch of content for us on the rookies. And Brett's draft guide, obviously, which is... Yeah, I had a chance to record with Brett this week, and we're both super high on this running back class. A lot of people are...

I did my dream... My dream landing spots article. It's over at Fantasy Points. Right now you can read that one. But yeah, I'm with you. This running back class is sick. This running back class is going to nuke a lot of running backs that we think might be safe.

It's going to be a lot of sort of disappointed dynasty managers when they wake up heading into day three of the NFL draft. because some of those day two landing spots with this class are just going to be, like, changing the game. This is a, this is like one of the best running back classes I've ever seen. And we have a generational prospect at the top in Ashton Genti. So this is a big time class. Let's pivot over to tight end. Less to talk about at the tight end spot.

And this is one where even in your guide, you said, let me pull up the exact quotes. I don't misrepresent you here. but it says my overall tight-end strategy this year is whatever, it doesn't really matter. And this is one where I'll push back on two things you did. You were never high on Dalton Kincaid. In fact, you were critical on Dalton Kincaid, but you moved him up in your rankings. Correct me if I'm wrong, Scott. You had him around tight-end six.

Am I correct on that? Well, let me just derail us for just a tiny bit. just because I think this is so amusing. I pulled back up that 2017 draft. Listen to all these running backs. Leonard Furnett, Christian McCaffrey, Dalvin Cook, Joe Mixin, Alvin Kamara, Kareem Hunt, James Connor,

Aaron Jones, Tariq Cohen. I think Austin Echler was an undrafted free agent. That was just like such a random outlier year that just totally reshapes the NFL. And it like has a dramatic impact on, you know, past percentage or pass rate over expectation, different things like that. I can't say for certain, but if this class is in any way similar to that, it would be massive, massive implications for fantasy.

But yeah, you asked about tight ends. And I never felt good about my tight ends rankings the entire time I was kind of lost and I admitted it. The good news is I argued is that it's just not really that impactful of a decision. I think I should have like of a position. I think I should have leaned into. that a little bit more and just say like grab grab the cheapest guy inside the top 12, which would have been Brock Bowers and would have been awesome. But yeah, here's my rankings and

they were bad. And so this was bad process, bad results. I deserve to be punished. Travis Kelsey, huge tier at the top. Travis Kelsey tight end one, Sam Laporta, tight end two. By the way, I think he was hurt for just about the entirety of the season. The coaching staff kind of basically admitted as much. He did see targets kind of uptick towards the but it was also Dan Campbell kind of was just honest with us and said he expected Jameson to get more work at at LaPorter's expense. Mark Andrews, tight-in three, still to this day, I don't really know what happened there. I just did not expect Isaiah likely to eat into his route share as much as he did. Trey McBride four, all these guys in a tier. And I waffled back and

forth. I had Trey McBride, tight-in-one one for multiple weeks. And then I had him tight-in-three and then tight end four. And then I had Kyle Pitts, tight end five, enough already. Enough already. No must. No more. No, not doing it. We're not doing it again. George Kittle six in the same tier with Pitts. Kittle, Kittal should have been in the top, top four. You know, I made the case for it. He was my highest on tight end in

best ball. And I made the case to, you know, gall in on him in basketball. But it just, I don't know why it didn't train. And then Dalton Kincaid 7, Evan Ingram, 8, Jake Ferguson 9, David and Joku 10, Brock Bowers 11. And I'll let you, I'll let you frame the question, but I'm sure I already know this. Okay. So the Bowers 11-1, this is one where you love the profile. This is one where, like when you talked about prospects, this is a can't miss type tight end lands in a situation where so the tight end position just as a just a general draft strategy of my own, and I'm sure yours as well. We want to target tight ends who are going to be

either the leading target or the second leading target on their team. You almost need that most years. Occasionally you get touchdown outliers who can mess that whole equation up, but you really want to embrace the tight ends who can be the number two or number one target on their team. With Bowers, it was sort of clear that he was going to be the number two target behind Devonte Adams. I mean, sort of everything. was there. I ended up with a with a good amount of Brock Bowers. But I was just a little bit surprised to see you push him down to tight end 11, especially after we had the Sam Laporte's season the year before where sort of the glass ceiling was broken for a rookie tight end. Was it the offense situation?

Was it the quarterback? Break that one down. Like I I care so much. And by the way, if like there, if I talked to you into a player and it didn't work out, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter. or remind me because it's just going to help me for when I do my draft guide is coming up with these takeaways, lessons learned. Like I really, I really value that. I appreciate that. I want that. But like, I'm not someone who's just like steady. You know, you just like, you take your wins and your losses with a grain of salt. I ride the emotional roller coaster. And so every week this season, Brock Bowers just slap me across the face with how stupid this was. Let's read what I wrote in the draft guide. Brock Bowers is probably the best tight end prospect ever who fell into a terrible landing spot. Elite

outlier talents like Bowers are the sort of players who we want to be betting on, hashtag upside wins championships, especially at the onesie positions. And outlier talents have a way of overcoming all obstacles, dot, dot, dot, but I'm not as bullish as all this seems. Why not? Why aren't you as bullish as all that seems. And so I said with you on your show, I'm pretty sure, is Jemar Chase, I had as the elite, the best wide receiver prospect to come out with Julio Jones. I want to be drafting him everywhere, blah, blah, blah. And then there was the stupid report out of camp where he was dropping every pass thrown his way. He did that in preseason. And I'm like, oh, he took a year off. And T. Higgins.

is there. And so I didn't have him as a must draft player. And like, I beat myself up for that every single week that season. And I'm like, never again. If you have a freak outlier talent, you go all in. I don't care how bad this situation is. And then here I am. I'm like, well, Michael Mayer is there. It's really hard for a tight end to overcome a 60% route share. If they do go with the two tight end thing, I don't really know what happened with Michael Mayer. He was like, he was put on IR for off the field reasons for like a couple months. It was a mental health thing. And I don't think we never got the full story there.

Yeah. And then even when he came back, though, it didn't matter. Bowers is still bawling out. And so it's just rule in bold, in highlighter, underlined is always draft the generational. Like I, my, I almost cried when I wrote. my in the the prospect model my my write-up on bowers it was so beautiful it was dangstatt after dank stat after dank stat where i was like if this guy were a wide receiver he's right there with malick neighbors and marvin harrison jr which is insane um and uh yeah this is a big miss this

it's a tough one to relive and it's just it's just an l i don't know what went wrong there it was just it was just poor process and uh i broke a rule that i had and i don't know why Well, it's going to hurt even more every time you land in Vegas and you see a hundred foot billboard with Brock Bowers on it moving forward. Well, I have them on every dynasty league. Thank God. Yeah, thank God. You'll make up for it there. So I'll say that the one kind of takeaway at the tight end spot, you reference Pitts, you reference Kincaid. And I think that the younger player getting better and will take a huge leap forward because of XYZ in their second and third year, that does, has not. been hitting as often as the rookie tight end slash tight end in a new situation. A couple of the bigger

hits we've seen the last two years have been Sam Laporta, Brock Bowers, and actually, to his credit, Kincaid as a rookie also kind of hit at ADP and had that stretch. But it's the Pitts Kincaid types that get people in trouble, the speculative younger tight end. If you're going to look for those guys, look for the Tucker craft, look for the Tray McBride who sort of didn't really register as rookies and then get an opportunity and thrive. Those guys cost you nothing versus a guy like Pitts and Kincaid. So that was sort of my- Go ahead. And that's what I've always done. That's always what made me, you know, some of my best picks like Darren Waller's breakout year, Mark Andrews' breakout year, et cetera. And I really like went away from like a lot of the rules I had

sort of set in stone. I think I just kind of like, again, I let off the section with like, I'm kind of lost at the tight end position there this year. And I felt like I, I just kind of gravitated towards ADP, which I don't typically do and I don't want to do. But I don't know. I just kind of, I kind of was a mess at tight end this year. I got to go back to the drawing board and kind of just kind of tune out. I think the noise and stick to, I know what's worked for me in the past. Yeah, this is one where also I talked about this with. Brett Whitefield about how the NFL is sort of a copycat league. You saw two tight ends this year with 110 plus receptions in Brock Bowers and

Trey McBride, both young players, both high draft capital guys, first round pick Bowers, second round pick McBride. You also had back-to-back seasons with rookie tight ends, just making a huge impact. Bowers this year, Samuel Ford of the year before. I do want to say, like, again, this isn't a very impactful. position. Like George Kittle was the best tight end by war. And he was behind Baker Mayfield and four other quarterbacks in terms of wins above. I mean, it's a little different when you're talking about, you know, I don't know, draft capital or relative to like intrapositional value, but like not a lot.

It's just, you know, and Bowers was great, but he, you know, he wasn't like Travis Kelsey in his prime. And like, so that's the way I've always viewed the position is like if you're not getting a Travis Kelsey in his prime, it's not a position that really matters. It would go most important, most impactful running back, then wide receiver, then quarterback, then tight end, then defense. So I will say like misses at the tight end position. It doesn't matter a lot, but I think the better takeaway here really should have just been from me is like, go cheap, go cheap. And, you know, if you went cheap, you would have just lucked into Brock Bowers anyway. Yeah. I think this is another one where all offseason, though, and I love the way you put that because, you know, 15 points per game is great to have,

but 15 points per game, missing on a 15 point per game guy is never going to destroy you. So I think that's a good way of looking at it. I do think this is a year where you're doing your process next year. I think this is another year where we're going to have to be open-minded to rookies. We talked about the strength of the running back class. It's sort of a transformative year at the tight end position. where you might see five, six guys go in the top 60 picks with two or three going to the first round. And I think it's a copycat league where people have seen this sort of success from younger tight ends.

And I think there's going to be NFL GMs right now looking at guys like Tyler Warren, Colston Loveland, Harold Fandon Jr., if he has a really big senior bowl and saying, this is a guy that can help my passing game right away. So it'll be really interesting to kind of pick your brain all offseason about your draft process with the tight ends. Scott, we set a record here. This is the longest ever school of Scott since we started recording with one another. So shout out to everybody's still watching. Yeah. Yeah. Shout out to you. I love you. If you're listening to a 90-minute fantasy football podcast in January, you are one of us. You are a true D-Gen junkie. I love it.

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