Fantasy Football Daily - The Best and Worst of Round 1 | On the Clock! NFL Draft Podcast

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

The first round of the 2023 NFL Draft is in the books, and it was a WILD one. Brett Whitefield (@BGWhitefield) recaps the round, highlighting the best values, worst picks, and craziest moves from an action-packed night. BRETT WHITEFIELD'S 2023 NFL DRAFT PROSPECT GUIDE IS FREE TO READ WITH A NO-CHARGE LOGIN AT FANTASY POINTS. Interested in playing Best Ball in 2023? There's no better place than Underdog Fantasy. Use our code FANTASYPTS to sign up for a new account at Underdog, and not only will you get a 100% deposit match up to $100... but you'll get a Fantasy Points Standard subscription for only $5! https://www.fantasypoints.com/underdog --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time to the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by FantasyPoints.com. Top level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room, with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. We are back with another episode of On the Clock. I'm your host, Brad Whitefield. This is a post-round one edition of On the Clock. Welcome to the show. I will do my best to keep my composure as we talk about some of these picks,

but I wanted to give you a thorough breakdown of my thoughts. If you tuned into the stream last night, the live stream, thank you so much for the support. It was awesome. The feedback was outstanding. We had quite a lot of viewers in there. I think at one point we had over 250 people watching live, which is really cool. Tons of comments.

Made the night very fun. We will be back tonight doing the same thing. If you did listen to the stream, you learned about Chris Wacken I's pick value chart that we made, we took the Spielberger-Fitchgerald chart and we tweaked some of the pick values and then correlated that to my draft board to spit out our kind of numerical thoughts on the value of each pick made. We take into account trades and how the trades affect the value. We also take into account positional value. So if you unnecessarily took a linebacker or a running back

off Detroit in the first round, you probably got killed in our model. That's just the way the cookie crumbles. So let's kind of go through this draft. I'm not going to go through every pick, but we'll talk about some of the best picks and some of the worst picks, and I'll kind of go into detail on my thoughts on those and why the Whitefield Wecht value chart does not like them. So first and foremost, Bryce Young was indeed the first pick overall. The model likes this pick quite a bit.

Obviously, being a quarterback, was Bryce my top guy on the board? No, was he my top quarterback on the board? No, but quarterback is very, very important. The Panthers didn't have one. For me, you know, Young is a fantastic prospect. So this is like a 98th percentile pick as far as value goes. The next pick, C.J. Stroud, you know, was it a bad pick? No.

I was a little lower on Stroud than I think some, my quarterback three, and somewhere between like five and six on my board overall, Texans take him at two for a 93rd percentile score. And then the next pick is where it gets interesting. I think they're getting a lot of praise for trading up for Will Anderson here, but they gave up way too much. Even without the trade up, this was a 96 percentile score. When you factor in the trades,

Let me see. Let me read this here. Yeah. Yeah. Good Lord. When you, wow, when you factor in the trades here, this is, oh, they got, this is not a good pick at all. Will Anderson is not, you know, he is not the level of edge prospect of, say, Joey Bosa or Miles Garrett. He's closer to the Aiden Hutchinson spectrum, which is fine. but you're just not giving up three first round picks for Aiden Hutchinson,

nor should you have for Will Anderson. So on its face, you know, if they had the third overall pick, like if Arizona stood pat and took Will Anderson, this would be a pretty good pick, 96 percentile pick. But because of the draft capital involved for the Texans that come up from 12 to get this pick, it's just really, really poor in our score. So the best score of the night happened at fourth overall, and that was Anthony Richardson to the Colts.

This was a 100th percentile score. He was my top quarterback on the board. They get him at four. And he's the third QB off the board. So that's, you know, pretty good value, in my opinion. The next big one would be Arizona Cardinals at six. They pick Paris Johnson Jr. Now, this is another one where if they were originally picking at six, you know, this isn't the end of the world.

it's above a 90th percentile score. They lose a little bit of value because of where Paris Johnson ranked on my big board. But ultimately, the fact that they had to trade up from 12 to 6 and give up the 34th overall pick, which is a pretty valuable pick, that makes this a lot less valuable in my mind. And the model agrees with that. Let's keep working. So Jalen Carter at Pick 9 was the, The next best score of the night.

No, actually, this is the third best score of the night. Carter, if they would have stood head at 10, Carter, they would have been a perfect score, 100 percentile score since they gave up a fourth round pick, I think, to move into that spot. It damages it a little bit, but like we're splitting hairs at this point. This is a phenomenal pick. Probably my favorite pick of the night. I think when you're talking about the concerns you have with Jalen Carter off the field,

maybe some football character stuff. Getting him in a locker room full of his boys, you know, Jordan Davis, Nick Kobe Dean and now Nolan Smith is great. The Eagles obviously have a culture there, a well-defined culture that's been a good franchise for a while. Roseman,

it just seems to be a mastermind here. Carter, I think that culture will really help prop him up. You know, having those, like having Nolan Smith in the locker room is huge too, because Smith seems like one of those, one of those dudes that's just a,

really, really good kid who's kind of a natural-born leader. So I think the Eagles have the ecosystem to support Jalen Carter and make sure he stays focused. Now, obviously, at some point in an adult's life, they can't rely on external motivation. They've got to rely on internal motivation. And I guess the idea of the hope and the prayer there for Carter is that he gets there, you know? If there is something going on, who knows? maybe maybe he's plenty motivated we just don't know um the next big one for me jemere gibbs at 12 overall for the lions pardon me jemir gibbs at 12 overall for the lions this was you know Gibbs was 27 on my

board so i you know this isn't like a huge reach as far as value like i you know he still was slated to go in the top 31 for me i mocked him in the first round but he's a running back guys. They just spent 18 and a half million dollars on David Montgomery or whatever it was. It's just not the running backs don't move the needle. We'll get to Campbell too here in a minute.

But they took a running back and a linebacker with two first round picks. And the problem is, positional value is so important when drafting, especially in the first round, that even if they hit on both these guys, even if, let's say Gibbs and Campbell are both Pro Bowl players.

The impact they make in terms of wins and losses is very small. You can go to any analytical study. PFS done a bunch of studies on war and how certain positions relate to war. I don't think war is necessarily easily quantifiable on an individual level in the NFL. But there is some ways to quantify it. And every study done shows that these are the two least valuable positions in football. you know, do I think Campbell and Gibbs make the lines a little bit better? Yeah, it's like, we've talked about this on the pod before.

There's this idea of, we call it, cheap upgrades or easy, easy upgrades. You see this a lot with teams picking running backs at the back of the first round where it's like, man, we were really good last year. The ex-player just immediately comes in and helps. But like, for Gibbs to really help this team and move the needle, he has got to be the best past. catching running back in the NFL. He's got to be Christian McAfrey. I just don't see how it's possible. Now, Brad Holmes got up at the end of the draft and said, or end of the first round and said, they don't view Gibbs as just a running back. That's good. I like hearing things like that. I just hope it's true in practice. It's easy to say things like that when you're trying to sell

a pick, like, oh, he's not just a running back. He's much more than that. Okay, cool. Are you actually going to use him as much more than that? Are we going to see him in the slot? Are we going to see him split out wide. Alabama did use him that way sometimes. It didn't manifest into a ton of production, actually. Bijan, I think, has better reps in that type of role. That's the interesting thing. The one nice thing about the Gibbs pick, juxtapose of the Campbell pick, is they did at least traded back to make that pick. They didn't stay at six in draft a running back. They did get a really nice, valuable pick in pick 34, who that should be able to land them a really good player. And I hope Brad Holmes turns his attention. and more towards positional value.

There's some decent corners out there. There's really good defensive back in Bryant Branch. There's some pass rusher help available still too, with either Derek Hall or Atta Tamaway, Ataburare from Northwestern. These are guys that can really help this defensive line. There's some offensive linemen available too in the second round. So, like, hopefully we get some positional value here. If he comes back in round two and, like, pick 34 specifically, and takes a tight end,

I might waterboard myself. I might waterboard myself. So at least with the Gibbs pick, like I said, they did trade back. They did get, you know, pick 34. So you got to look at it like Gibbs plus 34. Is that better, you know, than what they would take at 6? It probably isn't. But it helps take this thing off a little bit.

The Campbell pick, however, at 18, is the worst pick of the entire round via the Whitefield Wecht model. They lose 557 points on the pick score. It's a 70th percentile draft pick. 70th percentile score for a draft pick here. Campbell scores as a, you know, a day two player for me. That's not that I don't like Jack Campbell. It's just that linebackers don't really affect the outcomes of games a whole lot in

general and then when you have a guy who's like that old school thumper type big like i'll just read some of my scotting report to you these are the highlights of his strengths big frame with good length a monster defending the run intangibles high floor is a coverage defender let me read this blurb to you campbell's instincts pop again in the past game as his own defender he doesn't waste movement he relates to the routes in front of him well and or gets to his landmark efficiently he is good at reading the quarterback understanding route concepts and has good ball skills to minimize what is happening in front of him. I don't think he has the fluidness or explosive movements required to be a great

coverage defender, especially in man, but he shouldn't be a liability at the very least. I also wrote this in the weakness section, better tester than functional athlete. And I've seen a lot of people combating me on being upset about this pick because of how great of an athlete is. If you're going to drop the lineback, at least get a great athlete. guys, I don't see it on tape. Campbell's combine workout was absolutely shocking to me. I never viewed Campbell as a subpar athlete,

but in no world that I think he was of the elite variety either. It shows up in his tape, too. He clearly lacks quick-twitch movements in just about every facet of the game. When you look at the things he struggles with as a player, all of it comes back to not being an elite athlete, yet he tested as an elite athlete. So functional athleticism is done,

more important than, you know, testing, tested athleticism. And I know it's really hard to start quantifying what that looks like. And that's why film scores matter, guys. Like, you can't just run pure analytical models. Like, I value analytics very highly in everything that I do. That's one of the reasons I hate this pick, because it's not analytically sound. But with that said, you still have to apply context to everything analytically driven. And when you apply the film score to the athleticism score. They don't match. Anyways, another,

let's see here. Yeah, so backing up a little bit. So the Van Ness pick and the Will McDonald pick got scored pretty horrendously for me as well. Van Ness was 40th overall. My big board, Will McDonald was 32. They got taken at pick 13 and pick 15 respectively. They do get a.

slight bump in the model because their pass rushers and pass rushers are valuable premium positions. So I don't want to kill them for it, but they were they were 77th percentile and 70s or 82nd percentile selections here. So we did not love those picks. We won't crush them for it though. All right, working our way down. The Jackson Smith and Jigba pick was of the phenomenal variety.

This was pick 20 and it graded as a 97th percentile pick for us. They picked up 186 additional points in terms of value with this pick. Really, really liked this pick. Obviously, a premium position at wide receiver. He happened to be the best guy available at the time they picked him on my board. And he was the number one wide receiver on my board. So really liked this pick. The Jordan Addison pick to Minnesota at 23.

also scored very favorably for me. He was my wide receiver two in the class, and they got him at pick, let's see here, 24, which, no, sorry, pick 23. He was a 16th player in my board. They got him at pick 23. This was a 96th percentile score. So I really like that one. The perhaps the best pick of the knight, other than Anthony Richardson,

was Dalton Kincaid to the Buffalo Bills at pick 25. Kincaid was a 13th player on my board. They got them at 25. Really, really liked this pick. We've talked at length on this pod and the Take Talk pot about supporting your quarterbacks, especially guys with the label of inaccurate. Josh Allen is definitely that. We started to see that rear its ugly head last year.

Kincaid is a route running a machine. He is a true separator in every sense of the word. Detailed route runner. He ran a really complex route tree at Utah, which is great considering tight ends don't normally run complex route trees in college. So he steps into the NFL probably a little ahead of the game in terms of where tight ends normally are as far as route running goes or as far as past game options go. So I think he steps in right away and helps Josh Allen kind of control the short, middle

parts of the field. You line them up in the slot, line them up out wide. He can be a mismatch weapon. I really, really like, I kind of wanted them to go wide receiver, but maybe they do that on day two, but I really like this addition. This is going to be phenomenal for them. Dawson Knox is not a bad player, but he is definitely not a needle mover at the 10-end position. I like the idea of getting both of them on the field together, forcing defenses to put that extra linebacker on the field. Then you can put him in conflict with read option, RPO type stuff. get Kincaid out in space. He's phenomenal after the catch.

Love all of this stuff. All right, let's go Miles Murphy to the Cincinnati Bengals. Murphy is, you know, he, I scored him very highly. He was my 15th rated player in the class. They get him at pick 28. Other than the Richardson pick, this was the best pick of the night. for me it's it's marginal between kinkade and murphy like they're very very close but when you talk about premium positions i mean pass rusher is so important murphy is absolutely a trades guy big long powerful frame i know we've heard speculation that some teams have

given him the soft label i don't really see soft on his tape i see a lack of discipline in the run game but i don't see soft i think he plays hard i think he's strong and And I think he's physical. So I don't, I don't really see, you know, he just got, he has to get better with reset, you know, when an offensive line is resetting their hands, he has to continue to fight the hand battle. He cannot give his chest up as easily as he does. That will help him set that edge. But I think the traits are so freaking good. Getting a guy with that level of physical ability at pick 28 is, is ludicrous.

Cincinnati is a really good team. This regime, this front office is doing a really, really good job, just constantly adding tank. I really, really love this pick. Probably my favorite pick of the first round. Yes, big time stuff here. The Eagles get Nolan Smith at 30. Now, I was a little lower on Smith than most, but I still had them, what, 24th on my board,

just outside of my top, or my first round grades. I think I had 22 first round grades. He was 24th. So, like, getting my pick 30, though, is still a value. So they pick up some positive EV here, 92nd percentile pick. hard to do that at the end of the first round when this pool of players is really deep. So they take a guy from the top of that pool,

that my tier two, I guess of players really like it. I especially like it too just because of the things we mentioned with Carter. Like you're building a culture. You're basically recreating the 2021 Georgia defense, which was one of the best defenses in college football history, really like that they did that. I think that's phenomenal stuff.

and just continuing to build on the culture there, I think, is a big deal as well. Some notable things as well, like Mazzie Smith going 26. I wish I would have stuck with this in my mock. This is kind of how I had it all the way up until crunch time. I pulled him out of the first. How long have I been saying to you guys now that he's a first round pick for me? I don't know why in my mock I went off of this, but he seems like a first round pick. You know, you don't find guys his size.

that move the way he does, and I knew a team would fall in love with that. I think one of the other shocking things here was Deonté Banks making it the 24. He seemed to be surging, according to Twitter lately, surging as far as, you know, up the board. A lot of people thought he'd go way earlier than the consensus big board. He actually ends up going later, and Emmanuel Forbes passed him up as well. Forbes goes 16th to Washington. You know, this is interesting. Like, do I think Forbes or do I think Banks is a better player than Forbes?

Yeah, I think his ceiling is much higher, but Forbes is a hell of a player. And he fits that Washington scheme really, really good. My comfort Emmanuel Forbes is actually Josh Norman. Ironically, Ron Rivera was Josh Norman's head coach in Carolina. Now he's the coach of Washington. The fit is great. So Forbes is like Josh Norman on TRT because Forbes is a lot better of an athlete actually than Norman.

So his ball skills, though, are ridiculous. He's going to thrive in that, you know, zone, off zone, bail zone stuff where he can keep his eyes on the quarterback and make plays underneath of him. I really like what they did there. The pick score here was not good. This is one of the – I think this is the only pick, actually, of the round where the Whitefield Wicked model hated the pick. I think it was – gosh, it was the second worst, third worst pick of the night, maybe,

Fifth worst. It was top five worst picks of the night as far as value goes. But I like it because the team fit is so good. You have to remember when we're stacking our board, when I did all my scores and stacked that top 150, you got to remember that's a generic vertical stacked board. There's certain players that don't fit certain teams. And so if you went through and took the time to individually stack each board,

forms would have definitely been way higher on the board for teams like Washington or even the Eagles, even the Steelers. to an extent. So you have to keep that in mind when you're, you know, when you're kind of trying to add context to some of these draft grades. Like, you know, like I said, I think banks probably a better prospect, but he translates better as a press man guy where Forbes fits that Washington scheme so much better. Okay, let's see here. Is there anything else we should talk about? Yeah, how about the run of four receivers in a row? I heard a lot of talk that teams didn't like this receiver group.

We heard a lot of talk that, you know, there was a certain point in the draft last night where people started to think, wow, only one receiver is going to go in this first round. Pretty crazy, right? Yeah, that didn't happen. Four receivers went in a row, picked two. 20, pick 21, pick 22, pick 23. All of these picks made sense, too. That's actually the crazy thing.

It's like maybe not the order. They should have came off the board based on my board, but like all the picks made sense. We already talked about JSN, but Quentin Johnson did the Chargers. I said this on the stream last night, but Keenan Allen and Mike Williams are just both so vanilla in what they do. There's no real like,

I shouldn't say there's no, big playability. I guess Williams can win contestant catches downfield, but there's not a lot of flash with those guys. That offense needs big plays. We got to maximize Justin Herbert's arm. Johnson gives them a legit deep threat and also

ridiculous playmaking ability underneath. You're going to scheme touches for them. We know that the element of the offense has been there for the last couple years. I know we have a new coordinator coming in and tell him more. But they're going to get a lot on a Johnson, I think.

Johnson actually compares favorably to C.D. Lamb, who Kellan Moore worked with in Dallas, obviously. Johnson is somewhere on the spectrum of like between C.D. Lamb and what people thought Traylon Burks was last year. I think Johnson's a way better prospect than Burks was. Johnson had a first round grade for me. Burks did not. I do really like this fit. The big playability here is going to make that offense a lot better. Zayflowers of Baltimore Listen, you got to give the Raven some credit here.

It's like they've been listening to the podcast. I've grilled them relentlessly about their inability to consistently support Lamar Jackson. Hey, they go out, they throw a ridiculous money at OBJ, whatever that is, you know,

they definitely overpaid, but they did what they had to do. They give Lamar some money, and then they go get Zayflowers on day one. He's going to have a chance, Lamar's now going to have a chance to play with the best receiving core he's ever had

and Rashon Bateman, OBJ, and Zay Flowers. They're rolling it back with Mark Andrews. Obviously, I mean, you just, you can't help but like what they're doing. And Zay, I probably would have went Addison here, but if you're trying to recreate Hollywood Brown in this offense, I think Zay and Hollywood are very similar players. I know my colleague and trusted confidant, Scott Barrett, pointed out how Zay doesn't have the freakish top end speed,

that Hollywood does. And I think that's true to an extent. I do think Zay is probably faster than his testing numbers suggested, but I do think Hollywood has otherworldly speed. So not a one-to-one comparison for sure, but I think Zay does a lot of the same things that Hollywood does very, very well. And then Addison to the Vikings at 23, loved this pick. They desperately needed to get help for Justin Jefferson, take some of that pressure off of him. Addison is the most detail-oriented, most precise, best route technician in this class. I like that they're giving Kirk easy throws here. And that's what it's all about for me.

Give your quarterback easy throws. When it's prime time now, you know, and Kirk's feeling the pressure of being in a primetime game, he only has to miss by a couple feet and it can still be a completion here. So jokes aside, I love Addison. The Addison Jefferson Hockeson trio should be pretty potent moving forward. Let's see. Anything else? Yeah, a couple of noteworthy things about guys that didn't get drafted in the first round.

So we have, let's see here. Michael Mayer didn't get drafted in the first round. Hendon Hooker didn't get drafted in the first round. Joey Porter, Jr., Brian Branch. Will Levis. Will Levis didn't get drafted in the first round. Now, listen, it sounds like maybe there's some medical things that's holding Will Levis back.

I don't really know what's going on there, but I will say this. Levis and Hooker being available, we are well past the breaking point for both of those guys where they become a value now. Like we are full in value territory. Any team that takes Levis or Hooker,

I don't care what team it is or who their quarterback is, it's a good pick because of where we're at in the draft, because of how valuable quarterback is, because of how analytically sounded is to get a young QB on a rookie deal. Now, especially for teams that need a quarterback, you know, yeah, I think both of those guys would be great picks.

Brian Branch should come off the board quickly here. Jalen Hyatt would be interesting to see where he goes. I didn't think he was going to go on the first round anyways, but I think we're going to find out pretty quickly whether teams buy into the hype and what he brings on the table or not. Osiris Torrance was another one. We saw a bunch of offensive linemen come off the board. I think six tackles went last night.

The thing that was interesting for a guy like Torrance is a lot of those tackles have inside out capabilities, whether you're talking Skoransky, Darnel Wright, Paris Johnson Jr., Anton Harris. A lot of these guys can also play guard. Now, do I think all of them will? No, but no shot. But maybe that stopped the guy like Osir's, Torrance or a Joe Tittman from getting in the first round because, you know, why not get the

positional versatility with the player you're taking? So like Jacksonville took Anton Harrison. It makes perfect sense, right? Because he can play left tackle once Cam Robinson moves on. They can play him at guard until then, or he can just be the swing tackle. It doesn't really matter. Let's see. Yeah.

I'm really interested to see where Atatamua, Etabawari from Northwestern goes. He's a trades guy. on paper he had like everything you'd want in a first round pick so really really intrigued to see where he comes off the board I had him right in that cluster he was sandwiched between Lucas Van Ness and Felix and Adduke Azoma for me as far as edge defenders go so I'm really really interested to see where he goes darnall washington's another one freak athlete doesn't play a valuable position

we only saw one tight end come off the board last night is that like we've been hearing about the tight end class for how long I've been I've been pumping it up I kind of felt like that was going to happen. I only mocked one tight end in the first round. It happened to be the wrong one. But despite that, I do think the depth of this class might be pushing these guys down because it's like, shoot, why are we going to take a guy in the first round if we can get essentially the same player 30 to 60 picks later? And I think that's what's happened. But all right.

Anyways, let's get out of here. Day two tonight. It's going to be fun. Come join the stream. We'll be vibing out, having a good time. will be giving you high level breakdowns. There's going to be a lot more skill players going tonight as well. So if you're a fantasy person,

you will like the content significantly more than your typical grind-in offensive linemen talk. So anyways, check it out. Check out the prospect guide on fancypoints.com. See how I feel about your favorite team's player that they drafted last night. Other than that, that's it. it. We're going to do it. We're going to get out of here. Thanks for listening, guys. We will be back

very, very soon. Out. Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points podcast. Remember to subscribe, rate, and review on your favorite platform. And come join the roster at FantasyPoints.com.