Fantasy Football Daily - Should We AVOID DRAFTING This First Round RB in 2026 Fantasy Football?
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searching for some fantasy takeaways with NFL director of analytics Ryan Paganetti.
This is Fantasy Football Daily with Brett and Scott.
Let's dive right in.
Ryan, how are you, sir?
I am doing great.
I'm finally excited that there's real games and I don't have to talk about rain pants as much anymore.
A couple people were tagging me that there was like nearly a rain pants game.
with the the bears were playing and there was like a significant downpour before the game and people
were kind of tipping me off. They're like, all right, we're going to have somebody looking for
rain pants. But yeah, we could start talking about real players and, you know, preseason usage and,
you know, different trends and whatnot. I'm excited about that. Well, the first thing I wanted to ask you,
I wanted to ask you about Ashton Gentie. So I had you on this show and I kind of gave you grief for being,
director of analytics with the Las Vegas Raiders and in a year that they took a running back
top 10 where that's typically viewed as like a cardinal sin in the analytics community where
you know hashtag running backs don't matter was a major trend even though I might not entirely agree
with it I know there's certainly some truth to that you gave a take we ended up scrubbing it from
the episode and then on our my last episode I was talking about
talking about how I talked to you and you kind of spooked me a little bit and I moved
Ash and Gentie down in my rankings. I wouldn't say why, just that you kind of spooked me.
And so I'm wondering if there's anything you could say here on this that we can keep in the
episode and not take out. So if you have to be careful, I get it.
Yeah. So what I'd say is so I got offered this job to report directly for Pete as an actual
and coach. And my kind of role there was very, very heavily coaching analytics and game management
based. And they had an infrastructure there of people that were, I got there March still about a
month before the draft, maybe a month and a half. And, you know, I offered to kind of help these guys
out in terms of, because I had just been director of football analytics for the Jaguars. And
They kind of had an infrastructure already set up there for the front office kind of analytics,
I guess you could say.
And this is no disrespect to anybody there.
But I was a little bit behind the eight ball in the sense that, you know, I came in a little bit after Pete had already started.
And there was about a million projects to deal with regarding, you know, coaching related topics and whatnot.
So my role really there was like,
serve in a sort of supplementary role in terms of some of the draft stuff. Now I will say
to me you can't be like a real analytics person and actually advocate for running back in the top
10. And like yes, occasionally it works out okay. I totally come from the world of
offensive line is light years more important. And, um, you know,
I know, for example, I know Jeff Stelton very well.
My brother's run game coordinator in the NFL, and, you know, I've been part of a team that won the Super Bowl, and we were basically using very marginal players at times at running back.
But when the line was really good, it didn't matter.
And so, like, my personal take is that I would much rather, you know, like a top 10 offensive line and a just practice, a list of practice squad running backs.
And I actually think that would be more fun than, then as a.
opposed to having like the 25th best offensive line and the, you know, a top 10 running back.
From a macro perspective, yes, the Raiders offensive line was a disaster and I would not want
to be any running back behind that line last year. But they're also, you know, there's been
some different kind of viewpoints on that, that it may not have been as simple as strictly
the offensive line being an issue. And I'm not, trust me, I'm not discounted that. Like,
It was painful to be a part of that at times.
But some of the metrics, it was about as bad as you could get from a rush offense.
And this is coming from some people in terms of Pete and Chip that have been part of elite run offenses.
They know how to scheme up a good offense.
And to give you a perspective, I think there was probably seven times that Chip had the number one rush yards or yards per carry offense in college.
and then his first year in the league with Philly,
they were the number one yards per carry
and rush yards offense.
And he did it, I think, at UCLA and say 22 or so,
maybe 21 with DTR and Charbonnet.
Like they were number one in yards per carry
by like two standard deviations.
And so he's a very creative scheme guy.
We tried to accommodate Genty
kind of being more of a downhill under center type player
in terms of like that sort of fitting his skill set.
a little bit. And we actually, the fourth game of the year, we really had a great rushing game
against the Bears. And a few plays before the end of the game, Colton Miller had an injury. He ended up
going out for the season. He was by far our best offensive linemen. And we really were not,
the roster was not set up in a way that there was a player to step in at tackle that could
very easily, no one was going to replace it, but to at least be manageable there. And,
You know, I think at that time in that fourth week, we actually, it was the highest rushing
output of any team going like through four games.
And then after that, it was just like a car accident in terms of like, you know, we really,
really struggled.
The division was pretty talented too.
I think at the end of the day, like whenever something goes wrong in the NFL, just as to sum up
this viewpoint, like it's, it's never as simple as just point the finger.
at one variable.
And like a lot of times there's more nuance.
Like what are the, what's the, what are the techniques being used?
How is the running back reading it?
You know, what is, are they just playing a lot of really talented defenses?
And I guess my position is that there was a little bit more than strictly the offensive
line that sort of explain that.
And if you look at some of the metrics like expected rushing yards and whatnot, that attempts to kind
of account for that a little bit.
I think there's some questions there.
Um, you know, I, I, I, I, I, especially being on social media, like, pretty extensively
over the last month, like, you see how passionate the fans are. And they, there's almost like,
they just find a lightning rod to sort of attack and weaponize. And it clearly that the, the,
the, whether it was coaching or offensive line, like that, those were the, those were the topics for
the Raiders last year. And I'm not, I'm not absolving anybody from any blame, but that's kind of my
position on that. And just from just from like a summary standpoint, you see Brock Bowers at practice
with the with the Raiders and you think like there's some things here where this guy might be a
first ballot hall famer. And I wasn't necessarily to that may have been the only player, you know,
on that offense that I was seeing that from. And that's kind of just like I guess my summary of
that topic. Yeah, let me bring this back to fantasy. So this is, you know, partly what you've told me over
the phone some of the other things i think we can keep under wraps but i this this really kind of
gels with how i've kind of viewed genti from the start which was you know obviously there's
well first of all it was like legitimately one of the worst rookie seasons ever by a running back he
well it was one of the worst EPA per runs we've seen in decades uh for the the unit as a whole
he had 266 carries and 55 receptions obviously volume is the most important thing with the running back position for fantasy
but like on that volume it was one of the worst seasons ever that's been done 79 times in NFL history
of those 79 running back seasons gentees 2025 was the only one with fewer than 15 fantasy points per game
he was all the way down at 14.4 um i think there's more to it than the offense of
line and even if you wanted to blame the offensive line, it's not like this offensive line
looks much better. And then it's the prospect. It's Ashton Genti, the prospect. You know, he,
2024, he gained 2,601 rushing yards. It was the second most in FBS history behind only
Barry Sanders' legendary 1988 season. But it came in the Mountain West. And so, you know, when I
listed my comps for Genti, one of the top ones was Devin Singletary.
who in the CUSA had 56 touchdowns over his last two years.
And that was something I really found doing my analytics prospect modeling was like,
it's not so much that you need to, you know, devalue production coming outside of the power conferences.
It's really just that it just like massively raises your risk of busting.
And so I think that's a real, yeah, like, sure, he also,
had the best and most miss tackles in PFF college history, but it's also like, you know,
Mountain West defenders are missing tackles a lot more often than Alabama defenders, right?
And so you have to factor that in as well. And so what we're left with is sure,
he saw a ton of volume, but he wasn't all that great with it. And, and yes, certainly I have some
concerns for a guy who is going like mid to late round one just about everywhere after like
borderline Trent Richardson-esque rookie season. And so yeah, I ended up moving him down two spots
in my rankings. We'll see if that burns me. Certainly I'm a big Clint Kubiak believer.
I think you are too, Ryan. And he has shown over the years an ability to elevate the
offensive line. New Orleans had a bottom three offensive line.
on paper. Seattle had a bottom three
offensive line on paper last year, but
in both instances, the finished
middle of the pack in yards before
contact per attempt.
Two and five Canadians
will hear the words, you have cancer.
That's why every step
and dollar raised matters.
On September 19th, join thousands
in Toronto for the Princess Margaret
Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge
yourself, friends, and family
to walk 21 kilometers
in support of life-saving research.
Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer.
Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca.
I wanted to get a plug-in for the site.
And so I'll just reiterate what you said on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, Ryan.
You said fantasy points data, which you're using to cook up some of these super dank stats and awesome tweets,
is better than the data provider that NFL teams paid six figures for.
And this is fantasy points data you can get with a $200 a year subscription.
Any comments on that, Ryan?
Yeah, I'd say this is like, you know, there's there's some in the league, maybe more than some,
that are really turned off by these other providers that attempt to sort of grade the tape subjectively.
And there's people that just wildly, wildly disagree with what those,
the conclusions that are reached and the idea. And there's players that hate it. A lot of the
players really hate it when they're playing on Sunday night football. And it says that there's
67th of 88 players when they're actually playing great. And I think that this other company
that everyone kind of is familiar with, like they, they were very dismissive at concerns
from the team side, you know, whether it was in the quality of the data or like how are they
classifying things, like things, you know, and I think the players,
were, you know, relatively hostile about, you know, some of the grading methodologies.
Coaches were very hostile. You know, there was times where people, you know, from this company
came in and attempted to explain their grading to coaches. And the coaches, like, left the meeting
when I was part of teams and they say, I don't want to use any of their stuff. Like, and it actually,
like, it hurt my ability to do my job because like, in many cases, like the objective data is fine.
Like if it's like, hey, is it, what is the offensive personnel group and whatnot? But,
But like there's also cases where like I, you know, I'm showing an offensive coordinator.
I'm like, hey, this this team is really poor against duo.
And they're like, okay, well, can you get me a cut up using that classification?
And I give them a cut up.
And then they call me into their office and they're like three of the first seven plays are not duo.
And then it's like it's almost like embarrassing from my standpoint.
So like I would use the data at times as like an initial sort of sweep.
and then I'd have to manually go through it and clean it up.
And then so like when I've used some of your guys' data,
it totally aligns with what like coaches actually classify some of these concepts,
for example, with.
And I think that that it's a much more reasonable, you know, people don't like, like,
like it's a little bit unfair, but like when there's some questions regarding the data,
it can turn into like a zero versus a hundred binary thing where people just shut everything off.
So, but I think that that just like, I had no bias.
There was no reason why I would particularly use like your guys data.
I simply just was intrigued by the idea of another vendor sort of competing in a world where there was like kind of a monopoly.
And you guys obviously have built like a significant market share in like sort of the consumer market.
But it's it's been entirely like merit based versus like this other group is essentially leaned on having just like.
market power and having no one to really compete with. And then, you know, I mean, there's,
there's, it's widely been reported that there's been like issues. There's been sales and,
you know, whatnot and like, you know, different moving parts and whatnot, you know, people losing
jobs and things like that. But I'm just a believer in meritocracy. And like if there was
another company that was called like not fantasy points and they and their data was better than
your guys, like I might, you know, point that out too. But like, I'm just, I'm just from what I
have experience, like this stuff is awesome and it's helped me tremendously and like I'll take a look
at your guys data and I'll all kind of cross-check it with the film that I'm looking at. And like it's,
it's really excellent and it's it's really actionable. And I see what you guys are doing on
on social media all the time. Like you guys are churning out so much content that it's really just
lapping everybody that, that I, you know, else that I see and you know, you're seeing other companies
basically just give up on the media part of things because they, I would argue that they almost
just can't compete with it because there's a lot of,
of talent with what you guys are doing. And yeah, I'd say that I, my attitude on all this stuff is like,
if you want to get coaches, for example, to like change their behavior, like your analysis has to be
top notch. And it's the most embarrassing, because it's literally happened to me, the most
embarrassing thing thing ever to like say, hey, we should do X, Y, Z because of this. And then
here's the plays. And oh, just kidding, like that, that was incorrectly classified.
And then it's like, you know, it's sort of a turnoff. So like I literally would spend hours and hours a week cleaning up data like manually or having interns clean up data at times, which I would prefer not to do that because it's like a significant life inconvenience to have to do that. So anyway, like I've just really appreciated what you guys have done. And, you know, I, I, there's, I mean, I didn't even know Scott. The only reason that like I ever met Scott was because I just started seeing a stats pop up on, on, on, on, you know, I, there's, I mean, it's the, I didn't even know Scott. And, um, I, I mean, the, I didn't even know Scott. I,
Twitter where like he'd have points about certain players and I'm like oh god like we we better like
look into this like this separation stat or XYZ because we didn't even have it and then there
would be things that were like a lot of coaches really and like personnel people they like lists
and Scott's a big list guy so like when the list is terrible and like you're about to like
draft the player and guarantee him tens of millions of dollars or like you're about to sign a guy
in free agency and there's a list out there that shows like eight of nine guys being like
total bus.
Like you have to, in this error,
like you have to be on top of all that stuff.
And, you know, I think a great example is the running back from the
Broncos, you know, what's it?
What is it?
Coleman.
Jonah Coleman, yeah.
Yeah.
And like, I didn't follow the draft too closely this year.
I had some other things going on.
But, you know, you guys kind of picked up on him being sort of a sleeper.
And he's, you know, he's working with the ones.
They're pulling him after the first quarter.
He had a, he had a sick run in week when I know it's just preseason.
But he had one of the more impressive runs of the whole, you know,
week and then they were basically saying Sean Payton pulled him out. He's like, all right, I've seen
enough, which is what the, which is what the Cardinals should have done after, you know, a couple
carries of Jeremy I love. But, you know, it's super unfortunate how that played out. But I think
that just kind of goes to show you that like the people that are really digging into the data and
it's high quality data and high quality like talent analyzing the data. Like you can sort of be
ahead of the game, whether it's in fantasy or even in the, you know, whether it's in like real
football in the draft. Dude, thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure getting
and getting to talk to you. Also, I do owe you some things. So I'll make sure you get that
off camera here. I'll get you a delivery of goods. But yeah, we just want to say thank you for
coming on. And listeners, please go out to FantasyPoints.com. Check out the new website. Check out
the new front office tool. It is an industry-changing tool for your fantasy leagues. And with that,
we will be back next time. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer.
That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19,
join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk.
Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research.
Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer.
Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca.