Fantasy Football Daily - How To Win in Fantasy Football in 2025 + 2024 Takeaways | School Of Scott

Episode Date: February 14, 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 "How To Win in Fantasy Football in 2025 + 2024 Takeaways." Where to find us: http://twitter.com/RyanJ_Heath 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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Welcome to School of Scott. I'm Theo Greminger. No Scott Barrett today. First time ever a school of Scott without Scott Barrett. But I'm excited to be joined by Ryan Heath. We're going to be going over Ryan's incredible 2024 takeaways article that you can read right over at Fantasy Points. This is absolute fire. Ryan took a look at some of the things he got wrong, some of the things he got right in 2024 from a deeper analytical perspective. And he points out a few things that can help you win in 2025. Ryan, how you doing today, man? Hey, I'm doing great. Yeah, thanks for having me on here, Theo. Very big shoes to fill out here on School of Scott with Scott Barrett not here. But yeah, I will do my best to do my best Scott Barrett impression. And we'll see how that goes today. Yeah. So at the School of Scott, we're taking a deep. dive into the box scores and helping you become better at playing fantasy football.

And I think anybody who reads Ryan's article is going to become a little bit better at playing fantasy football. This is a very, very good article. I sent you that message after I read it. You had a ton of takeaways here from the 2024 season. This was a year where there was a lot different. There was several positions regressed in terms of the overall scoring. Some positions took a step forward.

Some positions were somewhat neutral. But let's first dive into the position everybody wants to hear about the running back position. There was a running back positional scoring outburst in 2024. Is this sustainable? We're certainly seeing this on early underdog ADPs, early FFPC ADPs from early 2025 drafts. The market is aggressively attacking the high-end running back position. Do you anticipate that this is something that's a changing of the guard in terms of scoring? Or was 2024 somewhat of a one-off?

Yeah, so I think it was somewhat of an outlier. But just to talk about this, I want to come from the other side of the argument first because there are very smart people on the other side of this argument as well, including my dynasty points co-host Jacob Sanderson. Basically, you could say, well, look, the NFL is changing, the run game over all has become somewhat more effective. Teams are using these heavier packages a lot more in 2024. Go-line carries are slightly up.

All these teams are just seeing the value of the running back position now. And I guess it makes sense that you might want to carry that forward into fantasy football, right? And say, well, it looks like the running back renaissance is here and that it's here to stay. But I disagree with that for really one important reason. And that's because running back renaissance is here. backs collectively, just top 30 running backs by preseason ADP, had one of their two healthiest seasons in recent memory this past season. The highest rate made it to at least 15 games played of any season aside from, I believe, 2021 was the last time we saw this many running back staying

healthy. And that coincided with one of the unhealthiest wide receiver seasons in recent memory. So yeah, it makes sense that both in real NFL terms, we see more running game production, less receiving game production when all the star receivers are hurt. And the same in fantasy football. It makes sense that more running backs are producing because more of the actually good and talented running backs were healthy for most of the season than we typically see, especially compared to wide receivers. So, yeah, we'll get into it a little bit more later on in terms of the talent and how some guys are aging out soon. But yeah, overall, I don't think that 2024 is what we should expect going forward for the fantasy scoring of the running back position.

Yeah, that's definitely an interesting take. And I think one that is sort of thought provoking in the community early on. Fantasy football managers can often sometimes be copycats chasing last season scoring line. And the market's sort of reflecting it now where you're seeing in 2024, it was sort of the argument was Christian McCaffrey or C.D. Lamb or Tyree Kill, the RB one overall, and then you had the two top wide receivers in ADP. And it was like a draft sort of switching up. These days, you're seeing three out of the top four picks are the running back spots on underdog drafts. This is definitely a change. People are really chasing that true bell cow at the number one spot.

and it's not just one player. So we're definitely going to spend a little bit more time discussing that running back position coming up. But just from a bird's eye view, taking a big step back, one other thing you discussed in your article was the win rates. In seasons past, we could potentially find a player in the middle rounds. You know, you think about Lamar Jackson in 2019, that sort of outcome player that could really, really drive win rates. But this year, on the contrary, win rates are being driven by rounds one through six players. So are fantasy managers becoming better at identifying this sort of breakout talents and players that can make impacts on overall league success, not just, you know,

guys who beat their ADP and score a little bit more than they were supposed to? I believe so, yeah. So just to set definitions here, a little bit. Anytime I say league winner on this podcast or in my article, I'm talking about players that made the playoffs on an ESPN playoff team in at least 55% of ESPN leagues. ESPN publishes this data every single year. I've been tracking it for the last couple. Scott Barrett used to track it for going back to 2017. So this is like a really good way or a data focused way that Scott and I just like to talk about the players that actually matter in fantasy, the league winners, the guys that are getting more than 55% of their teams to the playoffs.

And yeah, when it comes to these league winners in 2024, almost all of them were drafted within the first six rounds. The only guy who went kind of later was Brock Bowers in terms of league winners. And that's more of a recent development. So there were no undrafted league winners in 2022. There were only two in 2023. They were Pukunakua and Kyron Williams. So both the direct result of Sean McVeigh just lying to us in the preseason of one coach lying to us. And then again, there were no undrafted league winners in 2024. And yeah, I do think that it's partial. And I do think that It's partially just fantasy managers getting smarter and the ADP on these platforms getting smarter.

But it's not just getting smarter. It's also taking in more information, I think, especially from the preseason, about these guys that could have roles and would have upside in doing so. So a really good example from this past season was Bucky Irving. So as soon as we got any sort of whispers that Bucky Irving was going to have a role on offense in training camp when he's showing out. You know, he's behind Rashad White. It's just taking you back to pre-week-1.

This is what we were thinking about. He immediately was getting drafted in ESPN leagues. Back in the day, that wasn't happening. You could just pick up James Robinson after week one, whatever his rookie year was. I think now the average fantasy manager, or at least the ADP in these platforms, really bake in the types of players that can have these league-winning seasons.

especially rookie running backs that can earn surprising roles. So, yeah, I think it's a lot harder to just add guys on waivers now than it was especially five years ago, especially 10 years ago. Yeah, I think that's an unbelievably interesting way of putting it, Ryan. And I thought a lot about this as well. I think another thing that sort of changed the win rate marketplace was Justin Jefferson season, because after the Justin Jefferson season, you saw, no discounts whatsoever. Like,

2022 was a year, or excuse me, 2021 was a year where Cooper Cup was viewed as this massive league winner. He was still being drafted inside of like round four. But Jamar Chase that year was also a high-end wide receiver one. And he was like a sixth round pick, a fifth round pick before the quote-unquote drops were plaguing him in preseason. So I think that the rookie wide receiver being driven. up in ADP and then having those breakouts in years past, you might get that youth discount.

I think people are a little bit more willing to embrace uncertainty and upside more often than they were in the past. Do you sort of agree on that? Yeah, I fully agree. And I mean, that's bad for us. That's bad for me. That's bad for Scott Barrett. That's bad for our whole brand because that that's kind of what the two of us are always constantly talking about as one of our biggest edges is, yeah, the average fantasy manager doesn't care enough about upside. They care too much about median outcome, about a projected week one role, especially for running backs. Yeah, it's becoming less and less the case.

I do think people are catching on more and more. So we are going to probably have to find different ways to extract these edges in fantasy going forward. And we'll probably talk about a few of those on this very podcast. So looking forward to getting into that. And I love just to point one thing out that you said, with the, I think that fantasy managers are more patient when these sort of players, you know, come and exist. You think about years ago, there's people that would tell you a horror story.

I'll bring up Justin Jefferson. I'll bring up Amun Ross St. Brown's rookie season where they're like, you know, I drafted that guy. But then after week two, I cut him loose. I couldn't stand seeing those low scoring numbers. I think you sort of nailed it where fantasy managers are also willing to sit on a zero a little bit longer. and not necessarily a zero, but an unstartable player. For instance, like the two rookies who we'll dive into certainly Bucky Irving a little later, but Bucky Irving and Tyrone Tracy start the year out slowly or slowish for Irving. And then managers are like, okay, and then they take over and it's like a rewarding their patience.

I think so people have become sharper drafters. There's more information and they're also being patient when an upside situation, before the upside situation breakout reveals itself, they're willing to sort of tolerate lower scoring players on their bench as well. So a lot of great stuff there. We're going to take a quick break and we come back. We're going to dive into the running back position with some of Ryan's research and see certain ways that can help you win in 2025.

Welcome back to the School of Scott, Theo Greminger, with guest host, aka just straight up guest, Ryan Heath, Ryan, we're discussing your incredible 2024 key takeaways article that you can find over at fantasy points right now. Absolutely tremendous read. Let's talk about this running back position. Should we, first and foremost, the two of us have had this conversation several times. And it's sort of a, this sort of ties hand in hand with the dynasty community where there's certain fantasy managers who just adhere to an age apex. Guy turns a certain age.

I am significantly less interested in him. on my dynasty roster, and that's sort of trickled over to redraft, where the more aggressive unknown upside drafter has embraced younger backs and faded older backs for years because we have seen how when the bottom falls out on some of these older backs, they can go from high scoring to a near zero. But after the success of a number of older backs this year and in the previous two seasons, You talk about three straight years, Ryan, where the RB one overall has been past the age apex. Austin Eccler three years ago, Christian McCaffrey in 2023.

And then this year was Sequin Berkeley. And then we'll throw Derek Henry. He was just so impactful. Should we adjust our thinking on the running back age apex in fantasy? Yeah, I'll even add a few more names from this past season. So also Alvin Camara, also Joe Mixon, both were league winning players. by our ESPN playoff rate definition also both well past the age apex, right? So I do think we should adjust a little bit, but I don't think we should suddenly be targeting

older running backs necessarily. So the reason I say that is because I think that the understanding of the age apex has really infected the entire fantasy community. Everybody is constantly talking about it. I don't want to draft old running backs. They're high risk. And that's true. But because that understanding is now very much baked into all these players' ADPs,

I don't think that just as a draft strategy, you can say I'm fading every running back over 26 is necessarily valid anymore. Camara and Mixon, especially, were drafted well below their previous season finishes and their previous season volume this past season. They went ahead and did basically the same thing as they did in 2023 or improved on actually in both of their cases. So that's one part. Yeah, the market has adjusted to the age apex, especially at the running back position, maybe in dynasty more so at the wide receiver position as well. The other thing going on here, though, is right now a lot of the best running backs in the league

happen to be older. And the reason for that is largely the impact of that amazing 2017 running back draft class. So for those that don't remember, that that includes a bunch of the names we just listed off. That Austin Eccler was in that. That was Christian McCaffrey, Alvin Camara, Joe Mixin, Leonard Fournette was putting up huge numbers there. Obviously, he hasn't lasted quite as long. So many guys, James Connor, Aaron Jones, guys who were still productive this year, all from that class. So I think right now, just the running back talent in the league kind of skews a bit older. So it would make sense that we're seeing a lot more productive seasons out of older running backs, just because those are the running backs right now that are the best that have been the most talented.

It doesn't mean that any of them individually are safe bets. All of them are individually risky. But it also doesn't mean because they're older that you can individually fade any of these running backs just for that reason. Because, again, the talent profile is just much higher than, we typically see of running backs in the league at age 27, 28, 29, or what have you. And because NFL teams recognize that very clearly, these are the guys that are being given these full Belkow workloads in the league right now. It is, it's these older guys.

So, yeah, I guess those are just my thoughts on the age apex, on the age apex. And yeah, to wrap it up, it still matters, but I do think the market is almost fully just pricing it in at this point, to the point where you can argue for upside bets on guys that are heavily discounted for that reason. Let's jump ahead. You've done a lot of research on the age curves and your age curves model. 24 like diverged from it. And I'll push back on just one thing. like do you think that we should pay a little bit more attention with the contracts that these older backs are getting specifically on new teams and new situations? Pushback on that one. Does it sort of change our train of thought when an NFL team invests in an older back as in, hey, this sort of money and this sort of investment this team is making is sort of telling us that these guys are not cooked?

our NFL team's getting a little bit better at analyzing these older backs. And also one other thing that's been sort of bandied about is these backs are staying healthier and these backs are staying fresher and older, not just because of the talent of the 2017 class, but because they're taking incredible care of themselves. They're spending more money outside the NFL. So case in point, the biggest example of this is like Derek Henry, all the freak stuff we see in the off season. And sort of your thoughts on those two things, Ryan, in regards with your age curve.

Yeah, to that first point, I agree that NFL teams as a whole are getting smarter and how they're allocating their resources and their salary cap. This past season, we did see a lot of these, not like massive, but decent size contracts handed out to these older running backs. And it was by generally forward thinking and analytically driven teams, right? The Ravens going out for Derek Henry, the Eagles, how he, Roseman going out to sign Sequin Barkley. I do think that that is a signal, or obviously in hindsight, because I was definitely

one of the people that was raising my eyebrows at this at the time. But yeah, in hindsight, I think especially these forward-thinking organizations had it right. Yeah, this specific crop of players probably has a bit more longevity than your typical crop of age 26 to 30 running backs. And they recognize that. I didn't. last spring. So good, like, good on them, good on the NFL GMs. And yeah, the other piece of that,

in terms of outside of the NFL, all of the exercise science and all of that, I don't know as much personally, like about the nutrition and the injury stuff and everything that goes into how these guys prepare. But yeah, I can only assume that all of that is getting better as we advance as science makes more discoveries. So, yeah, I would imagine that, that is playing into it somewhat as well. But again, Father Time is literally undefeated. So even if we're extending out these players' careers on average, an extra year, an extra two years for their peak, it is going to stop at some point.

And that's something we should keep in mind, especially as you've mentioned, the market is right now reacting and pushing these running backs in general upboards. Yeah, so it's sort of like a dumb team lets older back go, smart team gobbles a up. The Baltimore Ravens get Tennessee's Derek Henry. The Philadelphia Eagles get the New York Giants, Sequin Barclay. And you saw the NFL sort of react to this. In my opinion, like the Alvin Kamara getting this extension at his age, despite the team situation of New Orleans. And to somewhat extent, Arizona extending James Connor would necessarily call them like the dumb team. I think they're somewhere in the middle. It's almost like reactionary that, hey, we don't

want this to happen to us. We're just going to sign this guy. I don't want to see Alvin Kamara on another team helping, you know, them win games when he should just be in New Orleans. I think you're seeing some of the reaction for the NFL. So we should sort of react to that as well. And then just to the point with the longevity of the career, I think it's a little bit of LeBron effect where like LeBron James has aged so well and it's how much money he's

spending off the field. In the past, I think NFL players were crazy. about their offseason workout programs as well and somewhat crazy about their nutrition, depending on the athlete, but they were more trusting in like the organization. Now you're hearing about these very successful, long-term, very successful players

with like their own coaches, their own nutritionists, their own personal chef. So a lot to sort of unpack. What about somebody who's going to point at this and say, Ryan, but, you know, these high-end running backs were scoring.

The early, early-round, early-drafted guys were scoring, but what about Chase Brown? What about Chuba Hubbard? What about Bucky Irving? Those guys definitely must have had the same sort of impact on win rates and the power at the top. What would you say to that? Yeah.

So in a normal year, that probably would have been the case. I agree. Those three names you mentioned, Hubbard, Chase Brown, Bucky Irving, all were among the top players just by fantasy points over their ADP-based expectation. So they all outperform their draft position by pretty much the most of any player, certainly at the running back position. And there was an impact there. But very interestingly, the playoff win rates, the ESPN playoff win rates, did not really spike as much for those players. None of those three guys made it to that 55% cutoff mark that we like to use to analyze and call a guy a league winner.

So, yeah, while those players did matter, if you drafted them, or if they were dropped and you picked them up off the waiver wire, that probably did help your team. But in a season like this where we had so many early round running backs that were performing at high levels that people drafted, it didn't move the needle enough it looks like on average based on the win rates to actually get a ton of teams into the playoffs just on those guys alone, right? So I mean, obviously if you had Derek Henry,

and a Chase Brown even better. Yeah, that's probably helping your win rate. But if you were a zero RB team that didn't have any of these high-end producers, there were just too many of them kind of crowding out all of these more like zero-r-b guys, at least this year. That's not necessarily going to happen every year, especially as we talked about. If the health kind of swings back for the position in any of the following years, then yeah, yeah, you're still probably going to get these late round.

producers that can have this massive impact on win rates. But yeah, specifically this season, it wasn't the case that a Bucky Irving or a Chase Brown by themselves was propelling a significant number of teams into the finals or into the playoffs. One interesting term that you used that I thought was terrific was you talked about the running back collapse of the 2024 rookie class. So it's a almost a contradiction that running back scoring was excessively high. this year and there were so many players that were a success at their ADP.

Usually in years past when we saw this sort of running back impact, there would have been a rookie that would have made a huge huge impact towards the top. You referenced James Robinson. Everybody knows Alvin Kamara's rookie season, Sequin, Zeke. The list goes on of guys that just crushed in their rookie season. But this year, you had a massive failure of the 2024 class. And a lot of these guys look like they're going to struggle to recover value down the line. Jonathan Brooks, number one drafted running back.

Obviously, injuries are going to derail him for at least 2025, possibly beyond, and so on. Trey Benson, they re-signed James Connor, the whole thesis that Trey Benson would take over in 2025. Now he's going to be a injury upside contingent play once again. then you couple that with the 2025 class that's coming in as, in my opinion, the most talented class of backs since 2017. How much pressure is there on the 2025 class to sort of make up for 2024 and take over the high-end running back scoring when eventually these 2017 guys died down? Yeah, there's a ton of pressure on it.

And yeah, the reason for that is exactly what you just said. Right now, as we've been talking about all of the talent at the running back position is thematically pretty old. Yeah, we can talk about how long can they extend their careers out with all of these developments in the NFL. But eventually these guys are going to fall off at some point. It may not be all at once, but if it is all at once, then suddenly we're sitting here with the 2024 class that was a complete and total flop. You mentioned Jonathan Brooks and Trey Benson, hilarious, by the way, that the two most highly touted running back prospects from this 24 class, both had the incumbent starter ahead of them earn a contract extension, a multi-year

contract extension during their rookie season. Like that, that's just very funny to me. I can't ever remember a time that happened. Even if you go deeper into that 24 class, though, you had Marshawn Lloyd missing pretty much his entire rookie season, getting appendicitis like the day before he was supposed to make his debut, which, hilarious is the wrong word. And that's sort of, that ties in, not to interrupt you,

that sort of ties into the whole thesis with Marshaun Lloyd, especially for, I know because I made it in Dynasty, was Josh Jacobs, you know, this contract, this could be a one-year guy, everything sort of teed up for Lloyd to potentially take over, and he's going to be this incredible value for us, especially in 2025. That's sort of gone out the window with Jacobs being another guy who completely smashed.

Yeah, absolutely. And actually kind of similar from a dynasty lens and just from a talent lens with us wanting it to be younger at the position. Blake Corum, he was seen as, okay, like he's eventually going to take over from Kyron Williams here. What actually happened is Corum was barely played the first month of the year, played exactly the third drive of pretty much every Rams game for most of the year and only the third drive. this was actually my favorite time every Sunday was it I would log on to Twitter during the afternoon games and everyone is tweeting about oh here's Blake Corum here it's happening now guys and I would just every single time I'd be like oh must be the Rams third drive on offense because Blake Corum is trending on Twitter right now I feel personally attacked on that at least one there was one

there was one game where we had it Ryan it was the half that was the takeover and I'm like you know, Blake Corum, this is finally the Blake Corum game, Kyron Williams' second half. So, and the Blake quorum argument that he could take over because Kyron Williams is this, you know, Sean McVeigh is going to eventually bench him. We had our opportunity with all those fumbles. Blake Corum still didn't go in when it was Fumble City and he was playing behind Ronnie Rivers for a good portion of the year too.

So the Blake quorum won, another L for this class. Yeah, exactly. And then just to add insult to injury, he's the one that is playing in the meaningless week 18 game that the Rams aren't trying to win and he breaks his arm. It's like, yeah, pretty much just a, yeah, like very rough rookie season outcome for Blake Corum. You get to like Ray Davis and Jalen Wright and they start looking like the success stories of this 2024 running back class. Just because they had flashes at times, they look like actual backups that will stick in the league. But that's pretty much as good as you can say for anyone outside of Bucky. Irving and Tyrone Tracy. These are your only two, like, really credible year two breakout candidates

that I think can make an impact from this class. That's not a lot of guys. So yes, to get back to what we were talking about, the 2025 class has really, really big shoes to fill. Because if at the same time that we have this disappointing 24 class, the 2017 class plus Saquan plus Henry age out, let's say If it all kind of happens in one year, then, yeah, we really need that 2025 class to shoulder the load. I personally, I think Gentie is amazing elite prospect, all of that. I would say that this is a deep class. I would not say that it has all of the elite top end talent that the 2017 class did. So like the 2025 class can certainly go one of two ways.

but it's pretty easy just zooming out to kind of look at these three classes, add in what we're expecting to happen with the position being less healthy than it was this year for most years moving forward. Kind of if all of these things happen at once, then the depth at the running back position could just completely collapse. If the 25 class fails to totally smash, the 24 class. keeps being really rough, 2017 class ages out all at once.

Suddenly, we don't have a lot of talented running backs in the league. So this is kind of my conspiracy theory almost that I lay out in the article that I just call the running back depth collapse theory. I'm not saying this is like the most likely thing to like instantly happen in 2025, but it's really more of a thought exercise that I want people thinking about because the scoring overall at the running back position is dependent on how old is all of the talent, are they young enough to keep producing at any given moment, right? And currently, as we've mentioned this whole time, the ADP is just kind of following

last year's scoring, right? So, but that's not necessarily what's going to happen, right? We can envision scenarios where the position's depth completely craters as soon as next year. Again, even if it's not the most likely outcome, all of this can happen, right? So just stuff that I think people should keep in mind when they're drafting for 2025, you don't want to just follow last year off the cliff, right? So that, yeah, that's kind of my point with like the running back depth collapse theory. And we're not just discussing running backs. We're also going to talk about wide receivers. So big shout out to our zero RB drafters.

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and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk business. Ryan, let's talk a little bit about VORP. Running backs must have absolutely crushed wide receivers in that category last season, right? Yeah, so they did beat them in it. But VORP, for those unaware, is just value over replacement. There's different ways to calculate it. I just like to take the top three.

at each position. So the top three running backs by fantasy points per game, their average fantasy points per game and compare that to the bottom three starters. So in this case, if we're doing a 10-team league, the RB-18 through the RB20, just compare how many more fantasy points per game those two groups were separated by, right? So top three running backs this year average 6.8 more fantasy points per game. than the RB 18 through the RB 20. That's decent, right?

Wide receivers this year, the top three, average 5.6 more fantasy points per game than the wide receiver 18 through 20. So yes, running backs did beat wide receivers, top three running backs versus top three wide receivers, did beat running backs beat wide receivers in Bork, right? That wasn't the case over as recently as last year, right? wide receivers had 8.3 fantasy points per game over the baseline starters last year. For running backs, it was 7.6 last year. I would say most seasons over the last decade and a half,

running backs are generally leading in this category. But really before 2024, we were seeing the last few seasons that wide receivers were winning in both 2022 and in top end value of a replacement. So this is really, I think this most directly relates to the argument of, well, which position should you draft specifically in round one, a running back or a wide receiver. It was actually correct to draft a wide receiver in round one this year over a running back. That's because all of the hyperproductive running backs were either Sequin Barclay at the turn or Derek Henry, Alvin Kamara, Joe Mix, and further down.

And the most productive wide receiver was Jamar Chase, one of the best win rates that we have seen since 2017 of any player. 72% of Jamar Chase drafters in ESPN leagues made their playoffs. And also, even with disappointing seasons from Justin Jefferson from Amanra St. Brown, or at least disappointing by their standards, both of those two receivers, were also on over 55% of ESPN playoff rosters. And again, part of that is the depth at each of these positions. The depth that running back was insane this year. The RB18 through the RB20 were performing better than they ever have since 2012.

And in fact, not just those bottom end starters. The entirety of RB2s had the best season we have seen in recent memory since 2012, which is when my data goes back to. If you just line up RB-11 through RB20 every season, every single one of those guys this year outscored all of their counterparts in the past decade and a half. Whereas wide receiver, the depth really fell off this year. It was kind of just Jamar Chase

and very few other players actually mattering because, again, so many of them got hurt. We had Chris Godwin go down almost immediately when he was scoring as a top three wide receiver. Same with Rashi Rice was scoring as a top three wide receiver on that pace, but went down in week four. So, yeah, it was, it's, yeah, it's easy to say, like running backs were so much better than wide receivers this year.

But when it comes to, like, the top end of it, who should I draft in round one? I think it's a lot less clear, especially if we zoom out to the last couple of years instead of just 2024. Yeah, I think that's a super interesting way of putting it. And people might be a little bit surprised by the Justin Jefferson Amon Ross St. Brown win rates. And what's interesting about those guys, though, Ryan, were they didn't fail at ADP. They stayed healthy. So you had 18.6, 18.7 points per game.

That's not necessarily what you're going for when you're drafting Justin Jefferson, but you avoided some landmines and potentially. With the way that ADP landed out where you'd see second round Derek Henry continually, you could have had a Justin Jefferson Derek Henry team building it that way. Jamar Chase is a whole other story, but he also fell to the late first at times. There was holdout concerns. I know I was in a high-stakes NFFC draft in New York City, and Chase fell to us at like the 11, which was like a unicorn.

Didn't usually go to the 111 in that sort of format, but we took it anyway. We were pretty pleased with that one. So that sort of falls hand in hand. Let's expand a little bit about these injuries to the wide receiver spot. Because two things you said, Ryan, you brought up the fact that running back twos scored at a very high rate. That also went with some of these wide receivers that were on a pathway to returning exceptional ADP value, the Rashi Rises, the Chris Godwins. They missed time with injury.

And then there was a bunch of other wide receivers who missed time with injuries that weren't like season ending, but impactful if you had them on your fantasy team. Talk a little bit about God, good, good hearts law, 2025 strategy, and a potential wide receiver revenge tour in 2025, just simply by staying healthy. Yeah. So just to, I'll start with wide receivers that were injured and that could stay healthy and completely turn the position around next year. Right. So this is just among top 20 wide receivers by preseason ADP, these guys all missed at least five games.

Huk and Nakua, T. Higgins, Nico Collins, A.J. Brown, Duante Smith, Stefan Diggs, all those guys missed at least five games. Diggs, obviously, a season ending injury. And zooming out even further, if we look at the top 30 wide receivers by preseason ADP, only 53% of, of them actually stayed healthy and played 15 or more games. That is the lowest of any season this decade, right? And we can see very similarly with quarterbacks in 2023. We know exactly what happens, usually the following year. Quarterbacks had their least healthy season in a long time in 2023. We had this exact conversation about, wow, the quarterback position was really bad this year.

is this like a is this a trend what's going on and it immediately bounced back like 80% of top 15 kubes stayed healthy this year all the early round kubes smashed i really expect similar to happen at the wide receiver position um as far as good hearts law which you bring up so i i just want to kind of kind of read off what what that is what that means and then apply it to fancy football here so Goodhart's law is when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. So one good example of this in fantasy football is the running back dead zone that we have talked about for years, right? The problem with the running back dead zone was we always talked about it really as RB2s, right?

RB2s are really poor bets, or you would say round four through six are the worst bets at the running back position, right? And that became so well understood and like so known in the fantasy community that that was no longer a good measure, right? Because people are targeting their avoiding running backs in those rounds or avoiding drafting RB2s. All of them are getting pushed down. Suddenly RB2s were one of the best bets you can make this year because we just moved all. we just moved all those guys down essentially, right? The way we apply this to 2025 is, as you were talking about,

the running back ADPs are generally up, especially from last year, wide receiver ADPs generally down. People talking about, well, this is now we got to go robust RV. We got to draft multiple RVs in the first round because this is what the win rates were last year. No, we don't have to do that because guess what? win rates are dependent on the, yes, on injuries, as we've been talking about, but also on ADP. If all of these talented players are going later, then they don't even have to score as many fantasy points to post these really high win rates, right?

We'll talk about that at the tight end position a little bit later on too. But, yeah, I think it's important to just not chase last year's results both on an individual player level and also on a position wide level. Because, yeah, yeah, I feel like every year in the fantasy industry, there's like a new strategy that's in v. Sometimes it's zero RB, sometimes it's hero RB, it's Ben Robust RB at different times, maybe again this year. But that's where, yeah, the measure is becoming a target in all of these instances. So I guess the short way of saying this is like Zig and other Zag, but it's not always Zieg and other Zag.

it's don't zig just because everyone else is zinging is, I guess, the way I would sum that up. Well, one thing that I don't think would be a zig-while-other-zag is fading Jemar Chase as the number one pick in 2025's drafts. And one thing that's interesting, Ryan, is we're used to seeing a positional disparity between the RB1 and the RB2 occasionally. Like you think back, there's been seasons where the RB1, like, outscored. you know, two other like RB2s continually and there's like a maybe a four point per game gap between RB1 and RB2. Like that's happened a few times

in the past, if not more. But at the wide receiver spot, you think back to the 2023 season where CD Lamb and Tyree Kill were separated like by a tenth of a point. They're both giving you like 23 point per game seasons and Amun Ross St. Brown's giving you like a 21 point per game season if you have to draft him and he was the wide receiver three. This year at the wide receiver spot,

it's incredibly rare to see a five point difference between wide receiver one and wide receiver two. Chase averages 23.7. Justin Jefferson averages 18.7. Is Jamar Chase your 2025 101? We're way early, but drafts are happening right now, Ryan? Yeah, that's difficult for me. So if he is, it's not because of that gap that you just pointed out between him and Justin Jefferson. I guess that this focusing just on that on, okay, last year, the wide receiver one was so much better than the wide receiver two. That's why I have to draft the wide receiver one first overall. That's a perfect example right there of Good Hart's Law. That shouldn't be how you're analyzing this.

So I do think that Chase probably somewhat overperformed his average expectation for this year. Jefferson probably somewhat underperformed it. If Jefferson played 50 seasons, I would expect this one to be at least in the lower half of the seasons he plays, right? In that larger hypothetical sample. So no, I don't think that necessarily you have to take Chase at the 101 because of that. I mean, I think just overall as a bet, Chase makes sense as the 101, just like digging into them specifically as a player. I mean, there's a chance that T. Higgins is gone.

That's a ton of target competition. Chase historically over his career has absolutely smashed in games that Higgins has been out for, except for like a weird three or four game stretch at the start of this year, but that we've all forgotten about that now after what he did in the 75. Yeah, 75% of the year. So, yeah, I think Chase is an amazing bet. We know the Bengals are always going to have a very high pass rate. Chase is clearly one of the most efficient, most dynamic receivers in the league.

Yeah, I'm never worried about, I'm not really worried about the Bengals defense, suddenly becoming a lot better and then being able to run the ball more. So, yeah, I think Chase makes sense as a 101. But, again, it's not because of the gap specifically between him and Jefferson last year and a one. year sample. Yeah, I think I agree with you on that. And I think that there will be a lot of guys challenging him behind him as the wide receiver two, making a push for the wide receiver one. We also had incredible breakouts from guys like Brian Thomas, guys like Malik neighbors, Pukunakua is in a great setting. But I think when you look at it and take a step back, Jemar Chase is very much in his prime, age-wise, and performance-wise. He hit the Triple Crown this year, led the league in touch

touchdown catches, receiving yardage, had the most receptions, and he had the most targets. And we have quarterback stability with Joe Burrow. A lot to like about his profile at the 101 this year. And I will be updating my 20, 25, top 25. We're going to expand it to top 50 pretty soon. That'll be over at fantasy points as well. Let's talk about the tight end spot. One thing that I thought was very, very interesting that you wrote about,

was if we take away the two sort of Mount Rushmore fantasy football tight ends of the recent memory and fantasy, Rob Gronkowski and Travis Kelsey, just how valuable has the tight end position been sort of without those two massive scoring guys? Yeah, so it hasn't been very valuable if you just take out only those two guys since 2012. Kelsey by himself has accounted for four of the 13 league winning seasons by a tight end since 2017. He's the only tight end to have ever been a league winner at an ADP before round five, or at a top 50 ADP, I should say. Yeah, if you remove him and Gronk from our longer sample since 2012,

then we've only seen one tight end other than those two ever have a season above 18 fantasy points per game compared to the five collectively between those guys. There were only three years since 2012 without Kelsey and Gronk, where the top tier at the tight end position had more than five warp, more than five points per game above the bottom three starters at the position. So, yeah, especially if you take them out, the tight end position just doesn't matter nearly as much, especially compared to the running back position, to the wide receiver position, and even to the quarterback position nowadays.

So I think it's really important going forward in this new world we have where Kelsey is very clearly past his prime. Maybe he sticks around as like a solid producer for another year or two or three, not doubting Travis Kelsey's ability and his longevity or anything. But I think we can pretty safely say that his 18 to 19 fantasy point per game seasons are well behind him. Now the only real important question at the tight end position is, do you think anyone else can have those Kelsey level seasons going forward? I think we have a really great candidate in Brock Bowers to do that. I think Trey McBride is somewhat behind Bowers as a candidate to have a

Kelsey level season. But the reason that that matters is those are the only tight ends you should ever be drafting earliest, especially within the first three rounds, the first four rounds, because only those Kelsey level seasons have ever provided league winning production at that early of an ADP. Like all of Bowers and Kittle and McBride were league winners this year by ESPN playoff win rate, but all of them were drafted relatively later. McBride and Kittle both well outside the top 50 picks on ESPN, Brock Bowers, down in round 12. And yeah, as I was saying, the bar just has to be a lot higher when you're asking,

can I draft a tight end at Travis Kelsey levels of ADP? Now, I think it's an interesting one. I would push back just a little bit. And what do you think about the theory that Bowers and McBride, those two guys actually sort of left a little bit of a gas in the tank in terms of scoring? McBride and Bowers both had two of the, the top four highest reception seasons ever at the tight end position, but neither of them scored at that Kelsey-like level, therefore positive touchdown regression, those two guys with that sort of target total, that sort of targeted magnet profile, and we're going into the season where they're both the number one target on their teams, that those guys actually are a little

bit undervalued right now. What would you say to that theory? Yeah, I mean, I think there is, I think there was reason to that, right? So I guess starting with McBride, because he's the easiest to talk about in terms of touchdown regression. Yeah, we have an expected touchdowns model at fantasy points as part of our expected fantasy points stat. McBride scored 5.8 fewer touchdowns than we would expect based on his volume, where all of his targets came on the field. this past season. If he scored just at expectation on the touchdown front, yeah, he would have averaged about another two fantasy points per game. That gets him up to 17 fantasy points per game or

so. Then, yeah, then we can have the conversation of, okay, this is probably close enough to a Kelsey level season to where you'd be happy to have drafted that in the top three rounds, right? So yeah, I think there's a chance. With Bowers, yes, you could certainly say that he ran a little cold on touchdowns as well on the Raiders. You don't even have to massage his numbers as heavily, though. If you just take out the four games where third string, Desmond Ritter was playing significant snaps, Bowers gets up to 17.3 fantasy points per game. Again, that's kind of like the minimum bar, I would say, to return like a Kelsey level

season at an early 80p. But I will say on both of these guys, if we're comparing to Kelsey for all of these seasons, where Kelsey was an elite tight end and putting up 18, 19 fantasy points per game, he had elite quarterback play for the most part. He had Patrick Mahomes in most of these seasons. And I mean, same thing with Rob Grankowski moving back. It was Tom Brady. Like the two best quarterbacks we've ever seen,

Grace and NFL football field, are the ones that have really driven and helped these elite tight end seasons that we've seen. and that I think a lot of people base like their, I want an elite tight end draft strategy off of. So do I think that either the Cardinals or the Raiders have a realistic shot of getting that level of quarterback play in 2025? No, probably not.

But I mean, you can definitely still argue that Bowers, I think especially, can be like a slightly lesser version of Kelsey from a fantasy scoring perspective. The Raiders have the sixth overall pick. They have a ton of cap space. I could certainly see a season like that out of Bowers. Chip Kelly actually specifically makes me kind of interested in Bowers. He's an OC that has been known to really feed his number one guy, famously made like Jeremy Macklin and Jeremy Curley like these highly valuable

PPR scams the last time we saw Chip Kelly in the NFL. He's always been really fast-paced ranking at the top of the league in neutral pace. So I like Bowers more than Nick Bride. I'm way more likely to click his name early in 2025 drafts. But yeah, I do think that we need to understand that if these two guys can't live up to that impossibly high bar, then pretty clearly the best strategy of the tight end position is just to kind of wait and get whatever guy you think can finish top 12. because, yeah, the separation without the Kelsey level seasons, the separation between the top and the bottom end of tight end starters is just not that wide.

Yeah, interesting. Big shout out to AOC, Aidan O'Connell from all of us, Brock Bowers managers. Those Desmond Ritter starts, they were a dark period for us. AOC came back and gave us the high-scoring ones. Let's talk a little bit about just one other theory with a tight-end position. Pick your brain on this one. you talked about if you're not attacking the very, very top of the tight end spot. Do you also think that the fact that we've seen back-to-back seasons of youthful

breakouts where rookie tight ends have both finished as tight end won overall in overall fantasy scoring with Sam Laporta and with obviously Brock Bowers, that NFL teams are going to be more willing to embrace talented young tight ends and sort of try to emulate the success. It's a copycat league. We also have a very deep class of tight ends with some high-end talent. Could be as many as three tight-end select in the first round of the 2025 NFL draft. Do you think that that is also a, hey, this is creating another avenue for us to find upside at the position without drafting a guy super early?

Yeah, I think it certainly does. Yeah, we kind of saw this with White. receivers happen about 10 years ago where we transitioned very much from like, oh, don't expect anything out of rookie wide receivers. I'm talking like 2014, 2015. Like when I first really started playing fantasy, that was kind of the understanding. That was the age curve data. Like the breakouts happen in maybe in year two, but even late as year three, year four,

that's when you really expect wide receivers to come on. And yeah, you could certainly argue that similar is happening at the tight end position now, where, yeah, for a while, we would say, oh, you can wait until year four or five for tight-end breakouts. More recently, it's most especially been in year two has been when we've seen tight-end breakouts. Yeah, we've had a few decently big ones in rookie seasons for tight-ends now. As you said, this tight-end class looks very good, at least maybe close, somewhat comparable

to like the Leporta-Kincade class of tight-ends. So, yeah, I would not be surprised if we, again, saw at least one rookie tight end be highly productive. So, yeah, I think that's another way you can kind of stay ahead of the thinking, kind of on the age curves and on everyone else's approaches to the age apex. Because, yeah, like I've written about age curves and the age apex more than a lot of people in this industry. But I recognize, and I think it's very important to recognize that all of this is very much. much driven by talent, right? If you get this incredibly talented class of one specific position, that's going to drive what the age curve looks like when these guys are breaking out.

That 2014 ride receiver class was really the first time when we were like, oh, wow, these receivers are immediately ready to make an impact. This is crazy. So, yeah, I would really keep that in mind with tight ends right now specifically. Yeah, very interesting. And sort of to the argument that you made very early on in the show about how drafters are embracing upside and not letting potentially high scoring players fall, Tyler Warren, who's probably going to be the top tight end drafted, certainly my tight end one, Brett Whitefield's tight end one in the 2025 class out of Penn State, is already tight end 10 on underdog. Colston Loveland, who's supposed to join him. in the first round, actually a 20-year-old out of Michigan. He's tight-end 18. We see Harold Fanon Jr. at 20, tight-end 25.

And then we see Mason Taylor and Elijah Arroyo inside of the tight-end three land. So drafters are very much embracing the rookie tight ends. It's kind of rare to see five rookie tight ends inside of this sort of range, especially with one going at tight-end 10 overall. So definitely the market sort of reacting, just like Ryan's talked about. Let's talk about quarterback, because I thought that the coolest thing you wrote was sort of your 2025 plan at the quarterback position. And you've talked about this extensively, as has Scott, sort of the impact of the Shanahan coaching tree with quarterback scoring and, of course, the Konami Code. Talk about your quarterback plan. Yeah, so I just want to kind of start at the beginning here.

So the way I've looked at the quarterback position over the last several years is we've kind of had two distinct eras of where it makes the most sense to draft a quarterback in fantasy, right? I would say pre-2020, and again, all of the league winner data backs this up, there were zero league winning quarterbacks drafted inside the first four rounds of ESPN. ADP from 2017 to 2021. The late round quarterback strategy really reigns supreme at that point. But since 2022, so over the past three seasons, we have had seven league-winning quarterback seasons from inside the top four rounds of ESPN ADP. All of those have been Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, and Jalen Hertz, with a couple of them repeating to make up the seven.

So, yes, very clearly the reason for that is we have these hyper-mobile quarterbacks that also are highly productive through the air. The production becomes much more predictable when we know they're getting all of these points on the ground as well. Fantasy drafters starting in 2022 or so really started recognizing that these guys were getting drafted earlier and they were scoring enough to maintain league winner status even at these higher ADPs. It used to be that you could just kind of draft the guy that runs who was going late and log out. You could do that with Jaden Daniels this past season really only because he was a rookie. But even Daniels didn't quite make it. Until the problem was that preseason game, because you were getting Jaden Daniels as like quarterback 13

and quarterback 12, 13, 14, in that sort of somewhat free range. Then he had the preseason game where he scored the rushing touchdown in the opening drive after marching the team down the field had several big completions and people's jaws dropped. And all of a sudden he was like QB9, QB10 in high stakes drafts and there was no discount whatsoever. It turned out to still be an ADP win. But to your argument and the sort of talking about Scott's and

this is the school of Scott. Scott, of course, was on Lamar Jackson heavily in that 2019 season. I highly recommended him to draft him, bet on him to win the MVP, all that sort of thing. That doesn't exist anymore because of Lamar Jackson. Lamar Jackson had that massive season, and then all of a sudden people are not going to let rushing upside go late. It just doesn't happen. Anthony Richardson was overdrafted chasing that model. Certainly Jaden Daniels, he didn't get that sort of discount.

So I'll agree with you on that. It also goes back to your initial argument about drafters not letting upside slip. So it all sort of ties hand and hand. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, now we're in this kind of new world where it's like, okay, all of the league winning quarterbacks, the ones that are making league winner status are going early because we know who they are. Draftors recognize the upside and all of that.

So you're left with this decision. Okay. I am either clicking one of those early round quarterbacks and giving up on the opportunity cost of whichever running back or wide receiver that I could be selecting there. Or I can wait and just accept that I'm at a disadvantage at the QB position, kind of try to snipe one of these like smaller win late round guys. And you have been able to do that. I would not say that you can't be successful with a late round QB strategy the last few years. But yeah, you're not getting like these massive league winning seasons out of them because, yeah, all the rushing guys are gone. But I will say pretty importantly, it hasn't been like the, I would refer to them like it as the scraps of like the late round mobile Konami code quarterbacks.

You haven't been getting anywhere drafting like the Daniel Joneses of the world in the last few seasons in the late rounds. the guys that have really outperformed their ADP have one thing in common, really. And it's that they've played in these, I call it a McShanahan system. So either the McVeigh or the Shanahan coaching tree, they play under one of these play callers. So since 2020, we've had seven quarterbacks with above a 45% ESPN playoff rate. that have gone outside the top 100 picks, right? Jayden Daniels this past season was one of them, and Justin Fields in 2022.

Those were the only two hyper-mobile guys. But the rest of them, C.J. Stroud, his rookie season, Matt Stafford, 2021, Mayfield this past year, Brock Purdy, 2023, 23, Tua in 2022. Easy commonality. Yeah, all of them are in these McShanahan systems. So you can clearly see that,

the McShanahan pocket passer, even if you just drafted them blindly compared to every other QB outside of the top 100 by ADP are overperforming their ADP based expectation by more than anybody else. Like you can just, and this even includes like the disaster offenses that have come out of like Shane Waldron or guys like this that are technically McShanahan tree guys that have had these implosions. if you just blindly drafted them, you would on average be working out better than drafting non-Mishanahan QB. So that's kind of going to be my decision point or my strategy in 2025 is I'm either taking the plunge on that early QB on a Josh Allen, on a Jalen Hertz, within the top 30 to 36 picks, or I'm just going to take whoever the cheapest pocket passer is in a McShanahan offense.

Right now, like J.J. McCarthy is looking pretty interesting there. Obviously, Kevin O'Connell has gotten some great quarterback play out of Sam Darnold this past season, top 10 QB season out of him. Trevor Lawrence, I think very interestingly, has Brian Thomas Jr. to throw to in potentially like a second-year explosion. has Baker Mayfield's former OC and Liam Cohn as his head coach now. And it's even better that he had like the dopey little clip of him saying Duval because people think that he's like a bad coach now because of that clip for whatever reason.

But no, he got insanely efficient production out of Baker Mayfield. Give me Trevor Lawrence in that same system, of course, if he's going to be completely free in drafts next year. So that's kind of what I have my eye on in terms of my late round quarterback strategy next year is not necessarily trying to force like this is a very clearly flawed guy that might run a little bit more than average. But no, I'm just taking the guys in offenses that are most likely to have a schematic advantage over the rest of the league because those are all the guys that have been most

efficient and most productive, especially over the last three years, kind of as defenses have caught up to typical offensive tricks. It's really only these McShanahan systems that are still producing efficient quarterback play from pocket passers. We love when new coaches get like some sort of a tag put on them. We had the Dan Campbell's going to fail because he's a meathead argument made by several, you know, quote unquote analysts and NFL reporters. They've since deleted a lot of those tweets. We're also going to like finding out that Liam Cohen is dorkier and a little more awkward. than we would have liked.

If that sort of causes an ADP discount, we're going to take all of them because Liam Cohen knows what he's doing, running a team offensively, very fantasy-friendly guy. Super interesting stuff there, Ryan. And Scott and I talked about this on a previous episode about how going back to the early QB well,

it's sort of another axiom where I want to target late round QBs, you brought this up and you said it very well. There's value right now at a 10. quarterback in somewhat the same way you're arguing about attacking tight end, embracing the top of the line guys where Josh Allen on underdog is ADP of 29, Lamar Jackson's ADP of 33. I've been clicking that button over and over again because it seems like the market's going to push those guys a little bit closer to the two, three turn when we get to,

you know, the summer months. And then Jaden Daniels are getting at 38, Jalen Hertz at 43. one guy I just want to pick your brain on because he showed a little bit as a runner, 430 rushing yards, 4 rushing scores, certainly success as a passer. Do you think that Bo Nix, who settled in at QB7, is a value or probably somebody that you think has being drafted at sort of his ceiling range? I don't know if I wouldn't say like value or ceiling. I think that's probably about right. Nick's is weird because he kind of has like a halfway advantage for both of the things we just talked about.

So yeah, he's certainly more mobile than like your statue-esque pocket passer. He didn't really run as much in the second half of the year kind of as they opened up the offense more. And he started scoring more fantasy points. So I don't necessarily know that all of the rushing is fully going to translate into year two for him. But I mean, I do think he has a schematic advantage under Sean Payton, right? This was kind of the original like quarterback cheat code coach, right? Like he was getting really strong fantasy production out of guys like Teddy Bridgewater back in the day. So yeah, I think QB7 is probably about right for Bonix.

Yeah, I don't think I'd take too much issue with that ADP. Yeah, it's interesting. It's also just shows how the market corrects itself very, very quickly and another player where drafters are not allowing this sort of upside range to fall in drafts. I would not have guessed that the market would be drafting Bow Nix at QB7. This is similar range to guys like Anthony Richardson, C.J. Stroud last year as a year two guy getting pushed up. So a lot of what you talk about at beginning keeps coming full circle. Black Friday is here at IKEA and the clock is ticking on savings you won't want to miss.

Join IKEA family for free today and unlock deals on everything from holiday must-haves to cozy at-home essentials, all the little and big things you need to make this season shine. But don't wait. Like leftovers at midnight, our Black Friday offers won't last. Shop now at IKEA.ca.ca slash Black Friday. Ikea, bring home to life. We've talked about all four positional groups. Now let's talk about some players that you were correct on, some players that you had were correct on with an asterisk because bad things happen to them. and then we'll talk about some of your losses. Let's start out with some of the players you were right on. I want to say a player's name and share your thoughts

and maybe any lessons that we learn from this player's season. And let's start out with one that Scott Barrett and the two of us were heavily on this past off season. A big pat on your back type moment. Devon A. Chan, this is your guy. Ryan, you were pounding the table for him and you were absolutely correct. Yeah, I actually can't believe I haven't said its name yet on this podcast.

That's amazing. I got over an hour into a show without saying Devon A-chan. We'll put him on the thumbnail. We'll put him on the thumbnail. Let's do it. But yeah, 22.6 fantasy points per game in Tua starts. That would have been more than Sequin Barclay as the overall RB1 over the full season. Obviously, Tua didn't start every game.

But, yeah, when he was, A-chan was the best running back that you could have, that you could be starting. And yeah, I mean, the way I got there, I feel like I laid out this case a million times in the offseason, he was the most efficient rookie running back that we had ever seen, was heading into year two where we very often see efficient running backs get more volume. And I know I had a graphic at one point where every running back anywhere near as efficient as A-chan as a rookie just exploded in both their volume and their fantasy points.

the following season. So, yeah, it was really just as simple as that, like drafting talented players on offenses, especially with a forward-thinking play caller that's going to want to utilize him. Now, I didn't expect H.N. to become, like, the Dolphins wide receiver won and one and a half with Jono Smith, I guess. I didn't expect the receiving usage to be quite that insane. But, yeah, I mean, these talented players find a way, especially going into year two for those running backs. Yeah, I love it.

I think that another lesson learned is that we saw this with Bijon as well. Guys sort of take that next step as receivers. Teams trust second year backs more and more in terms of the passing game. So that was not part of the thesis with Devon A-chan. And what else I think is interesting is Devon A-chan right now is an ADP of 13.1 on Underdog. I'm shocked that his ADP isn't pushed up a little bit closer to the the Bijan, Jamir Gibbs, Seiquon range because of all the stuff you talked about.

And what if he takes one step further as a receiver where he gets 10% more targets just because he's so good at catching the football and producing with it. And what if the running production and the efficiency gets a little bit closer to what we saw as a rookie, maybe hits a few more home runs? I mean, I think RB1 overall is very much in the wheelhouse, and you're getting a discount on him behind sort of the big three. Your thoughts on that early ADP, Ryan?

Yeah, no, I think both in redraft right now, yeah, like back of like one two turn, that's one of the best clicks that you can make, in my opinion at the moment. And even specifically in Dynasty right now, he's the RB4, the RB5 kind of right next to Bruce Hall in these early startups. he's really the only running back inside of like the top 12 that I'm super excited to click. I never draft running backs and startups. I'm making another. I made an exception for Devon A Chan last year. I will make an exception for H.N. again, this year, this is what the cost is.

Because, yeah, I just feel amazing about him both for 2025 and projecting forward as a talent. Because, yeah, as you said, I mean, the dolphins had some of the worst run blocking from their offensive line this year. It really affected A. Chan's efficiency. I think he might have only had one run of over 30 yards the entire season, which would have shocked me if you told me that in the preseason. And he still had the year he did. So yeah, I am fully with you.

I think A Chan has a very compelling RB1 overall case for 2025. So, yeah, I'm still pretty surprised at the discount we're still getting. Yeah, and we talked about Bucky or excuse me, it's a great segue to Bucky. Irving because we talked about Devon A. Chan and Bejohn Robinson taking these big steps forward in year two as receivers, certainly Chase Brown as well. A lot of these guys just take these big step forward in year two. Last year we had this incredible season from Bucky Irving. Bucking Irving had over 1,100 rushing yards, eight rushing scores, and he added 47 receptions on nearly 400 receiving yards. And he did this with Rashad,

White giving us another 50 receptions. So Bucky Irving was one you got right. And I think this is one with a little bit of room to run us in 2025. Yeah. So I should give even more credit to Scott here, because Scott was much bigger on Irving than I was. We kind of collectively put together our hits and misses in here. And Irving, I would give like 80, 90 percent credit to Scott. But yeah, I mean, Scott called him the running back with the best chance of any to be this year's Kairn Williams, and that's kind of exactly what happened. He didn't quite make league winner status. He wasn't quite at 55% of ESPN playoff rosters, but he was one of the top five most

common players on championship winning rosters, again, because of his kind of late season run that he went on. So I think the lesson you have to learn here is, yeah, we should always want to take shots on rookies that are behind, like, these grossly inefficient veterans. It's Rashad White by pretty much every rushing efficiency stat was among the worst running backs in the league in 2023, despite all the volume he got. I know one was going around where he was pretty much the only starting running back in the league that was below a certain threshold of rush yards over expected. And he was like extremely far below everybody else. So yeah, you want to take shots on rookies behind those types of guys.

And especially now if that rookie, if he fell in the draft, Bucky Irving falls to day three, kind of lowering his baseline expectation for most fantasy managers back in the summer and going into draft season. The reason Irving fell is because he was an outlier in one specific way, which is that he was relatively small and his athletic testing was really bad, adjusted for that, right? but if like the red flag on a prospect is not like production related like it was nothing to do

with what Bucky Irving did on a football field, then I'm pretty interested in taking that discount if the market is just going to discount him as if this is a whatever typical day three round four pick. That's just something I'm going to kind of be looking for because I think NFL teams do at least now at the running back position. they do a decent job kind of weeding through these outliers. They kind of understand what typically productive running backs look like. They're usually they're big and fast and for fantasy they catch passes.

If a guy is still getting drafted and is clearly like on the depth chart with a real chance to break through despite all of that, they've probably identified something important about that player, right? If he's so much of an outlier athletically and size wise that they were still willing to spend it. any sort of pick on him, really. So, yeah, that's just something I'm going to kind of be looking out for and kind of the lesson I'm taking from the Bucky Irving experience. Yeah, and just tying both those players together, I think this is another example of the low BMI, high value touch running back.

NFL teams are sort of embracing these guys a little bit more, not even talking about guys that were big hits for you, but you mentioned Kyron Williams earlier. Jemir Gibbs was certainly a smaller back. James Cook was sub 200 pounds. These guys have sort of been hitting. I think that when NFL teams draft the smaller back and they give them early usage,

we need to take note because these guys have sort of been hitting. And years past, these were sort of the archetypes NFL teams would be fading because of their size. Very, very interesting one. We talked a lot about the Konami code. We talked about your quarterback strategy. Were there any other lessons learned with Jaden Daniels and attacking him at ADP?

Yeah, with him, I think it's pretty simple. You just draft the hyper-mobile guys when they're available late, especially if they're a top three NFL draft pick. Yeah, we might end up having this same discussion with Cam Ward. I think a lot less of Cam Ward as a prospect than I did of Jaden Daniels. But, I mean, I guess going forward, that's probably just the thing to keep in mind. I don't know if I'll be as insane on Ward, but we'll have to see. Yeah, and check out my most.

recent recording with Brett Whitefield right here on Fantasy Points YouTube and Fantasy Points Podcasts. We talked about Cam Ward. He's my QB1. Right now he's Brett's QB3-ish. So I agree with you. I'm very interested in Cam Ward. I think he's an interesting one for next year. I don't know if he's going to have quite that sort of rushing upside, but he is athletic, interesting quarterback prospect. One other player that is the oldest guy we're going to talk about, that you were pounding the table for last summer when the two of us podcasted together was George Kittle. George Kittle actually averaged the most points per game at the tight end position,

finished behind Bowers and McBride because of, of course, games played. But Kittle was 15.7 points per game. This was a ton of return on value versus, you know, Leporta, the Travis Kelsey types at the very top. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, if you were, aside from McBride, if you were taking like a top six tight end, hopefully it was George Kittle this past season. And the reason I was so into him kind of a few reasons, right? So age 31 season, I think there was somewhat of a discount being slightly baked into him there.

My age curve data showed that age 31 tight ends are totally fine and do not experience that much of a production drop off. So right there, I'm like, okay, we're getting a market discount probably because of his age. I'll take it, especially because George Kittle has still been one of the most efficient tight ends in the league, buy all the per route metrics, buy yards per out run in basically every season that he's played, including in 2022. So I was like, there's no reason to think George Kittle is not still at the top of his game here. And yeah, I mean, he pretty clearly was.

And the final reason I really liked Kittle and was on him so much is because he had shown previously in his career, just incredible contingent upside in any games that either Brandon Iyuk or Debo Samuel had missed. Thinking back to pre-week one, Iyuk had this contract holdout situation going on. We knew that Debo Samuel at the time was viewed as at least decently injury prone. So I was like, okay, Kittle, upside wins championships. You only need one of those other 49ers pass catchers to get hurt. And he'll be the clear tight end one.

And yeah, that's pretty much exactly what happened. over 16 fantasy points per game across eight full games without at least one of Iyuk or Samuel. Obviously, the 49ers offense as a whole got even more beat up maybe than anyone could have expected this past year. But yeah, Kiddle ended up being like the biggest beneficiary of it. So yeah, again, just taking the discounts on older players if the historical age data supports doing so. And understanding contingent upside. I think really especially at the tight end position, it is more important than for wide receivers, for example. We see a lot of tight ends become more productive if a wide receiver goes down midseason.

That tends to be when a lot of them will kind of capitalize. Yeah, and spoiler alert, George Kittle will end up becoming an ADP value again this season because it's sort of, it happens every single year. And it's a player where you reference guys like Grankowski and Kelsey, if we were filling out that Mount Rushmore of fantasy football relevant tight ends of the last like 25 years, we'd have to carve out a spot for George Kittle because it's the consistency with him. You've had just him winning in different ways in different seasons. This year, 1,100 receiving yards, eight touchdown catches.

And this is a player that's played very well with Brock Purdy. So a lot to like about George Kittle. the market is making you pay a little more this year. He's tight end three, but I think that's the correct way of going about it. He would be my tight end three behind sort of the Bowers, McBride, Big Two as well. Let's talk about Jackson Smith and Jigba because this is a testament to believing in what you saw in the rookie evaluation process, believing in the player himself. We talked about this with Scott, on the recent school of Scott, about how he,

compared JSN sort of to Keenan Allen in the evaluative process, stuck to his guns in 2024, and was paid off well. JSN not only had his quote-unquote breakout season, but he also finished as a wide receiver one. He also set the Seattle Seahawks record for most receptions in a single season in franchise history. Your thoughts with targeting JSN and the process, Ryan? Yeah, so I think the biggest thing to take away from JSN is to always pay attention to coaching changes or to play caller changes, offensive coordinator changes, right? So when JSN was drafted in his post draft presser, Pete Carroll is asked, okay, like you've drafted a third receiver here. You guys going to be using more 11 personnel.

What's kind of the plan here? You have three really good wide receivers. And his response was kind of like, eh, I mean, we really need to get. better on third downs, but, you know, like, we'll see how he mixes in. And that quote, like instantly, I think, scared off a lot of people for JSN in his rookie season, like, oh, Pete Carroll doesn't care at all that he just drafted a receiver in round one. It's probably just going to be Metcalf and Lockett with JSN not getting the opportunity

to play much 11 personnel. That was exactly what happened. And when you dug even deeper into his rookie season, you could literally see that it lined up with that quote from Pete Carroll. On first and second down, JSN, number one, was rarely on the field. But even when he was, all of his per target, or excuse me, per route rates were really low on first and second down.

It's like, oh, they literally, even if he's on the field, they're just not designing the offense to JSN on first and second down. On third down, all of his rates completely spiked. It's like, oh, wow, this looks like a real actual, like, rookie wide receiver we could get excited about if we just zero in on his production on third down. And I had a tweet pointing this out in the summer. And yeah, then when we get the coaching change, when Ryan Grub is going to be the Seahawks OC, we just had seen him succeed with three wide receivers at Washington.

It's like, okay, he's probably going to play a lot of 11 personnel. And JSN is probably not just going to be Xed out and excluded from the offense. on person second down. Year two for a wide receiver. We really liked him as a prospect. Why not? We're getting a decent discount. So, yeah, I think just moving forward,

pay attention to these coaching changes, especially with how coaches talked about players previously and how that might change with their new coach. I guess I just want to say, I think people will be very quick to apply this to Roma Dunzee this year. Because, yeah, it's an obvious corollary with the situation behind DJ Moore and Keyes. and Allen. Now he probably, now Keenan Allen's probably gone. Ben Johnson coming in.

I'm with you. I think that there is some good upside for Roma Dunzee. I don't think we're going to get as big of a discount in the market for his ADP because of what we just saw with JSN. And certainly in Dynasty, that's the case. Odunze is the wide receiver 17 in early startups right now. JSN is only the wide receiver 13 after he had the second year breakout. So yeah, I'm a little skeptical of like O'Donzei's dynasty ADP, just kind of on this line of thought. But it is definitely something to consider for redraft specifically, I'd say, when we all kind of forget about this six months from now. I was literally just going to ask you about the Romadunzei corollary here.

And I think that you nailed it. You talked about the dynasty startup ADP. It's almost like a room of dunzae's rookie season didn't even happen, the way the dynasty managers are treating them. And it's also, I think, JSN's year two, and certainly the Ben Johnson effect are both driving Roma Dunzei's early ADP price. Roma Dunzee is being selected as wide receiver 25 in early underdog drafts. Absolutely nailed it, Ryan, with that one.

Let's talk about a couple of players where I touched on these with Scott the last time we recorded, but let's lump together Rashi Rice and Chris Godwin. these were guys that you were both on that could have been league winners. Obviously, it ends in disappointment when they go down with season-ending injuries. Your lessons learned from these two white outs. Yeah, so with Rashi, it was pretty simple to me, at least. I always want to target efficient wide receivers in their rookie season that eventually earned full-time roles, remained efficient in them.

all of Rice's splits in the slot out wide, if you remove screens, if you kind of take away all the Andy Reed trickery, all of Rice's rates were still really good, like elite top 12 as a rookie. He was discounted significantly from that heading into 2024 because of Xavier Worthy being drafted and also because of the suspension worries. I was really zeroing in on Rice as like an upside pick kind of regardless of the suspension. I also want to shout out Drew Davenport on Twitter, was really providing a lot of excellent legal updates throughout the summer that also kind of led me to the position of the suspension fears being overblown for Rashi Rice in 2024,

just with how everything with that process was working out. So, yeah, Rice was clearly a good process pick in 2024. It doesn't work out because his quarterback destroys his knee in week four and runs into him. but that's what happens sometimes. Chris Godwin, I think, is a little bit more interesting. And this is another one where I'm giving a ton more of the credit to Scott because he does such a good job kind of parsing through, especially all of these coaching press conferences and statements.

With Godwin, what really sold me and what especially sticks out to me in hindsight is that Liam Cohn had specifically been talking about how he wanted to put Chris Godwin, back into the slot pretty much from the moment that Cohn got hired last spring. And if you just match that up to Godwin's career production in the slot and out wide, he'd always been a lot better whenever he was in the slot. So just matching up coach speak with actual results on the field previously and saying, okay, this is like the, if this happens, this is like the perfect storm for a production explosion, that's the stuff you want to be looking out for.

So, yeah, again, Godwin, obviously, an amazing process pick, 19.7 fantasy points per game before his injury would have been wide receiver two overall on the season. Didn't work out. But, yeah, that's just kind of how this year went, unfortunately, with injuries. Yeah, somewhere in the multiverse, we're discussing why these guys were the greatest picks ever. And they both went down in such fluky situations. Chris Godwin in a game that was already settled with like a minute to go in the fourth quarter. and with Rashi Rice, it was Patrick Mahomes, like, fell into him for that injury. It was just truly painful for fantasy football managers with those two.

Let's talk about a running back where Scott sort of brought this guy up as another process versus results. I would sort of argue that 15.1 points per game based on where his ADP was going is somewhat of a win for targeting Kenneth Walker last season. And there was not really having to pay a premium. This was a player where also I would argue that the games that he missed and Zach Charbonnet scored so many points and was so effective for fantasy managers also sort of proves the thesis that targeting Ken Walker was the correct move. You targeted the running back and the Ryan Grubb offense with a chance to expand upon his past catching role and you were dead right on this one, Ryan. Yeah, with Walker, it was very clear to me with Walker that I have always kind of been a fantasy manager that is at least very aware of archetype, right?

I want to draft past catching running backs, especially early on. But in the off season, we were hearing from both Mike McDonald and Ryan Grub that they really wanted to use Ken Walker more in the passing game. and that made sense to me because Walker has been one of the most efficient and explosive running backs in the league ever since he's entered, including his receiving efficiency, had been pretty good through his first two years. He just wasn't used that way much. So it made a lot of sense to me. And I was like, okay, I can start drafting Ken Walker kind of in the middle rounds. If he doesn't get the receiving usage, then it's kind of whatever. Like you about break even on the pick, most likely. If he does, then you probably profit a lot. and kind of both happened, right? So Walker set career highs in Target share, 12.7%. Career highs in expected fantasy points per game, almost 17. Really the reason that he didn't have this smash, like, league breaking season is, yeah, like, unfortunately timed injuries. There was a game where he was, like, really sick and it wasn't getting goal line work

for some reason. There were, like, just kind of lots of weird bumps in the road throughout the year, just help-wise off the field. And also the Seahawks, again, had some of the worst offensive line play in the league. That one game where Zach Charbonnet really went off that you mentioned, really like extra proves this point because that game, I think it was week 14. The Seahawks had 3.36 yards before contact per attempt generated by their offensive line. would have ranked top five across the full season.

Before that, for both Ken Walker and Zach Charbonnet, they were both ranking like 53rd of 57 qualifiers and yards before contact for attempt. So for whatever reason, that was just the one day that the Seahawks offensive line decided that they could functionally run block and it didn't really ever happen again after that. But yeah, to your point, that kind of drives home.

Like this could have been like an insanely special season from Ken Walker. But, I mean, we get a good consolation prize because Walker is now just as cheap or cheaper as he was last season for some reason. I guess because Charbonnet had that big performance kind of towards the end of the year and it's stuck in people's minds. But again, everything we've heard from Mike McDonald is that he absolutely loves Ken Walker. He brings in Clint Kubiak from the Saints, probably wanting to take a more run-heavy approach. That was like a very common talking point from McDonald's as we, we need. need to run the ball and feed Ken Walker more on this team that was barely high in pass rate over expectation across the entire season.

Just again, because they could not be efficient or sustained drives or kind of stay ahead of schedule. So, yeah, Walker early is one of my favorite values in all formats for 2025 because we've literally seen it happen now. We've seen him have the three down roll, at least at times. We know he's capable of it. We know the team wants that to happen. So, yeah, give me another shot.

on it at the exact same cost or even cheaper. Yeah, Kenneth Walker has been an easy click for me in early best balls. I've also been able to trade for him in Dynasty and buy low in a couple of spots. Completely agree with you. We also have the X factor that I think DK Metcalf is gone. They're in tremendously poor cap situation. One of the easiest ways to save money is to trade DK. Mekoff and just go with a, you know, a rookie or a cheaper guy at the wide receiver two spot opposite

at JSN. And I think Charbonnet being good as a contingent upside guy doesn't make Ken Walker worse. And I think the argument sort of jumped the shark that Charbonne is actually more efficient, but multiple coaching staffs have gone with Ken Walker clearly ahead of him. That means something in the NFL. So completely with you on Ken Walker, let's talk about one big miss because I think there's some lessons learned there. Kyler Murray was one quarterback that you'd circled as a potential target did not work well. Murray this year was very disappointing. You were also the opportunity cost of drafting Murray was that he was being drafted in a range right around Joe Burrow and Jayden Daniels slightly ahead of those guys. So simply by waiting around and drafting Burrow or

Daniels, your win rates would have gone up exponentially. Yeah. Yeah. And I think Murray really makes sense to evaluate, like, in comparison to Jaden Daniels. Because, yeah, if your entire strategy, as we've talked about, was just, okay, I'm going to draft, like, the guy that runs that is going the latest, yeah, you were clicking Kyler and Jaden Daniels without discerning between them. But kind of my argument for Kyler that I now think was bad process was, okay, coming off of his ACL tear in 2022, in 2023, he just had. a career low in rush attempts per game right after the ACL tear. That's what we would expect.

It's the year after the year after now. Those rushing attempts should shoot up and he should be back to a top five fantasy quarterback, right? Like just copy and paste the stats from 2021 and previously. Like, let's go, right? But that was bad process. Because as it turned out for part of the reason that Jaden Daniels was so successful. Kyler is under a completely different coaching staff and offensive system now than he was when he was putting up those top five fantasy numbers and all of those big rushing numbers. Cliff Kingsbury, always ranking near the top of the league in neutral pace, which Jane and Daniels was benefiting from.

Kyla Murray on now one of the slowest and most run heavy offenses in the league, one of the most sluggish ones. And also didn't help that just, okay, he's a year older. And it turned out he set another career low in rush attempts per game, which again makes sense as these hyper-mobile quarterbacks are aging, I would say, and especially like the non-super elite ones, makes sense that especially the designed rush attempts are going to be coming down. If Kyler isn't good enough as a passer to sustain all of these drives, like as we very clearly seen with Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson being able to do so, then yeah, the fantasy kind of a passer. appeal just goes away pretty quickly. So, I mean, Kyler finished as the QB12 against the QB 1080P, not like a disaster on paper, but yeah, as you said, that locked you out of clicking a Jaden Daniels or Joe Burrow, which was really important and something I'm going to be taking to

heart. And again, just paying attention to these coaching staffs, to these systems and not just kind of copy-pasting a player stats from years prior. Yeah, and I think also one thing that Scott and I discussed was the arbitrage play at the quarterback position. When it's presented, let's take a longer look. The Anthony Richardson drafter had the option of drafting Jaden Daniels a little bit later, the same sort of rushing upside. And with Richardson, it was a quarterback who was much more efficient as a collegiate, as a passer, or not even close. That was sort of right there. And I think with Murray, the argument that it's going to give you a Konami code result, not only is it coming off of injury and returning that value,

but I have a cheaper, younger archetype just available to me a little later in ADP. So I think that's definitely an interesting one. Murray got a lot of people. I'll say that Murray was a sharp squeeze this past year. And we talked about QB12. It didn't feel like QB12, though. It felt like you were getting, you know, like you had a couple weeks in there where it was very frustrating.

Ryan, this is now the longest school of Scott that I've ever recorded since I started joining Scott on these shows, but I think we covered a ton. Your work is highly recommended. Let everybody know where they can find it and what you have on the podcast side. Yeah, absolutely. So you can find this article right now as you're listening to this podcast. You can go to fantasy points.com. It's Ryan Heats, 2024 key takeaways. Really long read. I think one of the best things I've ever written. I was really satisfied with how it came out. It's just really, if you were interested in everything I had to say on the show today, there's just even more of it in the article, just really like a masterclass

kind of on what happened in the 2024 season and how we can take all of those lessons forward into 2025. So, yeah, highly recommend checking that out. And you can also find me on the Dynasty Points feed with Thomas Tipple, with Jacob Sanderson, with Lucas Gilbert, and Andy Buckler's been doing. joining us recently. We just break down everything with Dynasty every single week. We've been going through some Dynasty rankings. Theo, I know you've got your Dynasty rankings on the site right now, too. So we're going to pressure this off season. Fantasy Points is definitely the place to be.

This 2025 class, people are head over heels for it, dynasty points, all the Dynasty content we're going to be putting out on the site. And I will say just to, I will give you one more, I've given you props on this article a few more times. I'll say if you take the time to read this article before you start drafting in 2025, you will be a better drafter because of it. Absolute banger from Ryan. Highly recommend all of his work. Check out the podcasts I've been dropping with Brett Whitefield on the 2025 rookie class. And School of Scott with Scott Barrett is coming right around the corner.

Scott now are going to be covering a ton of topics. We're going to be talking about early ADP. We're going to be talking about 2025 class, free agents. Everything you need to win in fantasy football 2025 you can get from fantasy point. We'll see you soon.