Fantasy Football Daily - IDP Corner 2024: IDP Draft Plan + Preseason Notes

Episode Date: August 17, 2024

Justin Varnes (@DownWithIDP) and Tom Simons discuss the IDP Draft Plan, position battles, and late-round targets. #FFIDP Dynasty Fantasy Football Playlist - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-kupTuz42SeHflK6fqOqKTxwqB2s46M6&si=MlpKS9aY6Nqdwr8- Use promocode - SCOREMORE for 10% off your subscription. Subscribe to FantasyPoints for FREE - https://www.fantasypoints.com/plans#/ Where to find us: http://twitter.com/DownWithIDP http://twitter.com/FantasyPTS 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

What? What are you shaking your head? You're welcome. Welcome to another edition of the IDP Corner. This is presented by the Fantasy Points Now podcast. I'm one of your hosts, one of the IDP analysts over Fantasy Points. You can follow me on Twitter at Down with IDP. My name is Justin Varns.

I did those backwards for the first time in my entire career. Somebody who never does it backwards, please welcome Mr. Thomas Simons. How you doing tonight, Thomas? Flintstones, meet the Flintstones. Have a yabba-dabab-dab-doo-time. We'll have a guy on my Wilma. I wish you would have done that backwards. Careful what I wish for.

Everything going all right, man. Good to talk to you this evening. It is going all right. It's been extremely busy, and there are just so much happening out there. and the landscape of especially IDP landscape. It's just changing and constantly moving and shifting. And half the league is bringing in these new defensive schemes. And everybody's freaking out about the kick return rules.

And it's just crazy. Yeah, a lot going on. And not only that, it was a couple days ago, I swear four major IDPs went down like on the same day. It was just one of those days when. hear about it. Yeah. We're going to get to injuries in a bit.

But man, oh, man, that was one of those days. I just wanted to have everyone who plays football just go back to bed and start over the next day. So we'll get to those here pretty soon. What we want to do first is we know preseason is started now. And as we get closer and closer to the regular season, there are still some camp battles going on or some defensive scheme things that I'm hoping to, get some eyes on this week, particularly this weekend. So I'm going to mention a couple of them and before we get to the injuries. These are things that I'm going to be looking for if you want to kind of follow along at home if you're watching these games, pay attention to these two,

because these can really make some pretty big shifts on the IDP landscape. I'm going to start in Minnesota. There's been a little bit of a battle as to who would be the every down linebacker in Minnesota. It looked early on like it was going to be Yvonne Pace. He seemed locked in as the linebacker who was going to wear the green dot, the communication helmet. We've seen Blake Cashman get some reps with that communication helmet, so they're basically the quarterback of the defense. They're the ones who are not going to be coming off the field. So that all made us have a slight pause there.

Wait, is Pace going to have it? Or did he just lose that to Cashman? I'm pretty sure Pace is going to have it, but this is exactly the sort of thing that we're going to be watching carefully. Not only this weekend, this podcast was recorded on. Thursday night. It's going to drop Saturday morning. So a couple of games will have already have, or a game will have already happened. But it's really these Saturday, Saturday games that we're focusing on over the weekend. So watching that Minnesota game very carefully,

there are several good reasons why the team would want to have Cashman take reps with that helmet. Just get reps relaying signals to the rest of the defense. Doesn't mean that he's overtaking it, but would really love to see a full set where, wherever, the starters are, we want to see Pace with them, even if that means they're all off the field, and then we'll watch the following week and watch and practice. But pay close attention to that one. I think that you hit the nail on the head here in that you've got to be careful with a game like this one coming up for Minnesota, because if Cashman starts and Pace doesn't play, that doesn't mean Cashman's the starter over Pace. It just means that they're giving him the time

this week and next week it may be Pace. If Pace starts and plays four, plays in one series and then Cashman takes over and where's the green dot? Again, that doesn't necessarily mean Cashman is going to wear the green dot, but it does mean that they have confidence in him to give him at least reps with the green dot. And that's true for a lot of teams out there. Absolutely. We know that safety alignment, safety roles, this not only changes season to season, also can change week to week for teams.

one of the ways that some of the defensive coordinators have slowed down the passing attack of some of these great offenses has been with their safety play, their safety alignments. So we're always looking at that carefully. There are three teams in particular I'm going to be zeroed in on. I want to watch very carefully the safety alignments for the Jets, the Raiders, and the Packers this weekend. We won't see a lot of flash, but I'd love to see if we can pick up whether somebody is playing a little bit more up or a little bit of. more on the back end with these safety duos. All three teams have safeties who are very low in rankings and off draft boards. Most people aren't drafting many of the guys from the Jets, the Raiders, or the Packers. So these are some players that if we see some tendencies that they may play more

in the box or they may play, you know, more deep, more regularly, or is it something where they're switching back and forth on a fairly regular basis? What I'm really looking for is to take these six or seven safeties and try to quickly figure out if there is some hidden value in some of these safeties who are very low in rankings, very low on draft boards that would really help us in the kind of DB3, DB4 range. Those three teams in particular for me at least. And I'm going to bring up the Packers in a little bit, but go ahead and move on for now. Okay. And then the linebacker situation, another linebacker situation, in Atlanta. I want to get my eyes on the whole Caden Ellis, Nate Landman, Troy Anderson

configuration. I've seen so many combinations this preseason. Are they struggling to find the best pairing, or is this the plan to mix and match them depending on the package? We definitely have seen that before. It's absolutely maddening. So is that what's happening in Atlanta? Or again, is this just some testing out? They have three talented linebackers. I don't think they have a, you know, this is one of the situations where if they had a Bobby Wagner or something like that where they could plug and play, a complete player, this probably wouldn't be happening. But all three have strengths and weaknesses. So it would be great to see some consistency here so we could draft any of these players with a little bit more confidence. Particularly now, as we get closer to Labor Day, drafts are coming in hot and heavy.

So we need to get this information as quickly as possible. You know, I would add a fourth name to that trio, and that's J.D. Bertrand, who is, he was taken in the, I believe it was the fifth round out of Notre Dame. And he's pushing for playing time. He had a really good opening preseason week one. He didn't score a lot of fancy points. But still, he got some snaps and is making some noise and could be added to that rotation. Well, that'll make it even muddier. Yeah. But also, you know, if there aren't two clear linebackers to clearly have their roles set in place, this is where we can see some undrafted free agents or some rookies make a play and actually move up the ranks here pretty quickly. Some players who probably won't be making plays anytime soon are going to be on Thomas's injury list.

What's got for us? Well, let's start off with stay in Atlanta. Braylin Trice, their rookie defensive end, tore is ACL, and he's done for the year. Also in Atlanta is DeMarco Helms, who injured his ankle, and now he's questionable for the season opener. And in a minute, I'll tell you what they did in response to that. I'll move on to more injuries. Linebacker, B.J. O. Jolari on Arizona was placed on Injors Reserve with a knee injury. Matt Milano suffered a torn.

Biceps muscle is out indefinitely. He most likely won't show up until mid to late December. Buffalo's weak side linebacker position is kind of weak, but I'll get into that in a little bit. Cornerback Dane Jackson from Carolina suffered a significant hamstring injury and is out up to six weeks. He could actually start the season on the PUP list or even temporary IR. It's to be seen. Also on Carolina Xavier Woods, their safety injured his groin is likely out until at least opening day, maybe more. A couple of Cleveland players, Greg Newsom and Denzel Ward, both of them cornerbacks. Newsom had surgery on his hamstring, and the team hopes he'll be ready for the season over that and keep an eye on that one. And Denzel Ward has already got his first concussion of the season back on August 7.

that's not a good thing to have when you're beginning, you're just in the preseason. No kidding. Go ahead. I think you're about to talk about the big trade. We have a big trade that just happened and we have some signings. Before we get to that, we're going to step aside just for a brief commercial break. All right.

You were about to say something big happening in Atlanta, one of two things, right? Yes. The first thing is add another name to those linebackers, and this is Matthew Judon, who's an edge rusher from the first thing. Patriots, the Falcons acquired Judon for a third round pick. And so with Trice going down and Atlanta really needing an edge rusher, they put the heavy price tag out on Judon and they got them. So Matthew Judon will now be an edge rusher for the Falcons.

Also, the Falcons signed veteran safety Justin Simmons, former Broncos safety. This is kind of a rebound immediately off of acquiring Judon. They signed Simmons to a one-year $8 million deal, and a lot of it has to do with Helms, who is questionable for the opener, as I mentioned a minute ago. Also being signed was defensive end, Carl Lawson, formerly of the Jets. Dallas signed him. They gave him a tryout when Sam Williams went down with a torn ACL, yet they didn't sign him. They signed Muhammad L. Kuddin and Shaka Tony instead. Now, Tony was released recently.

now they have loss in the fold. And also being released was the giant safety, Jalen Mills. So now that we got some injuries and kind of got you caught up on some of the news and notes, Thomas and I are going to kind of take you through some of the players that we are looking at that we've been drafting lately. My IDP draft plan just dropped over at fantasy points. You can catch it there. and where I go through kind of, I like to, I think in terms of tears in this,

the draft plan usually captures a general feeling of what's going on schematically for defenses and how that changes our landscape in terms of, you know, who you can draft and who you shouldn't draft. One of the, you know, some of the trends I've been following in the last couple years, one was as teams moved to heavier and heavier dime packages, we saw, fewer and fewer linebackers in the middle ranges be as fantasy relevant. It became more important to move up a little bit more quickly and try to get those top 15, top 20 linebackers if you wanted to see a fairly decent gap between those players and kind of the next tier down. But over the last couple of years, we've seen Nickel basically work its way back into the fall. Teams are playing less and less dime over the last couple of years.

So, you know, we kind of break, we kind of break down some of those things. Also, what's happening on the defensive line, all the, you know, nowadays we're trying to draft these defensive linemen who can literally work from all the way left to all the way right across so that when it comes to offensive linemen figuring out protections and all that, they, you know, these are incredibly versatile linemen. That has changed the landscape a little bit in terms of the types of players that you can draft for, um, uh, for your defensive line. This is something Thomas mentioned, I think last episode, if not the episode before that, which is as leagues get more and more savvy to the whole edge position, it used to be that if you played in a traditional league, outside linebackers like T.J. Watt were off the table.

But now more and more, we have these outside linebackers coming back into play for your quote-unquote defensive end slot, if you will, or your DL slot. So now we've got all the defensive ends and all the outside linebackers together. And one of the trends that has happened is more and more we're seeing defensive tackles matter when it comes to fantasy football. It used to be you'd have a handful of defensive tackles in the top 20, like maybe three, four, five, that kind of thing. Now that's pushing double digits often just because of how they're being used. So our draft plan is based around a lot of this movement. And then from there, I kind of break it down into different tiers.

I have names for which we're going to get into just a little bit. But Thomas, speaking of draft, I wanted to ask you if you had anyone particular, you kind of have your eye on. I do. And before I do that, I want to piggyback on what you just said because it's a great point. And that, you know, four or five years ago, there was no edge rushing. It didn't exist in the fantasy. football world and especially in the IDP world.

Yeah, you had T.J. Watt with sacks and players like that, you know, the Joey Boses and the Nick Boses and as they came into the league, they were more and more relevant in big scoring, a big play scoring league. Well, now you've got these defenses, as you mentioned, they're reverting back more to the nickel, but they're still only playing two linebacker sets. There's so many teams out there with just two linebackers that they play the entire game or pretty much 85 to 90% of the snaps, which means that there are more and more edge rushers that are being rotated in and out depending on, like you said, the situation in the gameplay. So that's a huge point.

While it's shifting back to a nickel, there's also the edge rushing is having a major effect on that when it comes to linebackers. Now, speaking of linebackers, the first one that pops into my head that is somebody that I've been targeting and looking at a lot, especially in the last 48 hours, is Dorian Williams from Buffalo. Now, with Matt Milano with the torn biceps out until mid to late December, Williams has been manning the weak side linebacker spot next to middle linebacker Terrell Bernard. So we're going to have to watch him over the next two games and see if that maintains. And somebody like Nicholas Morrow or Dionne Jones or one of the rookies starts to take more snaps at the outside linebacker. If Williams sits when Bernard sits, that's a very strong case that Williams is and has earned the weak side linebacker position, especially with the bills being very thin at the weak spot, the weak side linebacker spot, as they have three rookies behind Williams. Now, this could be a huge spike in Williams' fancy value, especially if you,

He's a three-down linebacker, and even if it's part-time during a game, if he gets 70% or more snaps, Williams is a solid linebacker three and a possible linebacker two. Yeah, watching this Buffalo thing is going to be interesting. It's a terrible injury. Second year in a row, man. Milano goes down. That's really tough for Milano.

I know. So I want to talk a little bit about my draft plan. I'm just going to pick a few players from a couple of the tiers from the DL-Sash-Edge position. I tend to break them up into three categories, elite DLs and edges, solid DLs and edges, and then upside DLs and edges. And this is based partly on what kind of league you're in how deep your league is and what exactly you're looking for in terms of how deep you need to go and also what the rest of your league

is doing. In general, I'm waiting this year on all my IDP, all three of my IDPs, longer. than I've ever waited before. And I honestly have not been happier with my, I've never been as happy with my teams as I am this year. And so for all these positions, I'm trying to catch the back end of each of these. So a couple of my back end kind of elite DLs,

what I usually define an elite DL as is somebody who I think is going to play a thousand snaps, somebody who can give us a really solid tackle floor and a really high, you know, upside seat. So Max Crosby. Miles Garrett, you know, T.J. Watt, these sorts of players who, you know, even on their, usually on some of their worst days, they're going to put up a handful of tackles or maybe, you know, even if they only get two tackles, one is likely a tackle for loss. And, but they obviously have that massive sack upside. Miles Garrett, Max Crosby, T.J. Watt, these guys are usually going to go earlier than I'm willing to take them. So when I need an elite D.L. I find myself on the back end of this. A couple of players I really like are Aidan Hutchinson, who is, to me, I think he's

already kind of in that category, but he's not yet really getting drafted at the level that those guys are. Also, I'm still really, really high on Derek Brown. This is a great example of a defensive tackle who isn't going to put up a ton of sacks. You know, he's not going to be nearly as flashy as T.J. Watt. The dude had 103 tackles last year. So even if he comes massively off, off that number, it ends up somewhere in the 70 to 80 tackle range. I'd be thrilled. And I can get them for a couple of rounds later. And then when he get to like the solid DLs, same sort of thing.

Josh Heinz Allen, Jonathan Gernard, Will Anderson. These guys are usually going a little bit sooner than I would take them. I'm looking at it, Justin Matabweke, Bueke, George Karloftus, Ed Oliver, who I think had an underrated season last year. And then the only other upside edge I wanted to talk a little bit about was Greg Rousseau. Remember, you know, we're so used to the Buffalo Bills having a really heavy rotation on their edges and that very few of their defensive linemen are playing above 60% of the snaps. And Rousseau had been that case. But now that they've let go, their veteran edges, there really aren't that many edges to rotate with. So I'm expecting Greg Rousseau's snap counts to get more into the 70 to 80 and possibly 90% range.

I think he's getting drafted way too late. So that's a best to me is an upside DL that I'm really liking this. You know, it's funny how Aidan Hutchinson's value is just people, I wouldn't say they're ignoring him, but he's flying under the radar and he's coming so much later than we would anticipate. And that's a great call on Rousseau because especially with Milano going down and who knows how they're going to shift that defensive scheme. and the, you know, guys like Rousseau and A.J. Epinessa, they could see a lot more interaction in playing time because of the injury to Milano and how it shifts that. I'm going to stay at linebacker, and I'm going to talk about Dion Henley.

Dan Henley is likely going to be the starting inside linebacker for the Chargers on opening day. Now, that's not a guarantee. There's the thought that head coach Jim Harbaugh would go with his middle linebacker at Michigan. Michigan last year, junior Colson. That's the reason why they drafted him. Unfortunately, Colson has missed most of training camp following an appendectomy he had back in July. Now, he's due to come back here shortly and could claim the starting job by opening day. But it's a very strong possibility Henley will be the starter on opening day, and it may take two or three games before Colson starts to rack up the defensive snap count.

And so you have to be careful if you're going to go after Colson. I'm not saying go after Henley, but I am saying if you're going after Colson, you've got to be careful because once he's up and running and is healthy, he's going to be a very valuable key asset for you on your defense, especially manning and probably wearing the green dot for the chargers. But Henley may steal the show from him for the first three or four weeks. man how unlucky is junior colson he like he got drafted by literally his college hedge coach for the year before he's like oh my god this is it you can't have asked for a better place for him and then and then all of a sudden well yeah and it wasn't and it wasn't like a torn ACL or some like on field thing you know so an appendix puts them down yeah tiny little thing that's useless and nobody knows what it's

there for. Just to piss us off. Speaking of linebackers, you know, I look at my linebackers. I called kind of the same thing we talked about for defensive linemen. I call them anchor linebackers, anchor LBs, where the same thing. We are expecting these guys to play every snap. They have a history of putting up solid production, good tackle percentages, all that sort of stuff. So this is your, you know, FOIA-Luicon, Roquan-Smiths,

type players. Same thing. These guys are usually going, because remember how late I'm trying to draft my LBs. These guys are going way too early for me. I'm looking at guys like Ernest Jones, Kizir White, Bobby O'Karekay. To me, these guys are going at least a round, if not a couple of rounds later. Aluakun is an interesting one. For three straight years, he's like barely missed a snap. He's been on teams that have struggled offensively. So he's put up massive, you know, snap numbers, massive tackle numbers. He is an absolute stud, but he like has never gone down. You know, so at some point that's got a turn.

And I'm not, you know, I said this last year. Yeah, right. Yeah. You know, you don't want to draft scared. But to me, he's almost always going to be one of the first guys off the board. And I usually don't want to draft a guy that early. But, you know, it's hard to pass. there's going to be some sort of circumstance that's going to come up eventually where we're worried about it.

We worry about it on the office side right now with Christian McCaffrey. Like is this? Was that his last year of being dominant? Because it's not going to go on forever. He's already got a calf injury. So for me, I'm waiting. And Ernest Jones, like I said, Kaiser White, some of these guys, probably okay, Rake. I'm just waiting on because I feel like the dip from Aluicon to those guys is an easy dip to take if I can get two more rounds of offensive.

the players. You know, it's funny because with a guy like Aluacan, you're more apt to sit back and wait a few rounds and pick a youngster like Jones. You know, there's also the MoMA effect with Jacksonville. And what I mean by that is the Jaguars have Chad Mumma, who they drafted the same time they drafted Devin Lloyd. And OlaCon and Lloyd have been the starters, whereas Mumma is underachieved in his rookie season last year. Thus, he only took 146 defensive snaps. Now, the coaching staff wants him on the field more, and that could be at the cost of fewer snaps for Olicon and Lloyd. Now, I'm not saying that it's going to be a significant drop-off for these two,

but it could amount to anywhere between 50 and 100 less snaps that they take, especially Lloyd. And this is what you were mentioning with Oluacon is that you're drafting his, him with an ADP that's really high and you're worried that that MoMA could steal some snaps and he could drop down to close to a thousand or even up down to 950 snaps this year and then that doesn't take into consideration what you also mentioned which is you know his stability and whether or not he's going to play all 17 games so this is definitely worth watching closely in the final two preseason games because if MoMA starts to play more now,

in these two games, that means they want to get them more involved during the year, and that could cost OlaCon and Lloyd some snaps. Yeah. While we're on linebackers, I want to talk about a couple of upside linebackers. I'm looking at that I think are going way too late that I've picked up a lot of these guys super, super late and happy to do so. Tyrell Dodson, I mean, he had a breakout year last year. I really think he's going to be a major contributor.

Kenneth Murray, I know he was a. disappointment at the beginning of his career. He's wearing the green dot. If you put, we've seen it time of time again, you can put almost anyone on the field for a thousand snaps and they will be fantasy relevant in the middle linebacker role. So however it's worked out, they really like Murray. And Murray did make massive improvements last year. So Dotson and Murray are two guys for me.

I can get super late in drafts. I'm very happy to get them that late. Who else do you have? Well, you had mentioned Tyrell Dotson, and there's, I had already brought up J.D. Bertrand, but there's another rookie linebacker that's not, that's flying so far under the radar that people don't realize that this is, you know, you got to pay attention here. Tyrese Knight, who is backing up Dotson and Jerome Baker in Seattle, you have to pay attention to that situation because, first of all, Knight is a tackling machine. This kid is a beast when it comes to making tackles. So in tackle heavy leagues, night is going to be a relevant factor in the future,

especially when you consider that both Baker and Dotson are on one-year deals. And both of them have injury history. So Knight is well suited for the Seahawks new defensive scheme. And I had mentioned Bertrand being added to the trio you had mentioned in Atlanta. He's second on the depth chart behind Caden Ellis. He's just an injury away from seeing significant playing time as well. So these are two guys that I would be very, very, I wouldn't pick them early. I would definitely be in the late rounds, but you could get them and stash them for the first month and see how it flies.

Yeah, that's a great call. There's always these players every year that nobody's even remotely, it's even remotely on the radar. Right. Yeah. So I'm going to move on to our defensive backs in the IDP draft plan. Same thing here. We've got, you know, our elite defensive backs, Derwin James, Antoine Winfield, Jesse Bays, these kinds of players. Again, going off the board, to me, you know, too high.

There's an entire stack of what I call reliable DPs. The reason I use the term reliable DBs is, you know, as volatile as the DB market is in terms of snaps and a lot. and all that. Once you get past those handful of like kind of no doubters that I just mentioned, it really becomes more about reliability, like having a solid floor and having somebody you can count on week to week given the volatility of the position. So Grant Delpin, I'm targeting him left and right. He's a great player. He puts up really good numbers. Cam Curl had a little bit of an off year last year and still ended up in the top 15. He's a new team should be in a better situation here.

Julian Blackman, another one, it's kind of amazing. He's one of the few guys who plays loads and loads of box safety snaps, which we all covet, but everybody likes the Kyle Hamilton's and the Buddha Baker's in terms of name

better than that. One more to throw out. Remember that in Dallas, they don't have three safeties they're rotating around anymore. Jayron Curse is gone. I think Donovan Wilson is the guy who should get more of that work. And he's, I mean, I've been in a couple of leagues where he hasn't even been drafted.

So these are a couple of like mid-round or mid-to-late-round D-Bs that I'm really looking at this year. Yeah, and you bring up a valid point with Dallas. He's a definite be a definite starter. And you got Marquis Bell, who is more of a linebacker safety than he is anything else. You mentioned Buda Baker. Well, there's Jalen Thompson, who fits the mold you're talking about. about. So there's definitely, you know how I feel about DVs, especially cornerbacks and somewhat safeties. Once you get past the upper tier, they're a dime a dozen. They, they're going to be

somebody you can find on the waiver wire in week two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. It just pops up every year and it's, it's the nature of the beast. Now, I'm going to go back to what you talked about earlier with your three teams that you were targeting safeties on, and one of them being Green Bay. Now, Green Bay went out and got Xavier McKinney in the offseason, and he's going to start. They also drafted Javon Bullard, and Bullard is the rookie safety that has garnered most of the attention in training camp as he vise for the starting job opposite McKinney, and most likely will be the starter. It's fellow rookie Evan Williams that I want people to pay attention to because he opened some eyes in the Packers' first preseason game when he posted six solos and forced a fumble that was recovered by his teammate while taking 40% of the defensive snaps. He could play himself into a third safety role and be on the field and play more towards the box or rotate in the box with Bullard. So while Bullard is garnering most of the attention,

Evan Williams is somebody you should also be laying your eyes on and watching for the rest of the preseason. Yeah, absolutely. It's the same sort of situation. So with the quote-unquote kind of unknown or off-the-radar players you guys were talking about. To me, the most valuable part of this IDP draft plan every year tends to come at what I call the upside dbs. These are the dbs that nobody's drafting or a very few. people are drafting and they, I've had good success over the last couple of years of having most of these players end up in the top 25.

We're going to go over that list as soon as we get back from the break. This Giving Tuesday, Cam H is counting on your support. Together, we can forge a better path for mental health by creating a future where Canadians can get the help they need when they need it, no matter who or where they are. From November 25th to December 2nd, your donation will be. doubled. That means every dollar goes twice as far to help build a future where no one's seeking help is left behind. Donate today at camh.ca.ca.com.com.com. Today, so let's dive into to part of this upside DB list that is in my IDP draft plan. These are, again, these are guys who are either

not being drafted or going super duper duper late. And, uh, To me, this is really where you can take advantage of leagues who are drafting, particularly if you've got, if you're starting at least two defensive backs. To me, I want at least two of these guys are definitely one at absolute worst case scenario for me. So my list, it's a fairly short list, but Brandon Jones, this is a guy who, when he's on the field, He's really produced well. He was in Vic Fangio's doghouse last year. He was also injured before that.

He's got a new team, and he's over in Denver. He should have clear starting role here. And remember that the left-right safety split defense that has been in Denver for last four or five, six years, that's gone now. So I'm expecting to see Brandon Jones definitely move up the leaderboard here pretty soon. Taylor Rap, you have a new set of safeties over in Buffalo, and for some reason, neither of them are being drafted very much. We just had two stud safeties in Jordan Poyer and Mike Ahide

that were both fantasy relevant. Now because there are new faces or new names there, there obviously is some uncertainty, and as there should be. I'm not drafting Taylor Rap as my DB1, but Taylor Rap has also produced. So he's shown that he can produce. He's moving to a team that should be,

fairly productive for defensive backs. You can get them for almost cheap. And I'm going to throw a name out there, Antonio Johnson. That's a guy to watch out for. I think, again, going undrafted, I believe, in almost every league I'm in, except for me being the one who drafts at the very end of the draft. So a couple of upside DBs. Hopefully one or two of those will hit for y'all this year.

I think you got one more player for us, right? Right, Thomas? Yeah, actually I do. It's on Dallas. And someone to keep your eye on is another rookie linebacker. And it's Maris Leifau, who the Cowboys drafted, and this rookie is running with the second team currently. But starters DeMarvian overshone has a hip pointer, and Des Moen Clark has a knee injury, and they're both injury prone and have started missing training cap playing time and practices. Now, Leifow could take, you know, he took 26 snaps in the Cowboys' first preseason game.

Yes, he only had one assist. But it was kind of an unexpected. Here you go. Get in there and see what you can do. So watch him for the next two games and make sure that if overshone and Clark, these injuries that they have, if they become nagging, then the rookie could turn around and be a very big integral part of this defense, even though, yes, they have.

Kendricks and, you know, they will probably rotate Micah Parsons off of the end, the edge, especially now that they have Carl Wilson, and they may move Parsons around into a linebacker position. But Dallas is well known for running a two linebacker set. Yes, they do have a depth chart that shows them with a weak side, middle linebacker, strong side linebacking. but you may find the cowboys go with the two linebacker set with Parsons and Kendricks involved if Clark and Overshown are not playing. But the rookie could also get involved in that if these two are injury proud. All right. That is going to do it for us here on the IDP board.

Thanks, Fred. We will be back next week. We'll have another round of preseason games under our belt. We'll be getting closer and closer to major drafts for most of you all out there. And then we're going to blink and it'll be the regular season. But for now, we're going to go take a nice nap. We're both pretty exhausted. And I hope everybody gets to enjoy their weekend.

Thomas, you want to take us out? Be well and be safe. What? What? What are you shaking your head? You're welcome.