Fantasy Football Daily - School of Scott | Fantasy Football Theory Deep Dive with Shawn Siegele

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

Welcome to School of Scott, the ultimate fantasy football masterclass hosted by Scott Barrett of FantasyPoints.com. In this episode, Scott welcomes Shawn Siegele for a fantasy football deep dive. Where to find us: http://twitter.com/ScottbarrettDFB http://twitter.com/FantasyPts Find Our Podcasts Here - https://www.fantasypoints.com/media/podcasts#/ Age Curves Article By Ryan Heath - https://www.fantasypoints.com/nfl/articles/2024/age-curves-when-nfl-players-break-out#/ Use promo code SCOREMORE for 10% off your subscription. Dynasty Video Playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-kupTuz42SeHflK6fqOqKTxwqB2s46M6 Subscribe to FantasyPoints for FREE - https://www.fantasypoints.com/plans#/ All our podcasts are here - https://www.fantasypoints.com/media/podcasts#/ FantasyPoints Website - https://www.fantasypoints.com NEW! Data Suite - https://data.fantasypoints.com Twitter - https://twitter.com/FantasyPts Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/FantasyPts Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/FantasyPts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, you are listening to or watching School of Scott. It's my very own podcast where I don't post very frequently. I just kind of do whatever I want to do and what I wanted to do, very excited to do, is interview a fantasy football legend, the great Sean Siegel, author of the greatest, in my opinion, at the very least the most important article ever written, the inventor of the zero RB strategy from that article. Also, one of the best sharpest players I know. There's very few people potentially no one I respect more than Sean.

There's also no one I think I disagree with more often than Sean. And like time and time again in a dynasty league, I'm like, yikes. I don't know what he was doing there. or in the MFL 10 of death. I'm like, wow, that's a weird pick. And then lo and behold, we're always finishing the top three together, even though we have all these disagreements. Sean, thank you so much for coming on.

I can't tell you how legitimately, earnestly, excited I am to have this conversation with you. Well, yeah, this is going to be great. This is always one that I look forward to the most. We have a blast when we have you on OT. I think probably most of what you said there is undeserved, but I will say I make some weird picks. So we can definitely agree on that part of it.

I think the last time I had you on, I said something to the effect of, hey, Sean, I've got this new strategy I've been thinking through. You know, we just see in the current landscape, you know, the dearth of Belkow running backs, they're a dying breed. We see the rise of the committee back. We know running backs get injured more

than wide receivers. We've seen a number of really rough, underwhelming running back draft classes, but these amazing, uh, rookie wide receiver classes. I don't know that the NFL has ever had like a top six, top eight and, uh, wide receivers in the game that we have right now. So I'm, I'm thinking about just drafting like almost no running backs and calling it the, the no running back. What do you think about that, Sean? I like, but I, we got to, We got to talk about this. You were way ahead of the curve.

You, your article came out, what was it, 12 years now? Yeah, 2013. 11 years ago. I remember reading it shortly after it dropped on the beach in South Carolina and thinking to myself, this is like one of the best, this is the best article I've ever read. I like fell so much more in love with fantasy football after reading it. And of course, I went out and drafted a bunch of your RB team. and always held it in high esteem, but I have been a zero-r-be critic over the years.

I said, looking at the historical macro trends, like, I don't doubt you can win with this strategy. I just do not think it's optimal because running back is far and away the most important position in fantasy, highest-end running back's most valuable commodity in fantasy, and for the most part, ADP is pretty good at predicting who that's going to be. there were a few outlier years. There was that one, what was it, the Devanta Freeman goes nuclear year

where he was like the only, him and Levy on Bell maybe were the only good running backs and wide receivers went nuclear. I'm sure everybody got hurt to outside of Freeman, which really helps him separate. Because the scoring for him was still, it was very good, but it wasn't until the level of these Uber back types of players.

Yeah, I love that. You call it Uber back. I've been calling it Uber back because of you, Packerang calls it running backs with legendary upside. And so, yeah, there was that outlier season. And then for a while, I think you were taking some lumps. I was critical of it.

I was pro RBRB. And then you've really seen a changing of the guard. I think three years ago, according to my data, according to wins above replacement, according to a bunch of it. It was basically tied in terms of RBRB versus your RB or HeroRB, whatever. And then the last two years, oh boy, baby, zero RB or devaluing the running back position, far and away, the optimal approach. So what are your thoughts on this and where we stand today? Do you want to get your victory lap in?

I just want it to be known on the record. I've always been very pro zero RB in bestball. I'm talking specifically about manage leagues. Yeah, what do you think, is this, to me, it doesn't look like back to back. outlier seasons. It looks to be, you know, a tremendous amount of evidence of a shifting NFL landscape and this is the new reality of the NFL. But what are your thoughts? I mean, there's way more to get into an unpack there than we possibly can and do the questions that the listeners really want. But it's been fun to track because I think that the interesting thing is there are

different dynamics that make it dominant in redraft and make it dominant in bestball. Certainly the rise of best ball has in the ease of studying that has made it clear enough that then a lot of people want to chase it and then as a result it becomes more necessary and not less which is another interesting element to it but there's also going to be the case that we have gone through these cycles as you mentioned where after you know you kind of come to the conclusion of that amazing time period where you have guys like marshall falcon ladenian tomlinson and priest holmes who scored a level that is basically impossible, right? And you go through this long stretch where I think that zero RB was pretty dominant. And then you have this sort of like tiny little golden age

of the running back where you have the guys like a bell and a David Johnson, a Todd Gurley, where they have that hybrid profile where you can get 10 rush expected points a game. You can get 10 receiving expected points a game and get you to like a 20 point baseline. And then one of the interesting things about those two guys, they didn't always outperform in a huge way, but you also have some of these players with the ability to create chunk plays. And, you know, someone like an Alvin Camara, for example, who can put up massive numbers and fantasy points above expectation. And for me, if you're going to get a guy who's like a 10, 10 and 5 guy, 10 rush, 10 receive, and then five above expectation, I mean, that player is a pretty clear type of selection. And so we did have

a little bout in there where it would make some sense. And one of the things that I've tried to suggest over the past several years is that it's almost inevitable that we're going to have a year that is someone like 2016. Because you think of 2015 being this time period where I do think that after you have this running back apocalypse and people are more willing to adjust to what's probably the way to play and you get this ADP shift and then right on the heels of that, you have a massive bounce back season for running backs where they stay healthy and they score and then people again depending on exactly what type of thing you're looking at what you're trying to accomplish arguably play it

a little bit incorrectly for the next five years or so but it also matches up with this great scoring era for running backs so maybe it's not incorrect I think you're going to have another season like 2016 and that's one of the reasons why a couple days ago I put out a piece suggesting that there is like this back who was very good and has weird complaints about his profile coming off of a huge season last year. I think he could be the most undervalued. And like obviously undervalue play, not so much one where in retrospect you go back and be like, oh, well, I mean, he beat ADP by a lot, scored a lot of points, had a great win rate. But it's an obvious value that we maybe haven't had since Leshawn McCoy in 2016.

Now, in some ways, this one's even more obvious because this guy's coming off of a huge season, whereas McCoy had that little dip in that first year with Buffalo, then he goes on the rampage. He's drafted in the early third round, people who go running back, running back, running back, and have LaShawn McCoy as their third. And if you're playing in a 2-2 format where you can play up to four running backs, they're like, yeah, we crushed everybody because you get LaShawn McCoy in round three. I mean, there are some things like that that could potentially happen this year and will happen

at some point in the next four or five years. And then you're going to have some ADP. I don't know if correction is the right word exactly, but it's definitely going to change, right? But big picture, I mean, we're really looking at one guy who separates by so much. And then you have two players who could make the jump to that level, who have the right profile and they have that chunk play potential to where you could get 25 point per game season.

If you've got three guys who could score 25 points per game, I mean, we're probably in some ways inching back to that range where you have guys like Gurley and Johnson and Bell all there together. The problem is just, I mean, unfortunately, their backups are good. And the NFL is a little bit different. And so I worry that the Falcons and the Jets will knock the scoring on Robinson and Hall just enough so that we all come out of the season thinking, I mean, these dudes are unreal. But it didn't move the needle quite as much as we would have liked. liked in fantasy. So I want to ask you where exactly you're taking these big three running backs and how often you're adopting a zero running back approach in your drafts. But first,

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Yeah. So the way, this is something I loved about your approach to ZerRB is you fully acknowledge that, like, running back is the most important position in fantasy or highest end running backs are the most valuable commodity in fantasy. And, you know, part of the argument for ZERB, is just beyond that, there's not much of an impact. And you can find these outliers off of waivers. You can put up a tremendous amount of points, even if it's just for a few weeks because the starter

went down with an injury. But to me, I'm seeing, you call it Uberbacks, running backs of legendary upside. And we can get into sort of the individually what we think about these players. You talked about the RB2s behind them. I liked what you had to say about Breeze Hall, but I'm drafting the first three running backs, top three off the board. I think, you know, you're right, there's a shifting landscape. There's the rise of the committee backs. There's a decline in running back talent. There's a scarcity of bell cows. But to me, all that does is it just further enhances the value of the top three running backs. I get C.D. Lamb insane production last year, Tyreek Hill, in my opinion, maybe the greatest wide receiver ever.

But if you look at win rate data last year and start sit leagues, Christian McCaffrey, you know, outscored all other running backs by over 100 PPR fantasy points. 60% of all ESPN teams had McCaffrey in the finals. It was over twice as much as any other round one player. So to me, it should be McCaffrey, Brie, then Robinson is the top three picks. But then I fully comfortable punting RB2 after that, or even if I miss out on those top three, taking more of his zero RB approach, kind of waiting until deeper into the draft before grabbing a running back and not even really taking a quantity

approach until maybe the double digit rounds. That's personally what I'm doing. But what are you doing with those top three? How do you have it? It's going to depend a lot on the format and what the requirements are. I think anytime that you're playing in a home league yeah, I should mention like 90% of home leagues or start two wide receiver and two running back one flex, not even three wide receiver, which in the leagues we play is far more common. And so the other element there is just that the receivers you really want to target the most fun breakout candidates, they fall so much that it, I mean, you're going to get your receivers. there's so little penalty.

If you can get exposure to one of those top running backs, I think you have to do it. If you're in a deeper league with multiple flexes, the thing that you- I think FFPC. Right. And so we want to really- And that's only start two wide receiver. Right. So we have two, two and two.

One of the things that's interesting is that because running backs have fallen so much, you have this dual dynamic where now it's not as. obvious that wide receivers are going to give you a scoring advantage in the flex related to where they're drafted. And at the same time, similar running backs are so cheap later that there is virtually no punishment for waiting. And so you kind of have to balance those two things as you're going through the draft. For me, one of the keys for zero RB has always been that if you take running backs in the

second half of the first round and the first half of the second round, and the first half of the second round unless you honestly believe and there are cases where like the best guy does fall one of the girly seasons he fell one of the mcalfrey seasons he fell there are occasionally guys you can get but i mean you have to believe you're drafting a profile that really wins if you're simply chasing points and trying to fill the spot you're going to get killed and the other thing that you then do is you push down the next most valuable players you push down those really exciting receivers to the guys who already drafted the good running backs so part of it is a matter of you have to have a good plan for dominating out of 9 through 12 and almost always that is taking these

star receivers now the flip side of it for 2024 is that I think you could argue that once you get into that 9 10 11 12 13 etc range that the receivers look more like you're chasing than they ever have I don't know that there are great running back options to help you out so you sort of have a problem right you're like I just wish I had a different draft slot but you want to at least keep those things front of mind when you're looking at it. For me, I think that in redraft, you have a pretty clear top five. Jamar Chase is somebody that I don't want to miss on after we have witnessed that rookie season. But the flip side of it is that his profile the last several years is really not that great

when you're thinking about trying to match him up with these guys he's going in the same range with. You'd really almost prefer Amman Ra and Justin Jefferson, but then you have the quarterback issue with Jefferson. you have this just incredibly elite cast of characters in Detroit. And while I always tend to fade, you know, team volume concerns, there is a point at which your ceiling just has to be slightly lower. And so when you look at the problems for Chase, St. Brown, and Jefferson, for me then, when we're talking about potentially getting 25 point per game seasons from Hall

and Robinson and PPR, I mean, I think they probably slide in there at 4. and five and then there's a tier break and so it's not just that they're four and five but the three of the top five guys in redraft probably are running backs yeah i i love it can't really disagree also like i think you could win with either approach pretty easily there's no wrong pick you can make there so how often are you going zero rb yourself is there any is there any running back maybe going rounds two or three you're willing to make an exception for we have a a pretty big split here in terms of terms of the guys who just like right off the bat look like dead zone running backs. And I've had a lot of people give me a hard time for referring to Sequin

Barkley as a dead zone running back because he's going above the dead zone. Well, you don't want to pay extra, right, for a guy who has a dead zone profile. I was like, don't be tricked by the fact that he's going at the one two turn. This player has serious problems with their profile. So you have players like that and players that are much worse than Barclay as well, the people that are more easily identifiable with the dead. zone. But at the same time, you've got guys like Kyron Williams, Travis E.TN, Devon, A. Chan, where either the profile or the talent is extreme. And so if the situation cleared up,

then I mean, you're off to the races. I think any time that you are looking at guys with that much talent, if you feel like you're in a flat spot at receiver and all you'd really be accomplishing by drafting a wide receiver would be able to say you drafted a wide receiver. because on your own board, you legitimately have enough depth that the guy you're looking at in round six or seven does a similar thing for you. Then you could make that pick of a running back

that you think is really talented. We have a similar thing a little bit farther down with Kenneth Walker where, you know, are the Seattle Seahawks going to create enough of a pie? You know, is this going to be a good offense? And then can he hold Charbonnet back? I mean, Charbonnet was one of the guys I thought was very overhyped last year.

It would just set unfair expectations for who he was. And I think it was similar with Tank Bigsby. Both of those guys, though, as post-hyped candidates, even though they're just going to their second years, are interesting because they could actually maybe do a little bit more damage this year than they did last year. I say that only to note that, I mean, Walker's going where he's going for a reason, but his talent is just absolutely off the charts.

Those are the kind of guys where I think you want to occasionally get some exposure. I love it. I think all that makes sense to me. It seems like you kind of approach this in a similar way to myself, where it's, you know, what's the optimal strategy? It really depends on where the value is. And that could be dependent upon where exactly you're drafting. You know, your approach at the 111 is going to be different than the 103 because there's going to be different players available to you there. You mentioned it earlier. We were talking about redraft leagues, right? And so it's like, like you can look at running back and you could say, oh, my goodness, look at how late Jonathan Brooks is going or look at where Devon A chain is going or at TN or Kenneth Walker. It's like, yeah, clearly it makes sense to wait at running back, but you can do the same thing at the wide receiver position. You can, Malik Neighbors is a top 25 overall player for me and he's going round six on Yahoo. I just checked it yesterday. Still, still like round six, early round six. And yeah, so I think really ultimately you can win with either approach.

And it seems like you're more or less saying the same thing. Yeah. The thing that you want to do is make sure that you are skewing all of the outcomes in your favor as you're moving through, that you understand where your tiers are, that you're trying to hit the end of tears and create upside through that. And it's fun to have that as a puzzle and to be looking at the draft in a dynamic fashion as opposed to thinking, I have to go running back, running back, or I have to take six receivers to start. Individual formats are going to lean one way or another a little bit. And certainly depending on formats and depending on draft slots, I'm going to lean one way or the other.

But your overall approach has to fit the circumstances of that draft. The majority of people who like subscribe to the site just for my little draft plan, draft guide article, are people in their home leagues or doing multiple of those. and something I tell all of them to do is like know where you're you're drafting and then plot out your perfect draft. So if you have the 102, you know you have the 102 and then you have the 23 and then you have the 25. What is that? And then you just like go down and just like see the players available to you and try and plot out your perfect draft but also do the mock draft and do many mock drafts. And so like do a mock draft where you go full on zero or B. Do a mock. Do a mock draft.

draft where you go rb-r-r-b do mock draft where you just go best player available and you see what teams you like the most but it's also like hey in a worst-case scenario you know you're going to have a plan in place you're going to know what to do if you do take to do decide to take or force to take a zero-r-b approach so i'm glad we talked about this uh i think it's a fascinating topic zero-r-b never been more relevant than it is today and also again in bestball i just think think zero RB is or a hero RB is very close to optimal, but really you want to be devaluing running back, especially RB2. Scott, in the apex experts draft, yeah, I selected Kyron Williams at the 307 after I believe 25

wide receivers have done. That's, well, that's why your Twitter handle, which you never use is FF contrarian. You are such a contra. people always ask me what my political views are and I say I'm a contrarian. They're like, what does that mean? I'm like, well, what are your political views? And I'm like, oh, I'm a Democrat. I'm a conservative.

I'm a libertarian. I'm like, oh, well, I'm the opposite of that. Just I love it. But it's like that's also where the value is. You know, you just you read Charlie Munger, Seth Klarman, Warren Buffett, though I'll tell you like all the value, all the money, the prize is the opposite direction of where the herd is headed. But yeah, yeah.

And so that's kind of what you have to do yourself. All right. So this was, I just wanted to have a nice little chat here about zero RB. Also, also my take my lumps for being too late to adopt as your RB because I think I was, I was on board last year for the most part. But the year before that, I was an Arden RBRB in an amazing year for ZERB. So how to get that out in the open. And now we can move to the more formulaic component of this show.

I had a list of questions that I'm going to ask you and I'm going to ask my next few guests before the season starts. And the first one is just a general, when something you can't stop thinking about, what's something maybe you've written about or when you haven't, something that's crucially important, or just something that's maybe flying under the radar that people need to know about

or just something you wanted to pick my brain on. So fairly open ended. What's something you can't stop thinking about? Well, yeah, I do want to pick your brain on this. And my question, the part that I can't stop thinking about, is this element of running back deflation and the running back dead zone and where it moves to. And if it's now okay to draft bad running backs because they're going so late. and I think the most obvious places that we're looking at there are the Dallas Cowboys and the Los Angeles Chargers.

But we do additionally have some other backfields like the Cleveland Browns and arguably the Washington commanders, some places where you're getting the nominal starter really late. And yet that starter has either no moat or an offense that is just so, skewed against running back scoring, but if there's any kind of committee, you're just going to wish you had somebody else. I think that's a great question. Yeah, let me just right off the top, let me just say I'm like a nihilist when it comes to, I guess, like, macro trends. And maybe maybe you're part of this because of how how much zero RB has crushed over the last two years. I don't think dead zones are real. I think every season is its own unique special snowflake.

I think the micro is the macro, which means the macro is irrelevant. Every year I write this article anatomy of a league winner, every year it gets nominated for an award. And I didn't write it this year. I just wrote like a super abridged version that came out today. But I just didn't feel like it was necessary to waste my time. Like, how should you draft? What position should you target?

What dead zone should you avoid? I just feel like it's entirely dependent on where the ADP value is. And so you brought up Dallas Cowboys backfield. You brought up Chargers backfield. I would throw maybe Devin Singletary into that mix. Maybe Giovante into that mix. Maybe. When you throw Javonte in, are you throwing him in because he's questionable

or because they have so many guys or both? Let me just say, I'm getting some very slight 2022, to Josh Jacobs vibes on Javante, where it's like you could see him being the guy, maybe the offense, or he himself does better than you think. Amazing collegiate profile, according to like at least my research. And then he had that injury,

which is an injury which should take an extra year to come back from. You slim down by all accounts he looks great. I'm a big estimate guy. I loved Estimate. You know, Jaliel McLaughlin, there's excitement there. We know this is in the Sean, Peyton backfield ranks top two and total PPR fantasy points every year ever. But it is typically a committee.

I think there's a chance. I think even if it is a committee, he can beat his ADP. I think maybe we're overstating the odds that it's a committee. But it's just another one of these sort of gross guys who maybe is a better bet to beat ADP or might have more upside than we think. Or are you thinking about this all in a different way? Well, I'm trying to, for myself, but also get a feel from you on whether you think there's a difference between, and obviously there's a difference, but how does it manifest in fantasy between a backfield that may have five good running backs, and that's obviously problematic in the Denver Broncos, but is going to score a lot of running back points versus backfields like the Chargers and the Cowboys who have, say, three really weak. starting candidates and might not score many running back points.

Now, I guess I'm a little bit more enthusiastic about the Chargers, but then, I mean, that's the other reason I brought the commanders in. Robinson was actually the guy that I had nominated to be like the 2023 version of Josh Jacobs last year. And I mean, he didn't hit that, but he had a nice season. Yeah. You look at the peripherals. He's probably, you know, an okay starter.

And then you look at Echler and he's probably an okay compliment. they have some unfortunate overlaps and you just wouldn't expect that backfield to score money running back points. So is a backfield like the Broncos with a lot of interesting guys better or worse from a fantasy perspective than one like the Chargers and the Cowboys where one of the things that I keep saying to people, and I'll probably be wrong because it is a little bit of a narrow path to draw to. But in addition to these guys that we're choosing between for these offenses, we could easily not

have the actual starter even on their rosters yet. Hey, that's a great point because that has burned me in the past. What was it? Sophomore junior season when, you know, they signed Levion Bell off the street or whatever team it was that signed Leonard Frenet off the street. I was on whoever was their RB1 at the time. So that's something you have to factor in. And so like ultimately it's always dependent upon cost.

But, you know, looking at the cost, I think what's the most likely scenario for the Dallas Cowboys is like a gross. two-way, potentially even three-way committee backfield where Rico Dattle, let's say, leads the team in rushing yards, but it's Zique Elliott who leads in snaps and dominates near end zone work. But like Dattle's free in Home League, so I think that's a worthy dart. You look at the Chargers. Yeah, my friend who was at Chargers training camp was saying, dude, Jake Ed Dobbins looks unbelievably good. And they the team seems to think he's their starter. And so if it's him who's like even cheaper, even Gus Edwards where it's just a bet on like,

well, the other guy probably gets hurt because he's always hurt. It's just how often do you get the lead back, even if it's a committee, for the team that seems likely to, or a team that wants to lead the league and carries. And then for the Broncos, I mean, I don't think we're going to see a five-way committee backfield. And you look at Sean Payton committees, like even with Alvin, Kamara heavily involved, like Mark Ingram was valuable. And so I think, I think maybe we're overstating how much of a committee that might be. To me, he's just, I mean, to me, a lot of these guys are, you know, maybe underrated upside or they're just like valuable innings eaters.

If you did take a zero RB approach and you need more of that quality or quantity over quality. But I think it comes down to price, but like, doubtle's free. I'm on that. Dobbins is so cheap and like, what, he ranks third best all time and career yards per carry? Like, what if he stays healthy? And like, hey, you'll find out week one if he's dusty or not. And, you know, so Javante, you know, it just seems safe to me.

You know, like, I know there's not, we've talked about this. There's like really not much value at all on like a low end RV too. But maybe there is if you take like a super zero or B approach. But I don't know. You're the one who brought this up. And so it's a topic you can't stop thinking about. It's one I probably haven't thought about enough. So what do you think?

Well, I think the notes there on Dobbins are interesting in part. He's a player this difficult for me because I've had a lot. And at a certain point, it does get a little bit difficult just emotionally beyond everything else to keep going back to the well. But I guess I don't understand his price as we continue to get positive information as it would contrast with, say, a Dowdell or an Elliott or an Edwards or, as you mentioned, a Singletary. Certainly, it doesn't really seem like Jerome Ford should still be going where he's going. Too high or too low?

Too high. Yeah. And it doesn't seem, again, a lot of this is going to come down to them personal preference. But it's interesting to think about some of those names versus like a Blake Corum, the trade Benson who if you draft them in a deep league you're going to be sitting on that for a while if you draft them in a shallow league you're going to be cutting them in a couple weeks there are guys you know two three four rounds later who are similar plays and so if you are drafting in an ffPC main event or a deep home league that round nine 10 11 pick which i mean one of

the things that's both good and bad about a home league is that you can almost say that by the time you get even to round nine, your picture is somewhat irrelevant. You're going to be cutting guys. There's going to be a deep free agent pool, that type of thing. But in a 20 roster spot league, you really don't, and one of the things too, one of the reasons why it's so easy to say that about the home leagues is even big picture, almost any league, you get into the double digit rounds and we're vastly overconfident in terms of what we're going to get from a production perspective. But you also don't want to be filling your roster with holes or players that a couple of weeks in you're like, I just could have used that pick much more effectively,

either getting volume I could use now or getting a better contingent play. So from that perspective, you know, when you're looking at guys like Corum and like Benson, who probably don't have much early value, at least the value if it hits is meaningful, whereas the value from some of these, again, borderline starters, is just never going to be someone you want to put in the starting lineup. Yeah, I don't know.

I guess I was viewing it the other way. I'm very like anti-handcuff, but maybe this this changes on ff PC versus a home league but i just like want to grab the cheapest because you can't predict injuries i know you can predict upside but i feel like you know like tyron tracy's free and like comparable upside to maybe some of those other names um because you could also win the starting job yeah yeah for sure um but i just mean you can get cheaper handcuffs later so again it's like sort of a micro thing but with givante like well i feel like we'll know right away if he's valuable or not.

And if he is just like dead roster weight, you can cut him the same as, you know, quorum's probably going to get cut by an impatient owner in week three if he is at a 30% snap share. Like Tank Bigsby all last year was dead weight. Zach Charbonnet all last year was dead weight. Whereas like J.K. Dobbins, I think you know right away. Doubtle you might even know right.

It's like a 50-50 committee. Okay. Like maybe there's something there. And like Zeeke has three yards per carry. He is 4.5 yards for carry week. Who knows, but that's sort of, that's sort of how I'm thinking about it. I think you kind of get your answer right away,

and there's value in that. But go ahead. No, you go ahead. We might. We might. It's one of the things that we do see, and you think back to a couple years ago with Rashad Penny, where he was such a difference maker in best ball,

but he was completely non-existent in managed, high stakes leagues because he had been cut after the deadline to be able to be picked back up. And so that far into the season, we had no idea the Rashad Penny was going to light the world on fire just a couple weeks later and dominate the fantasy playoffs. Him and Amun Ross St. Brown both that year. But we're overdue for an ad break. But then I'm going to ask you for some less draft players, which I know is what everyone wants to hear.

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Help yourself. Mmm, designed for indulgence. Precision crafted to navigate every corner of my mouth. All for just $18. Okay, okay. Try the season's hottest flavors from the PC Holiday Insiders report. Please feast responsibly. All right, Sean, give me your number one must draft player, if you can.

If you want to pay while that, I understand. We're big fans of RotaViz. I'll give you a chance to plug a promo code at the end of the show. Or you can just do it, squeeze it in right now. No one's going to yell at you for that. But your number one must draft player. And if you can't give me that, then if you do give me that, plug the promo code. If you can't give me that, just give me your number one, zero RB target.

because so many, so many times, Sean, I've, like, read your article. There's your number one zero RB. And I'm like, what? What? This guy. What? And then lo and behold, you know, week 14 on, he puts up, you know, high in RB2 numbers. So what are you going to give me, Sean?

Well, Scott, we've got our training camp discount going. And I wanted your listeners to get a special additional $10 off by using the coupon code, Scott. It should be very easy. everyone's going to be able to do that. The number one player to draft is Xavier Worthy. Oh, okay. So folks at home, you guys got to make me look good. We're big fans of Rodeviz.

We're big fans of Sean. All the great work we're doing over there. So if they make a promo code with my name on it, you guys better use it. Show them some love. Xavier Worthy. Okay. So my issue with this, Sean, is I'm all in on Rishi Rice. But here's what I'll say about Xavier.

the clear now because their free agent acquisition, sadly because he actually pretty good, but like always is one of my guys, one of my all-time my guys, every year Hollywood Brown and every year gets hurt and look at that. Well, he's hurt yet again. So last year, I had my rookie running back article come out and pre-draft. And I had Devon A-chain, I think RB4. But I said, I said, like, he'd be RB2 if he goes to the dolphins. If he goes to the dolphins, may God have mercy on our souls. He went to the dolphin, dolphins. And then he had the most efficient season of any rookie or any running back ever with as many touches as he had.

And so pre-draft writing the Xavier worthy thing is like, I have this concern and I have this concern. Maybe he goes to the dolphins or he goes to especially the chiefs. May God have mercy on our souls. Because I talk about, the primary thing is, you know, BMI. I don't know where you stand on BMI, but I talk about the concerns on BMI and how maybe that's no longer an issue. But like the one thing you can really do to mitigate that is heavy use of motion. I also talk about how you say if you're worthy was a screen god in college.

And, you know, that's how they used Rishi Rice, who like very limited, very small, Routree, sort of raw prospect coming out, but superstar in part because of that screen usage. Kansas City Chiefs top five in motion last year, that's going to help get him free access off the ball, mitigate the size concerns, and really utilize his speed. They also need a deep threat. They've really lost that element of their passing game. And so I'm not, I feel like I'm not high enough on him. I think I have him wide receiver 39, wide receiver 40 in my rankings.

So you have to tell me where you're at on him and why I should be so much higher than I am. Well, you have him right about an ADP, if not maybe a spot or two below, which. Oh, come on. What a mistake that is, right. What I think you want to do is you want to get him just before his ADP, obviously, don't necessarily elevate him up multiple rounds and burn picks that you don't have to. At the same time, this offense sets up, I think, for both Rice, and worthy to hit.

And so I don't think it's one or the other. Maybe you don't get them on the same team, but you can definitely draft both of them as you go through your redraft portion of the season here. What you discussed there, I think is exactly right and that it's the perfect team for the chiefs. I don't necessarily have the same NFL connections that you might, but do hear whispers that it were the teams who use motion,

the teams that are forward-thinking, the teams that understood the value of having a guy catch a ball and take it the distance, to be able to do the kinds of things that A. Chan, for example, does in the running game, and then obviously they can get with Tyree Kill and some of those other guys, that those are the teams that wanted worthy and saw the value in that profile. There's a little bit of a concern always if you think a guy is a manufactured touch guy and a vertical touch guy because you do want the player to be able to do the other parts of it.

But I think that we can get lost in what the volume actually might be for worthy. Travis May, you know, several years ago, and you think about this is the same group of guys that has Marvin Harrison and Malik neighbors, right, as this class, that Xavier Worthy had the best freshman season of all time. And then you end up having some other circumstances in years two and three, where in year two, the air conversion was incredibly low, in part, in my understanding, because of some hand injuries and some things like that. But he actually went back as a sophomore and put up an indefinitely. insane total in terms of air yards. We love to have that volume of target depth in addition to just the targets that he's going to draw. Then he comes back in year three because they have Adnanai Mitchell and they actually do use

him underneath some more. I mean, basically what Xavier Worthy is you're getting a little bit of a mix of, you know, no one's going to be Tyree Kill, but you're going to be able to do some of those same things, but also especially early be able to do some of the Cole Hardin things that they actually were able to do with him some as a. a rookie before things mature and they're like, well, this guy's terrible. We want to really go in a different direction. If you can get those manufactured touches for him, if you can get behind the defense, but you also get him to intermediate level free to catch and run. You're talking about

three level dominance and more volume, I think, than people, certainly than people have packed into the ADP, but the potential to have this like truly amazing rookie season. I think Rishi Rice is going to be good. The chiefs are interesting because, Because like a truly great team with a great coach and an all-time great quarterback, they're not sitting back and saying, okay, we went back-to-back Super Bowls. We've got it all figured out. They're saying our offense was terrible last year by our standards. If we're going to give ourselves the best chance to win three, we've got to dramatically improve.

And I think they've set themselves up to do that. Yeah, you know what's telling too? So we've heard this time and time again that Andy Reid's offense is, notoriously tough on rookies. Like, look at Rishi Rice. Like, he was top 10 and yards for route run from, first three weeks of the season, first five weeks of the season, first seven weeks of the season.

But it took about until like week nine until he really cleared like a 50, 60% route share. And you saw that with Sky Moore, couldn't get him on the field. But what are you seeing with week one of preseason? We haven't seen week two yet as a recording. But week one of preseason, he was a starter. He was on the field. quite a bit. He was being used in motion, which is exactly what we want to see. So maybe there's a different learning curve or a different trajectory than some of the other wide receivers we've seen.

McColl Hardman was another example. I think that's certainly the case. And, you know, draft capital trading up to do that with the bills, which, yeah, I mean, obviously I think we see that coming back to haunt them. So I just pulled it up in the Fantasy Points data suite. And so really what was the Achilles heel of the Chief's offense? We remember in the Tyreek Hill glory days, you know, dropping back to past Mahomes chucks at 30 yards. Tyreek catches it, takes it to the house. This has been an entirely different offense.

And part of this is, you know, teams playing more too high coverage against them. But I just pulled it up in the Fantasy Points data suite. Last year, Patrick Mahomes threw deep 64 times. He had only 17 completions, 27%. 27%. He had six interceptions. Only one deep passing touchdown all year. That is so bad. I think Baker Mayfield or three different quarterbacks were at 11.

Derek Carr had 11 deep passing touchdowns. Patrick Mahomes had one. Eric Carr was a pretty good vertical passer last year, a little bit under the radar. Yeah. No kidding. Seriously. I did not expect that. But yeah, you can check that on the Fantasy Points Data Suite.

And so maybe this is the cure to what ails them. I also think this is still bullish for my guy. Having that speed on the perimeter can help open up Rishi Rice in the short to intermediate levels of the field. But folks, if you see me, you see Xavier Worthy skyrocketing up my rankings, you know why. I have Sean to thank for that. Can you give us a few more names in the show notes? It's supposed to be one at each position.

But I kind of want to just cut to the chase here. I need to know your super gross must draft late round zero. RB target. Who's the, who's either the best or the grossest or the grossest and best? Well, if we want the grossest, then I think you have to go. I made the case that Sequin Barkley is a dead zone back, even though he's going at the one two turn. And one of the reasons is that the Eagles offense is not set up to amplify his particular scoring profile. And then his peripherals have actually been pretty bad the last several years, other than the ability to create the big play, which I think is underrated in anybody that you want as a skill player.

And there's reason to believe the Eagles obviously toward the top of NFL and block metrics, the Giants are for the bottom. If the thing you can do is create a big play and now your offensive line is much better, that's very bullish for Saquan Barkley. So in some ways, my argument might be exaggerated. But the flip side of that is that if I'm going to say that, then it's going to be gross to come back and tell you that Will Shipley is the guy. but Will Shipley is the guy, right?

I mean, his rushing peripherals last year and the committee he found himself in last year in college was gross. But you look at the first couple of years, you look what he is as a receiver, you look at the athleticism that he brings to the table. He has the same problem in that the Eagles have both brought in backs

where if you threw them the ball, they would be awesome. But the offense probably won't. And yet at the same time, the other reason that I'm a little bit skeptical of Berkeley is I think that people are going to be surprised at how at this stage of Berkeley's career, We're not talking about rookie Barclay, who was one of the greatest running backs of all time. At this stage of his career, the difference between him and Will Shipley, probably not that much.

I was hoping you would say this because to me, this looked like the grossest name. And I peaked at your rankings. There were some disagreements, but there were also a lot of players I thought I was crazy low on. You were even lower on. And so Saquan Barclay was definitely one of those. But I'm with you. I'm never drafting him at cost. But yeah, Will Shipley to me, it's like, oh, I don't know, it seems like Gainwell is the RB2, and he's redundant to gain well.

And, you know, he was in a committee last year. But I mean, he has tremendous upside based on this collegiate profile. Like you said, there is the athleticism, tremendous amount of athleticism. There is what he did as a sophomore where he had 210 carries, 38 receptions. And so, yeah, like, I'm not going to, I'm not. going to trash this at all just because your track record on names going super late, I think are super gross that end up hitting is tremendous. So there it is folks.

Will Shipley is going to ship tournaments in 2024 because he has the Sean Segal stamp of approval. And this man does not miss the gross or the name, the more likely it is to hit. We're going to take our last commercial break. and we're going to get to a few more names. All right. Give me a few more, Sean. Any position, anyone you want to talk about.

Well, I wanted to ask you, you've got the question here of one player, good or bad, keeping you up at night. The guy who keeps me up is Jerry Judy, right? You've got this, obviously he's a superstar in college. You go back and look and you think about it in the context of what Devante Smith and Jalen Waddle are doing. You have a rookie season,

or he was seventh in the NFL in Air Yards. you have a second year injury, but where the yards per route run was still above a lot of guys who are going fairly early in drafts right now. As a third year player, you have a guy who does hit, well, we tend to use that Rodeviz as the breakout level, but someone who was ninth in fantasy points over expectation. He was number nine in yards after catch per reception. SIS had him as number two in the entire NFL and points above average per route on deep targets. He was way better than Cortland Sutton.

And then you come back in 2022 and Sean Payton sees Russell Wilson play for a month. And he's like, we are shutting things down. We are not going to throw the ball at all anymore. And then he gets traded to the Cleveland Browns. They give him a decent amount of money. Now, the amount of money maybe isn't that much in the new environment for receivers where people who are under contract for multiple years are like, I'm holding out for another $50 million because you know you're paying people but i mean this is a guy who if you didn't have

the sort of emotional sense of what he's actually done to fantasy managers which that's what matters right fantasy points i think he would easily come out and say this guy is better than amari cooper you get a bounce back from deshawn watson then he's off to the races but scott i mean he may be the softest wide receiver in the NFL. He is like basically not practiced yet. And you know he's going to like have he's going to turn his ankle on the first play and be out for a month. He's going to not catch any touchdowns. What are you supposed to do with a guy here where you're looking like this is the best value by like three or four rounds in the entire draft. And yet I'm going to draft him and I'm going to feel like an idiot because he's already demonstrated what the key flaws are that keep him

from being fantasy relevant. Yeah. This is why I love having you on is you have like the most unique takes. You have such bold takes. You have the takes that no one else has. But like you hear them. You're like, you're making some great points.

I never would have guessed Jerry Judy was the player that was keeping you up at night. But I, you know, when you spin it like that, I get it. Let's not forget when this player was coming out, the debate in the dynasty community and among like film experts was Cidilam or Jerry Judy. one of these guys is a superstar. The Raiders were having their own separate conversation,

but we wouldn't get into that. I had CDLAM one, but I had it as basically tied. I love their collegiate profiles for both of them. I thought they would be, you know, PPR superstars. You know, he just signed this contract. Remember Christian Kirk signed that deal, making him like a top five or top 10 highest paid wide receiver in the NFL. We're all like, oh, that's crazy. Jerry Judy now basically, makes the exact same amount as him. And so I haven't done nearly as much research into Jerry Judy as I should, but I was planning to get to it next week where over the next few weeks, we're launching some new tools and

stats to the data suite. As be on the lookout for ass, Sean Siegel. It's average separation score, also route win rate, where we look at every wide receiver on every route in every game, every single wide receiver. And so I saw Jerry Judy popping in a few of those. I saw him, I think, ranking best in the league in ass on horizontally breaking routes, which is what Cleveland needed last year. I also remember in 2022.

So cover one is a coverage shell where very predictive of like, oh, this is an elite separator. This is a great route runner. Typically, all of the studs are dominant against cover one. He led the league in 2022, 5.1 yards for route run against cover one, against all other covered shells. He was 1.85. I know many also thought he was slot only early in his career, but hasn't entirely been used slot only. So I need to dig into that. I need to dig into a bunch of different stuff with him.

Also the injuries, clouding are samples. But yeah, now that you mention it, I think he's a lot trickier than he's getting credit for, which is just like he's a bus, but, you know, it's a brand new change of C. Maybe he is more talented than Amari Cooper at this age and stage of his career. Good shout. Yeah, this is something I need to give way more thought on. And I wasn't prepared to talk too deeply about. Well, it's encouraging to hear those things.

Some of the other advanced metrics also suggest he gets open at will. And that was the thing, you know, back to at Alabama or he's up against all of these speed demons. And everybody's like, you know, the guy who separates is Jerry Judy and the numbers, tracked that. He was wide open for that flurry of good quarterbacks. They had the other thing when you look at Jerry Judy is that as bad as you think his quarterback play has been in the course of his career, I guarantee you it has actually been worse when you go and look at the numbers. And so, I mean, that hurts him. But similar to Kendra Miller, like, you've got to practice

at some point if you want to play an NFL games and score fantasy points. Yeah, no kidding. I still have some friends at PFF. I used to work there if you guys don't know that. And one of them charts every single Broncos game. And so I like, I was higher than consensus on Jerry Judy just about every year of his career. And part of that is because my guy is charting every Broncos game, but it's not a Broncos homer is saying Jerry Judy gets open at will. And I'm like, all right, then why aren't the fantasy points there? And it's like, Drew Locke, for whatever reason, only targets him when he's not open and doesn't even look in his direction when he's wide open or it's, you know, it's just, he's not getting catchable targets or he's not what else, blah, blah, blah. I know people have also heard this

with Elijah Moore over the years, but I've heard the same thing. Jerry Judy gets open at will. He's way more talented than he gets credit for. But like you said, he's also very fragile. So yeah, good shout on that. You have a few more names for me, Sean? Well, do you have an explanation for why George Kettle is undervalued by multiple? rounds um i i don't because when you're looking to play these leagues right you're trying to figure out how you can get in right before the tear break and one of the risks is just that you'll miss somebody else will take it but you can see how these drafts are flowing and in many cases you're going to be in drafts where people don't want to take a a player out of order in terms of

a positional rank. And certainly when you're thinking about best ball and those types of things, you know that most drafters are going to go by ADP for the ADP value. And so for a variety of reasons there, you get players locked in to certain price ranges that they never made any sense, aren't going to make sense. And, you know, it depends on how many teams you're drafting. If you're drafting three, just grab the best guys.

If you draft in 50, it becomes a little bit trickier. if you're drafted on 150, it becomes trickier yet. But I mean, George Kettle is, I mean, he and Travis Kelsey are the two best tight ends in the NFL, but Kelsey is moving into this area where probably not going to be the same thing. He's facing the same type of target competition that Kittle has already faced. And the chiefs are going to start kind of pulling back probably even more on his opportunities. Travis Kelsey and George Kettle are the same play, but they're not priced on the same areas. Do you know who led all tight ends and receiving yards last year?

I should because I've been writing about the tight ends today. It's George Kittle. No surprise. The player we're talking about is George Kittle. Yeah. So, I mean, that's a great point. You only saw 89 targets ranked in a three-way tie for eighth alongside like Cole Komet. But yeah.

So like George Kittle is one of my favorite players of all time. I mean, he's, I think he's one of the most underrated players in the NFL today. I think there's an argument to me made that he's the most valuable or the second most valuable non-quarterback in the NFL today. If you look back since 2018, he ranked first, first, first, first, fourth, first, fourth, first, in yards per route run at the position that 2019, 3.12, most ever by a tight end. And he did all this, like the common refrain with Kittle is, oh, he always gets hurt. he always gets hurt. And that's true. That is so true. But imagine what would happen if he didn't. I know, dude. So this is the tweet I have. Maybe, maybe Trey behind the glass can pull it up for the folks at home. But 2018 separated his right shoulder in the preseason opener, didn't miss any time.

2019 played with a broken bone in his ankle from week nine on, also played with a knee patella sprain or a popped capsule in his knee from week nine on. came into the season with a hamstring sprain, suffered an MCL sprain in week one, missed only two games, 2021 calf strain, 22 grind strain, which lingered. Last season, sports hernia core muscle injury from week nine on. And again, first in yards for route run every single year. There's upside if Brandon Iuke gets traded currently as recording. We don't really know.

But we do know that George Kittle, when over the the last three seasons when one of the other has missed time averages like 23.2 half point PPR fantasy points per game, which is like eight fantasy points per game more than any other tight end. So tremendous upside there. But this is your player. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't. I'm with you. These numbers don't sound as impressive after you rip some of those off. But in terms of writing about him and this tight end position and how you want to play it such that you get exposure to both talent and scoring and environment for the team. Kittle comes in at the end of this tier. Again, we're trying to get players who are similar plays, but multi-round discounts. But lead position in targets per route run in 2021, finished second points per game in 2022. And then as you're noting, yards, yards per out and yards per target in 2023. I mean, there's no objective reason that he should be. I mean, are we concerned

that he hasn't put the 30 pounds back on yet? I mean, his floor is insanely high. His per game scoring when you're talking about defeating your league mates, your college friends, your coworkers in the semis and the finals are off the charts. But those were like floor scenarios. When the ceiling scenarios, you don't even need to bother with who else you draft. You can just auto pick and make sure that you select George Kettle at some point. Yeah, I don't know that we should be worried about the weight. Last I checked is he gained it all back.

And also like Rob Grankowski was like, remember when he came back from a time? He was like 60 pounds underweight and he still was productive in the second half that year. But the question, sorry for interrupting, by the way. The question I was going to ask was, do you have him above Cal Pitts? Because Pitts goes at least around later on ESPN, NFL.com, and Yahoo. That one is tough. The probably the person who's burned me the most in fantasy, certainly the last couple years is Kyle Pitts. So it is difficult to, I think, make the adjustments that you have to make

because you're going to go from one of the worst situations to one of the best, certainly not the best, but a fantastic situation. My concern is that any time that we start giving players just a full excuse for having played a season where they were theoretically not completely healthy and we then don't look at what they did because supposedly they're less than 100%. I mean, so many guys are out there playing at less than 100%. And the effort from Pitts last year was poor. And so one of the things that Blair Andrews has done a lot of great work on for us is how guys who perform poorly because of injury, that's actually not great.

You don't want to be buying people where your excuses like they were injured. That's actually something to be stay away from. And then if you're concerned about the ability to catch, the ability to fight for the ball, the ability to act. the ability to actually be the star type of player, but it looked like he was going to be, even though he was in a terrible environment. And you think about what, you know, a George Kittle or a Travis Kelsey would have done.

Those guys would have been knocked down by Arthur Smith, but they would not have looked like what Kyle Pitts looked like, right? They would have found a way to get the job done. The flip side of that is that Pitt's talent, and especially when you're talking about pure receiving tight end, is so off the charts and he's already done it. as a rookie, I think you have to kind of put some of those things, you have to keep the concerns in mind, but also put some of the emotion aside and say, we've got to give it one more chance.

If he burns you this year, I don't think you want to keep going back again and again after that. That's just torturing yourself. But when you get decent prices on it this year and you are getting decent prices because we have some options, right? I think you have to take that. So I guess I would expect George Kettle to still be the better play. if you are looking at both of them side by side, I think that Pitts does actually have more ceiling

because there is a little bit less of that competition concern. He's not as good of a player. He's not going to be as efficient. And then partly, it's also then personal preference. Like how much do you want talent versus how much do you believe that volume is the thing that can launch a player to the type of season that other tie-ins can't compete with?

Both of them look really, really good right now. Yeah, it's interesting to me, that Drake London has never finished, what, top 36 in fantasy points per game. And now he's around one pick on underdog, whereas Pitts, his prices remain stagnant. So it seems to me like there's more value there. And it's also like, remember like both of these players coming out is Kyle Pitts was supposed to be the Calvin Johnson of tight ends. It's supposed to be the best tight end prospect ever.

And just about every, well, rookie season, he set the rookie tight. end record for receiving yards. And then everything that could have gone wrong since did go wrong. And also that rookie season, Arthur Smith, horrible quarterback play since then. Just if you look at all receivers over the last two years with at least, what is it, 100 targets, and you sort by catchable target rate, Calpits all the way at the bottom, just looking at Kirk Cousins in the offense he's played in his entire career, which is what he's going to play in Atlanta, according to our metrics, according to Ryan Heath's metrics, that's worth a 150% boost in catchable targets per game. So what? Do you just 1.5x Kyle Pitts numbers? But I think you need

to do more than that. It's also the route share should go up. There's no Jonu Smith there eating into his playing time. He shouldn't be like playing, running so many of his routes as an outside wide receiver up against the league's best cornerbacks. He should be getting layup targets in line where you have a much higher fantasy point per target average, more targets and routes from the slot. And yeah, so it just seems like there's this, if it was ever going to happen for this player who we were like, he could be one of the best ever. He could be Calvin Johnson with a tight end designation for fantasy. This should be the year. The only thing that's been holding me back is I feel like if that were to happen, we would hear so many more reports of

Kyle Pitts is lighting the world on fire. Kyle Pitts looks insane. And as of at least like a month ago, I was looking for it. I was digging for it. And I was only saying, you know, he's still getting his wings under him, but, you know, we're encouraged by the progress he's made. And it's like, I feel like that's not what you want to hear for, which could be, you know, supposed to be the best tight end of all time, which by the way, or best tight end prospect, which by the way might now be Brock Bowers. But yeah, so that's my thoughts on that. Also, if I could just do a quick little clawback to Jerry Judy,

so two seasons ago in games with a 60% snap share or higher, he ranked, he had 79 yards per game, which ranked 11th, 17 fantasy points per game, which ranked 10th among all tight ends. So I did not expect that. So yeah, way too early to write that. guy off as a bust, certainly too early for pits. And of course, George Kittle, one of my favorite players ever. The dude is just awesome. He's the man. He's a freak. And what if he doesn't get hurt, Sean? What if this is the one year he stays fully healthy? All right, give me one more name, Sean,

if you don't mind. Well, as we wrap up, I'd be interested in hearing how you like to play. I mean, this is another like hour and a half, three hour, 10 hour conversation. But thinking about elite quarterbacks versus window quarterbacks, or obviously the next sort of big tier of quarterbacks, versus trying to stream some of the interesting guys like now. Again, format is going to make a big difference. But we discussed a little bit of the problem last year for Patrick Mahalps. And it seems to me that Josh Allen has been now put in a somewhat similar

situation. He has a different path to scoring because of the rushing touchdowns. And yet the path that he and Jalen Hertz have, and Jalen Hertz is a completely different kind of situation. Obviously, he's got a couple of elite receivers, but there are lots of things they have to solve from the second half of last season. When you're looking at that and contrasting it with the prices of young QBs, either one or two or three tears down depending on how specific you want to break it. For me, I know that there's more risk and there's a little bit more projection and you're going to run into this question that people have of like, why didn't you just take the easy play? You can look more wrong, both for yourself and for your subscribers. But I guess I'm not completely understanding why you wouldn't

attack the price of a Jordan Love or if you prefer some other guys in that range as opposed to burning one of those really valuable picks on guys who are facing challenges that maybe they haven't faced recently. I mean, you need to get a separating score from those top quarterbacks in order to draft them where they go. Yeah, I'll be honest. So I'm not drafting a lot of Josh Allen, Jane La Hertz. I'm totally on board with it. I think you can win your league by taking that approach, maybe in a 10 team that's optimal even. But just personally, I'm drafting my later round must draft quarterback. My Exodia quarterback has just worked out really well for me over the years. But I have no problem with taking Josh Allen, who outscored the next closest quarterback by

over two fantasy points per game last year. He's finished as the overall QB1 by fantasy points per game in each of the last three years. There's concerns over receiver talent, but I mean, that was the case last year. They didn't get much out of Stefan Diggs in the second half. Gabe Davis, I'm sorry. I think he's terrible. And he was way more productive in the second half. He's averaging like 9.9 rushing fantasy points per game. And like that's the key point is he he runs. He's an amazing prolific runner who scores a lot of rushing touchdowns. And so yeah, like he signed his big contract. He got rid of Stefan Diggs. They're counting on him to be Superman. And so now he has to be Superman. But I expect the rushing floor and ceiling to still be there.

for him to still make some sort of miracle throws, you know, chuck it deep and to have some success doing that. I think he's QB1 for me. But if you look at our projections, maybe this is the more controversial point, is that Jalen Hertz is higher than Josh Allen in our own projections. The caveat being projections are Chris Wecht is Philadelphia Eagles,

Homer potentially. He promises me that's not the case, but it's not, you know, feeding the projection. but I saw you were extremely low on Jalen Hertz. Yeah, I think that we have some contextual concerns for both guys, where, again, I mean, they've got a score to be worth their picks. And it's not that I don't think they're good. I just don't know that you're going to separate.

And you look at someone in taking the second, taking the stretch of play where Jordan Love was utterly dominant and Jalen Hertz struggled is not the best way in any way, shape, or form to understand what's going to happen this season. But it is the case that over that chunk, I mean, we've already gotten a guy who doesn't have much starting experience to, you know, put up a half season that not only is better, but gaps some of those other guys. But I do think the thing I would note is that you go into your home league and you should take your guy at quarterback because you should be able to outdraft your friends, your family, your coworkers, your college. But he's all of that.

So I think in those formats, if you want to grab those guys, I'm certainly behind it. The thing that was making me smile is that it reminded me of the other name that I have here for you. And one of our long conversations or sort of through lines to guys that we enjoy. And I mean, I don't know if you object to me saying this because obviously there are different points in their careers and they wouldn't have been expected to score in the same way. But back when they were on the Vikings, you were on team Adam Thielen and I was on team Stefan Diggs. And one of the things that was fun is just our discussion of the problem that digs is as a locker room cancer. And so I'm very interested to hear how you're approaching this year in this situation where these three guys just, I mean, again, when you project it, there are volume problems. But then you think about C.J. Stroud.

And I mean, I think that Patrick Mahomes could challenge all the records this year. I don't know that he even beats C.J. Stroud. You've got these three guys. It's hilarious to go search. anything on Stefan Diggs because everything coming out of Houston is like this guy is going to absolutely dominate. He's going to be the wide receiver one. And everything coming out of Buffalo is like, thank goodness, Stefan Diggs is gone. Now Josh Allen can be himself. It's such a better environment. Obviously, both of those things can be true at the same time. Yeah. All right. So we're

going to close on this. I think this is a really interesting topic. Sean, I can talk to you all day, every day. So folks at home, promo code Scott over at Rodeviz, make me look good, convince Sean that he has to do as many fantasy points guest spots as possible. We're going to close with the Texans. Before I do, I just want to say, Jordan Love, I'm not quite there, but I will say the guru, John Hanson, all the way is. That's his must draft quarterback this year. Check out his draft plan over at fantasy points.com. So we're talking about the Texans. And so I struggle with them. I struggle with the Chicago Bears to an extent, like the Green Bay Packers to extent, where I worry they're all more of the better in bestball archetype. And I'm not really going to dive too deep into the weeds on the analytics here.

These are more just, you know, I don't know, bro speak, just kind of game theory we're going to talk about. But here's what I know and here's what I'm thinking of. So Nico Collins, obviously tremendously dominant last year. Brett Whitefield is telling me this is one of the new superstars in the NFL. He's an alpha wide receiver one. He's awesome. Fine. But if you look at games, both he and Tank Dell both played in full last year,

Tank Dell had a significantly higher route share, kind of surprising. More targets per game, more fantasy points per game. Tang Del did that as a rookie prior to last year, Nico Collins didn't really do much of anything. Tang Del, also the ass god, the ass king, led all wide receivers and ass last year, average separation score. I think the dude is really freaking good.

I also think it matters that this is CJ Stroud's BFF, they're boys in real life, they hang out all the time, they're always talking, they're always texting. And then you have Stefan Diggs thrown into the mix. And so what I have heard from sources is that Buffalo legitimately concerned about him. They have some in-house tracking metrics that showed a significant decline in the second half last year of his, what is it? His first 10 yards once the ball is snapped, it was much slower than the first half, something like that. But I do think, you know, borderline age cliff, that's something to worry about.

but I have heard from my guys Houston training camp. I'm located in Houston. If I have good connections anywhere, it's Houston. Stefan Diggs is far and away the most heavily involved wide receiver in Houston's camp. That could just be, you know, chemistry building, rapport building, because Stroud already has it with Dell and Collins. So it could be that. Could be. Stefan Diggs is already the wide receiver one.

And so you brought up Adam Thielen versus Stefan Diggs and how he talked about how he's kind of a headcase. and what that means. And I worry about what this means for the Texas. Is this an issue in the sense that he's going to be unhappy because Del is a stud, Niko's a stud, and he's not getting enough targets. And so he's going to be a problem. Maybe the whole thing implodes, or maybe it's a good thing. Maybe he's just like the biggest a-hole.

And he's so obnoxious, like he's going to demand his targets and he's going to get those targets to keep him healthy, happy, or maybe he's just going to be on best behavior because he wants a fat contract next year. I don't have a lot of good answers. I just have a lot of questions, and this is just how I'm thinking about it. But I saw you were,

it looks super high on Stefan Digg, so maybe you can enlighten me here. Yeah, I just, I have. I feel like you don't like old wide receivers. Well, one of the things that has been interesting this year is you look at the utter dominance for guys like Diggs and Alan over a long stretch, And even last season.

That's interesting. You mentioned those tracking metrics. That does give me a little bit of pause. You know, with Keenan Allen, what you're getting are these reports that he's way overweight. That gives me, obviously, some pause. And so that age cliff is a huge risk. The thing that I was wondering in terms of our previous discussions is whether or not this element with digs where, I mean, there are guys not just in football, but in all kinds

of situations where it just, they do eventually become a bad fit because they're a little bit harder to work with, but they're also just immensely talented, whether it's football or something else. And the original time period can really launch, just like it launched Josh Allen, really. And you know, you look at that second half of the season with the coordinator change, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the effort off the line of scrimmage was lousy because the play calling was lousy. I mean, the bills really did change their offense in ways that were very detrimental to them winning a Super Bowl, even though they want to spin it as what we went on this win streak and we reduced our mistakes. It's like you reduced your mistakes. You also reduced your chances

to be better than the Ravens and the Bengals and the other teams that are going to be in the mix now and over the next three, four, five years. So, but again, from the, the bill's perspective, I personally don't think that you should keep someone around who is a problem. So from that perspective, I'm fully supportive of what they did. I think from a fantasy perspective, you're going to rarely come across someone as legitimately talented as the Stefan Diggs. And that brings me back to this question with C.J. Stroud, where you have another question on here about Echo Chamber.

I don't know if this really fits that or not. But for me, this question of whether it makes sense. So I think the CJ Stroud is undervalued. There seems like there's this echo chamber. And again, maybe not exactly how people are thinking about that. But it is saying you can't draft him even where he's going because his path to being a viable fantasy score at the same level is so narrow because you have to have an epic season. I'm looking at that and thinking, I mean, this guy.

last year was immediately the only other guy that you would put with Patrick Mahomes from a full range of armed talent perspective he did those things for Nico Collins where I'm a Nico Collins skeptic only from the perspective I didn't think that

coming into the season there was any reason to believe he could do what he did. I also think we have to give him credit for what he did which is pretty extraordinary but then the things you mentioned H. Delt was even better and Stefan Diggs maybe even better than that. You're going to take a talent like CJ Strati. Strati. and think that you can't score with those three receivers. So that's the part that, you know, maybe it's Echo Chamber,

which it's something, again, of keeps you up at night, where I'm trying to work through that and thinking about how you should play it and what you should do with those prices because I like all three receivers. And if you like all three receivers, and we're talking about, yeah, I mean, we're talking about you just, you worry about context. And this is the thing people come back to. It's like, yeah, I mean, if you want to pick the very best outcome, then sure, draft C.J. Straub, but there are other outcomes at play.

maybe they get up and don't pass. Maybe the NFL defenses figure out a solution for him. Maybe the NFL defenses continue to innovate and figure out solutions for all of these quarterbacks, in which case it becomes even more important to have guys who can run. And it's already obviously extremely important to have that. So there are definitely two sides to it. I guess the optimist in me sees that quarterback and sees those three receivers and thinks, I mean, we haven't seen anything legitimately like that since Peyton Manning in 2013.

team. Yeah, very well could be the case. And like, if this is the best offense in football, would anyone be surprised? I don't think so. To bolster your, your Brandon Cook's argument, by the way, I just agree with what you said. I'm not a big Joe Brady fan. The word on the street, like prior to him getting that job was that he wasn't respected across league circles because he didn't know how to scheme guys open or he couldn't scheme wide receiver ones open. And you also saw, that like you know his full season as an NFL play caller Robbie Anderson and Curtis Samuel had more fantasy points than DJ Moore like when should that ever happen so maybe it was just you know horrific play calling which is what caused you know Stefan Diggs to get outproduced by Khalil Shakir and what are you seeing in the preseason right now you're seeing Tank Dell in week one preseason tanked out come off the field in two wide receiver sets and you're seeing Stefan Diggs move to the slot in a

personnel, which, like, let's not forget about Stefan Diggs. He played the Alpha X role beautifully in Buffalo, but he was also a dominant slot in, you know, shallow area of the field guy in Minnesota. He's just a complete wide receiver who could do it all in maybe a way that some of these other wide receivers have various limitations. And they can't. So I'm certainly open to it. I said that was what I was going to wrap the show up with, but we have five minutes

to the hour third. 30 marks. So I'm going to get greedy. Sean, what is, give me one player. This is the last one I promise. Give me one player you're all the way out on and you feel confident in avoiding or he's just not for you. You and I have also had some interesting conversations about Ezekiel Elliott. Okay. He's going at the 1010 in. Wow. FFPC main event. That's before Dowdell. It's before Dobbins. Now, these things are so apples and oranges that saying that he's going before Jalen Wright. people are like, well, I mean, he's going to play a lot more. But it's still interesting when you think about like how many,

how many 100-yard touchdown runs could Jalen, right, do in the amount of time it took Ezekiel Elliott to like run 100 yards down the field once. I'm pretty comfortable being out on Elliott. Is that inappropriate considering? I mean, the other thing that I've read is that Dowdell has actually looked the best in short yardage. And it seems to me like the only possible way that Elliott would score would be if they just sub them in to get those types of touchdowns. My take is that when you're talking about Royce Freeman

as your best back before he goes and gets the little injury, and you're talking about the list of running backs you have to trade for and the fact that teams have won Super Bowls with guys they picked up off the street, that gives me a lot of pause about anybody in that backfield. But certainly, Elliot, I mean, it's weird, right? The Patriots were so bad last season, and the frustration with Ramandre Stevenson was so palpable and justified that it's easy to miss the fact that when you dive into the advanced stats and different places are probably going to have some different numbers. We use sports info solutions.

They've got lots of great detail. Obviously, you guys have extraordinary stats over there. But the peripherals for Elliott, even though like from an eyeball test perspective, he didn't look dramatically worse than Romander Stevenson. They were bad. They were terrible. And so it's so weird to me that we have this kind of unique culture in Dallas that they soured on him originally. Then they have a season where they ruined Tony Pollard. And now they're like, oh, well, it probably doesn't even matter who we throw back there.

Ezekiel Elliott is someone we want to retire with our jersey on and be in the ring of honor, those types of things. That's a weird way to approach a season where you also want to win the Super Bowl. Yeah, especially when, by the way, they're going to sign Miles Sanders in a few weeks, most likely. I'm going to get greedy once again, Sean. This wasn't the answer I was hoping for it. I looked at your rankings. I saw you had Devante Adams as a low-end wide receiver, too. I feel like that's bold.

I feel like that's spicy. Can you tell me what went into that? Are we looking at, you know, like late career Julio vibes? Is that where we're getting from Devante Adams? Yeah, have you watched the receiver show? Everyone always asking me if I've seen. I have not. But there's no, I have.

And my conclusion was like, yeah, there's no way this guy doesn't lead the league in targets again. It's like they're going to do everything to keep him happy. He is like the heart and soul of the team. The head coach only has the job because Devante Adams cleared it and said, you know, you keep him, me and, you know, our phenon edge rush are going to stay in town. Well, one of the concerns you have to have is about the quarterback play. And to really get a season that is league winning, especially at prices, one of the things about where I have Don't Adam's rank, it's like it doesn't really matter once you've moved

him beyond the area where he could legitimately get him. So anything after that is just, you know, almost messing around a little bit. But when we're talking about where he goes, I just think you would need to have good quarterback play. And in some ways, there's some hypocrisy here. I'm very bullish on Brock Bowers, and it would make a lot of sense for people to come back and just say, I mean, he's not that separated.

Well, it depends on the format, but like not that separated from George Kittle. Take the guy you guys have been raving about as the best player in the NFL. But there are different price levels there. And Bowers, I think, is somebody who is so dominant that, and so able to win targets at different levels, that if they need someone just to go stand, like at the line of scrimand.

they can throw the ball of hours he can run with it they're going to try and do more dynamic things with devante adams his yards per target last year were awful and you know people will criticize that and say well that's going to bounce around a lot it's like yeah but it's also the crucial piece of here it's per route run which everyone loves and it is something where if you draw a huge number of targets but the efficiency is gone that is a cliff thing for me and so if you have some concerns there that there's a potential cliff, but then there's a potential situation where the quarterback play just hold someone down. Or you think back to, you know, camp news.

And it's like, for me, I think that Jacoby Myers is a very good player. And he's actually somebody who's delivered good win rates for people. He's one of these guys where you just keep looking. It's like every year, people don't want to buy in. Every year, the numbers are pretty good. You win with him. The problem is I think people want to win big with him and you're probably not going to because he's behind Devante Adams

and the quarterback play is terrible. Where's the scenario where you could ever actually win big with him? But he's supposedly been very, very good. Brock Bowers, the greatest tight-end prospect of all time and has been utterly dominating their camp. Michael May or somebody who was actually a very good tight-in prospect too, they're going to play a lot together. I think that you would need either Gardner, Minchew,

or Aidan O'Connell to be better than expected by a lot in order for Devante Adams to, be a good play at ADP. Because as soon as he starts losing targets, I mean, you really start to have that profile flounder, right? And again, maybe I'm just completely and totally off on that. But I have more target competition concern for him than I think anybody else does. And so that strongly suggests that I'm wrong.

But when you look at that, I mean, Gardner Minshue is somebody I thought played better last year than he did when you dive into his peripherals. Like, ah, man, I mean, he really actually was pretty bad last year for the Colts, which is disappointing because Aidan O'Connell is one of those guys who actually had good numbers in college, and he's the type of player where you can squint at that and say, well, there's a Brock Purdyish kind of outcome there. And a lot of the rhetoric has suggested that's what the Raiders also want to have happen. It would be a better ceiling outcome clearly than to have Gardner Minshu be the guy. But again, the problem is that probably whoever wins that job is going to be below average.

And so then you have a variety. And so then they're going to hand the ball to Zemir White, which means you're going to have a lot of three-outs. And you put all those things together. It's not so much to say Devante Adams is bad, but he's being drafted in a range where there are lots of very exciting plays. I think you want to take one of those. Yeah.

Team that wants to win with their defense, run the ball a lot, out of the greatest tight end of all time. And Jacoby Myers has been a star of camp. Yeah, I'll just, do me a favor, Sean, and watch receiver and let me know where you move. Devante Adams, too, because all my best counter arguments are really just, you know, bro takes based on watching receiver and being like, yeah, this guy is going to rank top three in targets.

Like, they're going to do everything possible to keep him happy. He's basically like an assistant coach of the team. But I feel bad. This is like so selfish of me. Sean is just I can talk to you all day, every day. And I have a blast doing it. I hope the listeners at home do as well. So we definitely ran a bit too long on time.

But thank you so much for coming on. Why don't you give another plug for that nice, sweet little promo code over at Rodeviz and let the folks at home know what to check out and what you've got coming? Yeah, I appreciate that so much. If you've enjoyed this, Ben Gretchen I have a great time doing stealing bananas. Collum Kelly and I have a great time doing, I think I said stealing bananas. Yeah, yeah, stealing bananas. Great show.

Big fan of Ben Gretchen yourself. So Ben, Ben does a fantastic job on that. Collum Kelly and I have a great time doing RotoViz overtime. Peter Overzette and I have been drafting every week in Best Ball Mania and the Best Ball Banana Stand. All of those are a blast. On the site, next week I should have the Zero RB candidates countdown out. That one is the one that we do tend to do the most volume on that one is fun.

I'll have the, I don't know exactly how many it will be, but 2730-ish priority targets for draft season. I'm going to have my 2024 redraft plan out in the next couple days. So a few fun things there that work on a lot and enjoy putting together. We've had some incredible series from Blair Andrews, from Jake Bose, from Matt Irby,

from Kevin, Bjorn, Connor, Michael. I'm biased. I love our group. We're doing a lot of really fun stuff. We'd love to have you guys over there. And we do have the training camp discount going, but on top of that, we know you guys are hanging out with fantasy points

and doing all that stuff. You don't want to spend billions of dollars more. 10 additional dollars off with the coupon code, Scott. Sean, thanks so much for coming on. It's been awesome.