Fantasy Football Daily - IDP Injury Impact with Dr. Edwin Porras | IDP Corner Podcast

Episode Date: August 19, 2023

Dr. Edwin Porras (@FBInjuryDoc) joins Justin Varnes (@downwithIDP) and Tom Simons to discuss some defensive player injuries and how they will affect the 2023 IDP fantasy football season. READ EDWIN'S INJURY [PRO]NE GUIDE WITH CODE INJURYPRONE25: https://injuryproneguide.myshopify.com/ Want to join a high-stakes dynasty league -- or any other high-stakes league? All new FFPC users get $25 off their first FFPC league of $35 or more, including dynasty orphans, using our affiliate link: ⁠https://myffpc.com/cms/public?affid=fantasypoints⁠ ⁠FANTASY POINTS PROJECTIONS ARE LIVE⁠ FOR ALL STANDARD AND PREMIUM SUBSCRIBERS! Interested in playing Best Ball in 2023? There's no better place than Underdog Fantasy. ⁠Use our code FANTASYPTS⁠ to sign up for a new account at Underdog, and not only will you get a 100% deposit match up to $100... but you'll get a Fantasy Points Standard subscription for only $5! ⁠https://www.fantasypoints.com/underdog --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time to the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by FantasyPoints.com. Top-level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room, with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. Welcome to another episode of the IDP Corner. This is a very special episode. My name is Justin Varns. You can follow me on Twitter at Down with IDP. I'm here as always with Mr. Thomas Simons.

We're going to break down the IDP side of things. How are you doing today, Thomas? I'm doing great, especially now I know we've got a doctor in the house. We definitely have a doctor in the house. We always look forward, Thomas and I do, to this episode that we try to do every preseason, which is to shed a little light on some of the injury issues that are going to be concerns that we all have on the defensive side of the ball as we head into the regular season. and they could be injuries from last year, injuries that have happened over training camp.

These are things that we don't get enough time to spend on normally. So it's great to have Mr. or doctor, should I say, Edwin Porras in the house. How you doing tonight, Edward? It is so good to be here. I'm happy to talk with you guys. I think I've said this before. Every time we do this, I learn something new. You guys are the true football gurus.

I really mean that. I think that when it comes to, at least this is my opinion. offense is again it's not all easy but offense is relatively easier to project in my opinion than defense because the defense obviously has to react to what the offense is doing and that adds a lot more layers of complexity you have to in my opinion you have to truly no ball to be an idp guy or girl you have to truly no ball and i think that like the hard like the true football hardos are the people who who gravitate towards towards uh idp and so i'm just excited to be on this to learn from you guys as well.

See, this is why we love having you. Yeah, exactly. You should come on every week and say that. I mean it. I mean, I'm serious. It's special to us because we get an opportunity to pick the resident doctor fantasy points. We get to pick his brain. And in particular certain aspects of injuries that a lot of people don't, they don't really

think about it or they don't really know much about it. They hear it and then it becomes ingrained in them. Oh, he's injured. well, just exactly what does that injury mean is what we like to pick at, especially in this podcast. Yeah, and for those of you who don't know, Edwin Porras, he's on Twitter at FB Injury Doc. He's our medical analyst over at FantasyPoints.com. He's a great follow on Twitter. He's got a lot of great stuff that he puts out where he does more than just talk about recovery time.

and he'll spend time breaking down actually the analytics of how this might affect a player in terms of how it's actually going to affect your fantasy team, which is great stuff to watch. He's got a lot of opinions on whether or not a player can be injury prone or not, which we're going to dive into at least a couple of times on this podcast. But it really is important what you're preaching about that, which we'll get into later. But for now, we're going to dive straight. As always, we're going to break things down. by defensive linemen, linebackers, and defensive back.

So we got a handful of defensive line we want to discuss. Thomas, do you want to start with the first one? Yeah, the first one is Derek Barnett on Philadelphia. Now, we all know that the Eagles have a very complicated rotation that they use, and Barnett is very big part of this rotation with a lot of guys. Now, he tore his ACL back on opening day of 2022, and my question for Dr. Ed's, one is if what's what is the average length of time in regards to recovering from an ACL injury and let me

re let me preface first that we all understand that the torn ACL is different today than it was 15 years ago and that's modern science has made it a lot easier to recover from this but a lot of people don't understand if you tear an ACL there's two things you have to worry about your mental and your physical state. And my point or my question to you, Edwin, is Barnett, is he ready to go and being just a year removed from a torn ACL? Now, this is a really good conversation and a really, really good place to start. And I think that the first thing that we can address this question with, and I promise, like, I'm trying not, I'm trying not to drone on. But as a fantasy player in general, If you are primarily IDP or if you, you know, dabble in IDP or if you haven't really gotten into, as Justin was saying, the analytics of how injuries actually affect performance for offensive players in particular and defensive players, I think these are really important principles to follow. So there are a ton of studies, right? I'm going to try to boil them down into what the findings were. There are a bunch of studies I've conducted in studies that are actually in the published literature in the medical community, sports medical community. Here's what it comes down to. When it comes to an AC,

tear in general, you want a player to have at least nine months of recovery under their belt, at least. Otherwise, their re-tear rate goes up. The other thing you want out of a player, if they're going to tear their ACL and return back to the same level of performance, we actually found that offensive players can do that easier and at a better rate than defensive players. That goes back to what we were talking about earlier in the opening is defensive players have to read and react, and that can still be a problem or an issue, even a year down the road. The other thing you're looking for is a non-complicated injury. You don't want to want a Giovante Williams, J.K. Dobbin type injury because those lend, you know, those are

automatically going to take at least another two months to recover from because of all the tissue involvement. So you want a relatively minimal ACL tear. And the other thing, now coming down to sort of biometrics, um, is age. You want them to be as young as possible. In fact, you want them to be about 22, I want to say 22 years old, which is extremely young, obviously. Um, so that, that leans itself. But what I've found in my own studies is if there are 20, 2526. 26 is pushing it, but if you're 25, 26 and a hyper athlete, right, we're talking athlete, even by NFL standards, even by defensive standards. If you are at the cream of the crop, we're talking top 10 percent, the top 10 percentile of athletes on the field, you're probably

going to recovery a little easier and a little faster than some other other guys. The last thing when it comes to ACL recovery in particular is NFL draft capital. If they have NFL draft capital of the fourth round or higher, then they also have a better chance of returning back to the previous level of performance. Now, there are a lot of different reasons why that can be. That can be because the front office staff is invested in them and they, you know, whether it's right or not, right, something cost fallacy. Like, hey, we invested this much in this player. We are going to pour everything we can into resources to get that person, that dude, back on the field as fast and as safely as possible. The other thing is money, right? We paid this guy a lot of money too. And we're

going to try to get this guy back onto the field so that we can do our best to, you know, to continue to push our investment. So those are, and, and, draft capital obviously also means a lot of times that they're just implicitly more talented and more athletic. Not always, but usually. So those are big picture principles. Now I'll bring it back to what we have here in Derek Barnett. So you got a guy, 26 year old, 12 months after the surgery, I assume since he didn't open on Pup, that it is not a complicated injury. And he wins. And again, I asked Justin to fill us out because it's really helpful to me to understand a little bit better. again, I'm learning from you guys, how they win. What we find in a ton of studies that you've

seen in the literature is after, you know how you see all those tweets and those reports about like, oh, you know, Kyler Murray, 20 miles per hour, straight line sprinting, breeze Hall, 22 miles per hour, straight line sprinting. That is actually not uncommon because ACLs don't really, in terms of straight line speed, don't impact straight line speed at all. It's really the lateral movements that you have to worry about. So when I look at these three guys that we're going to potentially talk about, right? You're talking about Derek Barnett, Joey Bosa, and Romero, O'Quara. Oh, gosh, Okwara. That's a different thing. All through those guys win with very minimal lateral movement. Not to say that they don't move side to side, but as defensive ends, obviously, they're coming

around the edge hot, and it is a B-line. They're trying to make a B-line towards the quarterback. So, you know, an ACL and ACL rehab shouldn't necessarily impact them too much from a performance. standpoint and given the fact that Barnett has had already 12 months to recover from, as long as he doesn't have any complications down the road, I think he should be good to go. Man, that's phenomenal insight. Yeah. Great stuff about the, about the age and the draft capital and all that. Great insight. And yeah, this is the sort of stuff that we don't get to spend as much time talking about. It's also fascinating to think about how we, how defensive players, you know, their literal motions on the field, backpedaling, things like that, you know, absorbing hits, you know, absorbing offensive linemen and stuff, how those movements may, you know, play out on the field differently than a wide receiver or a running back or a quarterback.

Really fascinating stuff, Edwin. You know, and I also want to point out you brought up a very valid point in regards to finances and what they've invested in him. You know, with Barnett, they've got like, I believe it's a little over $10 million of funds that there are even close to $12 million of dead cap space that they're putting towards him. So that's a lot of money to be paying a defensive end that, oh, well, you know, we're not going to worry about his health. And he is one of the three starting defensive ends they have with Josh Schwett and Brandon Graham. So he's a vital piece to this defense. He's also, they've invested a lot of money in him, and you bring up these valid points about his ability to move forward, and the lateral movement is not as drastic in what they're using him for. So let's talk about another player, and this isn't a specific injury that happened last year.

This is, and that's Edge Joey Bosa. You know, we talk a lot about his younger brother now, but when Joey Bosa, the older brother, came in the league, he was a dominant player and has still shown plenty of those flashes. But he has a little bit of a lengthy injury history, and I want to talk a little bit about that, Edwin. And the other thing is, I'm curious to hear how you think this might either negatively or positively affect his concern for injury going forward in that. What he's done this season is bulk back up to closer to his draft weight. The Chargers a couple of years ago asked him to slim down a little bit because he was going to play more outside linebacker, which means he was going to have to drop into coverage a little more,

have to be a little bit more agile. Well, this year they've asked him to basically put his hand in the dirt a little bit more. They've asked him to bulk back up. He's gained about 15 to 20 pounds, which again is closer to his draft weight. and he's going to spend a little less time dropping into coverage. So he's got a little bit of a lengthy injury history, and his body composition has changed a little bit. I've seen Joey Bosa a lot lower in drafts this year

based on his injury history, how unreliable he's been over the last few years. I'm wondering if any of this stuff makes you feel either a little more pessimistic or a little bit more optimistic about Bosa's chance to return to a healthy full-time player. Yeah, this is a really fascinating one to me because I think a lot of times what you see, and I see this on the offensive side of the ball with a lot of guys in terms of sort of narratives that build around these guys and how I think honestly what it is is exactly that.

It can be narrative. Oftentimes, I mean, it can be true as well. But a lot of times, for example, like if you have a running back, for example, and he plays 14, 15 games out of the season, but the two games he misses are in the fantasy playoffs and you lose, obviously people aren't going to love that, right? But if you look at a guy like, but it's, yeah, exactly. I think it's recency bias because when you look at a guy like Bosa, I think that you can say from a relatively objective perspective, like, yeah, this isn't, you know, he doesn't necessarily stay on the field, but you look at him since coming into the league, he's played 16. games. I'm looking at this three different times. Obviously, last season wasn't one of those times, but nonetheless, the year before that, he played all 16 games, or I guess 21 was 16 of 17 games. So that is something to consider is that oftentimes if you're drafting, you can exploit your, your league mates by understanding what narratives are and what they're not, honestly, just by pulling

up football reference, just looking like, okay, they're saying this guy misses a lot of games, like, how many games is he actually missed? Okay, do I consider that a lot of games, or do I think that it's worth it. I think that's the number one thing to look at. When it comes to Bosa in particular, he does have a bit of an injury history. So I'm not going to say that he's, you know, he's totally scot-free and the best predictor of previous injury, or I'm sorry, the best predictor of future injury is previous injury. And it's that same injury, right? Not something totally unrelated. So that is something to consider. Now, what's really fascinating is the fact that Bosa, and there's this concept, right? It's called, it's called,

I am blanking on it. Bone mass ratio. So a lot of NFL teams are really big into this right now, and it's just coming into trickling into baseball. Teams will take the measurement, long story short, they'll take measurements of a guy. They'll assume his body comp, or they'll calculate his body comp,

and then they have an idea with this number, how much mass, how about how much fat-free muscle muscle is actually ideal before it starts to become detrimental? And the way they measure that is, Because as a skeleton, as a human, as an individual, you can only put genetically, you can only put so much muscle on a person. Excuse me, before you start gaining just fat mass, right? Before you just start getting big. And so the fact that they're asking him to slim down, I have an inkling that they were either, you know, they were probably really pushing their luck with how much, how much weight he should have been playing at in the first place.

And so he just naturally might be a dude that it needs to have more weight on him in general. And so you could look at this two different ways. You can look at it as ooh, he lost or he gained 15 to 20 pounds. I'm not really loving that for his durability. Or you can look at his game log, like I said, you can consider something like, you know, bone mass ratio, bone to muscle ratio. And you can say, hmm, since 2019, he's played at least 12 games. and last year when he played at a lower weight, he only played five games.

I don't know. Maybe you can make that connection. I can't tell you for sure. But I think that playing at a weight that's closer to what's natural for him can actually help him in terms of durability. You know, I think that one of the keys with Bosa is the fact that when they moved him to the linebacker position

and had him in a two-point stance, they wanted him to do some coverage. And I think because of the fact he had that weight on him, they were afraid that he wasn't going to do very well in past coverage. So that's one of the reasons why they asked him to lose some weight. And the other reason now is that they, as Justin pointed out, you know, they, we brought, in our last podcast, we talked about edge rushing and how fantasy football leagues are changing from the traditional defensive end defensive tackle to edge rushers, where linebackers

are now being labeled as defensive ends, which totally change fantasy football lineups. and if you want more about that, you can go back and listen to our last podcast. But in this particular case, you've got Morgan Fox starting as their left defensive end, and then Sebastian Joseph Day is going to be more of a defensive tackle, which means they want Bosa to be, as Justin said, in a three-point stance as well as a two-point stance, but basically come off the edge and not cover as much. That's why I think the main reason why they want them to bulk back up. But you bring up a valid point of, okay, well, they had them trim down and then all of a sudden, boom, he loses 12 games or he missed a huge portion of the season because of injury.

And that's a big key. Now, speaking of injuries, we're going to jump over to one more defensive end, and that's Romeo O'Cohor from Detroit. He had an Achilles injury about mid-2020. Then he returned at the end of last season at 2022. Now, expectations, what are the expectations we should have on a player who's about a year and a half or almost two years removed from an Achilles injury? Now, we all also want to hear what your thoughts are for the mental state that players have. Now, I played football before and I blew my knees out. And when I came back, I had this stigma of, okay, I don't want to make this cut because I'm afraid I'll blow my knee out again.

Is this a major concern with the professionals at this level? Oh, absolutely. I mean, we have entire sports psych teams that will deal with these, with these situations. I don't want to say deal with, but like help these players through this situation. What you typically see with with high performing athletes at this level, at the highest level, is that they will be extremely confident early on in their rehab. And that confidence tends to plateau. Once they get closer to actually playing in games and being in live action, their confidence starts to plummet. And then they have to sort of work their way back. That is a very typical course that for even the highest level of most elite athletes. So the state of mind is definitely

something that plays into effect. And I think the further we get away from the let's withhold water because you played like shit type of mentality that used to be, you know, back in the, and it seems like, geez, I don't want to say the dark ages, but I can't. As a sports medicine professional in 2023, I cringe thinking about, you know, coaches withholding water from their athletes at any given point in time. I digress. Oh, yeah. No, yeah. That's crazy. It's scary when you think about stuff like that. It really is. And so, but the mental state is extremely important. So we also know that Achilles, they're kind of wildcards. You can get guys who come back and play at a certain level on the offensive side of the ball, right? Like Cam Acres, he was super young,

had high draft capital and he's sort of making a research. But how long will that last? You saw Marlon Mack over the last couple weeks. He, I think, I don't want to assume, because I didn't see a lot of reports on it. I think he retore the same Achilles that he tore previously. So, you know, you also have guys that just fizzle out of the league. So these Achilles injuries are still really a pain in medical professionals as ass because they're so unpredictable and they're just kind of wildcars. You can get guys that either fizzle out immediately or guys that will fizzle out over time and they're just never the same because you do need that power, you need that force. And when it comes to tendons in particular, it's different than an ACL,

which is a ligament because the tendon is one, it's the biggest tendons. in your body, the Achilles is. And for you, for a player to be able to push off, create power and create torque quickly, that, that tendon is needed at full strength and at full go and full blast. And unless a guy, like, unless a guy like, I can never say his name, good Lord, O'Cora, unless a guy like O'Quara can, can maybe find a different way to win, as you say, like, quote unquote, win, then you might see a dip in the box score for him. If all he, if all he relies on as bull rushing because that could be something that he's struggled with moving forward. You know, we're going to talk in a few minutes after we get through linebackers and defensive backs.

Pick your brain on some specific injuries and comparisons on them. But before we get to that, Justin, you have some thoughts on a few linebackers? Yeah, let's move on to linebackers. I want to talk about Buffalo's Tyrell Dodson. He's one of the linebackers they're trying to see. see if he can fit next to Matt Milano. Matt Milano is going to be there, every down linebacker,

but there is a battle going on right now for who that second linebacker is. And every second that these guys can be on the practice field in a preseason game only increases their chances, they're going to win it, and Dodson's one of the guys that they're looking at. Now, he has been dealing with an ankle injury. And so the question really is in terms of a linebacker who is going to have to, you know,

he's going to have to take on offensive linemen, try to shed blocks. But, you know, the modern linebacker has to double up. He has not only do that, but also be agile sideline to sideline and help with covering, you know, running backs and tight ends and things like that. So, you know, dealing with an ankle injury in camp, What is the risk that, A, he's slower and more importantly, fighting through an ankle injury doing that during trying to win a job and maybe pushing himself. Is there a tendency that that ankle injury is going to get worse?

Or how would that affect a player like that fighting for a job, basically? Yeah, that's really tough. It's really tough to know exactly what a player is going through, especially if you don't know the particulars of the ankle injury itself. But it is, you know, it's something to consider. I'd say that if it's your run-of-the-mill sort of lateral ankle sprain, those are extremely common, extremely common. And at worst, you have a situation where he can't really go at full 100% for two weeks. And yeah, man, like time is money right now.

So if you're of the belief that this is a serious ankle injury, which, again, I wish I had a little bit more information. That's the other thing about defensive guys. It's so hard to find information relatively speaking compared to the offensive side of the ball. It's so frustrating. But yeah, that's something that that that is difficult to deal with. And and you know, we we really just have to hang our hat on. Okay, if it's just a run of the middle ankle sprain, he's going to try to push through it. He's going to do his best. But it can definitely impact his ability to to move quickly and move in a way that's dynamic and will be allow him to, like you said, drop back into coverage, shed blocks and and do as much as you need to

from a side-to-side lateral perspective. You know, he's fighting a job with Terrell Bernard and Bayl Inspector, and Bernard's hurt as well. So I think Milano, for our benefit, Milano is the one to gamble on. With Tremaine Edmonds going over to Chicago, his position's opened up. But I don't see Dotson or Bernard or anybody taking a full-time three-down job going forward. I think there will be some share.

going on. I think Dotson may play against the run. Bernard could be against the past. We don't know until we actually see regular season games unfold. Now, you brought up a very valid point about not knowing what the injuries are. And a guy like Jordan Brooks on Seattle, we know what the injury was. I mean, he tore his ACL back in week 17 of last year. Now, we've talked earlier about ACL injuries. And if you think about it, we're only about eight months removed from that injury. And yet he just came off the PUP list. And Justin has brought up some valid points in the past about Brooks having issues about keeping up with running backs and tight ends and coverage, especially over the middle of the field. Now, will his recovery from this torn ACL affect this

weakness that he has in this game. We've been discussing how Bobby Wagner returning to Seattle is going to most likely help Brooks in this regard. But what's your thoughts about his knee injury, only being eight months removed from it? Yeah, that's tough. It's going to be tough. I mean, we just saw a report for Bruce Hall in particular.

I know I keep bringing up offensive guys. I'm sorry, that's the side of the ball. No, no, no, no. It's a great analysis and great comparison because people are more familiar with the offensive side of the ball. There are diehards here that know IDP very well, but we appreciate the comparisons. Absolutely.

So in terms of all the data and the literature that we have on ACLs, linebackers and running backs actually are the most comparable group together. They unfortunately have the worst time coming back. All of the things that I mentioned at the top of the show are relevant. Their age, their draft capital, how athletic are they? What could they do before the injury? The amount of time to recover before the injury. But I can tell you right now, at eight months, this guy's not 100%. He can say he's at 100%. He can talk about being 100%. But there's no way that he feels 100% at eight months. This is just me. Speaking from some experience,

some firsthand experience treating some of these guys, eight months is early. And even though it's possible, there's a big difference. I say this all the time on the other side of the ball. There's a massive difference between returning to perform and returning to play. And returning to to perform is a totally different level. So again, I think that the higher, the more talented and the better draft capital that a player has, the better you can, you can project them. But seeing as you guys are telling me, he's already having, he already has issues with, you know, covering, covering the middle of the field, moving side to side. His recovery, especially being just eight months, is not going to help. That's probably the most positive way to spin it. Being eight months removed

from an ACL is not going to help your ability to clamp down in coverage at all. So that is something that he might progress moving forward. But also understand, I think I said this. I've been babbling and babbling. But running backs and linebackers do have the worst time coming back. Linebackers in particular, they tend to be just like a pretty rag-tag group of, you know, they're very literally just somewhere in between, literally and figuratively, in between a defensive end and a corner.

And so they're just like this, this random athlete I can kind of do. They're kind of like, correct me if I'm wrong. This is where I can learn if I'm wrong. I sort of view linebackers in general as like, you know, they're really good at a lot of things, but they're great at not a lot of things. You know, you have to be a really outstanding linebacker to really be relevant. Am I wrong there?

No, no. You're absolutely right. If they were, if they were faster, they were in more agile, they would probably be defensive backs like a safety. If they were stronger and they would likely be a defensive end, right? They would be a Joey Bosa or a Nick Bosa or they'd be a, you know, a Jalen Ramsey or somebody like that. So, yeah, they are they are the Swiss Army knife, the jack of all trades of the defense. That's for sure.

You know, they also, the linebacker position has evolved so much from, the 70s, 80s, 90s into the 2000s and beyond because of the fact that this league has become more of a pass-oriented league. When we're referring to the offensive side of the ball, I mean, just look at what running backs are going through this year as far as getting contract signed. The league is looking at the running back position as not as valuable as the other positions. And consequently, you've got more of a pass-oriented game. So the run-stopping linebackers are becoming a, you know,

I wouldn't call them dinosaurs, but they're not as prevalent in the league as they used to be. Justin, you've got something over on the cults that you would like to talk about, right? Yeah, you want to talk about an elite athlete, kind of of the highest caliber, particularly at the line backing position, that's going to be our next guy, Shaquille Leonard. Shakeel Leder before his injury was just absolutely tearing up the league. And this is somebody who was a number one pick for us on the defensive side of the ball. And then, for example, he debuted in 2018, had 163 tackles. And he had at least 120 tackles for four years straight.

Then is he goal? That's a lot of tackles, I'll tell you that much. Even I know. And beyond that, he is excellent in coverage. He's one of those guys. He was a complete, every down linebacker. He can carry tight-ins down the seam. He can run sideline to sideline.

He's your prototypical, you know, kind of elite linebacker. But then what happened was a couple years ago, he suffered. a neck injury. And basically there's a nerve that runs from his back down into his lower leg. I guess it was causing issues with his neck as well. He had surgery before last season to correct him. And supposedly, you know, it was like looking better. We're going to talk about how the Colts report injuries here at a second. But it was, you know, it looked like everything was okay. We just heard lots of, you know, like, yeah, I think he's going to be fine. nothing specific. He tried to play a couple of times last year, just never, it never felt right. He was then shut down. He had a second back surgery. And he says it's been corrected and he says

he feels much better. We're getting a lot of the same sort of Colts kind of rhetoric. He's working, you know, he's working, like Jim RSA, a couple months ago, like said, he was working. He has a chance. He's getting a little better each day. It's a lot of kind of stuff like that. Now, he is on the practice field. He is practicing. And I think he's even playing a little bit. But any, you know, this is the kind of issue that, you know, we hear torn ACL. We hear high ankle spring. We hear we hear, you know, a torn broken bone. We hear. These are all things that we have at least some sense of like, well, we've heard enough. But this is an injury that remains at absolute mystery. Anytime you're talking about a back, I'm always just like, oh, you know, this, who knows what we're going to get?

Do you have any sort of insight? You know, this is a player. Like I said, he's an elite athlete. He's 28 years old. This is going to happen when he's about 26, 27. And he's had a second back surgery, and he says it's hopefully it's been fixed. But this is not someone fighting for a job. This is somebody who could be, I mean, this is the kind of guy.

This is like your Christian McCaffrey of the linebacking world. He's either going to win you your league or he's going to cost you your league because you're going to draft him so highly and then he's not going to play. Yeah, this is a tough one. This is a tough one because it sounds like, so I just want to clarify, he was having neck issues and then having low back issues. Is that correct? He had a neck issue that impinged on a nerve in his lower leg. So they went in and surgically corrected that. And then when he came back, he had more issues with his neck and back issue.

And then he had a second surgery done on that. What that tells me is with, you know, all medical mumbo jumbo-jumbo aside, this is probably not something that's just in his neck or just in his low back. This is likely an entire sort of, I hate to, I hate to be a long. It is like an entire spine issue. You think of guys that retired with neck issues. You think of guys like, you know, Chris Carson recently. You think of guys like J.D. McKissick. Ryan, I think of, I don't know if you remember David Wilson, the running back.

Yeah. Those guys, and again, I don't want to speculate because I don't know for a fact exactly what's going on. But based on your description, it sounds like there's something similar to that going on here with Shaq. what you worry about not so much is can he come back and be him? In reality, you really worry about longevity and career longevity. And this is his third surgery because he had an ankle surgery back in 2021. Right. And I wouldn't even, honestly, all other injuries aside, the neck and the spine are probably the most concerning. I mean, the spine is the most concerning, all other things aside. And just the fact that he's continued, he continued to have symptoms tells me that

and neck and back pain just doesn't go away, unfortunately. So he's probably living through neck and back pain every day of his life. I don't want, I don't wish this on him. I hope that he can make a full recovery and, you know, shove it in my face. And he's walking to the Hall of Fame one day. But you do worry for general career type of stuff with when the neck and the low back are involved if it's shooting all the way down to his neck or I'm sorry, all the way down to his leg. So again, he can probably come back and be just as athletic as you need him to be.

but he's just another hit away from being, you know, sideline again because the neck and the spine are obviously implicated every time he makes contact. So he's a high-risk guy. So I think, you know, hopefully he can stay healthy for his own sake because we want him to stay healthy as a human being. Looking at the fantasy perspective,

if he's a, you know, we're viewing him like you said as a Christian McCaffrey of, of IDP guys. And it just depends what your risk tolerance is because, you know, he's had two surgeries over the last, you know, year just for the neck itself and that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to go away. So if you think that, you know, he's going to be worth whatever you, best case scenario, he doesn't miss any games, right? And I'm totally wrong.

But worst case scenario, he's sidelined for another handful of games and over the long haul. He might not be in the league too long. But again, I don't wish that on him and I don't want to put too much bad juju other. Yeah, I mean, he ended up playing, they put him in a preseason game in their preseason opener. and he came out of the field with the first team defense. Obviously, the first team defense, just like the first team offense, they rarely play very many snaps that first game. He played a total of six snaps and basically didn't have anything come his way.

So it was great to see him out there in the first, you know, just suit up for the first team defense. He's been practicing. So, you know, he's taking hits and whatnot. But we've yet to really see what this is going to be. be like at full game speed yet. My question would be, and you might not have, you know, anything specific on this, but let's say that he can, you know, he can deal with the pain and that he gets lucky enough

that nothing, you know, major happens. Does anything about this make you concerned outright about his speed, his agility? Because these are the thing, you know, you lose just a little bit of that. you go from this elite level athlete to being an above average athlete. And that's still okay. But the risk of a, in other words, a healthy Shakil Leonard, meaning nothing major happens to re-injure himself. He gets lucky in that regard.

And mentally, he can feel like he can go full blast. Do you think something like that would sap him of any of his agility? Or do you think it's more of just a, like you said, a neck spine, issue versus something like a, you know, a soft tissue injury or or the Achilles, like you said, that actually really can sap you of power. Yeah, no, I think that that is definitely on the table is is a loss of function because if it is what I'm what I'm speculating sort of, if it is something that is related to the low back and the neck and the legs, like that tells me that there are nerves involved inherently. And when there's nerve involvement, you really worry about the

ability to maintain force, not because your muscles are weak, but because the nerves, which are basically the conduits from your muscles to your brain and your brain to your muscles, those can slow down. And if you have a slowdown in that conduction, then you're going to have a slowdown in the signals that go from your brain to your legs to move at a fast rate. So that is something that is concerning. Maybe it's not something too, you know, extremely concerning. Maybe like you said, if he's, you know, elite, he goes from the 99th percentile to the 90th percentile. Okay, maybe that's not the worst drop in the world. But it is something. It's a consideration. If you're, if you're looking at something that could potentially lead him to having less production,

it's definitely at play as well. Yeah. So just a little bit more on that. I mean, this is just, Again, the cults have seemingly for the last 10 years been terrible about this. You know, we had a lot of, you know, before Andrew Luck officially retired, we were getting almost no concrete understanding of his last injury. And this happened all the last couple of years with Shaquille Leonard in terms of not getting information. I do have a few quotes from him. And sorry we're spending so much time on him, but like, I said, if he, if he, this is the sort of player that really can, you know, can can can make or

break your your, your draft. Uh, he said that he couldn't, he didn't have any power on his lower left side of his body. He couldn't do a calf raise. For example, it was, and he felt like he was, um, he was losing feeling in that side. Uh, and I guess the doctors basically told him that you can't rush a, a nerve injury and he had never dealt with that before. So this second time after the surgery, he really slowed things. he really tried to slow things down.

I don't know if any of that, what I just said gives you any sort of indication, but he said he felt tingles down his left leg from his glute down to his hamstring and into his calf. Yeah, that is, that is certainly not. Yeah, that's concerning. I'll put it that way.

I don't think I need to go on along, so luckily, that is something that if it was at play before, I can, I don't want to say assure you, but I can assume safely, I think, that that is, going to be a continued issue and a problem, which again, it doesn't have to be like he takes a hit and his career comes to a screeching halt. It can be like, we look up in 2024 and you go, huh,

Shaq Leonard was 10th in tackles this year. And last year he was fourth and, you know, and so on and so forth. And that can be sort of how it happens. I think the key for fantasy owners, if you're going to get Shaq Leonard, have a backup plan, an insurance policy because you just don't know. Or get him at a deeply discounted rate. Yes. Take them as your third or fourth line back. Don't pay too high for him. How many Dynasty IDP leagues are there out there?

There's quite a few. Quite a few. Oh, yeah. If you're a contender, like you are absolutely like, you know for a fact looking at your roster. If everything swings your way, which of course, as everything goes with fantasy, you can ever be too, you know, certain. But if you're looking at your roster right now and you're like, I think I'm one of the

three or four, three or four, maybe four teams, if not top three teams that can make a run at it this year. I think like now is a time to strike. I would say the same thing with like, then if you're lacking, for example, like on the offensive side, if you were like, man, I could really, I could really hit this team could knock it out of the park this year. I just need a running back. Then you give up a whatever, second round pick, first round pick for a top tier, top two running

back to be your anchor because you think you got a chance. Like that's how I'm viewing Shaq Leonard based on this conversation. Right, right. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I'm going to hit one last linebacker and I'll make it a real quick one because when we get done with defensive backs, I want to get more into injury comparisons. But Drey Greenlaw in San Francisco pulled a hamstring muscle about six days ago in practice. So the question to you, Dr. Edwin-Borris, is what is the difference between a strain and a pull when it comes to hamstrings?

And what's the approximate recovery time for both? Yeah, that's a good question. I think a lot of times the public, the general language just gets confused. when you see when I see athletes and they're like it just kind of pulled it felt tight they come in they say oh it felt tight or it cramped up or it's kind of locking up on me or it just feels like it needs like I have a nod in it that's typically what you'd call like I would view that as like a grade zero grade one ish that's just tightness back off a little bit on some of the work that you're doing transition that work over to sort of rehab type stuff and it should clear up in

three to seven days. If it's a true strain, which again, a strain doesn't mean that you actually see it on MRI, but a strain can be something more serious where it's like a grade two. And at that point, you're looking at a two to three week recovery. So that's really the biggest difference between a strain and a pool. And again, I have a really hard time trusting guys because a lot of times when it's a strain, they'll call it a pool. A lot of times coaching staffs or coaches will say like, oh, well, it was just a pool when it was a strain or vice versa. So it's hard to really know and I just wait for the teams to show me and tell me like, hey, if he's out there tomorrow and it seems like he's doing everything just fine, then it probably,

you know, that's what I would follow more so than maybe the nomenclature. All right. Well, let's move on to some defensive backs. How many douche points don't get for using the word nomenclature? We nerd out like crazy on this podcast. So bring on the nomenclature, my man. Bring it on. So we're going to hit a couple of, I want to hit a major cornerback who obviously had a pretty big injury to start training camp. And then we're going to hit some of these, a handful of safeties who are, you know, we could consider either in the top five or ten of safeties if they're healthy and playing like they used to play or there are people we should skip. I'm going to start with the cornerback.

And that's obviously Jalen Ramsey out of Miami. I think he did have surgery on his full meniscus tear. They said he's going to be out for about six to eight weeks. The question is, when Ramsey comes back in, let's call it November, do you see anything that would prevent him from being, let's say, 95% the player? He was, keep in mind, he is a little on the older side. Yeah, you're cutting out a little bit there. Can you confirm who we're talking about?

Sorry. Jalen Ramsey. Jalen Ramsey. Sorry, no, that's okay. My internet was kind of cuts out sometimes. No, I hear you. So, yeah, Ramsey is going to be interesting. First we heard it was going to be minor and then we heard, oh, it's going to be six months and then now we're saying it's minor again. So who really knows what's going on? The reports are kind of all over the place. But when it comes to meniscus repair, similar to, you know, the concept of it might indirectly affect him is just the fact that these

injuries can be finicky. And that's because the meniscus itself is the cushion of the knee. And once it's on, and it's on the inside of the knee. And once you mess with the inside of the knee, your knee is pretty much never the same. You're always at risk to get knee aggravation, knee inflammation. That's what was the demise of Todd Gurley. Todd Gurley had early onset arthritis in his knee. And arthritis is an issue because arthritis never goes away. Arthritis is just, it is what it is. You manage it. You have good days. You have bad days, but your function is impacted. So you worry about Ramsey, keeping up with guys,

because the harder he plants and cuts and hits the ground once he comes back, you know, the more irritation that knee could potentially be exposed to. So he's a bit of a tricky guy to assess because he could come back and be fine, but he also, you could see, I could definitely see him having issues this year coming back. And there is some data to show that guys coming back from a meniscus issue have a harder time playing and playing through some stuff, they can miss more games and just have general near irritation the rest of the year. So, um, Ramsey's a tough one. That's a tough, that's a tough injury to come back, come back from for anybody. So if we're, if we're looking at, uh, you know,

some of these injuries are, the guys will come back and they won't be full speed, but then in six months or let's say next season, the 2024 season, um, that, you know, okay, now, you know, he's kind of more fully recovered. But is that, could that be the same? situation here? Or if Ramsey comes back and is 80% the player he was, and we end this season feeling like Ramsey wasn't quite himself, is that an indication because of the type of injury that he may never be that again? Or is this an injury that you can actually get better for, you know, another, a year off basically would do, would do him more good? Yeah, you can. And you can definitely come back from this injury. And it's not like guys don't have this, this type of,

of injury happen in the past, you know, disgrace turning back, Darius Geis, he was coming back from exactly the exact same injury. And he was playing relatively well, it seemed like. We didn't know what he was going to hold up from, like from a longevity perspective. But at 28, you don't love, I hate to say that because I'm freaking,

I'm 30 years old. So I hate to say that a 28 year old is old, but in the NFL it is. And so I, again, I don't want to give out bad juju, but I'm just thinking in terms of, of like a 28 year old wide receiver and then I hear that they have a minisectomy, I would kind of cringe and shy away because it can be the situation, Justin, that you mentioned, where he maybe loses, let's say he loses a step and a half this year. Next year, maybe he only lost, you know,

three quarters of a step. But it's going to be tough for him to come back and be the same dude because this injury is just, again, I don't want to say it derails careers, but it definitely for older guys can can contribute to maybe an earlier decrease in, you know, degradation of skill. But again, for Ramsey, it's like he plays all over the place, right? Like if they want to move into safety and maybe he can extend his career, but I don't know how that would impact him from an IDP fantasy perspective. But again, like, I think maybe the days of shut down all over the place, sideline to sideline Jalen Ramsey, I think that'd be, that's tough.

That's tough to project him to be that again. Speaking of safety, Justin, you had mentioned there are some safeties here that we wanted to talk about. There was three of them in Jamal Adams on Seattle, who tore his quadricep muscle back on opening day of last year. Tracy Walker on Detroit, he tore his Achilles in week three of 2022, and Derwin James, who has an injury history and is gaining an injury-prone tag. Now, all three of these safeties, they play and hit you like linebackers, and they're very physical. But they still need to be very quick and agile because they're expected to be in coverage as well as being in the box and playing tough against the run. Now, Adams and James, James play very hard and seem to get injured a lot, especially recently, and thus the injury tag. the question being is for for example with atoms quadricep tears are those something that you can come back from

quad ters are tough man like first of all it's hard to tear your quad completely and a rupture quad not that it doesn't happen but you definitely can um can tear your quad and just that just makes it tough all around the thing you know oftentimes what unfortunately what happens with guys is they do get injured, you know, for one thing, and then that thing tends to pile up again. When I look at his injury history, right, he's got the meniscus from 16, the foot fracture from 19, the meniscus again in 20, the shoulder in 22. And then he had obviously the quad tear. He's had a concussion. I would kind of label like the concussion in the shoulder are probably due to the nature of what you've said before, the sort of gameplay, the style of play. Yeah, like being physical. Like that

that makes sense to me. The meniscus, kind of along the same lines, kind of makes sense to me. And I mentioned it before. You know, the best predictor of future injury is previous injury. He had a meniscus in 16, has a meniscus again in 20. Now he's coming back from this quad tear. So is it possible for him to come back and be the same guy? It's certainly possible.

I would be curious because a lot of the data shows that once you have, and I just want to make sure, is it a was, maybe you don't know, is it a quad tendon tear or was it a tear of the quad itself it was a muscle yeah and also just I think the the when we're about to get to him at a minute but we can just jump to him as soon as you're done with with Adams but that injury history list I think that's for derwin James who had a that's the double yeah wrong tab who no worries we're definitely going to get to that that length the injury history in just a minute But yeah, I think he tore the muscle. Adams did. Jamal Adams tore his muscle.

Is that right, Thomas? Yes, it is. And I worked the game where he did it. And he came straight up the middle, and the quarterback saw him coming. So he bolted to the left. And Adams did a try to do a while he was stretching out to hit him, he tried to shift and turn. And he torched his leg when he did it. And it didn't look serious.

But all of a sudden he was laying on the ground. Cart came out. Totum away, and the next thing you know, he's got a torn quadriceps muscle. And then they had surgery on it, and he was done for the year. Yeah, I think that based on just what you're saying and what it sounds like, it's definitely a long road, obviously, as you saw, I mean, he's just now coming back from it now. I think that he can bounce back from it. The thing that you do worry about is that top end speed.

And so if you see him getting beat on deep routes, or if you see him sort of lagging behind on coverage. I think that could be something that he's still struggling with. And then obviously quad strains are something to be concerned about moving forward for him. So I think that he can do it. I think that it's possible. You just might see him maybe take a little bit to get back to full speed. Just to put a cap on Adams. The Seahawks went out and drafted Devon Devin Witherspoon, who is a shutdown type cornerback. They have Tarek Wollin. They have Michael Jackson. They have Kobe Bryant. They went out and signed Julian Love. They have quandary digs.

So I think when Adams does return, they're not going to expect him to do a lot of coverage, a lot of safety stuff. They'll put him more in the box and give him more of an edge linebacker position type thing. So Adams is not going to give you the production that he's done previous to his injuries, but they will use him more on run defense and also coming off the edge to give the, the defense, which they need, you know, some pressure on the quarterback, Adams will be one of the guys that'll do that. Let's move on to, we were talking about Derwin James. As you were saying, when he's got quite a lengthy injury history, but there's definitely a couple of meniscus things to consider. But, you know, he tore his left lateral meniscus in 2016, 2019.

he had a stress fracture of his right foot. 2020, he tore the meniscus in his right knee in training camp. So 2020, no injury, or 2021, no injuries, thank God. 2022, he basically had a hamstring injury and a shoulder injury. And then last year he had a concussion. So the concussion was from a hard hit and the shoulder injury. he was from harder. This guy plays super hard. He is, I don't mean to keep referencing this, but if it helps, he is the Christian McCaffrey of the defensive back row. I mean, this guy is

an elite athlete. He is the kind of guy who we jump a few rounds early to pick Derwin James up as a safety because he sticks out that far from everyone else. But he definitely plays with a harder style. So as of right now, he's okay. But, the question is you read that injury history, two meniscus tears, but obviously on different knees, one of those legs obviously also had a foot fracture, and he had a quad strain as well. How much of that is something that would actually get, so he clearly carries the quote-of-quote injury-prone tag, and some of that is from his style of play. The question is, how concerned would you be of either a re-injury of some of these things

or do any of these things make you think like, well, if he's already had meniscus tears, then A or B might be coming up, or is it just, if he plays that hard, he might just randomly miss some games by tearing something random that he uses too hard to hit the other person. Yeah, that's, man, that's hard, right? Like he is, and I was looking at his injury history before, that's my fault. But he, yes, has a lot of injuries from just playing a physical style in a physical game, right? I don't think I've mentioned this on this podcast yet. There's a 98% injury rate in NFL games.

Over a period of four years, they looked at four, you know, across four years, they looked at all 32 teams and looked at every single game between the years of 2012 and 2015. And they found that literally only 2% of NFL games in that time period had zero injuries. And once you account for the guy who dislocated his finger, put it back himself or the dude who had his shoulder, you know, popped out, right? The trainer secretly put it back in without telling the coach or, you know, the guy who saw stars. Once you account for those, there's a, there's a literally 100% injury rate in NFL games.

So this guy is just a victim of those injuries. And at this point, again, I'll say it again. I've said it before. Future injury, best predictor, past injury. And, you know, the best predictor for a future meniscus tear is a previous meniscus tear. The best predictor for a future concussion is a previous concussion. So those are risks that you take on with a guy like Derwin James. But man, like I don't see anything crazy that stands out to me understanding what I can. and get back in return. The foot fracture seems a little flukish at that point to me. So like the meniscus seems like it's behind him. Obviously had the concussion last year, but you're looking at a guy if he can provide that much value. I'm less, I'll put it this way. I'm less concerned for him that I am for

you know, Shaq Leonard, for example. I'm less concerned for him than some of the guys, you know, let's say the linebackers coming off in ACL. Like I'm less concerned for him from that perspective. And these are more risk-reward type analysis that you have on a player like James, on a player like Leonard, a player like Adams. These are risk-reward. What is the risk and what is the reward comparison? And is it worth the risk? Is the reward worth the risk?

Last safety we'll talk about is Tracy Walker out of Detroit. Thomas, you'd mentioned earlier about, you know, Romeo Okora tearing his Achilles mid-2020-1. Well, Walker tore his Achilles last September. So he is, you know, it won't be, you know, he tore it in week three. So let's say he's going to start the season a month shy of a 12-month recovery. He is back to practicing. Do you see any sort of limitations for him? or any sort of slowing.

I know you had mentioned nine months or eight months as a marker, but we're still short of a year for an Achilles tear for Walker. Yeah, no. For ACL, it's actually the nine month mark. Depending on the type of procedure that he had in terms of the Achilles, you can actually be back in about six or seven months like we saw in Cam Acres relatively recently. So that is a box that he has checked at this point.

And if he's at the seven, eight month mark at this point, it's not unreasonable to believe that he could, uh, you know, come back and be somewhat productive. I would not expect explosive plays. I would not expect him hawking anybody down potentially. I mean, maybe, but you know, um, it all depends. I, I just wouldn't expect a lot of explosiveness for him. But if they're asking him to sit back and play coverage and maybe beat a guy to a spot, I can see that still be in case. Hey, Thomas, uh, that's going to wrap us up. for the specific player stuff.

But I know there's a couple of topics you want to have Edwin kind of speed through that are just general injury things. Yeah, one of the things that I had mentioned earlier was discussing the various levels of injuries from soft tissues to joints to knee, back, head injuries. If you could, when we rank offensive and defensive players, we do them in tiers. So being that Tier 1 is the best possible position player and then Tier 2, everything drops downward. If you were to reverse that and Tier 1 is the worst for an injury, what would you classify in Tier 1? Broken bones, torn ACLs, Torn Achilles, Torn Pecks, Soft Tissue, what would you put in Tier 1 as the worst? That's tough. that's a hard one

we asked the tough questions here Edwin so yeah because it's so contextually driven it it just totally depends on so many okay I'll shut up I'm not I'll stop giving caveats here's what I think here's what I think head injuries are brain injuries

concussions are brain injuries those are bad you don't want those you see guys play through them but I think it's selection bias people are always like oh well this guy has three concussions or you know eight concussions that's called survivor bias survivorship bias. Yes, you see the guys that have eight concussions. Yes, you are biased into thinking it's normal for everybody to have two or three concussions in a two-year span. Of course, we think that,

unfortunately, because the NFL has done a good job of keeping that on the down low. And I'm just as guilty as anybody else because I love this game and I love the league just as much as anybody else. But that's the reality is concussions are brain injuries. We unfortunately have seen some of the effects of brain injuries on some former players, retired athletes that have gone through us. So that's obviously pretty bad. You think about spinal cord injuries. Those are tier one. You obviously lose the ability to to walk or you lose function in your legs or something along those lines. You get spinal cord injuries. Those are our tier one as well. And, you know, again, so this is an answer that's going to be more contextually driven. Let's say you're a fifth round draft pick. You're sort of scraping by on

the practice squad. You're about to get, you know, you're getting paid. I don't know, those guys get paid probably, I don't know, somewhere in the neighborhood of like 50 to 60 grand a year maybe. I don't really know. I don't know these days. I think they're more, but the point being that they're, they're on the, the bottom rung when it comes to financial obligations from the teams. Yeah. And let's say, let's say you're on the practice squad and you're, you know, a very below average outside linebacker and you tear your Achilles, your pop your Achilles in practice. The chances of you come, the chances of the team really on, and all honestly, and I hate putting it this way. Yeah, carrying that much and just signing the next guy up to take your salary. Like that, that could

be detrimental, right? So it's all contextually driven, but if I had to list all the ones off the top of my head, ACL would be up there with that specific, contextually driven issue too. Some devastating fracture, like an Alex Smith type fracture, right? Like those injuries are the ones that exist in my head. Well, Thomas, you want to tackle a couple of these last questions kind of quickly? Yeah, I mean, when we, one of the things we have in regards to, injured reserves and physically unable to perform lists and non-football injury lists. The POP list during the pre-season is very different than what it is in the in-season. The PUP list, basically, in the preseason, you can be put on that and taken off at any point in time.

But once you hit day one of the regular season, when you're on the PUP list, you're gone for six weeks for six games. So you can't play. If you have a bi-week and week five, then you have to be out for seven weeks. Same thing with the injured reserve. You have, you can be put during the preseason, you can be put on IR, but they have the ability to move you to the temporary injured reserve, which means that in again six weeks or six games, they can take you off the injured reserve, or they leave you on permanent injury reserve, which means you're done for the C. season. Right. So I think it's important to know, like you said, the rules. And so I'm going to make a correction. And I think I heard you, and if I heard you incorrectly, then definitely correct me,

correct me in return. So the PUP list is actually only four games now. That changed last season. So if you are on the PUP list when the season starts like you were mentioning, you're only on four games. Right. You only have to be out four weeks. It's no longer the six. But still, you have, once the season starts, you have to miss at least four games. That's correct. Which means you could miss five weeks if you, if, well, and with four games, if it's done at the beginning of the season, you can come back in week five. But if you have a biweek in week five, you can't come back to week six. Exactly.

And what complicates, what complicates it further is what people don't realize with the IR in particular. Like if we're talking short-term IR, that's four weeks as well. But that just means that the team has to make a decision. decision within three weeks of that four week mark, which is just even more complicated. Right. So let's say a guy's supposed to come back. Or I'm sorry, a guy completes the final, the final week, the fourth week of a short-term IR stint. And the team decides like, oh, well, we're just going to hold them out for the rest of this time as well. Like, they get into being out seven weeks. So it's a gamble if you're looking to acquire a guy in a

trade or something like that. So yeah, it's extremely important to be up to date with the rules and understand like what some of the, of the I are and the pup rules are. And yes, so training camp pup, basically guys can come on and off it at their leisure. Once they come off it, it doesn't mean that they can't go back on. There's also, I think that what you're alluding to too is the, it's really the reserve pup versus the active pup. The reserve pup is, and I'm going to butcher this because I tweeted this out just last year, there is a difference between the R pup and the regular pup.

and I think that's what we're alluding to. I'm pulling it up on Twitter right now. And essentially the difference is just that, is if they're on the active pup, it's not a big deal. Okay, so here it is. Active or just pup. A player can go back at any point during camp or the preseason. The reserve pup or our pup,

the player won't be back for the first four weeks of the regular season and the biweeks don't count. So yeah, I think that, I don't even know if I answered your question, but this was a good discussion. Yeah, no, you did. And the tough part everybody should understand is that, for example,

with irs, you don't necessarily know if they're on temporary IR or they're on permanent IR, which it's not like a designation at T-Dash IR or whatever the case is. So you have to really dig your research. If a player goes on IR, find out if it's indeed a they're done for the season or not. Are there any other questions you have, Justin? No, I think that was the bigger.

Oh, the last one I want to say, and then we're going to cut the good doctor loose here is in terms of like an age or a breaking point for age, and you had already mentioned this about a couple of injuries, but in terms of, you know, a defensive player sort of kind of breaking down and not being able to recover from an injury, we don't have to go through every single injury, but in general, is there, and this is super general, but is there an age range that, that you should say once, you know, we, you know, look, 30 is a round number. So we all use 30 as our reference for an NFL player being too old, right?

But, you know, when it comes to injuries, is it really 26 or is it, you know, or is it really 32? Or have you had any sort of feel of that kind of like before here you're better, you know, you have an above average chance and after here you have a below average chance of, of, either staying in the league or just or being closer to the player you were when you finally recover. You know, that's a good question. I think that in terms of age, it's tricky because the older you get, obviously, the less explosive you are. And that comes back to the question of like, when is a player truly in their prime? We know that for running backs, I think from a fantasy perspective, I want to say it's there, you know, over the last 10 years, no top 12 running back

has been above the age of, or maybe only like one or two has been above the age of, or maybe only like one or two has been above the age of 26. Like those running backs tend to peak around 24. And they can sustain that until about the age of 26. So I think that when you consider a guy, a defensive guy in general, when you consider them in their prime, I think defensive players tend to stay in their prime a little longer. I think they get there. It takes them a little longer to get there, but then they stay there a little longer.

I think if you're looking from a dynasty perspective, if you're looking at how to analyze this, 30 is a good number. I think if you're looking ahead, if you're thinking ahead, 28, 29 is something to consider. If you have a guy, and again, and it comes down, this entire podcast has been so good because we've been able to talk about topics that matter. And that's why I asked you, Justin, you know, can you tell me, like, how do these guys win? Because if you get a guy that wins primarily from lateral side to side movement, right, a guy that needs to go from inside the box, back pedal, drop his hips, and then go,

go to the sideline, like we're maybe thinking like an outside linebacker, inside linebacker, and they have an ACL tear and they're 28, I'm looking to maybe flip that guy. I'm not so confident, especially if they're an average to above average talent that they can come back. The flip side is also true. If you're looking at an elite guy, an elite guy, right? Let's think of some of the most elite guys that you can think of from a defensive perspective. They're also at an elite age, let's say 25, 26. They're coming into their prime a little bit. and they have an ACL tear, I am trying to acquire that dude

as hard as I possibly can because I know there's going to be panic and I know people are going to freak out. But when they're, you know, high, again, I can't have said enough. 29, 30. High draft capital, relatively young age, minimally complicated injury.

High, I think I said high draft capital already. Like, you know, super hyper athletic, even by NFL standards. Like, I am all over those players all the time. Excellent. Man, this has been so informative. Yeah, absolutely. We have to just put this on your calendar for every preseason go forward.

This is a wealth of knowledge that you dropped on us, and this is going to help us in our fantasy analysis, not only heading into this season, which is the main thing we were concerned about, but this is going to help us so much going forward, and I know that our listeners are going to benefit a lot from this. And what I love about it, man, is you're so good at comparing stuff to the offensive side of the ball.

Every one of us is also drafting running backs and quarterbacks and wide receivers. So it's good for us to, you know, we're looking at it through the lens of the defensive side of the ball, but it really is helpful on the other side as well. You're exactly right. I love the concept of, you know, thinking about the high draft capital, the age, all that sort of stuff, using that to your advantage to acquire a player. And then if an injury happens as we, you know, maybe it's not 30, maybe in a dynasty, that number really should be more like 28 or 29 that you might want to try and offload of play.

later, you know, sooner rather than later. This has been so good. Thank you so much for coming on. Indeed. Thank you very much. And when you do send us a bill, please make it out to Justin Barn. I was going to say John Hanson.

Yeah. We can all take a little. Let's just expensive. You're going to say, wait a minute. John's going to say, why am I getting an American Airlines at Delta ticket? Hotel. What?

What is this hotel in Honolulu? Listen, we have got to do this. this next year in the Maldives. It's the only way we're going to really get this done. I'm sorry, John. Sorry, John. It's a work trip, man. Well, thank you again for taking time out to join us. Thanks again. I had fun. Thomas, Thomas, take us out. Well, I'm going to just finalize this with a couple of quick notes and then we'll cap this. There's some recent injuries that we should bring up. Collage Cancy on Tampa Bay, the rookie defensive tackle strained his calf. We'll miss about a month. reserve linebacker Jacob Phillips on Cleveland

Torr's peck muscle done for the year linebacker Sean Bradley Philadelphia Torres Achilles linebacker adepto combo Agundig G Agundi G on Atlanta Atlanta landed an injury reserve with an ankle and foot injury

Rock you're seeing cornerback on Baltimore significant knee injury but no tear in his knee could miss a game or two cornerback Mike Hughes out for the pre season with a soft tissue injury. The cornerback Marlon Humphrey on Baltimore is undergoing foot surgery out at least a month. He's listed as out indefinitely. His backup, Cameron DeMarion Williams, will undergo ankle surgery and miss the start of the season,

maybe more. And finally, cornerback Rashad Fenton was placed on injured reserve and an undisclosed injury by the Cardinals. Shall we wrap it up, sir? Let's do it. Be well and be safe. Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points podcast. Remember to subscribe, rate, and review on your favorite platform.

And come join the roster at FantasyPoints.com.