Fantasy Football Today - 07/04: Projections Week! AFC West and NFC West (Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: July 4, 2019

Projections Week concludes with some of the most exciting offenses in the NFL as we look at the AFC West and NFC West. First, we have a philosophical discussion about projections and rankings ... LAC (5:30), DEN (16:00), KC (23:45), OAK (32:00). Projecting DEN is not easy at all with a new coaching staff. Projecting OAK is not easy with a new RB and of course Antonio Brown. Also, is Patrick Mahomes still QB1? Can Phillip Lindsay get a bigger share of the carries? Are there reasons to worry about Melvin Gordon? ... ARI (38:30), LAR (44:40), SEA (51:00), SF (56:00). Ben is really excited about Kyler Murray. Where is the Jimmy Garoppolo love? How do the carries get divided in SEA? What are we projecting for Todd Gurley? ... Email us at [e-mail] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

yeah USA it's 4th of July baby we're having fun here on the fantasy football today podcast great song yeah it is it really is a great song like no no shame in admitting that uh welcome back we're recording on wednesday you were looking for like Victory March songs and you wound up there. I was looking for like a good USA song and I couldn't really find anything. I found this. Hail to the Chief. But I'm not the president. So I really shouldn't be doing anything to this music.

So I went with Miley Cyrus instead. Anyway, NFC West, AFC West today. I'm out of sorts because of Miley Cyrus instead. Anyway, NFC West, AFC West today. I'm out of sorts because of Miley Cyrus. Here's what I was going to talk about before this show got derailed in the first 10 seconds. Patrick Mahomes scored the most fantasy points since Peyton Manning in 2013. That's what he did last year. Melvin Gordon averaged 5.1 yards per carry after three seasons below four yards per carry. What?

Todd Gurley had more than 16 carries only once in his final nine games, including the playoffs. That's bad. Once in his final nine games for Gurley, more than 16 carries. All right, so AFC West, NFC West, our fourth and final episode of this four-part series.

I am Adam Azer. You can follow me on Twitter at Adam Azer, A-I-Z-E-R. Here's the new guy, Ben Gretsch. He's at Yards Per Gretsch. That's a great Twitter handle. How'd you get that? It just kind of came to me. Brilliant. Brilliant. I knew Gretsch rhymed with catch, obviously.

Gretsch does not rhyme with catch. It sounds like 100% Gretsch rhymes with catch What? What kind of a take is this Adam? Are you serious? If you had gone to the thread One of Adam's worst takes was that frog does not rhyme with dog

Wait a second We'll get back to that in a moment Gretsch and catch have a different letter in the middle Things that have different letters can rhyme with dog Not in this situation Gretsch and catch have a different letter in the middle. Things that have different letters can rhyme with it. Not in this situation. Gretch and catch don't rhyme. Gretch and catch 100% rhyme. You're saying the word catch wrong.

You say catch like the thing you put on burgers. Do I go outside and have a gretch? Exactly. I say catch. Apparently, you say catch. Catch, of course. It's an A. Yes, frog and dog. You rhyme it with batch. Don't rhyme. Yes, I do catch. Apparently you say catch. Catch, of course. It's an A. Yes.

Frog and dog. You rhyme it with batch. Don't rhyme. Yes, I do rhyme. Catch and batch rhyme? That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Okay. I want to have a philosophical discussion here.

You're ranking some three legendary quarterbacks. Your projections for them are all lower than what they usually come out at when they finish the year at. All right, we talked about Drew Brees on our Wednesday show. Russell Wilson and Phillip Rivers. So, I don't remember everything off the top of my head, but Brees was 15,

Rivers was like 18, QB 18, or maybe I'm confusing. Do you have, I'm sorry. Yeah, Rivers is QB 18 for both of us. Right. And then where's Russell Wilson? I have him at QB 10. Oh, right.

Part of a kind of a big tier. Heath has him at QB 19. That's okay. So Ben is the only one who has either Rivers, Breeze, or Russell Wilson in the top. Or Brady. Yeah. I mean, sure, sure. We can throw Brady in there in the top 15. Or Brady. Yeah. I mean, sure, sure. We can throw Brady in there

in the top 15. Or Eli. Right. Hall of Famers. So, I don't know. I just can't imagine Phillip Rivers, who's been a top 12 quarterback five years in a row, being the 18th best quarterback in

fantasy. Part of it with him is projections are kind of guys who don't run. I mean, he's not – like me and Heath both have him projected for less than 20 rushing yards, fewer than 20 rushing yards. And that's – I mean, that's typical of what he's done the last few years. I don't have it in front of me, but I remember looking at it and being like, wow, he – it's not just that he doesn't provide value running. He doesn't run at all.

All he does is kneel down and maybe scramble for a couple yards all season long. So that's not going to help his projection. Yeah, last year he ran for seven yards. The year before he had negative two rushing yards. Well, so he's on the way up. I mean, that's nine more yards than the year before. That's big. No, I get that.

And you know what? The other thing is like QB 18 isn't so bad these days. So that's another thing to keep in mind. But I just wonder, do you also rank it that way? Do you rank Russell Wilson Heath as QB 19 or whatever it is? Yeah. I don't like it. And I didn't like it last year.

And there were a couple of weeks that I was really, really right and a couple of weeks where I looked like an idiot. But their current offensive philosophy, and we're going to get into that a lot more when we talk about the Seahawks specifically, it does not matter if they had the best quarterback ever. I don't think a quarterback's going to be good with their offensive philosophy. Do you think their offensive philosophy was pretty extreme last year? You anticipated staying the same?

I guess we'll get into that, right? Not staying quite the same, but I'm just not changing it as much as Ben is. And Ben, when you look at Breeze, Wilson, Rivers, right, do you look at your projection go well i gotta change something because these guys are too low well i guess not not wilson for you because you have them 10 but breeze yeah i mean they're kind of different situations i mean as far as rivers i i'm fine with him if i am late in the draft and and need a stable quarterback but there's so many quarterbacks that are mobile now that can add so much value rushing

that the upside is just higher for those guys if they can have a spike passing touchdown season. I think Rivers has, I mean, and we'll get into this with the Chargers, but the potential to be a top five passing TD guy this year, which would be great, but if he's not adding any value at all rushing, it still makes it difficult for him to

to ascend to top five fantasy status so he doesn't really have that kind of upside whereas other guys who at least have a little bit of a floor with their rushing uh just have more upside and they have more more of a floor too if they have a bad year i don't think rivers is going to have a bad year but um that's yeah i mean i look at it and i say yeah he's a little bit lower than i want him to but also as a fantasy option right now, I mean, him and Breeze, I don't think Breeze necessarily has as much upside in his offense now. Wilson, I think, does if they do throw a little bit more this year. And if he runs more, he ran less last year than he had for several years.

But, yeah, I mean, it's weird to see their names lower, but it's also a game within a game. It's not how good we think they are as quarterbacks. It's how good we think they are in fantasy. Well, why don't we just start with the Chargers, even though I have this obsession with alphabetical order. The Chargers are third in alphabetical order, but we'll start with them. Rivers was the number 10 quarterback in fantasy last year. He ended up with the 14th most attempts.

Another thing with Rivers is that he has the longest active streak of games played, so that always helps him finish in the top 12. I think we've talked... Have we talked enough about him? Is there anything else you want to add? Like maybe Heath? You guys both have him 18th? My number for the Chargers was

508. That was the number of pass attempts for Rivers last year, his lowest total since 2009. And that's true that he always plays 16 games, but it's also true that on a per-game basis last year, he was, I believe, closer to

what? 18th? No, I don't think so. I mean, he would have been behind Cam. I had him 13th on a per-game basis. Behind Trubisky, behind Mayfield. Yeah, I had him 13th. So not behind Jameis? Well, let me see.

Let me look at this website, fftoday.com, because it might depend. Rivers was 19th. So, you know, it's probably so close that, you know, because he averaged, on this website, 21.8 points per game. Aaron Rodgers was 12th at 22.6 per game. So, you know, it's a bunched-up group.

So, yeah, I mean, and since we know it's so close, it gets back to my point about the upside and the lack of rushing value that's why rivers for me and drafts becomes less of a target i i really like his passing potential but if we think he's just going to be not really a difference maker in a big big group like that i want so i want to draft somebody who could finish that group and also has potential to have a top five season if they really smash. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. So why don't we stick with the passing game? And what does Hunter Henry's return do to this team?

You guys have him projected for about 750 yards and six or seven touchdowns on around 60 catches. Tight end five for Heath, tight end six for Ben, although Ben does have Henry scoring a few more PPR fantasy points than Heath does. But similar projections. So, you know, discuss Henry Heath and also his impact on Keenan Allen, Mike Williams, et cetera. I don't think he impacts the wide receivers very much because that wasn't what changed about their offense last year. But for the five years before last year, this had been a team that threw the ball to tight ends as often as any in football. And they lost him before the season.

And Antonio Gates is obviously not the same player. And Virgil Green is a nothing burger. And so you look at it in 2018, 14.5% of their targets went to tight ends. That was the third lowest total in the league. Where did those targets go? To the running backs. 28% of their targets went to running ends this year than did last year because they actually have someone with talent playing that position, which could cut in to Melvin Gordon or Austin Eckler, but also comes a little bit possibly from the targets left by Tyrell Williams. 65 targets for Tyrell Williams. And you guys have Hunter Henry for like around 80 targets. So 83 for Heath, 88 actually for Ben.

Ben, why don't you talk about the wide receivers and what you expect from Keenan Allen and Mike Williams. Williams caught more touchdowns than Keenan Allen last year. I think he caught 10. And obviously we're going to project Keenan Allen to be higher. But Keenan Allen is not a top eight wide receiver in drafts. And you both have him projected for more than 100 catches, more than 1,200 yards, six or seven touchdowns,

and as a top eight wide receiver in PPR. Yeah, he's a guy that, if you look back at his career, has always commanded big targets. You can go all the way back to college. At Cal, he came in, he was two years younger, played with Marvin Jones for the Lions, that same Marvin Jones. He was two years younger than him, and as a the Lions, that same Marvin Jones. He was two years younger than him. And as a freshman right away, was just about as productive as him.

And then as a sophomore in Marvin Jones senior season, he blew him away. Even though he was a 19-year-old and Marvin Jones was a senior, a 21-year-old senior. So he did that. He came into the NFL and started commanding targets. He cut into Antonio Gates' target share right away. I mean, he's always been somebody that because of how good of a route runner he is and especially because he's put Philip Rivers now for so many years and Rivers knows his you know his little idiosyncrasies with the way that he runs his routes he's going to be open and he's going to get targets so even though

they have so many other options here I think you have to project Keenan Allen for a big target share you have to expect that he's going to catch a lot of balls I don't think he's going to have some kind of receiving touchdown spike, which is something he's – that's the weaker part of his profile. He doesn't catch a lot of TDs. And it gets to the Mike Williams question. Mike Williams now, huge, huge touchdown. 11% touchdown rate for his career now, which is massive.

It was 15% last year. If you look at Hunter henry before 2018 obviously didn't play last year um 10.5 career rate so far also massive when you get into double digit career touchdown rates in terms of per target how many touchdowns they score per target those are huge and then my stat is seven it's the number of running back receiving touchdowns both of the last two years that the Chargers running backs they combined for in the passing game. Gordon and Eckler, both last two years have combined for seven TDs, which is a not insignificant amount. And that's a trend that goes back to like Danny Woodhead, both of his 16 game seasons with the Chargers. He had six receiving touchdowns.

Rivers will throw to the backs, as Heath mentioned, and you'll do so in the red zone. And so as far as Mike Williams is concerned, the return of Hunter Henry concerns me a little bit in his ability to maintain that massive touchdown rate. It's going to come down. How far it comes down will be tough to see. And that also, I think, isn't great news for Keenan Allen having some kind of like breakout top five season. He's more just a stable option. He projects really well because he's a stable target option, but I don't think he has a double-digit touchdown ceiling, and you kind of want that.

Like you said, we're projecting him higher than his ADP. For other receivers around him, there's more potential for a double-digit TD season that we wouldn't necessarily project, but those things do happen. It's just not there probably for Allen. Okay. You guys have Mike Williams for more than 800 yards and seven touchdowns. Wide receiver 40 for Heath in PPR.

Wide receiver 31 for Ben in PPR. And Travis Benjamin, more or less fantasy irrelevant. And then if the last thing we should talk about, I guess, is does Austin Eckler matter, Heath? You have him as RB32 with much more generous projection than Ben's RB45. In fact, we're talking about 47 more fantasy points in PPR for Eckler than what Ben projects. For me, he's a lot like what I said about Deion Lewis

on the AFC South. I don't think, I don't have him ranked as high as I have him projected, but they did do some things last year, even when Gordon was healthy and Eckler was healthy, to limit Gordon's load in the running game. He only had 175 carries in 12 games. So I, I think he's going to have a role and he matters,

but I would like him more when I don't have to decide when to start him or in really deeper leagues where he's like a second flex. Okay. And I would just add Justin Jackson playing so well late in the year has me a little concerned that, I mean, they did that last year as he noted that they might even incorporate jackson a little bit this year too to because gordon still got hurt even as they were trying

to manage his workload and miss some time late in the year that this is going to be a playoff team they have high aspirations they're 12 and 4 last year um you know i would think that they want gordon healthy through potentially january so i i think we might see this is the deepest their their backfield has been in Gordon's career now, and I would think that we might, I'm kind of shying away from Gordon because of that. I was going to say, why should I take Melvin Gordon

fifth or sixth overall? Yeah, I haven't projected at running back seven now. I just actually bumped that down a little bit. And I don't think, like, he's been really good the last couple years. He was always a little bit underrated. Now I think we're at a point where he's getting the do and you know we might actually be it may have jumped the shark a little bit because we may be at a point where they need to spell him a little bit he's been banged up for the last few years he's like three of us four

seasons he's been banged up he's 10 second final thought i don really have one. I think the reason you take him as the fifth running back is because all of the options as the fifth running back have warts. Okay. Then let's go to our next team. Just jump back into alphabetical order. The Denver Broncos. By the way, kind of strange. In the AFC West, all four

teams last year were ranked 19th to 23rd in rush attempts, including the Denver Broncos who were 21st in rush attempts. They went 6-10. How do you project a team with a new head coach who's a defensive coordinator, Vic Fangio, and a new offensive coordinator, Rich Scangarello, who is in his first season as an offensive coordinator,

the former quarterbacks coach for San Francisco? Heath, how did you go about projecting the Broncos? Well, I think you can look a little bit at Gary Kubiak-style offense, because that's where Scangarello has... They both come from the Shanahan tree, if I remember correctly. Does that sound

right, Ben? Hey, honestly, I don't even know how to say his name. Is it Scangarello or Scangarello? Scangarello is what I saw phonetically in the article I read about him today. Yes. I think there's a little bit of not the pace. We pretty much have the same right around a thousand plays, which is just about average.

We do seem to have some disagreement in how pass heavy they will be. I've got them much more run heavy and towards the upper end of the league in terms of rush attempts, just because I do expect the defense to be decent. And I expect with an old defensive coordinator, head coach that he would really like it if they run the ball and take care of the football. But that's really a lot of guessing from me as well. Well,

and I don't, I don't hate your numbers here. I mean, I think that's what they want to do based just on it's Skangarello. You said Skangarello, you said, Adam? Scangarello, yeah. Scangarello made a comment that Joe Flacco was the perfect quarterback for his system, which— Which means you don't want to pass everybody.

That's a red flag, right? Like, he is not the perfect quarterback for any system. I'm sorry. He's immobile. He has a big arm. But he's a perfect quarterback for a system in 1985. He should not be the perfect quarterback for your system in 2019. He's not.

I mean, that comment means nothing to me. That's complimenting the guy who's on your team because you have to because he's on your team. Sure, but it sounds like the system that you would run with an immobile quarterback would be pretty run-heavy and maybe play action with a big arm and get him into some deep drops and let him throw. So you would expect more of a run uh a run-based uh offense and i kind of do but i also don't expect the broncos to be very good now if their

defense is good like he said i think their their breakdown could be pretty similar to what he said we both have them slow pace for that reason that they would probably lean more run at least in the first half again this is a team where i wind up pass heavier not because of what i think they want to do but because i think they're going to trail in games and and half the throw to get back into games so well we got to focus on the running backs here so heath why don't we go to your stat my stat is about the number of times that philip lindsey had more than 14 carries in the game and it was just four. I do expect this will continue to be a committee approach in Denver.

I hope you're wrong. Yes, committee, but I see your projections. You both have fairly similar numbers in terms of carries for Freeman and for Lindsey, and I really want them to get away from that. I don't want Royce Freeman to have more than 100 carries this year,

and you guys both have. Then you don't like Ben and I's projections. Right. It's going to happen. It's not like I don't like them, that I think they're bad. It's that I don't like them because I think it seriously limits Philip Lindsey. He was so good last year.

Do you want another depressing reality about that? Devontae Booker had 51 targets last year and he's got another depressing reality about that Devontae Booker had 51 targets last year and caught 38 passes I mean we just did this with with the Chargers but usually you don't talk about the third running back a lot and we're not talking about Devontae Booker being usable in fantasy but if Royce Freeman's gonna run enough to to limit Phil Blinzey's carries and he just mentioned Phil Blinzey was never really a workhorse uh in of carries. And Devontae Booker got 51 targets last year and is still there. And me and Heath both have him projected in the 40s this year. That limits Phillip Lindsay's ability to have big reception totals as well.

So it makes it pretty tough. Yeah, but for Lindsay, like down the stretch after their bye, weeks 11 through 16, he did not play week 17. I'll try to do some quick math here, but there was only one game in which Royce Freeman had more than seven carries. 12 plus 6 plus 4 plus 7 divided by 6. That's 7 per

game times 16. That's 112 carries. So Royce Freeman was on pace for 112 carries in Phillip Lindsay's last six games. I do think that they started to get away from Royce Freeman and make him pretty useless for fantasy owners. And they gave the ball to... They gave the running game to Philip Lindsay.

So, I mean, that encourages me. Right, but they are not there anymore? Yeah, but obviously Philip Lindsay is better than Royce Freeman. And Philip Lindsay's not practicing yet. That's true. If you said that like 12 months ago, that obviously Philip Lindsay is better than Royce Freeman, you'd have been thrown in an insane asylum. I mean Freeman had a way better profile.

But we saw it. He's better. Royce Freeman is a slug. Philip Lindsay is a steal. He's going to be one of the better undrafted free agents in a long time. Well, that's probably already true. Yeah, it probably is. But don't you feel that way?

Throw the scouting. Throw what we thought was true. But that goes back to the Corey Davis thing from a couple days ago. That was yesterday. You just seem to not care about pedigree once we're a season in. No, that's not true. I don't think Royce Freeman had some amazing pedigree, first of all. We anointed him for much better pedigree than Phillip Lindsay. Yeah, I don't think Royce Freeman had some amazing pedigree first of all. I mean, we anointed him for... Much better

pedigree than Phillip Lindsey. Yeah, I don't know what the deal was. He was extremely productive at Oregon. He was really, really good. I mean, maybe it was a system thing. Oregon was a very good offense, but he had a lot... He put up a lot of numbers. I did... I feel like Phillip Lindsey... Well, I'll try to... Did he have off-field

issues? Is that why he didn't get drafted? I don't know. Royce Freeman, 5,600 rushing yards in his career. So averaged almost 1,500 per year over four seasons. 800 receiving yards on top of that. 6,400 yards from scrimmage in a college career is pretty ridiculous. A lot of guys in Oregon don't do anything in the NFL.

But you saw it with your own eyes. Who's a better running back? Who's a better running back? Who's a better running back? Lindsey, Phillip Lindsey is a better running back. You've got to project Lindsey to be better. You absolutely have to project Lindsey to be better. We are projecting that. That's not it.

Project. I don't see any off-field issues, by the way, so I don't want to attach that to him. I was just curious. That was wrong of me. I think he's a really good person, actually. You wonder how these guys didn't get drafted. Like, that's usually the answer.

So, no, I don't think he had any off-field issues. So, anyway. He's small. Yeah, it's a prototypical NFL size issue that he didn't really get a chance. He had good numbers in college, but yeah, Royce Freeman was, he had double, Freeman also had double-edged touchdowns in four straight seasons. Oregon. Over 60 career TDs. All right. That's fair.

Uh, I just saying that so we can get to our next team, the Kansas city chiefs. Oh, Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Broncos wide receiver. Well,

real quick hit the receiving core. Cause who really cares? But, uh, Cortland Sutton, 16.8 yards per catch last year, 23 of his 84 targets were uncatchable. He had a really deep average depth of target,

so he had just a 50% catch rate with a lot of those uncatchable targets. But he still, even with that 50% catch rate, put up an 8.4 yards per target. He's got a new quarterback now, Joe Flacco, big arm. If they connect, Sutton, I mean, he had a really strong season given the fact that he didn't have a very strong catch rate, is my point. Really good yards per catch, it was the number. So he's the guy I expect to be their number one.

I don't really think that Emmanuel Sanders is going to be able to get back. This guy tore his Achilles in December. I mean, I think it's really optimistic to expect him to be back in nine months. Yeah, he's optimistic about it, but it would be pretty miraculous. Kevin Garant can't do it, that's for sure.

Kansas City is next. And what do you do? What's your Tyreek Hill stance right now? How are you guys projecting the Chiefs with Tyreek Hill? I am projecting him for a six-game absence. And I think it's a good time to talk about like what that means because he's projected for 87 targets catching 57 passes for 800 yards and six touchdowns and that's not really very good if it's spread over 16 games but if he does that over the final

10 games of the season you should probably draft him in like the fourth round you can get replacement-level production at wide receiver for the first five or six weeks of the season and then have one of the best receivers in fantasy football. Tyreek Hill was the number one receiver in non-PPR. In PPR, he was top five. Had to have been, right? So he's obviously awesome. And there are a lot of stats with the Chiefs.

But the one that jumps out to me is that you guys are projecting Damian Williams for 52 catches for Heath, 51 catches for Ben. 50 catches. Damian Williams has never had 50 carries in a season. So, like, Ben, you've got him as RB9. You've got him with a really big workload, 274 total touches. So, the reason why is I think he's a way better fit

for what Andy Reid wants to do. It's not just that he was good at the end of last season, which does matter, and it's not that they signed him to, I think, a two-year deal right at the end of the season. They locked him up during that little run while he was doing well, and they knew, obviously, that Hunt wouldn't be back.

It's that he's a way better fit than Carlos Hyde. People think Carlos Hyde is a decent receiving back because he had a 50-something catch season with San Francisco, but it wasn't actually efficient, and the majority of that was when C.J. Beathard was playing quarterback. He was getting just a ridiculous target share. I think 50 of his 80-something targets came in five games with Beathard under center. But my stat is Carlos Hyde's career yards per target on 168 targets now.

It's a pretty big sample. It's 3.97. The league average running back yards per target over the last three years is 6.0. So we're talking about more than two full yards lower. seven uh the league average running back yards per target over the last three years is 6.0 so we're talking about more than two full yards lower damian williams yes never had 50 carries in a career but he has always shown some receiving promise he has at least 20 catches in all five seasons of his career even when he's been a part-time player even when he was a part-time player in miami um he had he's caught at least 20 balls every season we're projecting him for 50 but

we're also projecting him to play a lot more, obviously. And in terms of the yards per target number, just for Williams, his career is six point four. It's above average, even playing in Miami. You know, not a very efficient offense. Williams is a really actually a good size speed specimen. If you go back to like his combine numbers was pretty fast and a bigger dude. He's the kind of guy that could do everything in the past in the run game. if you go back to his combine numbers, was pretty fast and a bigger dude. He's the kind of guy that could do everything in the pass and the run game.

So I think he's a better fit for what Andy Reid wants. It's not just necessarily a hope and a prayer. I think he's the back that they want. And actually, when I'm handcuffing him or I'm looking for, if I don't get Williams and I'm looking for a sleeper for Kansas City, I'm going to Darwin Thompson, who has a better receiving profile than Carlos Hyde. I think if Williams isn't the guy, I think Thompson has the better chance. And Heath, you project Carlos Hyde to be worse than Damian Williams.

You have Damian Williams as RB14. But you project Hyde to have twice as many carries as Ben projects, almost twice. 109 carries for Heath, 56 carries for Ben. So you see a more even split in this backfield. But that's not going to be like every game it's split, Is it because that don't we know Andy Reed doesn't really do that? That's what Andy, Andy Reed hasn't really done that. Although he did kind of do that at the start of when Damian Williams took over last year. I'm not, I don't feel comfortable with the idea that Damian Williams is going to handle 15 carries and five or six targets per week for an entire season.

So I do think it makes more sense for Carlos Hyde to handle some of the between-the-tackle stuff. If there's one thing Carlos Hyde can do, it's go forward three yards. Okay. How about Patrick Mahomes? Is he QB1 again? He is QB1 for me. My number, my stat for the Chiefs, 95. That's how many more fantasy

points Patrick Mahomes scored in a standard CBS league than any other player last year. Almost 100 fantasy. He is going to regress. He's not going to have a touchdown rate like he did last year. He's not going to have yards per attempt probably as good as it was last year.

He has a lot of room to regress and still be better than everyone else. Yeah. Peyton Manning, after his 5,500, 55 touched 5,500 yard, 55 touchdown season. He went from being the number one quarterback to the number four quarterback.

So I guess if you were going to take Patrick Holmes or the field, you'd probably want to take the field. But still one difference with that is peyton manning was like 107 years old he still had a really good year though it's just it's so hard to do it it's so hard to be number one at any position two years in a row like right hats off to antonio brown basically for dominating that position uh all right so sammy watkins um it's what okay sammy watkins travis kelsey how does a potential six game eight game absence whatever it is for travis kelsey or for tyreek hill rather affect those guys i don't think it affects travis kelsey as much i think kelsey's probably going to have his role it might affect his efficiency a little bit. I mean, we've talked about this throughout this series, how certain

players impact the overall efficiency of the offense. And Tyree Kill's definitely one of those players. His speed forces the safeties deep and it allows for a lot of room in the middle of the field. And that's a big reason Travis Kelsey has blown up over the last couple of years and finally taken that next step. I mean, the other reason, especially last year, was Patrick Mahomes. But Tyree Kill not being on the field might affect his efficiency a little bit, but I don't, I don't really project too much difference in targets, whether Hill's there or not. I think he's still going to get plenty of targets. Watkins is a guy that I think it's, it's a huge impact on. If, if Hill's not in the lineup, Watkins is going to have to take on a

pretty, pretty hefty role in terms of volume. And then obviously DeMarcus Robinson and Meikle Hardman, those guys are going to have to play a lot more too and do a lot. But when Hill's in the lineup, Watkins is a lot less interesting. So this is a really hard one to parse. I mean, I don't really have a whole ton of insight on how to go about this, frankly. Yeah, I think you just view Sammy Watkins is going to be, in my opinion, a number one wide receiver for however many games Tyreek Hill misses. I'm not saying he will be every single week, but if he misses six weeks at the end of week six, I expect that Sammy Watkins ranks as

a top 12 wide receiver. And then when Tyreek Hill comes back, you're looking at Sammy Watkins as a number three receiver again. So you draft him as a number two, I guess, and hope that you get six to eight weeks of number one production. I do think the injury thing with Sammy Watkins, I saw something the other day that was interesting, how much we talk about injuries with Sammy Watkins. He's missed fewer games in his career than Odell Beckham. Well, we should talk more about it with Beckham, I think. I always do.

I always do. Watkins, by the way, he had, with my stat, five games with more than five targets. That's it. And in none of those games, he had more than nine targets, by the way. In those five games, he averaged 18.2 fantasy points per game in PPR,

12.4 in non-PPR. Those are top 10, about 10th. That's terrific. All right, so let's move on here. McCole Hardman, by the way, just five-second thought on McCole Hardman. With the idea that Hill's probably going to play at some point this year, I'm a lot less interested. It's hard.

Is it going to be hard enough as a rookie to be productive right away? Yeah, because if Hill wasn't playing at all, then I could see a slow start for Hardman. But then by maybe the first, by the fifth or sixth game of the season, he's kind of figured things out and is becoming a bigger part of the offense. By the time he figures things out, Tyreek Hill may be back. We do have a piece of news, Adam, I know you had asked earlier. Do you want to just throw a piece of news in the middle here

that had nothing to do with players we're talking about? Can we do it after we project the Raiders? Sure. Projecting the Raiders then. They were 4-12. They were 23rd in rush attempts, 16th in pass attempts. How much of a factor is Josh Jacobs in

the passing game? The rookie first round pick running back. How much of a factor is he in the passing game? We have no idea. There's a lot of things we don't know about josh jacobs because we've never really seen him with a feature role he didn't do that at alabama um he didn't i jaw ben seems to think he's going to be more involved in the passing game than i do i will say i'll say this i i got a chance to listen to him speak actually in person at FSGA last week, and I bumped his receiving projection up a little bit because of that. They talked about splitting him out.

He talked about how they've been splitting him out a little bit. We heard a little bit about how he played quarterback in high school, which I didn't realize, and they put in some packages for him to throw the ball, or that package is there for a potential double pass situation this year you know i don't want to put too much like of a bias on on actually hearing a guy talk about his role because he's going to talk about his role and one thing that i i also thought was really interesting is he he mentioned uh jalen richard i believe i don't want to put a quote on him that i'm wrong on but i believe he called jalen richard

the best route running running back that he's ever been around or ever seen. So he had a huge compliment for Jalen Rashard's receiving role and ability. And my stat is 6.8. Again, going back to running back yards per target. That's Jalen Rashard's career yards per target on 156 targets. Again, the league average over the last three years, 6.0 for running backs. He was at 7.5 last year. He was very good in the passing game last year.

I don't think Josh Jacobs is going to be a star in the passing game. I think that's hard because Jalen Rashard still should have a role, and I still have Rashard for 20 more receptions than Jacobs, but I wound up projecting, I think, probably more total receptions than you for the backs and thinking that after hearing him talk, that maybe Jacobs and Rashard will get plenty of work. We know Derek, Derek Carr likes to check down.

Yeah. So you guys have, so Heath has Josh Jacobs projected for better rushing totals, but not as good as receiving totals. And that's why Ben has Jacobs RB 19ob's rb19 and heath has him rb24 and both have jaylen richard as a like a low end number three high end number four ppr running back meanwhile antonio brown so projected each of you have him for 96 catches on 153 to 160 targets. And 1,150 to

1,190 yards. So between 1,100 and 1,200 yards with 8 or 7 touchdowns. That's wide receiver 9 for Heath, wide receiver 13 for Ben. So he is, yeah, and actually, Heath, you like Tyrell Williams quite a bit too. You have him wide receiver 28. But let's talk about

those two wide receivers, Brown and Williams. I don't like Antonio Brown. I don't like the fact that I have him projected higher than Ben. But I think it's actually just more about how many receivers we have projected to score 260 fantasy points. Because Ben has him projected for two more points than I do and ranked four spots lower. So it's just one of those weird things in our projections. I do think there's an enormous opportunity here for Tyrell Williams. My stat was 361.

That's the number of targets the Raiders have to replace from last year's team. I don't expect Antonio Brown to get 180 targets, but even if he did, there's plenty of room for Tyrell Williams to make a huge impact. We've only seen him get a hundred targets once in his career. That was, I believe 2016, the year that Keenan Allen went down and he was a top 25 wide receiver that year. I think he had a great chance to come close to that again. At the very least, I like him as a high end number three receiver. If Antonio Brown is a top five receiver for the Raiders or even top eight, I'm going to miss on him this year.

I'm not going to take him probably in any leagues. To his point, our projection is pretty high. Both of us have him right in the same range. I haven't watched him for 13. He's within.4 points of the two guys ahead of him so yeah again to his point he could easily for me be a little bit higher in my projection the problem is i'm projecting that because what else can you project for the raiders i think there's a lot more downside i think there's risk for you know the connection to not

be there that we've seen with ben roethlisberger. Receivers tend to be a lot worse when they change teams just generally. And Derek Carr also wasn't very good at supporting Amari Cooper. I mean, both Amari Cooper and Michael Crabtree had their moments in Oakland, and Crabtree was good at scoring touchdowns. But I just think that Ben Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown, what they did was such a high bar. They set such a high bar that it almost has to come down from that. I'm concerned.

And Antonio Brown's not a young receiver anymore either. So I'm a little bit concerned about the downside from this project. Like, this is where the projection comes in. I see a lot more room for downside than I see for him to smash this projection. I agree with that completely. All right, Heath, What's our news update? Ezekiel Elliott will not be suspended.

Well, that's wonderful. Alright, well, we're going to take a quick break on fantasy football today. When we come back, we've got the NFC West as we finish up Projections Week. Kick off an exciting football season with BetMGM, an official sportsbook partner of the national football league yard after

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For free assistance, call the Connex Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Fall is almost gone, but have you sipped enough Starbucks fall faves? Enough of the pumpkin spice latte, the cinnamony pumpkin flavored legend, or the new iced apple crisp non-dairy chai. So silky, so smooth.

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Yeah, fun. Cliff Kingsbury and Kyler Murray. Is this going to be a good offense? It's certainly going to be faster paced because last year, 28th at rush attempts, 29th at pass attempts. They basically didn't want to play offense last year. So, all right, Heath, I'll give you the first word on Arizona. What is this offense going to look like? Well, they can't be slower. The 902 plays they ran last year's only more than the miami

dolphins i think ben talked about there's only been one team in the last six years run fewer than 900 they tried uh i i think that there's probably as much room for um variance or a wider error bar on this arizona cardinals offense than just about any in the NFL. They could, they've talked about wanting to run something like 85 or 90 plays a game. That's not going to happen, but if they get their way, they're going to be one of the fastest paced offenses in the NFL. And they've got a lot of young talent.

I just don't know how it's all going to fit together in the first year. If you told me Cliff Kingsbury was someone we're talking about, like Chip Kelly in five years, I would kind of believe that. But Chip Kelly's first season went pretty well. Yeah, Ben, you have Kyler Murray as QB8. Heath has him as QB16. Interestingly enough, Heath has Kyler Murray with better passing stats. But, Ben, you have Kyler Murray with 570 rushing yards compared to 350 for Heath

and four rushing touchdowns compared to two for Heath. So it's a, it's an aggressive projection QB eight for Kyler. Yeah. I mean, I, I just think this, this offense is going to be really fast paced. Like he said, I think there's going to be a lot of opportunity that the rushing thing is tough. It's really hard to tell. I can obviously understand where he sat on it to being a little bit more conservative with it I think Murray if you look at his production in college rushing the ball like you probably think he's going to scramble a decent amount and especially like if their line's not great or whatever he might be put in situations um where he has to run and if they're going to try to run

up temple they're going to run spread offense those you know those kinds of plays can can lead to more quarterback scrambles as well so I I that's that's where i'm at on him i'm pretty excited about him uh i think a big big thing i want to mention here as well with these guys is is just the the wide receiver three battle it sounds like andy isabella is really winning that over hakeem butler who's who's sounding like he's a little bit behind so i'm pretty excited about him because i think we're going to probably see a lot of three receivers i like christ Christian Kirk as well and Larry Fitzgerald. So there's three pretty good receivers there. So anyway, I'm excited about Isabella over Butler.

The only thing I'm worried about with all of the wide receivers and David Johnson and everyone is if they aren't able to sustain drives as well as they want to, I expect they are going to really spread the ball around. I don't think you're going to see a lot of weeks where anybody's getting double digit targets or anything like that. They're going to need to be high paced for the targets to be there for these guys. All right. We'll get to the receivers in just a moment. But David Johnson was the number 10 running back in fantasy. My favorite David Johnson status, he got 100% of his team's carries inside the five-yard line.

And I don't know why that would change dramatically. I mean, I don't think he'll get 100%, but he's got amazing Kyler Murray is going to get some of those. That's obviously going to change, but I don't see he's the goal linebacker. We like that. You have you both have david johnson projected as a top eight running back ben is

number five um but actually with about the same amount of fantasy points and the same amount of catches 63 and i don't think anybody would be surprised if he went over that yep that's so let's go to my stat i mean 40 43 which was the number of routes david david johnson lined up out of the backfield either split wide or from the slot in 2016 his massive receiving uh season he lined up out of the back with 180 times so whatever they were doing in arizona last year i i have no idea but you have to assume kingsbury with a more spread offense is gonna uh get his get david johnson out of the backfield more i mean all you have to do Kingsbury with a more spread offense is going to get David Johnson out of the backfield more. I mean, all you have to do is turn on the tape from 2016 and 2018 and try and figure out what went well for David Johnson and what went poorly.

And that's something that just stands right out. And then to your point about his goal line rushing, 7 for 15, this is inside the 10, even further out than inside the 5, at converting carries inside the 10 to touchdowns. Wow. the 10 even further out than inside the five uh at converting carries inside the 10 to touchdowns wow and that's actually that was actually better than his previous two seasons which were both really strong rates as well he's a 230 pound back he's a big dude who can also move but he's he's always been very good great vision and patience and ability to get into the end zone in the red zone so i really like his his upside as well i i'm taking him as my running back five. And I have him, I think, as my sixth overall player because I think there is upside to beat this projection. I think it's a little bit conservative.

All right, Heath. Christian Kirk, Larry Fitzgerald, Andy Isabella. Kirk is a top 26 guy for you guys, 24th for Heath, 26 for Ben in terms of the projections and PPR. Pretty big year. You have him projected for 76 catches, 998 yards, and six touchdowns. And this appears to be the year where Larry Fitzgerald isn't all that relevant. 69, 68, 69 catches, less than 730 yards, five touchdowns.

You both have him at that. But you do have Fitzgerald projected for a similar amount of targets as Christian Kirk. Heath, you just talked about the targets and how you see them being split up. But anyway, you're pretty high on Christian Kirk. Yeah, I think he has... We talk about upside with a lot of these guys. There's not very much upside with Larry Fitzgerald. It wouldn't

surprise me all that much if he leads the Cardinals in targets again this year. If there's three guys that have between 85 and 115 and he's the guy that's at the top but I don't get as excited about targets going to him Christian Kirk has better ability to do things down the field and make

plays after the catch let's go to the great I love Kirk this year oh you do yeah okay let's go to the Rams they were 13 and three they lost in the Super Bowl they also lost in the NFC Championship game but they got to play in the Superbowl. Uh, they were eighth in rush attempts, 14th and pass attempts. And I gave that stat about Todd Gurley one game in his final nine, including the post season with more than 16 carries. Uh, that is, uh, that is wild. So

Ben, how did you project, uh, the running backs for the Rams? Yeah. I mean, another really, really tough one to project, right? Because we don't know what Gurley's health is going to be. What I will say is my stat real quick. I chose the number three, which is how many more combined rushing and receiving TDs Todd Gurley had than anyone else in the NFL last year, despite playing just 14 games, despite that stat you just said where he wasn't necessarily getting a heavy rushing workload for the significantly like significant part of the second half of the season because his knee issues were already showing up he scored six more than anyone else in 2017 he's still in my opinion even if daryl henderson is very involved and i like henderson

todd really still gonna get the red zone touches i I think they're still going to use him in that area. And Henderson, they've talked more about as kind of a pass catcher, like big, big plague type of guy. When you think about Gurley's like fantasy production, he should still score plenty of touchdowns and probably still be involved in the passing game. Even if he's limited, I still like, I'm not, I can't move him down that far it's a

sketchy it's a sketchy pick to make because we don't know his health but man if he's if he just gets 200 uh rush attempts which i have him at 206 rush attempts and gets uh you know i have him just under 50 receptions gets right in that range he's it's gonna be pretty. Yeah, I think the big question is, is he as effective? Because there were times down the stretch last year where as much as it pains me to say it, CJ Anderson just looked like a better running back. A lot of people look like...

Gurley was... I mean, he's obviously playing hurt. Yeah, he was just... Right. It was himself. So I think there is... If you told me he was the top five running back this year on 240 touches, I would not be surprised at all. But he scares me quite a bit.

And I don't want to defend him too much because I am concerned about that too. But I would say, if you think about the bigger picture, that was a Super Bowl run season where he played 19 games, and the issue really just started to flare up during that season now they've had all off season to kind of think about how they want to make like perform maintenance throughout the week and handle that you can't imagine that girly you'll get in september october and november of this year would match what we saw in like december and january of last year at the end of a long season you know but yeah so you ben has girly projected for about 13 30 total yards 1330 heath about 100 less than that and uh both of them have him for either 11 or 12 total touchdowns heath has girly

as rb 16 in his projection ben is rb 13 but you know only 36 catches, according to Heath, for Gurley. I expect the area they'll try to limit him the most will be in the passing game because I think that's what Henderson's the best at. All right, so we go to the wide receivers. Woods or Cooks, who's better? I had Woods at the beginning of my projections. I currently actually have Cooks. And I just totally forgotten when I was going through the targets and the production last year,

the game, like, you look at Brandon Cook's stats and it looks like he played 16 games last year. Well, he had one game where he played like a quarter and got one target and didn't produce anything. He actually, my number was 10.3, 10.3 yards per target. That was the best number of his career, which is kind of astonishing when you think about the fact that he played with Tom Brady and Drew Brees.

And really the only reason that he wasn't quite as good is because he only scored five touchdowns. I think Cooks has a sneaky chance to be a top 10 wide receiver this year. I completely agree and actually have Cooks higher in my rankings, even though I have Woods projected a little bit higher, which again, it's one of those weird things where I just think Cooks has more potential to beat this projection. I really like Robert Woods as well. And for me, they're basically a coin flip. But even though I lean barely with Woods in my projection, I've decided in my drafts to lean a little bit towards Cooks.

And at Cooper Cup, you guys have getting between 104 and 116 targets. And you have all three of them with getting six or seven touchdowns. Cup, I mean, it's a 16-game projection, as we always remind you for guys that are not suspended. I do feel like Cup would have the best chance to lead this team in touchdowns. He's sort of been Jared Goff's red zone guy, hasn't he? Yeah, I have him tied for the team lead, and Heath does as well. He has them all scoring six.

I mean, I think it's certainly possible, especially when you think about the way that we do projections. We're projecting typically a touchdown percentage and we're projecting him for fewer targets overall. And we still have him as high as the other guys in receiving TDs. And that's because we're projecting him

for a lot higher touchdown rate. So I'm totally with you. I think Cup is probably on a per target basis. Yes, a better red zone option than the other two for fantasy. And Jared Goff, QB 10 for Heath, QB 11 for Ben. Just last question on the Rams. Their offensive line probably won't be as good. Did you guys factor that in?

I'm concerned about it. It's hard to factor in, though. I don't know. What do you think, Heath? Well, like I have talked, I didn't factor it into golf too much. It worries me a little bit for the effectiveness of the running game. I think it may just make them a little bit more pass-heavy.

Roger Saffold, one of their guards, signed with the Titans. Center John Sullivan, not with the team anymore either. And then, you know, Whitworth is kind of old. He was contemplating retirement. He's their left tackle. Two more teams left here in

the NFC West projections. Seattle. Alright, we got into this a little bit earlier. Russell Wilson, QB 10 for Ben, QB 18 for Heath. If you want to hear that discussion, it might come up a little bit organically, but that was at the beginning of the show. So, what do we do with Chris Carson and Rashad Penny this year, guys?

It's tough. I have Penny essentially getting the same amount of work as Carson. And it's not that I don't like Carson. It's just that I think Penny will probably be more involved in the passing game. My stat for Seattle here is 42, which is the number of targets Mike Davis left behind. It was a team running back high. He was kind of their pass catching back last year, and they kind of went with a three-back system. It's possible that it's like CJ Proseis or JD McKissick or one of those guys,

but I'm guessing that Rashad Penny gets used a lot more in the passing game this year. And I actually don't have him projected as high, nearly as high as he does in the passing game. So I'm guessing that he agrees with me, but I like Penny more in drafts for that reason. I think his upside's higher. It's a really tough call. Yeah, I would, I think there's a bigger gap between these two and non PPR than there is in PPR. And that's just because I agree entirely with what Ben said about the receiving game. I've got Penny at 47 catches for almost 400 yards through the air this

year. They're both top 30 backs for me in PPR. I think Penny will be a better value on draft day. Are you buying Tyler Lockett? You haven't projected guys as wide receiver 20. I don't, I don't buy that he can do what he did last year, but he has over the course of his career been one of the most efficient wide receivers in the NFL. They don't have anyone else to be the number one, so I think he has to get more targets.

And so I do think an increase in targets could make up for the regression in his efficiency. Right. I mean, that's kind of the stock answer. And so I do think an increase in targets could make up for the regression in his efficiency. Right. I mean, that's that's like kind of the stock answer. But at the same time, I'm like, I'm like, I don't even know what to think of him. Right. Because he could still be so efficient. Like you said, he's been so efficient in his career. He also might not get as much of a boost in targets as we're hoping for because he's always kind of been a downfield guy. And if DK Metcalf is kind of a one-trick pony downfield, David Moore was also a pretty efficient downfield guy for them last year. Who's going to get the intermediate targets here? Like, I don't even know. They just run the ball for those. They don't throw those. What about Will Disley?

I mean, maybe, but I think all three tight ends might be involved. Before Jimmy Graham, they always rotated tight ends. so I'm a little bit off their tight ends. I like Will Disley if he can be healthy at the start of camp. I made this call right after the draft. DK Metcalf is going to lead this team in touchdown catches.

I mean, it's possible. Look at David Moore last year. I think he had five on some deep plays. Russell Wilson has a very good deep ball accuracy but that's a great fit that's not where I'm going with that my I'm going with red zone because Tyler Lockett is not a red zone factor at all almost all of his touchdowns have been you know maybe within the red zone but not within like 15 yards uh I think Metcalf could fill that void. Two years ago, Jimmy Graham

had the highest red zone percentage. Maybe the second highest red zone percentage in the league, target percentage with Seattle. That's exactly what I was thinking. That's where I was going with it. Who do you guys like more, David Moore or DK Metcalf? I think Metcalf has more upside. He's more upside, more of an unknown. David Moore, DK Metcalf? I think Metcalf has more upside.

Yeah. I mean, he's more upside, more of an unknown. David Moore, I think, is a good best ball last round pick. You know, he's a good... He's going to have a couple of splash games, but... Okay. DK Metcalf, 49 catches for Heath, 39 for Ben. 730 yards for Heath, 542 for Ben.

Five touchdowns for Heath, four for Ben. 730 yards for Heath. 542 for Ben. Five touchdowns for Heath. Four for Ben. Wide receiver 60 for Heath. Wide receiver 74 for Ben. And really, look, this team is about the running backs. It's about the running backs. And there's a chance they both are going to be worth using.

Not exactly like an Ingram-Camara thing, but they're going to run the ball a lot. They're both projected as top 30 guys. So part of the reason this is my projection for these guys, because I'm lower than Heath on David Moore's targets as well. I'm a little bit higher on Tyler Lockett's. But part of the reason is I kind of feel like someone has to emerge.

And there's been some positive talk about their seventh round pick, John Ursua. I don't even know how to say his name. They also took Gary Jennings in the fourth round. There's a couple guys that I think could maybe emerge into like a 50 or 60 target role as more of the underneath intermediate and taking some of those Doug Baldwin targets if Lockett doesn't necessarily eat all those targets up. So I'm a little bit more conservative on the guys that they have at the top of their depth chart because they all just get their targets in a similar part of the field. And I think somebody could emerge out of nowhere here as well and be at least reasonably notable. All right, then.

We got one more team to get to here. The San Francisco 49ers. Oh, am I excited about the San Francisco 49ers? Oh, do I love Jimmy Garoppolo? Does anybody else love Jimmy Garoppolo? Or am I on Garoppolo Island? He's good. I wouldn't say I love him.

QB 21. He has the quarterback 21 just like I do. QB 21. That's not good enough, guys. You got to do better than that. Are we going to guarantee that he's a top 12 quarterback as well? You've got like 17 top 12 quarterbacks. No.

He does. We went team by team. He does a lot of top 12 quarterbacks. Top five. Not top 12. Top five. Would you please rank Russell Wilson, Jimmy Garoppolo, Drew Brees, and Phillip Rivers?

Okay. I'm goingolo, Drew Brees, and Phillip Rivers. Okay. I'm going to go with Brees, Garoppolo, Wilson, Rivers. So you definitely don't think that we're too low on Phillip Rivers. No, I don't anymore. I don't. Like, I do think he'll probably finish high because he's going to play 16 games. But, Ben, your point about the rushing yards is really good. Also, like I said, QB

18 is really not so bad these days. He's probably going to be a top 12 quarterback because he always is, but I understand. To that point from that Rivers discussion, I would much rather have Jimmy Garoppolo than Phillip Rivers because he does, I think, have upside to be a top five quarterback.

I don't think you're crazy to think that he could come in this year and be very, very good and have a little bit of rushing, a little bit more of a rushing presence than Rivers and also have a big spike passing year. I mean, it's totally possible. There's a lot of QBs that can happen for him, right? It's really hard to pick out that guy. All right, so what do the 49ers look like this year, guys? What kind of offense? Pass heavy? Run heavy?

Obviously, they bring in Tevin Coleman. This is a confusing team. Seattle appears to be more straightforward. They have 90 skill position players. Yeah, it's a confusing team. Well, I guess if I were really excited about someone else, it'd be Dante Pettis. I feel like Garoppolo and

Pettis are going to be on a lot of my teams. Heath, your projections tend to agree with me, at least for Pettis. Yeah, I mean, I don't know that I feel comfortable with it. My number for the team was 6.2. That's Dante Pettis' targets per game in the final five

games when he really broke out. That's not enough to be a must-start wide receiver. Does that include the Bears game? Because he got hurt in the first half of that game. He had five targets. But 7-7-7-5 in the four games before that. So like six and a half targets a game is about what I have him for at 99 for the season.

Ben's a little lower than me at 91, and I understand why. He's going to have to score touchdowns at a pretty good rate, and I've got him with seven. Ben has him with five. I feel like six is probably a better number. He's a number three receiver. There's a lot of these projections where we've had a gap, and I've been like, you know,

splitting the difference between me and Heath is probably the right thing to do and i i agree with on that with uh on pettis totally my my concern for the receivers is a there's so many of them and b george kittle is going to lead the team right and i will say for kittle i'm a little concerned about him keeping his efficiency up but he should be the the target leader and because there's so many receivers behind that, I'm concerned any of them emerges and becomes the number one. I mean, you have Pettis Goodwin, Deebo Samuel, Jalen Hurd. I have Kendrick Bourne on my projections. Heath, you had a different fifth guy in your projections. I can't remember. Oh, no, it was Jalen Hurd. But there's still more

guys. I mean, isn't Jordan Matthews on this team now? I can't even keep them all straight. I mean, they have a million players on their team. Yeah, they all suck. No, that's not true. Jordan Matthews is on the team. They all might suck. They all might not be, other than Kittle, obviously, any real competition for Dante Pettis.

They were like 20th in pass attempts last year. So maybe they throw more. Maybe they're just more efficient because obviously Garoppolo only played three games. I just think that I'm not looking at this group of wide receivers and going like, damn, I don't know how Dante Pettis is going to beat out Marquise Goodwin or Debo Samuel or Jalen Hurd or Kendrick Bourne

and Jordan Matthews. I think if they're smart, they get Dante Pettis the ball because, man, he was so good at the end of last year I agree the one thing I would add is last year at this time Marquise Goodwin was kind of a popular sleeper because of how well he finished the 2017 season with Garoppolo after Garoppolo came over in the trade obviously Garoppolo got hurt last year but I I think Garoppolo and Goodwin you know that connection that everyone was really high on last year, there's the potential that we see that spark a little bit this year as well.

So he's somebody that I'm – he's the second best San Francisco receiver for me. But, again, Kittle is behind Pettis. But Kittle's still the number one. And I just want to say my stat real quick for Kittle. 873 yards after the catch last year. First non-running back to lead the league in that category since 2013. Just had a ton of these little crossers that he just took to the house. What, like four or five of them last year?

It's going to be really hard for him to repeat that high of a yards after the catch rate. I would just say that he won't. Yeah, he won't. There's just no way. But it's also good for for garoppolo to have a weapon like that who can do a lot after the catches we definitely can feel confident that kiddo's going to be above average he's not going to regress down to some average rate but it's going to be really hard for him to match the yardage that he had last year i still like kiddo i just he's he's my tight end three i don't know he's a lot of people's tight end too and i get that too it's really a

matter of when it comes to those top three, I think really there's like everybody has Kelsey one and then you wait a few picks, then you take Earths or Kittle, but his Kittle right there with Earths for you, Ben, or is he sort of in a tier of his own in between Earths and then the Ingram, Howard,

Henry group? He's right there for me. I mean, he's, he's, I'm 13 points lower in PPR, but I have Kelsey almost 50 points higher than Ertz in PPR.

Ertz and Kittle are kind of in this clump, and then my tight end four, I have another 60 points behind Kittle. Those two guys are right in this little cluster, and there's a huge gap above and below them. Yeah, I think it's easy to say the yards are coming down. He had 1,377 yards. That's a single gap above and below them. Yeah, I think it's easy to say the yards are coming down.

He had 1,377 yards. That's a single season record for tight ends. I would think the touchdowns are coming up. He only had five. There have been 13 tight ends over the last five seasons with 1,000 or more yards, 13. Only two of them caught fewer touchdowns than George Kittle. And remember, he had more yards than all of them.

So, yeah, we like Kittle a lot. The running backs, Heath, your thoughts on how this backfield is going to look? Did you hear what Ben said about the wide receivers? It's exactly the same thing. We've got three running backs projected. We did not project Raheem Mostert, who they talk as if he's some very good part of their offense. I think Tevin Coleman is the best running back to own.

I currently have McKinnon as the second best. Ben has Brita as the second best. I don't believe I've drafted any of these guys this season so far. I certainly don't really want to draft the most expensive one yeah that's where i'm at you want to take the lower back in these situations it's a good we know kyle shanahan's system's good for running backs but the other guy you can mention as well is kyle jusek who got a reasonable number of targets last year and it's somebody that will probably steal some of the backfield passing work as well. It's a tough situation.

Any of these guys with the full workload would be worth probably a second or third-round pick, but we don't know that they're going to get it. And so you're kind of just like waiting for an injury or something to open up an opportunity, which means probably that the later guys are the best one. It's almost like the week one starter who's going to play the most early on has a tough time getting a full workload. He's more likely to go down

and then the backup would have more of a chance to move in and get a full workload because he's not competing with this other player now. But they've got six of them, so I don't know if that's true. That might not be true for these guys. But the fact that they went out and got Tevin Coleman right after they went out and got Tevin Coleman.

Right after they went out and got Jarek McKinnon? But McKinnon... Coleman was cheap. Do you remember the things we were saying about Jarek McKinnon just a year ago? Right. I think he's more suited to be a pass-catching guy than Coleman. But I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I think Coleman and Breida are better running backs than McKinnon. That's why they get to where they're at in my rankings. I think they'll win out. That's kind of my take. All right. How did you guys feel about Projections Week? It's over. I mean, it was fun.

It was a good one. I enjoyed it. I learned a lot. Best week in podcast history. I'll tell you what. My biggest takeaway is I really don't think I would take Ezekiel Elliott number one in PPR. I'm sorry to side with Ben on that. But that was one thing.

I'm glad your number one takeaway was disagreeing with me. No. There were many things. I think what you guys say about Juju Smith-Schuster is really resonating. There's how many targets he might get. There were probably five or six players that I changed my opinion on based on these shows. And even though we talked about so many guys, I actually do think that's a lot.

So I think this is a really productive week, and I hope people found it interesting. What are you guys doing for the July? Moving. You're moving? Yeah, I just got a house. I'm using the time off to move. Well, I hope you're staying yeah i just got a house i'm using the time off to move well i hope you're staying in the usa i am uh going to the beach about 10 30 11 o'clock tomorrow morning i will be

at the beach until about midnight yep you love the beach there will be lots of beers and fireworks and uh beers okay that's a that's a strong plan there will be a lot of beers while i move as well Beers and fireworks and beers. Okay. That's a strong plan. There will be a lot of beers while I move as well. I'm not going to lie. It won't be for me. So thanks for listening, everybody. From Miley Cyrus and Ben Gretsch and Heath Cummings, I'm Adam Azer.

I'm not going to sing because I'm just going to let her play us out.