Fantasy Football Daily - Injury Mythbusters with Dr. Edwin Porras

Episode Date: July 11, 2023

Graham Barfield (@GrahamBarfield) talks to Edwin Porras (@FBInjuryDoc) about injury-related myths that perplex fantasy football players. Are mobile QBs more likely to get injured than pocket passers? Are there any data points to help decide which RBs return to form best from ACL injuries? How can we apply Edwin's studies to Breece Hall and Javonte Williams? Myth or fact: Kyler Murray misses more than 8 games? Graham and Edwin discuss it all on the Fantasy Points Podcast. 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 FantasyPoint.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 back to the Fantasy Points Podcast Network. It's good to be with you. I am your host, Graham Barfield. I'm joined today with one of my good friends and one of our best contributors on the site. It is Mr. Edwin Porst.

You can follow him on Twitter at FB Injury Doc. He has one of the best Twitter feeds, one of the best, most valuable Twitter feeds you can find. And he's also got one of the most valuable podcasts you can find. You should subscribe to his podcast, the injury prone podcast. And his newsletter that he puts out, it's Edwin. It's me. It's good to talk to you, man. I'm excited for everything that we got going on at the site.

I'm excited to talk to you. This is always like around the time when football season sort of gets rolling. camps are right around the corner. People are starting to file in. Scott Fishbowl drafts are today. So I'm going to win the Scott Fishbowl today. There are a lot of different, a lot of different things going on. Football season is near, even though it's still baseball season.

It's the All-Star break, but football season is nearing. Yeah, you finally have a few days off here from the baseball grind. So you graciously gave me some of your time here. And I'm going to pick your brain today. And we're going to play some injury myth busters. And I really wish I had. had a MythBusters drop on my old mix board. I can actually set up, set up a drop. So maybe I should have actually used the old mix board. But real quick, did you watch Mythbusters? Because you sent

me a gift on Twitter. I watched me a Mythbusters. I feel like I was really young, but I did watch some of those. And that was always intriguing to be some of the scientific ones that they would do. Well, most of them are scientific, I guess. But yeah, I did watch Mythbusters. Are you more of an Adam Savage guy? I think I prefer. I think I prefer Jamie a little bit. I don't remember why. I don't remember why, but I remember one of the guys got on my nerves a little bit more than the other. Okay. Yeah, you're a little more stoic. So I'll play the Adam Savage character today. But no, seriously, we're going to talk through some myths, bust some myths today. And the first myth that we should bust, Edwin, you spent a lot of time this offseason and previous

offseason is talking through injury rates at quarterback. And you dove into the numbers this offseason and did a fantastic study. It's up on the site, FantasyPoints.com. And it's actually going to be a chapter or maybe a big section of your upcoming book. You can talk more about that later in the show. But this idea of mobile quarterbacks being more injury prone, I know that's a bell going off in your head right there, but mobile quarterbacks being more susceptible to injury than pocket passers is like just the general narrative that you'll see. You'll see, you'll see, you know, old sports writers to ESPN talking heads saying, you know, these mobile quarterbacks, man, they just can't stay healthy.

They just, Lamar Jackson's missed multiple games every, every couple of years. Justin Fields got hurt last year. You dug into the numbers and you actually dispelled some of these myths. So the floor is yours, Edwin, because I think this is one of the most interesting injury-related studies that we've seen come from the NFL in recent years. First, Graham, I think that we have to consider big picture before the trolls come out. that nobody is saying, and I say this in the article itself, nobody is saying that a quarterback should ram headfirst into a 300 pound defender, to a 200 pound linebacker, nobody is saying they should run recklessly into the sideline, right? Nobody is saying that. That is not the basis or the thesis of this specific conversation. This conversation is about when a quarterback scrambles, so basically any, anytime they try to run beyond the line of scrimmage that isn't designed, or when they are designed, right?

like a keeper or a boot or a sweep or something along those lines. Are those plays, again, we can't break it down to, you know, is this guy a Russian quarterback or are they not? But are those plays specifically more dangerous than, you know, let's say sitting back and throwing in the pocket? So that's what I decided to look at, looked at scrambles versus missed games, design runs versus misgames. And then just to see how it fared against taking a sack or getting hit in the pocket,

We also looked at that and then all hits combined. Basically what we found without getting too nerdy into the data, the only significant relationship that we found was the, in terms of the missed game data, was a significant and positive correlation for sacks and hits. And this is on a per game basis, right? So it's not cumulative. On a per game basis,

a significant positive correlation for sacks and hits versus missed games. and all hits versus miss game, miss games. So basically, if you start from all hits, that includes scrambles, design runs, getting sacked, getting hit in the pocket, that we know more contact. That implies more contact means you're more likely to miss games in the NFL as quarterback. Okay, that makes sense. So then you peel back the layers. You look at each individual category that I just mentioned,

sacks, hits, design, runs, scrambles. The only significant positive relationship that you find when you separate those out and tease them apart so you isolate them is the sacks versus hits category. there is actually a negative correlation with scrambles and missed games. Now, it was non-significant, so we can't jump to conclusions to say, oh, scrambling safer than X, Y, or Z. But basically, the findings of this study show that we don't want our quarterbacks taking hits, but we also don't want our quarterbacks taking sacks. And so if they can avoid, and this is kind of like makes sense, right?

Just from like a theoretical perspective, if you can get away from being a sitting duck or if you're not a sitting duck and you can brace yourself or prepare for contact in some way, shape or form, then obviously you're probably not going to get injured as often. And that's sort of what we found with this study. We also do the same thing with IR. And we found the exact same, basically the exact same correlations when it comes to sacks and hits versus being on the IR, design hits versus being on the IR. So all hits did have a positive correlation. So everything combined, if you get hit more often, you're more likely to be on the IR. But the only other significant positive relationship was taking sacks and getting hit in the pocket. That was also significantly

associated with being placed on the IR. So all of that to say, if a quarterback can run away or escape pressure or escape a hit, they're much more, they are more likely from an objective perspective to avoid injury. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. And you wrote about this in your article, again, the name of the article, you can go on Google, go on fantasy points.com. It's called the relationship of quarterback rushing attempts to injuries. And Edwin, you know, dispels a lot of myths in this. But what you went into, you know, from the top was that mobile quarterbacks don't miss more games than non-mobile quarterbacks. So not only did you find that scrambles and design rushing attempts actually, not only do they not correlate to injuries in terms of

miss games or time spent on the injured reserve, you actually found that by and large, across this large sample of data you were working with that generally speaking, mobile quarterbacks and non-mobile quarterbacks basically missed the same amount of games per year. You know, about 1.8 to 1.6 between the both. I thought that was fascinating. To your point about, you know, larger quarterbacks, by the way, if you ever are bored, go back on YouTube and watch Cam Newton highlights for 2015, man. I did a couple, I did a couple nights ago, just bored, you know, just, you know, some nights I'll pop on YouTube, pull up some, you know, Lidani and Tomlinson highlights or whatever. For whatever reason, I was in the mood to watch Cam. And Cam's 2015 was a

total revelation. And it honestly opened up the pathway for guys like Josh Allen and Anthony Richardson to not only become great quarterbacks, but become superstar players. You found that it makes sense that some of these larger quarterbacks like Cam tend to miss more games. I wanted to speak to you about this a little bit more. I know there's not a ton of data here. There's one Cam Newton. There's one Josh Allen. There's one Anthony Richardson. But if there is any predictor between injury and, you know, quarterbacks, I think you would agree. It seems like BMI is kind of like one of the predictors. But again, it's one of those things, Edwin, where it's a tiny sample size.

So the last thing I want to talk to you about here was the difference between weight and injuries of the quarterback position or whether that matters. Yeah, that's a good question, man. And again, the sample isn't huge. It's not like we've had Cam Newton's running around the league for 30 years. now, they really are just becoming more prevalent, more common in the league. But yeah, I mean, so when it comes to BMI specifically, which BMI, if you don't know what BMI is, it's a ratio essentially of how tall you are compared to how much you weigh. The assumption cannot necessarily be made that if, you know, if you have a higher BMI that you're

fatter, especially with these guys, I mean, you could be like a chiseled, you know, 30, 31 BMI as a running back, but a 30, 31 BMI for an offensive lineman is going to look totally different. So we can't really know muscle mass versus fat, which that's a whole different conversation that I've actually talked your ear off about grand before. We don't have to get on in this podcast. I have. I have. Yes, you have. So anyway, so if we look at BMI with this study, which by the way, I should know, this was like a hundred and, what was it, grand? Like a hundred and 70 plus sample quarter. Yeah. Yeah. So like 160 sample size. So basically I looked at quarterbacks in their BMI. So quarterbacks with the BMI of 28 or low.

so relatively smaller BMI, they missed about one game on average, whereas quarterbacks with a 28.1 and above BMI miss an average of two games. So the bigger you were essentially, the more likely or the more time that you miss. Now, is that significant or not? I'm not totally certain, but at this point, it's it's kind of interesting to me that you'd think that you'd be built, if you're built like Josh Allen or Cam Newton, that you take, you know, maybe it is just a cumulative hits that you take in the pocket or whatever the case may be. Or maybe it's something like Cam Newton, who he was dropping back in the pocket. And he's such a, he has such a big body, a big frame that eventually that the ligaments in his foot just, you know, decided to go, decided to give.

Like, what is it about size? And that's another really interesting conversation that I really don't have the answer to yet. But it is, it is fascinating to see that smaller quarterbacks actually do miss less, like a less amount of time. I think you started the whole argument off basically by saying the guys that are shifter in the pocket and can kind of make defenders miss and really avoid hits. That's kind of your big thesis. If these quarterbacks can avoid hits, they can avoid sacks. They're less likely to get injured. I think that's the case there. It's like if you're a little more athletic, a little smaller maybe, maybe you're actually more able to not take hits. And I think this is kind of an interesting parallel to the Bryce Young conversation.

Bryce Young is 5-11 man. Like he played it. Alabama at like 180. Like he's literally my size. I'm 5-11 180. I could not imagine being tackled by. I would get crushed. Now granted, if Aaron Donald tackled me, Edwin, I would break into two. Now, granted, I am not nearly the physical, obviously anything. My highest level of athleticism was high school baseball. But I'm just saying from a, like, Bryce Young also, if you just watch his tape, man, like he has a knack in the pocket. He's got the knack that Joe Burroughs got. You know, I think it's really interesting that, you know, some of the, the one red flag that people were pointing out in terms of Bryce Young was his size. And yes, sure, he can't see over the offensive line as well as Josh Allen can. But in terms of injuries, in terms of his longevity of the NFL, this study basically says, I mean, he should have just as long of an NFL timeline as Joe Burrow, any of the larger quarterbacks that went first overall or second overall, Andrew Luck. And not only that, like, he actually might be better, better, for the NFL because he's so good in the pocket and because he's small and agile,

you know, maybe he's not a big runner like Kyler Murray. That's fine. But as long as he can avoid sacks and hits, yeah, Bryce Young should be fine. Edwin, that was really, I mean, honestly, we could spend a whole podcast talking through your article. We have a lot more to talk to, excuse me, talk about. And I want to get to some running back and receiver talk. You've also spent a lot of time analyzing the different injury rates between running backs, and receivers. And you know, you've found, you know, by and large, running backs get injured more often than receivers, but you've spent a lot of time getting into the nitty credit. And this is yours chance here to get real into the nitty gritty with running back and receiver injury rates.

You know, obviously one of the main reasons zero RB is so prevalent in best ball leagues and dynasty leagues and how even in season long leagues is because running backs, by and large, get injured more often than receivers. However, you think, you. found that, you know, on the whole, receivers after they get injured, suffer from the same production losses that running back suffer from. And to that point, you've also found some specific injuries that have, I will say, hampered the careers of certain receivers and running backs by and large. I'll let you speak on those specific injuries, you know, excuse me, what they are. Receiver, it's typically foot, running back, it's typically knee. But

let's talk through some of these running back and receiver injury rates. And we'll start at the top. What have you found in terms of running back injury rates and age this off season that we should know going forward as we apply it to our drafts? This is a really tough, tough conversation, right? Because there's a lot of nuance, a lot of complexity. When it comes to injuries in particular, the best predictor of future injury is previous injury. You'll hear me say that over and over and over and over again. One of the studies, or I guess a part of a study, for example, with Ryan, who just put out as an awesome aging article over at Fantasy Points, I actually, I shot him a DM and I was really interested to see how, for example, ACL and ACL injury would impact a career. So again,

very contextually driven, very nuanced. Essentially, if you have a running back who tears their ACL, they have a steeper decline, a steeper drop-off in their final year eight. I believe it was that Ryan found in year eight. It's just, it's about a 14% steeper decline. It just happens a little faster in that final year. But that's also totally dependent because a bigger conversation from an NFL perspective is it's like 50% of guys fall out of the league if they don't have at least round forward draft capital. These guys will be like 22, 23, 24 years old, tear their ACL. And they're just out, whether it's a running back or a wide receiver. Right? So I think one of the, if we want to sneak this in into like a myth, like one of the biggest

misconceptions I still see out there is sort of a selection bias that NFL fans will see and fantasy gamers will see. It's like, oh, well, you know, the medical community and rehab is and surgeries has gotten so good. You know, these guys are coming back so fast, which yes, at the high end they are. But this is by the ACL injury, for example, is still by and large a career shortening, if not a career killer for a lot of these running backs and receivers who don't get the opportunity from the front office, maybe don't have the best pure athleticism in the world and are just hanging on to the roster by a threat. So I think we understate how much an injury can impact both a running back and a wide receiver, more specifically the ACL. Yeah, I think some of your your most interesting

takeaways in terms of your running back and ACL studies is just that. It's draft capital. Um, how many times have we seen just, you know, it doesn't even have to be a major ligament issue, like an ACL or a major knee injury. It could be something as simple as like an ankle sprain, fourth round, fifth round running back. Sprains his ankle misses two to three games. The backup takes back over or the starter takes back over and basically that fourth rounder like just never gets another starting job. And that's, we see this across the board. You know, I think that's a very interesting, maybe not myth, but just something to keep in the back your mind, especially when you're analyzing fragile positions, the most fragile position in fantasy, and that's running back.

I want to talk to you more about the running backs and ACL injuries. You spend a lot of time diving into the data. And what you found is by and large, we're really, really bad at predicting who's going to come back and who's going to come back and perform well off of ACL injuries. What can drafters, what can the folks out there listening to the podcast now, what can we do to get a little bit better about predicting, you know, performance. I love this question. This is one of my favorite questions because it fits right into what we were sort of saying.

It's a perfect segue. So even so we know that depending on the on the level that that player is coming back to, whether they're a practice squad player trying to get back to practice squad or a backup trying to get back to a backup's role or they're a superstar trying to get back to the starting job. We know by and large that most of them will fail to do so in the first year, at least from a fantasy points perspective. Most of them will score it, you know, I think it's like, I believe it was 52% of their previous, of their pre-injury levels in the first year back from ACL. Now, that,

it does not mean that their second year after ACL, they're better. In fact, a lot of them fall out of the league in their second year. A majority of them, if they don't fall out of the league, their first year back, they actually fall out of the league in their second year back, which is why this like, oh, I'm going to, I'll just take them in the, you know, year two, whatever. That's sort of, that's the myth that I wanted to tackle. And so what we found is that, yes, it does take an outlier to be Adrian Peterson, to be Jamal Charles, to be what would have been Sequan Barkley, RIP, pour one out, should have happened, didn't happen. All of those guys and what hopefully will be Breeze Hall, they all meet a certain set of criteria, sort of like you were saying. What you can expect or what

you can, what you need to have any sort of confidence in these guys to coming back in their first year back that they'll score at least 90% of their pre-injury production is if they're extremely young, 22 or lower, if they are an offensive player, which is what the big, big picture data literature says. And if they have, again, fourth round draft capital or higher. So obviously, you know, we presume the higher the draft capital, the younger they are, the better off they'll be. Another sort of specific criteria that you want them to meet. In fact, maybe I'll just read this off gram. It might be easier than me just rambling and rambling and rambling. So there are basically five dudes who have done this in the history of the NFL company that were fantasy

relevant and came back, produced at least 90%, if not more, and their first year back from an ACL. So four out of the five were 25 years or younger at the time of the injury. Four out of five were exceptionally athletic, like pure athletes. Like I'm talking like, like when it comes to to a speed score, I think it's like 92nd percentile. Actually, it's 92nd percentile for the 40 and 82nd percentile average for spork, which is over at fantasy points.com. If you want to look at that spork, which is just basically a weight adjust its athleticism metric. So 982nd percentile sport, four out of five had at least nine months dedicated to rehab, four to five were at least in round three, had it round three NFL draft capital,

four to five did not. Here's a super important one, right? Four of the five did not start on the pup. Did not start on the pup. Yeah. And then, of course, you can look at like how much receiving work they, they got in four out of five average at least two point seven PPR points per game through receiving prior to the injury. Well, guess who meets all those criteria, Graham? Brees.

Hall. I don't know if we can cuss. I'm sorry. Okay. He's 20. No, no. No, this is the HBO of 21 years old. That works. Ninety-sixth percentile spork. Ninety-second percentile 40. He has 9.75 months to rehab. And something I didn't even mention was the, the minimally complex injuries, not a J.K. Dobbins. Breeze Hall had essentially a, an ACL. And it sounds like a, very minimal meniscus issue, which was even less severe than Sequin Barclays. He's obviously the 36 overall pick in the NFL draft during his draft class, in his draft class. He averaged 5.82 p.pr points per game through the receiving.

And like I mentioned already, his surgical procedure was simple. So big picture takeaway. Most guys fall out of the league after an ACL tear in the second year. Most of them. If they're superstars, like we've seen Jamal Charles, Adrian Peterson, Saquan Barkley, and hopefully Breez Hall do, those dudes meet a very specific set of criteria so that they can actually contribute

and contribute and be a part of a winning fantasy squad in their first year back, which is why the reason that I harp on that is because our job is to, my job is to identify outliers and identifying outliers after ACL is one of the best savvious moves that you could make as a fantasy manager,

and I'm willing to take a risk on guys like Bruce Hall for that reason. makes a ton of sense. And I think all the criteria that you laid out, the early draft capital, the incredible athleticism, all of that. I mean, I think that makes a ton of sense. My one pushback, and Edwin, I'm going to, I'm going to fight fire with fire here. I have the privilege of texting you nonstop. Yep, yep. It's coming. Just wait. Let me set it up. I have the privilege of texting my good friend, Esquire, Edwin Porras. And I get the luxury of picking his brain about stuff like this all the time. I had an old text that I pulled back up.

You docks and me. Long time ago from when you, oh, here we go. Here we go. Old text that I pulled back up last night popped it in our doc here. You texted me that five, only five of 34 running backs have actually improved their fantasy production from year one to year two post-ACL. And I'm going somewhere with this. Now, five out of 34, it's 15%. It's 14.7%.

If we're looking for outliers, so that's five of the 34, I guarantee you. One of them is Adrian Peterson, right? Yeah. Yep. Jamal Charles, probably the other one. Keep going. Okay. I got two.

I know this one only because he told me, Geo Bernard. Random. That was the third one. The other two, I can't know. Oh, man. You're not going to believe this. J.K. Dobbins. And you already said, Jamal, Charles, I have to find the first.

fifth one. It was it was JK Dobbs, believe it or not, at that 90%. Okay. Continue. I'm sorry. Don't let me get, don't let me track you. Right. Yes. Yeah. So it's five of the 30, five of 34 running backs coming off in ACL have improved their fantasy production from year one to year two. And this is, this is my whole argument kind of against Brees Hall this year. Breast Hall is going in the third round, right? We should be particularly, particularly excited about his upside. You know, last year, Hall was, by points per game he was the RB 7 in his seven games played he had over 600 yards from scrimmage in

those seven games no by the way he wasn't even a full-time player in the first couple of games he wasn't a full-time player really to like week four week five i get it you know bris hall was rb seven but just listen to this again five of the 34 five of 34 running backs have increased their year one or their post your post basically post-acl production only five of 34 have done it And I guess my thing is with Breece Hall, he's going in the third round, man. We know we need to be shooting for upside in that third round. Breece Hall is going at RB8, RB9. Last year, he was the RB7.

We've already seen, I think it's pretty clear. The Jets will probably take it pretty easy on him at weeks one and two. I don't really care so much about that. You and I talk about this all the time. We talked about with Chris Godwin last year, and that's why we were in on Chris Godwin. I don't really care so much about weeks one or two. We want what he's going to be doing in weeks three and on. You can make the same argument for Bruce,

Hall. But I guess my thing is we should be really, really concerned that Breece Hall's upside might be a little bit tapped this year just because of all of the significant, you know, rehab it takes to come back from an ACL. My final thing I wanted to say about this, when, and this kind of is not really an NFL related thing, but it kind of is, you know, you were talking to me a couple weeks through text about Jamal Murray and his return. And, you know, just the pressure these running backs face from, you know, just coming back too soon, essentially. And I, I guess this is kind of like an open-ended question. But wouldn't it make more sense for teams just to take it a little easier? Take it a little easier on these guys. Like, give their bodies the

right amount of time to adjust and get used to basically a new knee. You know, just going through some of the data and the texts, you know, I didn't need to throw that in your face. But in all seriousness. I mean, just going through some of the data and everything that you, you know, you've been texting me over the months and weeks as we're prepared for this podcast. It kind of really just brought me to a broader point of like, man, maybe we should, we should just take it easy on some of these guys. Like Michael Gallup, you were speaking about this, but Michael Gallup came back in like seven months. I mean, that's ridiculous. You know, I guess that would be my, my big thing. If you're, if you're planning on drafting

running backs coming off of ACL, just be particularly, particularly understanding of what their upside is relative to cost and understand that unless they're Adrian Peterson or Jamal Charles or Gio Bernard apparently, it's a tough hill to climb. But you're right, Brise Hall is probably one of the few that could do it. Absolutely. And I think, I mean, you bring up very relevant points. And I don't think that you're wrong in any perspective. Teams should take it easy, right? Teams should take it slow. There probably shouldn't be honestly, honestly, God,

there probably shouldn't be one athlete that comes back in place prior to like even the nine, like the, even the 10 month mark. But the reality is that's just not what happens. With everything that's pushing back, you know,

with everything that's coming, you know, in the research now and these elite athletes, we're really basically just now testing the waters of being like, well, how far can we really push these guys? And I think you also bring up,

you might, you bring up Michael Galap, which brings up another interesting point that matters to. That point that I made about having enough time to actually dedicate to rehab. I was not in on Chris Godwin early in the season like we talked about. And then he ended up having a hamstring injury. He was eight months, you know, post-op.

I'm not surprised. Michael Gallup, he came out and by his own admission said, I was not confident in my knee. I didn't feel good. It wasn't great. And he came back at seven and a half months. It was just something, these timelines are getting crazier and crazier,

which is why this data is really meant to serve more so as a guide, as opposed to, you know, a hard and fast rule. I think that the timing of when the injury matters or when the injury happens matters a lot. And having time to rehab and be back matters a lot. So guys like Michael Gallup, you know, got to be careful. Guys like Chris Godwin, you got to be careful. I definitely agree with that. Like it's not a cut and dry, not a cut and dry thing.

And in terms of how does that apply to fantasy? Well, if you follow a fantasy analyst, if you go to fantasy points.com and you read our stuff, then you'll know which guys to be particularly selective on, and that is what I try to do. I don't try to, you know, the goal isn't to say like, oh, just draft him. It'll be fine. The goal is to identify specific outliers and point out guys who have less of a chance of being that outlier, which would lead to somebody like Javonte Williams, who I think has less of a chance of doing so. Well, you just read my mind, perfect said way, because I wanted to talk about Javante and Brise

in their costs relatively. So like I mentioned, Brees is going in the third round. Giovante Williams is starting to come up. There's some, it's a weird headline. There's a headline that Roda World ran with yesterday that said, Javante says he's good to go. If you actually listen to the quote, Javante never said he's good to go. He said, oh, it's up to the Browns.

I'm feeling better. But he never once said like, I'm good to go. And here's my question to you, Edwin, right? So Brice is going round three. Javante's going round nine. Relatively, Brice had the more difficult, or excuse me, Javante Williams had the more difficult injury to rehab from, right? Yes. Okay. You're shaking your head. Brees had the clean ACL. Jivante had ACL plus, but he did not have a hamstring injury, which Dobbins had. And Dobbins admitted he had. So Jvante's injury was probably not as severe as J.K. Dobbins. Not only that, Jvante was injured earlier in the year in Bruce Hall. He was injured first week of October. I believe Brees Hall's injury was the first week of November. So Javonte has an extra week, or excuse me, an extra month of rehab.

have in theory on Javante or on Brees. Yet the whole fantasy world has decided Brees Hall is worth a third round pick and Javante's worth a ninth round pick. Now, I came into this whole offseason thinking, man, I'm not going to hardly have any Javante. But if this is the cost of admission between both of these very talented running backs on offenses, we're all projecting to be a little better, you know, I think the Jets will be a lot better with Rogers, Anderson, and we can talk a lot more about that.

But just by and large, I can't get my head around why. If Brees Hall is a third round pick, Javante Williams should be a seventh round pick. At least. At least. And I think that's my entire argument against Brees is just like, you're already kind of drafting him near his ceiling. There's not a lot of room for equity there. He's probably a pretty solid pick. But Javante Williams, like, if we're hyping up Bruce Hall in the third round, Javante

Williams should be going to a lot earlier. I think, yeah, that's also, I think a lot of different things can be true. Right. And I don't want to talk to both sides of my mouth. I do think that there is some overcorrection. that's happening with Javante Williams. I do think Javante in the sixth or seventh round is reasonable. However, there are other things that you have to consider with Javante, like,

even though he does have a month of recovery and rehab up on Brees Hall, he's almost about two months from a purely objective data perspective. He's probably six to eight weeks behind him from a functional recovery perspective because the injury is longer, more drawn out, more complex, more complicated. Now, again, go back to the overcorrection. Basically, last year, J.K. Dobbins, I think he, from aside from this ending his career, it was pretty catastrophic for him. He was in and out of the lineup.

He took more than a year to recover. He had that one run that was really painful to watch. I don't know if you know what I'm referring to. He broke away, which was incredible. The fact that he even put up the numbers that he did, we mentioned earlier. He actually was one of those five that in the first year back scored 90% or better of fantasy points, different conversation for a different day. But he, you know, all things considered, that was sort of catastrophic. I don't think that Javonte Williams's recovery can go or will go

as poorly as Dobbins did, but it still has that chance. It's still basically two different injuries, if you will, because there is that what's called the posterior lateral PLC corner involvement. So that's basically another part of the joint that's being impacted. And And there are more complications that could come with that. And I think from a functional perspective, it's also going to be a lot harder for Javante to come back because of his athleticism. Obviously, he's got great draft capital. We don't love his speed.

Speed is a big part of what helps running backs come back to get their plant their foot in the ground and go. That's going to be. And he mentioned that himself. Javonte mentioned that himself in that quote. He said, you know, I'm still trying to get my speed back. You know, we're less than a month away from camp. And he's talking about still trying to get his speed back. So the chances of him starting on Pup are also pretty high.

So you could miss out four weeks of Javonte Williams and not getting back to the fifth week. And they'll still probably work him in at that point. Obviously, I can't predict the future. But I do think that that's very possible. Now, I've said this before too. Could Javante Williams provide solid value at the end of week 15, 16, 17? Absolutely. I think that he could be a legitimate league winner in the ninth round.

Now, could Javante William also need a cleanup? procedure in week 13 and so you lose them the rest of the season, that's also in the realm of possibilities. That's more likely than it is for somebody like Breece Hall. So I agree with you that I think the gap should be smaller, but the risk on Giovante is objectively a lot steeper. Yeah, that's great detail. That's great detail. And interestingly, just to put a bow on this entire conversation, you know, the jets have been linked to Dalvin Cook. You know, the Broncos have been linked to Daven Cook. I don't think, you know, either of these teams are particularly excited about the running back depth they have behind their injured starters. You know, Samajai P. Rind was one of

Sean Payton's first signings. I think he's still a still a really good bet in best ball, especially with a, you know, potentially decreasing cost with Javante Williams coming up in ADP. But all of that being said, I mean, I think, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head there, that Javante's risk is significantly higher, but he should be going. a little earlier. Edwin, we got to talk through one more injury narrative

that has been absolutely driving me crazy this offseason. And that's just the whole discourse around Kyler Murray. Murray popped his ACL midseason last year. You can speak more to the specifics of the injury, but I believe it was a clean injury. Also, by the way, if you remember the play,

non-contact, didn't take a hit. Completely, completely random. Kyler will be nine months removed, 10 months removed by week three, week four this year. In your upcoming book, you have a lot of more detail about quarterbacks coming back from ACL injuries. But, you know, like I said, I get to pick your brain. I've read a lot of this stuff beforehand. Joe Burrow, Robert Griffin III, Carson Palmer all came back from ACL injuries within a 10-month

range. Yet, Kyler Murray is being drafted as if he's going to miss not just like four or five games. He's being drafted like he's going to miss half the season, maybe even more than half the season. And even if he does miss eight games, Kyle Murray is going as a quarterback 24, Edwin. Can I remind everybody, his quarterback finishes by on a point per game basis are quarterback 14, quarterback five, quarterback six, and quarterback 11. He's never been worse than a quarterback 14. And that was his rookie season. Granted, obviously, there's a whole lot going on between, you know, Cardinals's new coaching staff. DeAndre Hopkins is gone. His only good receiver that we know of is Marquis Brown. We don't know who their tight-in is going to be. Their offensive line is a mess. Like,

there is a lot working against Kyler this year. But the main takeaway here is, I mean, I think anybody who is project, who projects the NFL and actually sits down and does projections and works through this, the only way that Kyler, like, misses the entirety of the season in my mind is if the cardinals start like oh and 10 edwin and they're just just complete dumpster fire and they're like you know what screw it we don't want to risk kailer uh we want to just take it easy with him i mean by and large it i just don't understand where this narrative came from me about kailer murray neither do i neither do i neither do i the season i think that you nailed all the highlights man um if there's one thing that i've learned in professional

sports working in professional sports directly, like my real job, if you will, is, and it's baseball, obviously different sport, different contexts, everything's different. These guys in about 98% of cases want to compete. And that carries way. I don't say that in like a fluff, you know, narrativey, like, oh, he wants to get out there on the field. Like, no, I have seen it firsthand and I see it every single day. These guys want to be out there. They are literally built different. They don't care as much about their stats in the sense of individual play. They want to be out there for their team. They want to contribute.

They want to bring. That's where they get their satisfaction. Man, I've seen, and again, I don't want to get too far off the rails. Like, as a PT, I've seen guys who when they, if you will, lose their sport, the one thing that they've lived to do their whole life with injury through injury. Like, they get lost. Like that is a mentally tough game. So the sooner they can get back, the sooner they get back to normalcy.

The sooner they get back, the better they feel. Like that stuff is very tangible, very objective. And the fact that I think Kyler Murray, it doesn't help that he's got this bad rap for, you know, the whole like the call of duty thing and the contract clause, all that BS. I think that's probably what's playing into this. But man, you nailed it on the head. We have no idea. We have no idea what Kyler Murray and his camper thinking. We have no idea what the Cardinals are thinking.

And most, most teams, genuinely, most teams don't try to tank. Like you have to at least make it look. You have to at least make it look like you're trying. And what's the best way to make it look like you're trying? You throw your starting quarterback out there. So at worst, I think that he comes back. At worst, I think he's back by week five. Even if the Cardinals win one or two games,

they're still going to probably throw him back out there. He's going to be eight months when the season starts, which is why I'm saying, which is why I'm saying, I think nine might be a little safer. I don't think the season's lost. I do think that QB24 is ridiculous. And I will say, since you docks me earlier, you clowned me when I was excited about getting Kyler and like

the millionth round for that one draft. Now, maybe I should have drafted another quarterback too. But man, yeah, especially in best ball. I hate the cliche, especially in best ball. I'm gobbling up as much Kyler as I possibly can. Yeah. No, it's not cliche. It's just right. You know, if we're looking for edges here. And, you know, I think you said it right there. I mean, you'd be stunned if it's not, you know, week five or week six for return. And with that being said, you know, an underdog, Kyler is still going 165, 175 overall on a tournament like drafters where it's, it's, you know, there's no playoffs, it's just full points. Any of those types of bestball tournaments, I do think you probably should be a little more leery of Kyler, but all of that being said,

all of this is more than baked into ADP. I think my, my actually, my biggest concern for Kyler this year, Edwin, and you can speak to this more. Have you looked into whether or not quarterbacks that are mobile coming back from major injury, what the rushing production looks like in the following year? Because that's like my big concern for Kyler is that he's, you know, he's, he runs as, you know, obviously that's his game. It's scrambling and making things happen when the pocket breaks down. He's going to have to do a lot of that this year behind the offensive line. But I'm just curious to know if there's any large scale sample that says rushing production dips.

Man, I wish there was like a bigger sample, but sort of like we mentioned before, rushing quarterbacks, uh, they just don't, they haven't existed for as long, right? They, we, we've seen RG3s. We've seen Cam Newton's, but even then like the amount of time that they, the amount of time or that they've been around like that, that archetype of quarterback just isn't very, so makes the sample really small is the point that I'm making. But we can't, we do have a relative small sample. Um, if you look at, you know, kind of,

relatively this era. Donovan McNabb, RG3, D'Shawn Watson, Carson Wentz, we're going to throw Joe Burrow in there. So basically, if you look at these guys

from a rushing attempts per game perspective, the first guy I mentioned and as I pull up this data, my computer's going a little slow, so I need to hide this column so that I don't read the wrong lines. This is fantastic podcasting.

I'm very, very prepared. As you can see, nothing but professional of the highest professionalism here at fantasy points. Donovan McNabb went from 3.2 rushing attempts to 3.6. Okay, weird. RG3, he went from 8 to 6.6. Deshawn Watson went from 5.1 to 6.2.

Carson Wentz went from 5.1 to 3.1, and Joe Burrow went from 3.7 to 2.5. So we're kind of all over the board, right? It's kind of random. And if you average those out, that comes down, to about a 10% difference, about a 10% decline. So, and that's what makes it tough to predict, sort of like you're saying, with the new offense, with a new coach, new scheme.

We don't know exactly how much Kyler is going to be running the ball and how much they're going to try to protect him or get quick reads, get him out of the pocket or get him, you know, get them to a three-step drop so they can get rid of the ball. We don't know how much of that is going to be incorporated. But what we do know is like if you look at case studies, and this is really going to be more so case studies, RG3. you know, he dropped, he dropped a pretty big chunk of his rushing, but that was still from eight attempts to six. Six.

Right. Like from basically from eight to six, like that six rushing attempts for a quarterback is still pretty good. Donovan now, for whatever reason, he went up. Deshawn Watson was running for his life that year in Houston. His went up by, you know, almost two entire attempts. So it's really going to depend a lot on his offensive line and how they decide to protect Kyler Murray.

So that stuff is a little bit less predictable because our data set just isn't as good. Yeah, still good context, though. Yeah, I knew it was only just a couple of quarterbacks, but I did want to mention that. And just to wrap up, the Kyler conversation, Kyler's average 6.7 rush attempts in his entire curve. However, he's really only had one truly great rushing season, and that was in 2020. He had 11 rushing touchdowns over 800 yards. Stayed healthy the whole year.

By and large, Kyler's kind of just been around like six to seven carries per game, around 40 yards per game with the occasional touchdown. As long as he kind of stays in that pocket, like five to six carries. you know, 30 to 40 yards, I think we're going to be more than fine from a floor perspective. Like I said, Kyler's really only had that one big spike season. We really just need the four to six points per game that he provides as a scrambler. And I think, you know, even a 10% decrease, Edwin, again, it's more than baked into ADP for him. I am not going to be drafting Kyler very much, if at all, in like, season-long leagues.

I just don't want to stash a second quarterback, especially if he's going to miss a whole month. But man, I think he's one of the best QB2, QB3s you can get in best ball relative to price and for an upside case. Edwin, this has been fantastic, man. We've been recording for nearly 45 minutes. I'm sure I could go another 45. We're going to let the people's ears take a break. I'm going to let you plug your upcoming book.

I'm really excited about it. Tell the folks where they can find it. What's coming, what to expect. Yeah, man, I think it's, I've been trying to keep it most. I mean, I tweeted about it. It's pinned on my profile. But this is something that I've literally wanted to do since I started doing this five years ago. And it really is like a labor of love, Graham.

We'll call it a labor of love. And it's basically every question that the most common questions that I get on a week to week basis and a year to year basis is going to be all in this book. So it's essentially going to be average of the most common. It's going to be separated by position. It's going to be, you know, the most common injuries. So for running backs, we're going to look at knee, we're going to look at hamstring, we're going to look at shoulder. And it's how many games they miss on average. It's going to be what their performance is in the first week back.

What's their re-injury rate? All that stuff, what is there risk going into the season? What is their year-to-year recurrence rate? We're going to look at concussions. And the way that I think this is going to be different or something that I at least I haven't seen in the industry yet. I was able to tap into your sharp brain. And I was asking you, you know, this is a couple months ago at this point, how can we make this relevant? And even though it will cut the sample size down, and it did cut the sample size down over the last five years,

what we're going to look at is basically cutoff points. We don't care how the RB3 or the practice squad special teams return guy does after their injury. I'm sorry, not that they're not relevant. They're just not relevant for fantasy purposes. They still matter as humans, not so much for fantasy. So we're going to give cutoffs. And so basically our sample, even though it will be slightly limited in all of those categories for running backs, wide receivers quarterbacks.

We're going to make it relevant, hyper relevant in the sense that it's going to be guys that you actually are considering on a week-to-week basis. On top of that, it's going to be my tiers that I put out every year. It's going to be injury profiles. I'm going to expand injury profiles this year to not just guys like, you know, Rashad Penny, Tony Pollard, but also going to give a bit of more context on guys like, you know, Justin Herbert or extraneous injuries that may have impacted other guys down the road. That's going to be all in this book.

I'm excited. It's coming. It's a lot of work. I've been doing it. I've been working on it most of the off season. And I'm excited to share it with the world once it's done. Yeah, I think I speak for everybody. We're all excited to read it. You're definitely going to want to check it out before you draft. And Edwin, you know, you know how I feel about all the work you're doing. I think this is going to be something that you guys are seriously going to want to read year and and you're out every summer. Edwin has put in a ton of work into injuries and making you a sharper, fantasy mind, sharper better. however you decide to get your action down, make sure you check out Edwin's book. This has been fantastic for Edwin. I'm Graham. We'll catch you guys next time on the Fantasy Points Podcast Network. Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points Podcast.

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