Fantasy Football Daily - JJ Zachariason on 2026 Rookie Targets, Sleepers & Must-Drafts

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

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Do you have a clear cut running back two overall right now, JJ? You know, the model does kind of. Emmett Johnson is someone that the model really, really likes as the RB2 right now. He was the only running back who tested in the three come at the at the combine this year. And he was like a 20 to 25th percentile kind of player within that drill. And so people are like, oh, he's so unathletic or why did he test? I think teams will look at that and say to themselves, he's a competitor. Like he wants to go out there and show that he is willing to do anything.

He's a great pass catcher, and we sometimes see that this archetype of player who is not overly athletic, but is still effective in fantasy football because of that pass catching prowess. Like I think the archetype ceiling here is like Aaron Jones. Ha ha, let's help. That's the old cheat. Breaking down 2026's top rookie prospects and players you should be targeting in your drafts, Theo Greminger, Fantasy Football Daily, Fantasy Points Podcast Network, and Fantasy Points YouTube. joined today by J.J. Zacharisen. JJ, this is like the time you start making the rounds on podcast because you just dropped your prospect guide. Absolute fire every single year.

Really, really extensive research you put in. And if you're a fantasy manager, there's something for everyone in this guide. Labor or love, how long is it take you to put that thing together? Too much, too much time spent on that thing. I mean, quite literally hundreds of hours when you think about, you know, the amount of time I put in. you know, Brandon Godula, who I hired in January, who I worked with at Numberfire and Fandul back in the day. He's now part of the late round family. He did all the tight end profiles this year. David Kitchen, our C.O, he helps put the guide together and sort of manage it from that perspective.

So there's a lot of work that goes into it. I know it's a PDF, but we care deeply about the design and the flow and the way it reads and, you know, the ability to get from one player to the next. and I'm proud of it. You know, we're very proud of this year's product for sure. You definitely should be proud of it. And then you mentioned sort of how it reads and how it looks. Like visually, it's stunning. And it's very easy to navigate.

A lot of times you get documents and you have to like search through. Here you have a table of contents, which is very searchable. You're able to pinpoint an exact prospect or profile very easily. I love the beginning. You start out way talking about film doesn't lie, but it does. and numbers don't lie, but they do. I thought that was an interesting way to start it out. Yeah, I mean, like, I think that people often try to just pick sides

and they think very black and white about a lot of things, not just in football and in fantasy football, but the world in general. And, you know, I just wanted to introduce the idea that that's not what this is. You know, this is an analytical, analytically minded way of viewing prospects and prospecting in general, but it's by no means the only way you should do it. You know, if you like film-based analysts, whether it's someone at fantasy points or whether it's Matt Waldman or whoever the case may be, I think you should be consuming as much as you can to make your own decisions. And this is just one avenue in order for you to do that. This is a very analytically based avenue for that.

Yeah. And what's interesting is you've developed this model and specifically the ZAP model, which I know has changed over the years and you fine pointed it. Maybe talk a little bit about it. And what I find is interesting is you're not just looking at these players. in year one, but sort of trying to shape how you view they'll produce in future seasons as well. Yeah, it's really funny. So, and I say it's funny because a lot of people will react to what the Zapp model says after one year of football for these guys playing football.

And it's like, okay, but the model is actually trying to project the first three years of a player's career. So what it does is it looks at a lot of player inputs. So a lot of collegiate production. And it's not just raw yards, raw receptions, raw touchdowns. You're looking at, you know, adjusted and age adjusted and program adjusted receiving yards per team pass attempt. You're looking at, you know, reception share, a lot of market share numbers and such. Height and weight measurements.

Age is obviously a factor. And all these things are coming together to, draft capital is the biggest input. But all these things are coming together to try to predict how well someone's going to perform during the first three years of their NFL career. And I do that by looking at what I call B2S, which is the best two seasons. in point per game average. You just average their top two seasons out of their first three. And that's what I'm modeling against, right?

And so that way, when I'm modeling against something and I have some sort of like test that I'm working on and sample that I'm working off of to try to predict that thing, I can then look at other factors to see how well those factors predict that thing. And so I know factually that the model through the years, it dates back to 2011. I want a robust enough sample size because oftentimes when you don't have that robust sample size, you overfit whenever you're modeling for prospects. You see Pooka Nakuwa break,

you know, have the monster start of his career that he's had as a day three wide receiver. And the model, if there's a small enough sample, the model looks at that and says, oh, we got to curtail what we're doing here to be more like Pukunakua because he's making up such a large proportion, you know, of those day three picks. Whereas if you go back all the way to 2011, it's very hard for one player to really substantially change that data and in your model to over. fit that. And so that's what the model is really looking at. It's everyone since 2011 at running back wide receiver and tight end who are either at the NFL combine or who are drafted. And it's looking at it and saying, how well are these players going to perform in their first three years? And it is,

like I was saying before, you can test this against other factors. And it is more predictive than draft capital itself. And it's more predictive than actually rookie ADP as well. So you could, you know, I don't, I don't rank my guys straight off the model. It's more of a guide for me. But if you were to do that, you would be better than ADP. And honestly, I should be more forceful in ranking with what the model is saying. Because when I stray away from it, it seems to bite me more often. No, you've had a number of hits over the years. I mean, I think your success rate is sort of, if you're paying attention to my content,

you've seen JJ come on and make some really, really good calls over the years. And certainly, we appreciate you coming on fantasy points pods. One thing that I'm curious about is there's been a lot of like, I wouldn't say hatred's the right word, there's a general lack of excitement about this class compared to specifically last year. Every year is different. And sometimes as a community, we overhyped classes. Sometimes we underrate them. But I'd say just as a content creator, last year, people were head over heels.

You've got to go get these 2025 rookie picks. You've got to make these 2025 rookies part of your best ball strategy. This year, not so much. There's a couple of prospects people like. and then generally like sort of a eh not really that excited about this class but 2027 that class is going to be just incredible right down the road where are you at from a bird's eye view when you're looking at this class and doing your extensive research do you think this class could be a little bit underrated or are you with everyone that this is not the greatest class that you've evaluated yeah i think that it depends on how people kind of view a question like that because some people look at classes and they say oh this wider seat you're class is good because there's four blue chip prospects. You know, there's just a lot of really good players. And then others will say, no, there's just a lot of depth, even though there's maybe only one blue trip prospect. And that's what I define as being a good class. Now, what I do and what I did actually

earlier this morning, so the Zapp model will take Zapp scores, the score that a player gets. And it categorizes players, just kind of give people an idea of hit rates historically in these different buckets. And, you know, I wouldn't necessarily, uh, you know, look at the ZAP model and, and only draft players based on those buckets alone because there's a wide range of player within each bucket. But it gives you a general idea of sort of where these players lands. So for instance, the top bucket is legendary performer. That was a new one that I added this year. There's elite producers, which is next, then weekly starters, then flex plays, bench warmer, waiver wire out in dart throws. There's seven categories, right? I actually looked at

the average that we get in each bucket from 2011 to the 2024 or sorry to 2025 and then I compared that average per season to what we're seeing this year. And what we basically found, what I basically found was that running back, we do have a legendary performer and Jeremiah Love, which we'll talk about, but we usually have 0.6 of those types of players. So it is above the average there. But elite producers were below the average. Weekly starters were basically at average and everyone else were below the average. And the reason for that is partially because only 20 running backs were invited that one of them was a full backs technically or sorry 21 running backs were invited one of them was a full back so only 20 running backs are really you know in this database right now

uh and eli heidenreich who's who's kind of a slot swiss army knife guy might not even be considered a running back to most people and so you just have a the sheer number of running backs is very low and so it makes sense that we would have fewer dart throws or fewer waiver wire ads because we just don't have as many running backs in general in this class that that went to the combine but with that being said, that's also telling that there's, it's not a great class, right? Like, if you only get 20-21 combine invites when, you know, sometimes we get 30, that that's telling that maybe this class isn't very strong. Now, at wide receiver, what I thought was interesting is that we have fewer legendary performers and elite producers than history has shown, but we have more weekly

starter flex play and bench warmers, which is kind of like the mid-tier. Like, weekly starters are usually the wide receiver three types on your fantasy roster where, you know, you're throwing them in your lineup. If you have a three wide receiver. team, you know, flex play, obviously more of a flex type player. That's how I'm viewing this wide receiver class. I do think that the talent at the top is fine. Like this isn't like a knock on them. But this class has a lot of average analytical profiles, but there's so many of them. And I think as a result of that, we're going to see some of them emerge just by pure numbers, right? Whereas someone might look at that and say, they're too average. It's going to be bad.

We don't really care about this. It's not a big enough deal. But we get stuff wrong. all the time with these players, right? So like, we're going to see a player emerge from a more average profile more than likely just because we have so many of them. And then at tight end, I'd say, you know, we had a ton of tight end invites this year more than I think any. It was the first year we did tight ends for the late round prospect guy. And of course, we get 27 invites to the combine, which was like a high since 2004 or something like that. But tight end was pretty average, maybe a little bit above average simply because of the sheer number. But I wouldn't say that we have unbelievable elite. It's not like last year.

tight end class. You know, like last year's tight end class was a lot heavier at the top and there was even some depth to it. This class has some depth. But I think I would I would categorize wide receiver as as generally average and running back as below average. It seems like a high volume wide receiver year. And I think a lot of players could get boosted by draft capital. We're a lot of times looking for guys to go in the top 50, the top 40. I think there'll be a high volume of them. Tight end's interesting because we've got the two guys we're going to talk about today. And then a big cluster. where multiple people have different tight ends as they're tight end three overall right now. Running back, though, is about as cut in dry as it gets.

JJ, let me know how they can access your guide. Yeah, it's over on late round.com. There's a giant button to order it. It's pretty simple. It's currently 1999 and there's over 170 pages of content. Like I said, there was a lot of work. And now, when the NFL draft happens, what happens with the guide right after? Yeah.

So if you purchase, if you pre-order, you now have the pre-draft guide. But if you just get it now and get the pre-draft guide, you will be emailed the final day of the NFL draft. It won't be immediate. Last year, last year, the NFL draft ended in about 15 minutes later. Someone was like, where's my guide? I'm like, I got to write up some of the day three guys and stuff. Because what I do is during the NFL draft, I rewrite a lot of the relevant profiles. If a guy goes undrafted or whatever, you can just look at his pre-draft profile and understand

how I generally viewed that player. but the Zapp scores all change, the writeups all change. So we'll be writing, you know, 70 to 80 probably, maybe 60 to 70 writeups over that three-day period. And so about an hour or two after the draft ends, you will get an email in your inbox that says, hey, the post-draft guide is ready to download and you can have that ready for your rookie. Yeah, I found out sort of how the sausage was made last year because we broadcast the entire NFL draft here at Fantasy Points YouTube. And Brett Whitefield and Scott Barrett and I were planning for it and we're like, you know, hey, I'm going to hit up JJ. See if he wants to come on for 15, 20 minutes during the draft.

And I talk to you and you're like, no, I can't. This is, I'm literally writing for like three days right as the NFL draft starts. So, yeah, tough one, tough one. Yeah, that's what, well, like the draft is in Pittsburgh this year. I live in Charlotte now, but I grew up in Pittsburgh. You know, born and raised, went there, went to Pitt and then left Pittsburgh after I graduated Pitt, but from Pitt. But it's in Pittsburgh this year and everyone's like, are you coming up for the draft?

Like, why would you not come up for the draft? I'm like, guys, that three day period, I am in a cave where I'm, I'm just grinding out all of these profiles so that the good people out there are ready for their rookie draft. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. The NFL draft that takes a different perspective when you're creating content. Here and at my previous job, like, I'm on the air like the entire time. Brett and I really don't leave the air for day one and day two. It's a lot of fun, but it's very, very intense. So looking forward to seeing those updates.

But let's talk about Jeremiah Love. Everyone's excited about them. It's about as cut and dry as a 101 in Dynasty Surve. circles and as the first rookie selected in redraft and in bestball. I've made an argument that I think from a redraft and best ball perspective, we might be getting a little bit of a discount on Jeremiah I Love based on Ashton Genti not coming in and having a 19 point per game season, really being a 14 point per game guy last year.

Jeremiah I Love, we're very high on him at fantasy points. How about you? When you start looking at him as in your Zapp model, how does he compare against guys like bejean robinson jimier gibbs and of course ashton gentie who was selected last year at six overall uh where are you at jj when it comes to this level of running back in jeremiah love yeah you know i i would say that analytically strictly from the inputs that the zap model looks at a running back which the big ones are uh reception share best season reception share uh adjusted yards per team play an adjusted receiving yards per team pass attempt.

The adjusted piece in those are adjusted for strength of schedule and adjusted for age. So, you know, if a player does something big when they're younger and they're doing it at Ohio State versus Ohio U, I always throw that analogy out. Any bobcats out there, I'm sorry, you know, no offense to your squad. You could just say a Mac team, you know. Yeah, right, right, right. So when you look at those metrics that the model looks at, weight is. another one where, you know, there's a cap to it. Like, you don't need like a 240 pound running back.

But, you know, someone who's like 220 that has unbelievable, you know, uh, metrics, uh, is going to look a little bit better than a guy who's 212 and Jeremiah Love. It's not, you know, all these things are like small pieces that add up to a larger puzzle. The biggest piece of the puzzle is just draft capital. And, and Love is almost definitely going to go top 10 in the draft. And if you look at top half running back since 2011, we've had 10 of them in that range in that top 16 range. Every single one of them, aside from Ash and Gentie, who's only played one year in the league, has gotten to 17 ppr points per game in one of their first three seasons. And that includes Trent Richardson, who did it as a rookie. He was at 16.99. It always frustrates me whenever I bring

that up because he's like, I just say 17. I think people would understand, but technically he was right below that 17 mark. But just strictly from a draft capital perspective, he's in the same bucket as a lot of these running backs. Now, if you want to, you know, get a little nitpicky and be a little bit detailed about it. I would say he's not quite as good of a prospect via the model as Bijon Robinson, Jemir Gibbs, and Ashton Genty. He's a little bit better than you're not, he's a decent bit better like he's in a category above Amari and Hampton who the model, I mean, the model loves Amarian Hampton. So that that's part of the reason why, you know, I say it in that way. But, you know, I think that if you were to compare him to Bejan Robinson more directly, it's kind of interesting because

both of them played with NFL caliber running backs in their backfield. And then if you look at their metrics down the line. Bejohn Robinson is just a little bit better at all of them, right? And now we've seen Robinson. This is where I think like we do need to be at least realistic is that I think Robinson has hit more of the higher end outcome for him as a prospect and as a player in the NFL because I think he's one of the best running backs I've ever seen in my life. Like he's, he's so unbelievably good. And we can't just make the assumption about any running back being that kind of player. But that is his top comp in the model is Robinson. So, uh, we're, looking at a player, in my opinion, who can step in anywhere, immediately contribute,

be an RB1 if things break the right way. And so I understand if someone wants to go after them and both redraft, obviously Dynasty, I think he's the 101 in every format. But from a redraft standpoint, I can understand going after them. You know, there's going to be a lot of people who are soured on, and I'm doing some research on this right now, on rookies in season long after what happened last year. because, you know, the wide receivers were pretty under, underwhelming last year versus cost.

Running back was generally underwhelming, I would say, versus cost. Some of that was because of injury. Some of that was just, you know, Ash and Genti was a little bit underwhelming or Trayvion Henderson or, you know, RJ Harvey for a lot of the year. You know, Caleb Johnson. I mean, do we even talk about him anymore? Right. So I think that there's going to be a lot of debate once we get into June and July and

stuff when people really start digging into season long more about. a player like Love. But historically, when you get a top two or three round, two and a half round running back in season long, they've outperform expectation more often than not. You know, I know that people get burned by these players. They remember when they were burned by these guys. But, you know, you forget about Ezekiel Elliott and Sequin Barclay and even Najee Harris, who was a second rounder, who was fine, his rookies, it was good his rookie season from a fantasy perspective. So I think love should be okay, just given the talent level and the kind of investment he's bound to get. think you nailed it and I think you know people have the recency bias of last season burned in several

ways but the year before we had so many rookies making impacts I mean lad mcconkey amazing pick brian thomas junior an amazing pick for redraft Brock bowers tight end one overall bucky irving so I think like things have a way of sort of balancing their their way out and I'll maintain that jeremiah love should be somebody you should be considering unless we have something's just catastrophic on draft day in terms of a landing spot. Kansas City, I think, would be the nightmare if he falls to nine. And they're like, you know what? We'll just take him with Kenneth Walker and use this rookie contract. Every other landing spot that's realistic makes a lot of sense. What's a landing spot that would get you very, very excited that's realistic? Like, there's been a lot of talk that

Tennessee could take them, New York could take them, Washington could take them. Of the realistic landing spots, what would be a spot where you're like, okay, this guy's a first round pick? I think it's got to be Washington. You know, Jane Daniels hopefully being healthy. You know, the offense, in my opinion, last year just generally underperformed and is better than what we saw, you know, season ago. You get a shift in offensive coordinator there. You know, we actually talked to Josh Johnson when I was at Radio Row at the at the Super Bowl this year. And he's very hype about David Blow and what could happen, you know, with that Washington offense this year.

So I think overall that would probably be the spot. You know, I don't think like a Cincinnati is probably in play, you know, just because they have other needs, a lot of other needs. And they're hypothetically, they could compete if they are able to fill some of those needs. It just seems like more of a luxury. So I do think that that if he is in Washington, that's probably the one spot that would be pretty intriguing. I agree with you. I think Washington is easily the team that I would want him to land on. they need an offensive focal point skill position player.

Terry McLaren, they said they're going to get him the ball a ton, but McLaren at his age, the sort of a little bit of a capped upside. And with love, it's that home run hitting ability that could get amplified playing next to a mobile quarterback like Jaden Daniel. So I would absolutely love that one. I would love seeing him there. There's a bunch of other running backs that we are throwing into a cluster.

And depending on who you talk to, there's maybe a lack of enthusiasm of, the rest of the guys collectively, or maybe there's, hey, I like these two guys, but the rest are really not for me. Do you have a clear cut running back to overall right now, JJ? You know, the model does kind of. I say kind of his score is about 70 right now, which is in the weekly starter category. And the guy right below him is at 64. So there's at least some sort of gap. I know that those numbers are kind of arbitrary to people who haven't necessarily consumed, you know, the Zapp model stuff in the past. But Emmett Johnson is someone that the model really, really likes as the RB2 right now.

And to be fair, and to be clear, that's with like 90th overall draft capital or so. You know, like he looks that good as like a late day three pick or day two pick, like a round three pick. In a world where I don't think it's going to happen, but in a world where he could go higher than that, the Zab model will have him as a clear RB2 in this class, and Lusjadarian price ends up going a lot higher than what we're expecting. at this moment. But look, the bottom line is this app model is very heavily focused on the receiving side of things. And Emmett Johnson has the best receiving profile probably in this class. You know, it's very well-rounded. I know that people are turned off because he had that 93.4

speed score. He didn't test as like an elite athlete. But here's the thing. And I've mentioned this before on shows. So someone might have heard this. But he was the only running back who tested in the three cone at the combine this year. And he was like a 20 to 25 percent. kind of player within that drill. And so people are like, oh, he's so unathletic or why did he test? I think teams will look at that and say to themselves, this dude is trying to, like, he's a baller.

Like he wants to, and he's a competitor. Like he wants to go out there and show that he is willing to do anything. And that's what he did at the combine. Even if it was kind of like subpar, you know, not amazingly athletic testing, he at least went out and did it. And I think that's something, right?

But yeah, I mean, like there's, There's some interesting metrics with him. You know, if you look at his mistackles forced or yards after contact per attempt, I think is a better one where it does rank pretty low in the class. It's third worst in the class. But there was a stat from Rich Rebar of sharp football analysis where he said that Johnson was hit at or behind the line on a class low 33.9% of his runs.

But when he was hit at or behind the line, he gained yardage at a class high, 75% of those runs. Yards after contact per attempts is a good metric. but there is context that's always needed. Like he wasn't as bad as what that metric, in my opinion, was generally showing. And again, he's a great pass catcher. And we sometimes see this archetype of player who is not overly athletic, but is still effective in fantasy football because of that pass catching prowess.

Like, I think the archetype ceiling here is like Aaron Jones. Like, think about Jones, where, you know, he can line up everywhere on the field. And he's like, Aaron Jones of this general. is probably the most undervalued receiving running back of anyone. Like just in terms of he's not the best, but in terms of like what he actually can do as a receiver versus how people view him as a player, he's probably the most undervalued.

And I think Emmett Johnson has that sort of path. Now, this archetype has burned me in the past because you get like a Tyler Biday type, for instance, who just turns into that satellite back. And that's all he can do in the right environment too. I mean, he wasn't even someone who was, you know, able to just stick around and just stay in one team. He needed to find the right spot. So, like, that's definitely an outcome.

But the comps for Johnson were Michael Carter, Kenneth Gainwell, and James White. So three, you know, pass catching or can be past catching running backs. You know, Michael Carter has the top comp. It's not great. I get it. But it's a realistic comp for him. And Michael Carter wasn't looked at that unfavorably when he came out. He actually had pretty decent early career production.

So right now, for me, Emmett Johnson is my RB2. I don't say that confidently because I think, draft capital is going to change a lot of this. And I think it's a very, very flat position after Jeremiah Love. A couple of weeks back, I recorded with Brett Whitefield and we did our player comps episode, which is always kind of difficult when you try to make player comps. But Aaron Jones was also my Emma Johnson comp. So we're locked in on that one.

Two other running backs to touch on your thoughts on Judarian Price, Jeremiah Love's teammate out of Notre Dame. Another player who, I wouldn't say the Combine helped him. He was 203 pounds, ran a 449. some of us thought maybe this would be a 4-4 flat and he came in a little bit lighter. Judarian Price is still my RB2, very, very high on him. And then Mike Washington on the flip side, especially compared to Price and Johnson, completely tore the combine up.

One of the better speed scores we've ever seen. Your thoughts on these two guys. Look, Janarian Price, and this isn't going to be surprising. If he goes day two, when he goes day two, I think that he's going to get day two capital. he's probably going to have the worst production profile of any day two running back in the Zapp models history, which goes back to 2011. Now, the obvious reason for that is because he played behind Jeremiah Love.

But I also think that if you're looking at this from a dynasty perspective and a rookie draft perspective, you have to think about, okay, what this tells me is that this is a highly volatile profile. It doesn't mean that it's going to bust. And there's teammate score as part of the Zat model inputs, which is why right now, Janarian Price is the RB3. within the Zat model. Like, it's not like he's, you know, because his profile is so bad that he's the RB6 or something like that.

And there's some reasons, you know, as to why he produced the way that he did, even aside from Jeremiah Love. The one thing I'll say, though, is that I still think, even when I look at analysis today and read what people are saying about the running backs, I still think that the fantasy community and draft people in general don't weigh receiving production enough still to this day. But in fantasy football, we're often playing in a full PPR format. The Zat model is looking at PPR points per game when what it's measuring against. And so receiving is actually a really, really important input because not only does receiving matter from a scoring perspective,

but running backs who can catch passes on the backfield are generally just more talented and more well-rounded running backs. When you get a profile where the guy has a best season 7% reception share and is adjusted receiving yards per team pass attempt is really poor, it's not just telling that he's not going to be much of a pass catcher at the NFL level. It's also telling that he's not the most special running back in the world where the team was just trying to get him the ball as much as possible in college. And so the one thing, I say this about Price because the one thing that does seem consistent, whether you're looking at something like the Zapp model or someone who's evaluating via film, is that there are questions about his past pro and there are questions about him as a receiver.

And to me, those are massively important for him to be able to score a lot of fantasy points you know, at the next level. So I think that's where like, like, let's try to find a middle ground with the way that we're approaching, you know, me versus a, you know, Waldman or whomever. Let's try to find a middle ground of like, okay, where is, where are the red flags for a player like Janarian Price?

And that would be the red flag, I think, because his receiving profile is horrendous in the, from a production standpoint. And again, there's reasons for that. I'm not dismissing that. I totally understand that. But that just means that there's a much more volatile outcome here. And obviously,

the comps are not good just because his production stuff is not that good. Like his top comp is Ronald Jones. And then you get Jordan Scarlett and Darrington Evans. It's not a good analytical profile. And it's hard for me to say, I'm going to spend a first round rookie pick on this profile. But at the same time, man, I'm not going to lie. Like right now today, there aren't really any running backs that would spend outside of Jeremiah I love a first round rookie pick on.

I would much rather at this point in the process before I know landing spot, before I know draft capital, to just get the wide receivers and just take a chance on one of them. And then brief thoughts on Mike Washington. Certainly the speed score is through the roof here. Your thoughts on him and another player who we're pretty confident is going to get drafted on day two. Yeah, I think the combine helped them a lot, obviously, to get that draft capital. And it's not, you don't see the same backwards correlation that you do a wide receiver where you get a really athletic running back. And then the draft capital is overinflating that profile because athleticism does matter a running back more than it does a wide receiver.

So with wide receiver, if they run really fast, it's almost a bad thing from a draft capital perspective because the faster guys run generally the more overdrafted they become. It's not really the case at running back. So I'm not that concerned about the draft capital stuff for Mike Washington. The one thing I'll say is like his production profile is just fine. It's not special. You know, his receiving profile maybe a little bit below average. You know, he wasn't like a bell cow year in and year out.

He did play with Seth McGowan one year. So you get a little bit of that like collegiate production with, you know, a fellow classmate or an NFL hopeful, you know, which can be helpful. But overall, like the top comp and really when you look at it's not their play style so much, but when you look at their metrics and line them up, the metrics of the Zab model looks at, it's Latavius Murray where same body size, you know, can handle big workload, very athletic, Latavius Murray had 115 speed score. You know, Mike Washington obviously is better, but 115 is incredibly.

Yeah, it's awesome. Right. Yeah. And so, so I think that that's kind of the type of player that we're looking at from a production standpoint in the NFL where, uh, you could have a spike season if he just becomes starter and gets fed a lot of work, but more than likely, uh, he'll be more of like that journeyman type who could, who could have a decent career because of that athleticism. I just don't want to right now definitively say that he's going to be some stud in fantasy football because I just don't see that from a production standpoint. Yeah, I think that's, that's fair with Washington, but I do think with the athleticism, the projected draft cap. there's a chance he lands on a team that embraces him as a volume back and has some traits that if he's given that sort of volume could be an opportunistic running back one for us at some point. So yeah, really, really fun stuff talking about Johnson Price and Washington. You write up so many more running backs. Give us a late round guy. A couple years back, you were all over Isaiah Pacheco became sort of a player you were constantly talking about this time of year. Ends up going to the seventh round. you encourage people to draft him and he ended up being a really, really fun player,

especially for Dynasty managers. Year one had some utility and then ended up giving you a one running back one season early in his career in KC. Give us a guy that's sort of a guy that you really like, maybe a dart throw guy or a Waverwire ad listed guy in your prospect guide. Yeah, you know, it's tough. I really don't think there's a player in the class that like really stands out. It's a pretty rough class. there's a couple of guys that I think are at least interesting if they find the right spot.

You know, we didn't talk about Nick Singleton. He's not necessarily like a dart throw type because the fantasy community is really, really high on him versus where he's projected to go, which is unfortunate because the model really does like Singleton. But it just appears as though the market doesn't realize that he's more than likely going to be a day three pick or he's trending to be more of that day three pick. So I won't go with him. I'll go with deeper players than that.

Seth McGowan, I mentioned as one, the problem with him is that. his age. He's very old. He's like, we're seeing that a little bit more, uh, because of the COVID season, because of NIL, because of transfer rules, these running backs and wide receivers are coming out at an older age. Um, but there are some good marks for McGowan and the model. And I'm only calling him out because he, he actually, you can almost think of him as like a, as like a slightly worse from an analytical perspective, Mike Washington. Like he tested really well, Seth McGowan did. Um, he had some off the field stuff, which doesn't help. But, uh,

like I said, he is very old. And so you're, this is, this is a last round kind of dart throw from a rookie draft perspective. But one of his comps that got spit out. This is the only reason why I'm really like, kind of intrigued was David Johnson. Oh, that's a pretty good one. Yeah. I mean, the other guy was Dwayne Washington and Keonté Ingram too, but David Johnson got spit out.

So I'm like, okay, you know, I can kind of see it if I squint. You know, David Johnson was a better prospect. But, you know, the past catching profile is not that, that bad for him. he had a 16% reception share in one season. You know, you get a little bit of that playing with a fellow, you know, NFL back. So Seth McGowan would be one. And then if you want to go just like fun and I say, I feel like we say this about any small player,

but Des Reed out of my alma mater out of Pitt, just like he could be a Tari Cohen type if he falls in the right spot. You know, that's that was his top comp for me. He had a really unbelievable receiving profile at Pitt, very electric and dynamic with a ball in his hands. But again, this is more of like, you know, he's not, he's not quite straight line speed like we see with like a Keaton Mitchell. Keaton Mitchell can break those long runs. But Des Reed can do a lot more through the air and be kind of like that situational back where one touch can can do a lot from a fantasy perspective.

So it's like a, you know, deep dynasty roster, deep starting lineup kind of player, maybe has a little bit of PPR or lore. But he's going to be one of those guys that just needs to find the right spot. I think that's the case for most of these guys because they're all like the majority. them are going to be day three picks. We should be looking at, you know, landing spot for those day three guys, ambiguous backfields for those day three guys. Because realistically, and this is what I've just realized through doing this over the last handful of years, realistically, when it comes to like day three running backs and stuff, your goal is to not necessarily just spot talent. It's to really spot that opportunity. You know, you just, you need like Kyle Munung guy last

year. Whereas like, was he a great prospect? In my opinion, no. I don't think it was a great prospect at all. But even in league, like I drafted them in leagues just because we knew it was an ambiguous situation and we knew it was a good situation or could have been a good situation. And then all of a sudden, you know, his value rises. And now you have an opportunity to really profit on that move if you want to, you know, with a player like Minunga, it's similar to what we saw with like Isaiah Pacheco back then, you know. So, so when we get those landing spots, don't be afraid with a day three player where talent is far less important because you're really just trying to gain value from that guy to just lean into landing spot and then after year one, you know,

reevaluate and see if you can turn it for a profit. Let's talk about Jordan Tyson. And I love seeing you so high on him. And your model has him clearly above the other two wide receivers who the fantasy community really pushed up at least early on during the college football season throughout the process. Carnell Tate's projected to be the first wide receiver taken off the board. And Mackay Lemon is a player that has a real high. when it comes to dynasty and fantasy.

But Jordan Tyson scores higher than both of these players. Your thoughts on Tyson, what are some of the really appealing traits that he brings to the table? And do you think that there's maybe a little bit of prospect fatigue with him where the communities maybe not as excited about him as they should be? Yeah, I think it's like, just look at his journey, right? I was thinking about this earlier this week and I put it to paper. And I'm like, I don't, like, usually the fantasy community is pretty,

data heavy and into the analytics side of things. And Nick Singleton's a great example of that where a lot of people who watch him, they're like, yeah, just another like, you know, like it's funny. I had Debrough on my show, Derek Brown last week on my show. And one of the main comps for Nick Singleton was C.J. Pro Seis. And that was his film based comp. And it's such a random player. The fact that we both had that comp for him, you know, says a lot about, you know, what he probably, what he more than likely is. But when it comes to Jordan Tyson, it's just wild to me. I'm not surprised that like some people like Tate Moore, some people like Lemonmore,

because I think they're very good prospects, right? So I'm not like shocked by that. But I am surprised that the consensus in the fantasy world is not on Jordan Tyson, that there are a lot of people would rather have the other two wide receivers. But just look at his story. He turns 18 in August of 2022, goes to Colorado,

leads that team in receiving in nine games played. As a freshman, as an 18, as a young freshman. right and then he gets injured he wasn't able to do much he wasn't able to do anything his sophomore year because of that injury uh but his freshman year he had a pro rated receiving yards per team pass down rate of 1.7 for he gets hurt the following year and then in 2024 he comes back and he has probably not i would almost say definitively the best age adjusted season of anyone in this class in 24 he had a a 3.36 pro rated receiving yards per team past attempt, which is otherworldly.

And then that actually gets boosted even more in the ZAP model because of strength of schedule adjustments. So you look at his first three years, immediate production as a freshman gets hurt, and then unbelievable season when he comes back off that injury. And then last year, people say it was a down year. Well, he was trending really well before his injury and then things kind of derailed a little bit post injury. But even still, last season, he had a 2.63 adjusted receiving yards,

per team pass attempt. If you were to use that as his best season and compare that to all the best seasons of the other combine invites, that still ranks 13th best in the class for that 2025 season. So like across the board, Jordan Tyson has the best age adjusted production of anyone in this class, which is why I'm just surprised that people are pushing him down the way they're pushing him down. Not to say that anyone's right or wrong. I'm just surprised by that, right?

And so I think that you look at his profile. If there's one analytical mark that is a little bit scary, it would be his mistackles force numbers. He's not much of a tackle breaker. We've seen some pretty big misses with players like that, like Jalen Rager and Jehan Dotson. But, you know, Chris Alave and Devante Smith are also part of that group, and we've seen some hits from it too. So to me, you know, if this comes down to medicals, which I think it does for a lot of people, I'm fine with kind of taking a chance on that just because, you know, first off, the model is not looking at Jordan Tyson and saying, oh, he's injury prone. So we're going to knock his zap score down

a little bit. This is not part of what the model's looking at. And also, I don't know how we measure injury proneness. You know, like, I don't know exactly what, how injury prone he is, what that really means, you know, from an NFL front office standpoint, if they're really turned off by that, I think some teams will be. And that's why his draft capital might fall. But in my opinion, he has the best analytical profile in this class at wide receiver. I would say it's really not that close. Like, instance, his breakout score is in the 95th percentile. If you look at wide receivers who are above the 90th percentile who get drafted in round one, it's hit after hit after hit. Breakout score itself as a metric, if you look at top 100 wide receivers, it's just as predictive as draft

capital. So that one single metric breakout score is just as predictive as what draft capital is. Now, obviously, that combined with all the other factors in the Zapp model is even more predictive than that. But it is, it's just a very good profile, in my opinion. And I'm just a little bit surprised that it's not more of the consensus than it is. And then it, I mean, some people have a big two and they don't include Jordan Tyson. And I, you know, I'm not saying anyone's right or wrong because I'm going to be wrong about plenty of stuff. I'm just saying objectively, like when you look at this from a number driven perspective, it's hard to say that Jordan Tyson doesn't look really good.

Yeah, I mean, I think that he's a player that's going to go somewhere when it's ultimately said and done. He'll go in the top 15 to 18 picks, maybe a little bit higher. and with the injuries, it's not like an overlap or reaggravation injury-wise. So I think that he'll get a pass with the NFL teams. Hey, we really won't know until his name is called. If he suddenly starts sliding, we could find out that some teams have flagged him and maybe other teams just follow suit. But I don't anticipate that.

I think he's a very, very good prospect and an interesting one. If you're trying to give the community and the people listening to this show, sort of a baseline where you think he'll end up as a level of player. I've heard you mention the name Chris Alave. Would that be a fair assessment of his talent level coming in? Yeah, I think from like a production standpoint, yes. You know, some of his comps, like he got like a CD Lamb comp in the model. He was a little bit tougher to comp, to be fair.

He did get a Corey Davis one. So I want people to understand that like this isn't only butterflies and this isn't like Malik neighbors. The model was obsessed with Malik neighbors, had. really good comps, you know. But it is similar to last year the model was obsessed with Luther Burden, like just obsessed, like to the point where even with draft capital, the newest iteration of the model still likes Luther Burden more than any other wide receiver in last year's class.

And that's probably wrong because I think, I think Tedroa McMillan showed that he's a really, really good wide receiver. But yeah, I mean, like I think Tyson from like a fantasy production standpoint and what we could see at the NFL level, I think that he has a chance to be like an alave type in terms of what he can do, you know, week to week and the kind of volume that he can see. Talk about the other two wide receivers that are very highly ranked in Dynasty, as well as guys that are being selected pretty highly on underdog in early bestball drafts. Carnell Tate, who's projected to go inside the top 10 overall picks in the NFL draft.

And then Mackay Lemon, who, I mean, some people are head over heels for him, JJ. And then there's others like Brett Whitefield who are poking holes in the profile a little bit. saying he's the type that could slide to maybe the end of the first round. Where are you at on Tate and Lemon? Yeah, I think, look, my liking Jordan Tyson more than them is not an indictment on them being bad or anything like that. I think that they're good, great prospects. Cardinal Tate, I think he can, he's one of those players that can fit anywhere. You know, perimeter guy can play all three levels and do it well.

My thing is that he might be falling victim a little bit to helping a real NFL team more than he would help a fantasy team. And I say that because he wasn't the best target earner in college. He ranks in the bottom half of this class among combine invites and best season pro-rated target share, 21.7% in his best season at Ohio State. Now, you can sit there and say, oh, he had a lot of competition, et cetera, et cetera. But if you were to compare Tate to the other Ohio State wide receivers that have come out over the last five years, you know, Chris Oliva, who we just talked about, Garrett-Wilson,

Emeka, Marvin Harrison Jr., Jackson's Fifth and Jigba. he's, in my opinion, from the Zapp model perspective, he's the worst of those guys. Now, he's still very, very good, and he has a great breakout score, but like, Emeka Buka last year looked better in the model than what Cardinal Tate looks like this year,

depending on, you know, obviously where the draft capital lands and all that kind of stuff. Because right now, Tate's draft capital is kind of out of control, and so he's going to look pretty decent in the Zapp model as a result of that. So my thing with him is I think he's pretty, like a pretty safe bet, like a good prospect and someone that you should feel very comfortable with, And he has pretty good comps, George Pickens, Calvin Ridley, Will Fuller.

You know, a lot of guys who can get down the field, which is what I think he's going to be able to do at the NFL level. But I do question if that like 25% target share ceiling is in his range of outcomes, you know, as he gets to the NFL level. I think that's fair. And Pickens has been a player that we've comped him to. Brett's got some higher end comps that he, you know, throws up the name like the AJ Greens and all that. But I think Pickens is a good name. And when it comes to Carnal Tate, if we get Carnal Tate going inside the top 10, it says a lot about where the NFL has him.

How about Mackay Lemon, though? Like, where are you out on him? There's, you know, the pro-McChi Lemon takes are out there where he could end up being a player with similar usage to an Amon-Ross, St. Brown, a JSN. Like, it's the type of profile that fantasy managers want to embrace and the type of player that's been really successful over the last couple years are you.

you there with Lemon as a potential guy who could end up being at some point in the near future, 150 target earner. Yeah, that's the thing. It's like this is the arc of the archetype of a player who generally will see, you know, could be a high volume earner at the NFL level. It does depend a little bit on landing spot. Like I think Aminara St. Brown, I've said this before, but Aminra Saint Brown probably, you know, he's obviously a very, very good player and he would, he would thrive anywhere given the player that he became. But Aminara St. Brown probably doesn't get off to the same start that he did if he's in almost any other location just because you know Detroit had very little around him. If you recall as a rookie and then he broke out

towards the end of the year when things really were, it was just him and then he could really shine and show off. And so hopefully, you know, Mackay Lemon is able to find a place like that. I've seen a lot of the takes about him being a slot guy first and foremost. I understand that take. If you look at day two wide receivers who had slot rates above 70% over the last five years, because data like that doesn't date back to too far. But if you look over the last five years, Lemon was at a 75% slot rate, day two wide receivers with a 70% or better slot rate or higher slot rate,

they bust at a pretty high rate. I mean, it's really not the kind of archetype that you want to invest in from a fantasy perspective. But when you look at day one, round one wide receivers, it changes. You get Jalen Waddle, Traylon Burks, Cadarius Tony, but then there's J.S.N. and a Mecca Buka. So it's a mixed bag. It's basically what you would see as a first,

round hit rate in general, you know, for, for these players. So I don't think slot rate matters that much because if a team is drafting a quote, unquote, slot player in round one, they're not just going to use them in the slot. They're going to use him all over the field. And what I think with Mackay Lemon, that's interesting, he had the highest yards per out run on the perimeter in this class, career yards per out run. It was higher than anyone. And so he won on the outside.

He was able to do that. You know, say what you want about the stuff going on at the Combine and the interviews and all Like, you know, I don't know. Doesn't do anything on, with my fantasy teams. You know what I mean? Like the guy being goofy at the podium doesn't do anything. Yeah, I don't know if a team will like have probably, you know, that'll be reflected in draft capital in my opinion, you know, more than anything else.

But I do think Mackay Lemon is a good prospect. I, if he had slightly better projected draft capital, he would be ahead of Carnell Tate, you know, in the Zapp model. But yeah, I mean, I think there is a big three in this class. I don't think it's a big two. I think Jordan Tyson absolutely belongs. in that conversation and Mackay Lemon does too. Yeah. And what you've got, so you have the legendary performer, then you have elite producers,

then you've got it like sort of a big cluster of weekly starters and then obviously a bunch of flex play guys. The player I'd love for you to talk about a little bit is Casey Concepcion. He's been a player that we've been very high on over here at fantasy points. Brett loves him. I like him a lot. Ryan Heath likes him a lot. And he comes in pretty highly ranked. Where are you out on KC? Yeah, so look, like you said, he's in that weekly starter category, but he's at the very top of that category. So if he were to get better draft capital than expected, he'd be in the elite producer category. That's, you know, again, the categories are there for us to have these conversations, you know, to be able to quickly reference and say, you know, where does this guy generally belong?

But Concepcion compared to some of the other weekly starters is way, way better. 76 percentile breakout score, which which is adjusted receiving, I don't know if I mentioned this, but it's, adjusted in age, age and schedule adjusted receiving yards per team pass attempt. And that's despite never having a crazy receiving yards per team pass attempt season. He maxed out at 2.25, which is not very high at all. And so the question is, why does he have a good breakout score? Because he produced right away at NC State. Like immediately, he was very productive at NC State.

He just never got to that like insane season. And this is where early declare status matters a lot. Because if Casey Concepcion went back to college for a fourth season, then all of a sudden, like he could put together one of those really good max season, you know, seasons and have a better receiving yards per team past them. But he's leaving school, which is why we should factor in the early declare stuff. Heavy slot usage at NC State. And so that, yes, that would be somewhat of a flag. But then he goes to Texas A&M and he only played in the slot on 34% of his routes run. And he had his highest yards per route run of his career. Actually, like McKay,

Lemon had a better perimeter yards per route run than slot yards per out run. So Casey Concepcion, he came in bigger than I think a lot of people expected at the combine this year too. I love him. Like I like at least compared to how like I think that he is in a tier above the Omar Cooper's and Denzel Boston's of the world. I think he's very clearly the wide receiver for in this class. Yeah, that's where we're at. Brett has him even higher than that. Brett has him ahead of Lemon. And Brett has him at like top 12 in his big board, super, super high on Casey Concepcion. And he's a player we're really rooting on. Do you care about the little knee cleanup surgery, JJ?

Do you think that's something that we need to keep an eye on? No, because I always think about this from the standpoint of like, if this were happening to an NFL player, would we care? And generally, it's no, right? Yeah, last summer Amon Ross St. Brown had a little cleanup. And then there was some saying up, you know, I'm worried because of the cleanup. And then Amon Ra goes out and does the same thing he does every year. Right.

It's just magnified because we don't have the substance of them being a good player already at the NFL level. And so I don't want to like double count it. I think draft capital usually captures that. Like I said, like Jordan Tyson, he might fall in the draft because of medicals. And if that happens, then it's going to be reflected in all of the stuff that I work with. And because draft capital is an input. And it's the same thing with Concepciona. People are concerned about teams are concerned about that in any way.

he's not going to be a first round pick, right? Because he's already projected more of it as like a late first. Yeah, interesting player and a player we're really rooting on. And I think has some fantasy traits that could really, really be effective at the next level. One player who during the college football season, I would text with Brett Whitefield. And I'm like, Chris Bell is just where it's at. Louisville, wide receiver, guys having all these blowup games, does incredibly well against the Miami Hurricanes team. And then Chris Bell tears his ACL.

he's in your flex play category. We're starting to hear some very positive medicals that he's ahead of schedule could potentially be there at the end of training camp when the originally we thought this could be a completely lost season. Where is your projection for Chris Bell and how would that change if he ends up being, let's say, a late first round selection? It would change if he was a late first round. I would definitely like him more. right now I think he's like a late second in the projected stuff that I was looking at and that's why his score is where it's at. What you like to see in his profile is that he got better every single year. You know, his final season, 2.59 pro rated receiving yards per team pass attempt.

There's nothing wrong with that. I wish he was an early to Claire, but, you know, we don't always get that with most of these players. We see fewer and fewer early to Claire wideouts. The one thing I'll say is that we have a lot of these general, you know, these general like big bodied Xs in this class, right? And a lot of times when you get a day two player like that, there's just a lot of volatility. So, and I say big bodied X's with average profiles, like average to maybe above average profiles. And so I think that's what we're looking at with Chris Bell, where there's just a lot of volatility. And we could, we should be okay with understanding that variance, especially

this is where like the cost benefit comes into play where if there's this really highly volatile profile, if you're spending that at the end of the second round of your rookie compared to the end of the first round, it's just different, you know, cost-benefit analysis. But in the Zapp model database, there's been 10 wide receivers drafted after round one before pick 100, before pick 101, so through Pick 100,

who weighed at least 215 pounds and posted a breakout score between 40 and 60. Chris Bell is right smack dab in the middle. He's, you know, he's heavier than that. But he had like a pretty average breakout score, and he's heavier, right? But this is just to show you the volatility. You get Cortland Sutton, D.K. Metcalfe, Michael Pittman,

and T. We would love those outcomes, right? But then you also get Greg Little, Devin Funches, Dorio, Greenbeckham, Chase Claypool, and Jonathan Mingo. You know, so to me, it's just like, it's really a hit or miss profile. And it's just going to come down to cost if I'm going to heavily invest there. That makes sense. When you're looking at your list of weekly starters, not Casey Concepcion, as well as flex play

guys, is there a player that you're like, I really like this guy, that I think this is a player that I want to add on my fantasy teams? and you are sort of rooting to land well during the NFL draft. There's a big group this year. Who's a JJ guy? I like Elijah Surat a lot from the class. He's in that flex play category. He just got better every single year throughout his collegiate career.

Zero star recruits started at St. Francis. And then obviously, you know, he goes to James Madison and then does the Indiana thing. But he was 71st percentile on breakout score, top six in yards per route running. in this class, trailed only Mackay Lemon and first downs per route run. The analytical profile is great for Elijah Surat. I think that, again, going back to what I said about Jordan Tyson, the fantasy industry is very much on Sarat, right? Like he will rank relatively high in a lot of rankings because the fantasy industry is

generally going to be skew more analytics heavy. There's not doing that with Jordan Tyson, which is why it's interesting. But I do think that there's reason, you know, to like Surat. It's just that, you know, again, I'm using projected draft capital and that projected draft capital for him is more round three at this point as opposed to round two. And that's what's bringing him down a little bit versus some of the other guys and why he's more flex playing, not weekly starter. One player I wanted to pick your brain on, that's another kind of polarizing guy on the

lower end, not a player that anyone's projecting to go inside of round one in dynasty rookie drafts, but there's some who are simply just writing off Zachariah Branch from Georgia. A lot of targets right around the line of scrimmage played at U.S. USC before Georgia, but he was super productive this year, had over 80 receptions, set the all-time record for the most catches by a Georgia bulldog in the history of the program. And then there's some saying, you know, I don't really care. He's too little. This is the kind of profile that this guy's going to bust out. Where are you at on Branch? Is it a player you're interested in? Do you think all the red flags are warranted? Could this be an outlier? You know, the model doesn't hate him. I'll say

this. You know, he had a pretty ordinary breakout score. It's 31. It's like a, it's not a, it's not like 31st percentile. It's more like a 40 to 50th percentile type breakout score. So nothing special on that end, right? My thing is that I think this is the profile that burns NFL teams year and and year out over and over again. It's very easy to fall in love with this profile because, yes, there is some production there. And yes, he is very athletic and he's very fast. But I have this in the guide. And I'll just, I'll just say some of the things that are from the guide. 45 and a half percent of his career targets came behind the line of scrimmage. Now, he can obviously grow into something more, you know, in the NFL.

But it does mean that we have to project a little bit with Branch, right? Because we haven't seen it yet. That's pretty dangerous territory, though, historically. This is what I wrote in the guide. If Branch is selected inside the top 100, which is where he's projected to go right now, he'll be the 11th player drafted in that range since 2020 with a career behind the line target rate above 30%. Remember, he was at 45 and a half percent. He'd be the first one to exceed 40 percent of that group.

Only two players in that bucket, Wondell Robinson and Luther Burden posted breakout scores above 75. So they were both really good in age-adjusted production. And that's more than likely why they're looking good in the NFL. The other players in this group who had target rates of 30 percent or higher behind the line of scrimmage, Lynn Bowden, Amari Rogers, Anthony Schwartz, Cadarius, Tony, Ron Del Moore, rest in peace, Valis Jones,

Trey Tucker and Malachi Corley. It is, and if you look at just screen usage, Theo, 35% of his career yards came on screens. Among top 100 picks since 2020, only two wide receivers

saw 30% of their yards come on screens, and that was Malachi Corley and Anthony Schwartz. I mean, this just screams to me, Mikul Hardman, you know,

just someone that a team, like, there is no doubt in my mind that chiefs love Zach Branch. You know, they love this kind of archaith. They love it. But from my perspective, when I look at what we've seen historically, it's not necessarily the right player to bet on. Now, with that being said,

if he has a mid-second round rookie pick, you know, draft cap, you know, ADP, I don't really care because I think there's a lot of players who are totally up in the air that are going to be in that range. My thing is, is if he gets round two draft capital and he lands in a place like Kansas City, you know, somewhere that people get really excited about. And that 80p rises, that's what I'm definitely going to be out because I just think that this profile is unbelievably scary.

I think that's going to happen. I think it's going to be a player that the NFL takes in the top 50. And instead of being able to take them with like the 305, you're going to have to take them with like the 207. And I think it's probably wise to be out. You had us at Malachi Corley. We're done talking about them. But we do need to talk about the tight end position.

There's a bunch of tight ends. who helped themselves out at the NFL combine, including the most athletic tight end of all time in Kenyon Sadiq. Kenyon Sadiq runs the same 40-yard dash time as Jemir Gibbs at 240 pounds, unbelievably athletic player and a player that we can safely bet on being selected, probably inside the top 20 overall. We're also in a period of time where rookie tight ends have been hitting every year for us. I'm Brock Bauer, Sam Leporta.

This past year we had a number. number of them. Where are you at on Kenyon, Sadiq as a, as a prospect level, what does the Zapp score say about him? The Zapp model got a, like a makeover at tight end, this offseason. And there's some really interesting stuff in it. Like, like I always use this example, just that people can wrap their heads around it. Breakout score is still part of the, the inputs there, speed score at, tight end. But I think a lot of people just in draft capital, I think a lot of people just assume like, oh, you're big and fast and you had decent production, therefore you're going to be good.

But the way that interacts with draft capital is kind of interesting. The example I use is Michael Mayer versus Hunter Henry, where if you look at their numbers and their statistics and age-adjusted production, very similar. The difference in draft capital, very similar. The difference that Michael Mayer was more athletic than Hunter Henry. And I think a lot of people would say, oh, well, then we should draft Michael Mayer over Hunter Henry,

hypothetically. They weren't in the same draft class. we would draft Michael Mayer ahead of Hunter Henry or like him more because he's more athletic and they had similar age-adjusted production. The model actually likes Hunter Henry a decent bit more because draft capital is kind of capturing things that the model wouldn't necessarily be able to capture

like route running potentially, right? So there's these other factors where if a semi, you know, you don't want someone who's just a schlub, you know, getting drafted, you know, in the beginning of the second round or something like that. But if it's a player who is not, super, super athleticism, but is above average or average athleticism. He can look better than a player who has great athleticism because there's a reason that

team is going after them, that player in the NFL draft and drafting him there. Now, Kenyon Sadiq is the case where the athleticism is there. The draft capital is going to be there. The production profile is just okay to above average, right? There's some reasons for that, you know, that he played with, you know, Terrence Ferguson, for instance, and he had other competition within that offense. But I do think that the model probably likes him a little bit too much because I think that it's not showing the volatility as much. And you can see that in his statistical comps. Noah, Fant, OJ. Howard, Evan Ingram, where the thing with tight end comps, though, is that they often are going to be worse than running back and wide receiver comps because the tight end position, you only get, how many elite tight ends have we really had over the last 10 years? Like eight of them, you know? Like it's just the same guy. So it's really hard to find like, oh, you're really.

your comp to just an unbelievably good player. The fact that he has Evan Ingram is actually not a bad thing at all. Like that's a good outcome at the tight end position in fantasy football. So I like Sadiq. The other thing that I want to point out here is that, yes, there are flaws to his profile for a guy who is going, like you said, probably going to go in the top 20. But this class in general across all positions is so weak that I still think he's a mid first rounder in rookie drafts because the rest of the, unless we see some surprises,

you know, a wide receiver or landing spots. We really like it running, but whatever the case may be, I think because of that, he's still a mid-ish type rookie pick, first round rookie pick just because the rest of the positions just aren't that great. Yeah, I think that's a really good way of putting it. And I think Sadiq, the high-end outcomes for him are really, really good. Some NFL coordinator is going to figure out how to utilize this athleticism.

Also, he's from Idaho. He's 21 years old. So he's a younger prospect who's sort of, of just this meteoric rise. And like you said, at Oregon, there's been a couple of things where there's been, certainly have been a number of NFL teammates there. And we haven't really seen any tight ends with immense production coming out of this school. So I am very into Sadiq, and I think he's a player that as a dynasty manager,

especially in tight end premium, if you don't want to dive into which wide receiver should I select at like the 107, just take Kenyon Sadiq. I think it's perfectly fine. I'm also super excited about Eli Stowers. And we've talked about this on fantasy points. There's only been three SEC tight ends who have gone over 60 receptions in a season, Brock Bowers, Evan Ingraham, and now Eli Stowers. Stowers and both of those guys had 110 plus catch season at the NFL level.

So Stowers is an elite company in terms of production and then backs it up at the combine with if there was no Kenyan Sadiq, everyone would have been talking about Eli. They were talking about him. But the next day it would have been like, oh my gosh, did you see what Eli Stowers did at the combine? The vertical leap, the 40, the broad jump. And he also measured in at 240 and it was a player that we were worried could end up being like a 235 pound or 230 pounders. So Stowers, I'd say that there's the analytical fantasy community is even higher on Stowers than they are Sadeek because of the college. production. Where are you at on stores at the level of prospect? And how close is he to Sadiq for you

in terms of a one, two? Yeah, the problem with Stowers is that he is, is currently projected as a round two tight end. You know, like as much as I want to say draft capital doesn't matter. And like I want to like a player that goes round two more than round one to be edgy and interesting. It would be really hard for me. If current, you know, NFL mock draft database right now, Kenyon Sadeek 17th overall, Eli Stowers, 51st overall. You know, like that difference in draft capital is enough for them to be in separate tiers, in my opinion. Now, with that being said, he has a really good profile.

He had a better production profile than what we saw from Kenyan Sadiq. And, you know, his top two comps in the Zapp model, Sam Leporta, Mike Kisicki, I think are better than the top two comp. They're definitely better than the top two comps for Kenyon Sadiq and OJ Howard and Noah Fant. And then obviously you get Evan Ingram and then Luke, Luke, Musgrave was Stowers third. But I think his comps, like the way that we feel like the comfort in drafting him,

I think is why people have sort of gravitated towards him more. But I always go back. And I keep going back to the fact that like we're working off of smaller samples with tight end because there aren't as many successful tight ends in the NFL from the standpoint of they don't see as much volume as wide receivers do. And there's just fewer of them. And then we also only start one of them in a normal fantasy league. So we just have fewer players in general at tight end.

end to really comp off of. And what I don't want to fall victim to is looking at past performance so tightly and saying Kenyon Sadiq is going to bust because all of these other players, four or five of them, who have similar profiles also busted and then say, I'm going to like Eli Stowers more because Sam Leporta and Mike Kisicki, I just, there's, it's a little bit too small of a sample for me to work off of. I'm not going to hate on anyone who likes him more because I think there's some valid reasons to feel that way.

But from my own process, the way that I look at things, I still am going to go Sadeke over Stowers. I still think they're like a tier apart. But I think Stowers is a first round rookie pick, like in every format. Because super, like the funny thing is like superflex versus non-superflex this year, just one dude basically at this point. That's right. You're like, like, so it really doesn't change that much when we say every format.

It's like, okay, well, there's, there's only one extra player that we're really dealing with here. But yeah, I had them, I had them ranked in the, in the first round whenever I came out the prospect guide, and I would assume it's going to be fairly close to that. You know, something like he'll probably fall a little bit just because we'll find some wide receivers and running backs in the right spot and better draft capital and such. But I still think he's going to be a first round pick in rookie draft for me. I'm with you. And I think it's appropriate to say I like them both.

I don't think that's a cop out and making it part of your rookie draft strategy. Both of these guys look like players who could be instant tight end ones for us in Dynasty. I'll take the under 51 all day long on. the prospect database. Yeah. I think it's more likely than not he goes at 31 than 51. Someone's going to fall in love with that profile. And again, the environment is ripe where NFL teams, it's a copycat league.

You've seen multiple rookie tight ends sort of hit in a major way. I think he ends up going somewhere in the top 40. I would be pretty confident in that statement. You've got a few other tight ends as flex play guys. I know I like Justin Jolie. I like Michael Trigg. There's some Max Claire, Claire guys out there. Jacob Sanderson really likes Max Claire.

Sam Roush people really like a lot. Jack Endries, Brett Whitefield, likes a lot. So there's a big bucket of tight ends where is this the tight end three? There's a lot of arguments. Who's a guy that you like when you're looking at these next tight ends sort of in your Zapp model after the big two? Yeah, I'd call out two guys here. One of them's Oscar Delp after what he did at his pro day. You know, like pretty interesting profile even before all of that.

Now, he didn't look as good in the Zapp model, partially because his projected capital. Right now, it's 131, and it was even lower than that, I think, whenever we published the prospect guide, that's going to rise a lot. But if you look at his statistical comps, his top three, Jared Wiley, okay, not good. Chigacanquo and Julius Thomas were the other two, though. And so he's a pretty intriguing profile, had a really good, I mean, he's athletic, right? Coming from a big program, played with Brock Bowers. And so we, we know that a good tight end can come from from this type of program.

And so Delp, I think is kind of interesting now. Sam Roush is the other one that I want to call out just because he's just such a large human being. I mean, he got, he unsurprisingly got a Darnell Washington comp in the Zapp model as his top one. But he's 6-6-27, 91st percentile speed score, breakout score above the 60th percentile, decent agility numbers even at his size. It's just a really interesting profile. And then one of the other guys he comp to, he's, he's bigger than him was George Kittle. I saw, I saw that.

And I was like, okay. All right, JJ, you got me. You got me. Yeah, kind of interesting. And now, look, Brandon Gadula did a lot of the tight end, did all the tight end writeups in the guide this year. And then, you know, I was, I was kind of overseeing all the tight end stuff. And so, um, he worked so hard on like just getting this model to a great place and, you know, us working together on, on testing it and, uh, figuring out how to how to get the,

the best results here. And so we had a discussion about Roush, though. And I was like, I was like, so Kittles, kiddell's one of the guys. It's like, yeah. Like the way that we look at comps is that we're looking at the distance on certain metrics. And then it sort of sums up those distances and says, okay, here's the closest

comp. So sometimes you're going to get a guy who's a little bit lighter, a little bit heavier. Ideally, you get like I talked about with Mike Washington earlier with Latavius Murray where like things really, really align analytically. But it more than likely says with Rosh that he's kind of an outlier as just like a player and size, you know, size wise and such. But that's what makes them also kind of intriguing, too, is that he's just this behemoth who actually had a decent,

decent enough production profile in college, too. Yeah, the third best Raz score of all time and had a strong senior bowl week. And now your model is to run out the word George Kittle. So it's like a 6-6, nearly 270-pound tight end. None of the big fantasy producers right now are in that size range. They're all like that 6-4-240. So if you get an offensive coordinator, or can figure out how to use Rouse.

He could be a red zone monster. Very interested in reading about him. And I can't stress this enough. If you're enjoying my show, make sure you go check out JJ's website. Let me know once again where you can find the prospect guide. Yeah, everything's on late round.com. It's just click guides.

It'll show up and pretty easy checkout process. And yeah, like I said, once the draft is over, you will get that guide, not immediately after, but at least a couple hours after. There you go. And then make sure you're checking out School of Scott. next week. Rich Rebar is joining Scott and I. We're going to break it down. Sigmund Bloom's going to be on Dynasty Life. You can find that over on Fantasy Points Dynasty YouTube if you're watching this

on the main YouTube channel. And check out my most recent Fantasy Football Daily, had Matt Harmon on, talked about a couple of wide receivers who could break out next year. We're everywhere here at Fantasy Points. We're going to help you crush your leagues next season.