Fantasy Football Today - Beyond the Box Score: Breece Hall vs. De'Von Achane; Cowboys Struggles (10/09 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

Fantasy Football Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and wherever else you listen to podcasts The 49ers whooped the Cowboys and we may have some rest of season concerns about the Cowboys offense (3:50). Should you buy low on Tony Pollard and CeeDee Lamb, or is that a trap? After we recap the game we'll update you on the news and notes (14:35) ... Advanced stats and film review (18:00) on Darren Waller, Joe Burrow, Zay Flowers, Calvin Ridley and more. Then it's time for our Five Big Topics: Ranking Breece Hall and De'Von Achane rest of season (36:30); sorting out the Eagles and Dolphins passing games (46:05); David Montgomery's rest of season value (52:10) ... We finish with our thoughts on Gardner Minshew (59:45) and the best running backs to stash (1:00:10 ) including Zach Charbonnet, Jaylen Warren and Tyjae Spears ... Email us at [e-mail] SUBSCRIBE to FFT Dynasty on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fantasy-football-today-dynasty/id1696679179 SUBSCRIBE to FFT Dynasty on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2aHlmMJw1m8FareKybdNfG?si=8487e2f9611b4438&nd=1 Follow our FFT team on Twitter: @FFToday, @AdamAizer, @JameyEisenberg, @daverichard, @heathcummingssr, @ctowerscbs Follow the brand new FFT TikTok account: https://www.tiktok.com/@fftoday Watch FFT on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/fantasyfootballtoday Get 20% off Fantasy Football Today merch: https://store.cbssports.com/collections/fantasy-football-today%20?utm_source=podcast-apple-com&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=buy-our-merch&utm_content=fantasy-football-collection Join our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/FantasyFootballToday/ Sign up for the FFT newsletter https://www.cbssports.com/newsletter You can listen to Fantasy Football Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast." To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ 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

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Now, here's some combination of Adam, Dave, Jamie, and Heath. What's up, everybody? Welcome to the show. It is Beyond the Box score after Fantasy Week 5. We have one more game left. Monday night, looks like Devontae Adams is going to play. That's great news. Hope for the same for Aaron Jones.

Adam Azer here with Jacob Gibbs and Dan Schneier, and this is Beyond the Box score advanced stats from simple people. San Francisco with a 42-10 win. We'll talk about that. We'll rank Brees Hall and Devon A-Chain. What's going on in the Dolphins passing game? In the Eagles passing game? Devontae Smith, three games with five or fewer targets already this season.

Dallas Goddard had his breakout. Stashing handcuffs. How much longer should you be doing that for? And we have some other topics. Oh, David Montgomery. Is he going to be a top 10 running back? And is Gardner Minshew going to be a QB1 for the next four to six weeks? All right. Jacob, how are we doing over there? How's it going? I'm great. I'm actually really excited for the HN and Brees Hall rest of season conversation. I

dove into my rest of season RB rankings a little bit when I saw the question. And I'm like, this is really interesting from RB5 to RB18 it's like kind of interchangeable okay uh dan i am in a pretty bad mood and i just want to give you a heads up mike i might take it out on you today i understand adam i'm in an equally as bad mood yours is probably due uh due to real life things like your family and if your family's fine okay the two things you know one i'm sick again a different sickness and every time i'm often are you sick this is what i'm talking this is why i'm in a bad mood because i'm thinking to myself god dan was right i am sick all the time and i'm having trouble coming to grips with that and the other thing is i think a lot of people might be might be able to

relate to this one this rarely happens man i went to sleep i to sleep. Unless some crazy stuff happens tonight, I'm going to have my best week of the year in fantasy. But I won. I went to 4-1 in probably the most important league for me. And I beat one of our colleagues, Darst. And he and I, I never talk smack to anyone, but if I do,

it's to him. And so I took a picture of it and I sent it to someone else. I beat him by one and a half points. And I sent it to someone else. Like, I beat him by one and a half points. And I sent it to someone else. I was like, I'm going to talk some smack on the message board tomorrow. Thankfully, I had forgotten because I woke up, and Dars texted me. He's like, I can't believe I beat you. I'm like, what?

No, you didn't. He's like, yeah, Lamb didn't do anything last night. I beat you. And he sends me a screenshot. I lost on a stat correction. Oh, no. It was the Texans DST that gave, like, two or three points. and he sends me a screenshot. I lost on a stat correction. I am so bad. It was the Texans DST that gave like two or three points

and now I lost and I am so, can you imagine if I had talked smack last night? And then got stat corrected the next day. A stat correction loss is as bad as it gets in fantasy football. And I feel bad for you, Adam,

but I'm equally, isn't in malaise right now. I'd call it a general malaise that I'm in just because the giants are just back to being one of the worst teams in the NFL. I saw a stat last night. The giants now have a DVO way of minus 72 point something. And that is the worst DVO of any team in the NFL by over 30 points. Overall DVO way.

They are in arguably the worst team in the NFL through five weeks by DVOA. They are the worst team in the NFL. I don't even care as much anymore as a fan, Adam, but doing a podcast on a team this bad gets really, really depressing. Well, this should be a fun show. All right, Jacob, let's take it away. Let's ramp it back up, talking about people like Devin Achan and Brees Hall and Joe Burrow, who I got to watch today on tape, who was really good.

By the way, Dan hosts a podcast called Big Blue Banter. San Francisco 42, Dallas 10. As bad as Giants fans feel, I bet the Cowboys fans are probably like, what's the point? We're going to make the playoffs. We're just going to get crushed by one of these teams right now. San Francisco wipes them out. And Jacob, what did you want to talk about from this game?

On the Dallas side of things, it's really looking bad. And, of course, you have to start the conversation with how weird the Dallas games have been this year. They've really only been in one game that wasn't just a wacky game script. But even when I looked at the underlying data, like there's just a lot of things that are discouraging. So CeeDee Lamb is the first guy I want to bring up. His target per run rate is at 22%, which is 30th among 81 qualified receivers and is right in line with his rate in 2020 and in 2021. Last year kind of looks like the outlier. I think that CeeDee Lamb really took a step forward last year and we saw him win against man coverage press coverage always he wasn't winning before down the field but so far

he's not been the same guy um and i don't i don't know if that's adding brandon cooks or what that is a function of um i can't imagine it's cooks right i mean he's not doing nothing exactly cooks is literally doing nothing he's 78th among 81 receivers in yard per run, right on the year. And we've seen his yard per hour and a drop for four consecutive years now, Brandon Cooks. So like, yeah, I don't, I don't think you can really attribute it to that. I don't know. You guys have any CD lamb thoughts? Yeah, I do. I mean, look, I brought up these concerns throughout the entire off season on this podcast. I don't like the offense. Mike McCarthy runs. I'm going to watch it on tape after this. I wish I had

before this. I didn't have time for it, but I just have to watch these route combinations and I have to watch these play calls because I know the old Mike McCarthy system and I know the old Ben McAdoo system, which was an offshoot of the Mike McCarthy system. And I know what Kellen Moore was running with the Cowboys last year and Kellen Moore was giving the Cowboys a weekly advantage from a route combination standpoint, from a play calling standpoint, from a design standpoint. I had my concerns about this offense from a pace standpoint, because we knew the pace was going to slow down after going from Mordick McCarthy. But now I'm worried at just how much is he relying on these guys winning one-on-ones?

You see what Keenan Allen has done in a quarter season with Kellen Moore over there as the big slot there. That was Lamb's role with Kellen Moore. That role isn't there anymore. It's not based on that. And so the offense isn't based out of that. So I just, I'll watch more of the Cowboys, but I had my concerns to begin with, with Mike McCarthy taking off this offense and really cratering it. And so far, all I've seen is examples of that. I say in general, a lot of the guys we're going to talk about today are going to fit a similar theme for me. And that is, it's still too early for me to panic on some of the

best players in fantasy. Okay. So I still believe in CeeDee Lamb. You know, Devante Smith, I still think is just a phenomenal player and he's going to get his. We'll break that down later. Jalen Waddell, I think, is just too good for this. His ADOT is way down, and that's bad, but it's small sample sizes. Waddell, for example, the first two games of the year, his ADOT was very high. In his last two games, his ADOT was very low.

So overall, it looks pretty low, and we want him to go downfield a little bit more because he can do that. But that could easily change next week. Look at Dallas Goddard. One week changes everything, right? So I'm still just fine with Lamb. And I would call him a buy low. And you've mentioned the game script. So far, Dallas has won by 30, won by 20, lost by 12. That was the game in Arizona that they lost and played without three offensive linemen. They won by 35 and they lost by 32. They've had a really weird year. So I am

sure that there is a lot of doubt. Like Lamb's playing in the slot more, and I don't like that because throughout his career he's been better out wide than he's been in the slot. But he's always been a guy who plays all around the field. The eight out of the entire offense is just lower. They're just not throwing the ball downfield as much. But I just tend to think that if the offensive line can stay healthy,

I think they'll hit their stride a little bit and be better than this. So I personally would be looking to buy low on Pollard and Lamb. Dak, maybe, but not really a big priority. So that's the thing, Jacob. I still think, even though we're almost a third of the way through the season, I still think it's only five games. It's my baseball background talking, I think, a little bit, but I'm still believing in most of the guys that I believed in.

I always believe that more with baseball, though, than football. It's just probably a better conversation for another podcast, Adam. But in baseball, I feel like, and this is from playing fantasy baseball and covering it for years, I feel like it's more like a game like that where you know the guys who can go on runs and can go on streaks. In football, I don't know if there's such things as runs and streaks. It's more just matchup-based.

And scheme is a huge part of this, I should say, not problem. And in my mind, the Cowboys' scheme is an issue. They are not generating things downfield for a reason. The route combinations and the play calls. It's not just all the offensive lines injuries in my mind. It's a big factor here. And Dak Prescott is not. He played.

How long did he have in Kellen Moore's system? Like he had that thing down. Four or five years. Right. He had that thing down at that point. And now it's going to an offense that, you know, from most people who watch the tape would tell you is a lot worse schematically than what Kellen Moore was running. And I know it wasn't, you know, people said, oh, Kellen Moore was so focused on

scoring points. He wasn't under, like, he needs to run the ball more and things like that. But I don't know. So far, what we're seeing has not been really pretty so far with the Cowboys offense. I'm not buying low because I still think they have a lot of tough games left on the schedule. Multiple games against the Eagles. Washington defense obviously hasn't looked as good lately, but we'll see what happens there. I just wanted to say that that's the reason that I viewed it through the per route lens is because that kind of filters out things like game script and blowout.

And it's just like, he's his per route data is way down in conjunction with a lower ADOT. Like that really lowers the ceiling for what lamb can be. I think he's going to have a tough time even getting like top 10 top 12 type ceiling um all right i'll take i'll take him i will take him top 12 rest of season i i still feel strongly there's a lot of receivers that are excited right now the last thing is tony pollard man it's been like really bad like worse than i even realized he's dead last and avoided tackle rate among 29 qualified running backs that's obviously been an area that he's excelled in the past yeah 18th out of 29 in

yards after contact another area where he's been like top three um so like yeah we expected the efficiency to drop off with more touches but like dead last and avoided tackle rate this is what i wanted to talk about today on this game at least like can i ask you guys how you feel about this and i don't have a chance unfortunately to watch it on tape today, but I did watch it last night, obviously. And I've seen other Cowboys games. I don't feel like Tony Pollard looks the same as he did before the injury last year. That's where I'm at with Paul. And I think the data Jacob just brought up backs all that up, but like in open space, he doesn't look as explosive. He doesn't look as elusive. Maybe it's an issue of now he's the lead guy,

or maybe it's an issue of he's not fully 100% back from that injury that was injured in the divisional round of the playoff back for week one of the regular season. For what it's worth, Jared Smola quote retweeted my Dallas data and tagged all the Twitter docs and was like, do you guys think the leg injury is a factor? And they were all like, no, I don't think that that's a problem. Okay. Well, those are Twitter docs and was like, do you guys think the leg injury is a factor? And they were all like, no, I don't think that that's a problem. Well, those are Twitter docs.

Pollard reminds me of the ETN conversation that we have where I kind of don't care because he's going to get so much work and he's catching passes that there are going to be. And he had the first three games of the year. 22 points, 20 points, 15 points.

Now he's had two bad games in a row. But again, even if he's not the same player, I just still think he's a true workhorse back who's involved in the passing game. There are not many of those. And I guess I'm not down on the Cowboys the way you are. From that standpoint, though, even if he has all that, Adam, which I agree he still has, if he has all that adam which i agree he

still has if he's not like as explosive in all the metrics or as efficient in all the metrics jacob brought up and if the cowboys offense isn't as fast-paced or scoring as much as as it did under kellen moore what does that lead to like he can't possibly be what we thought he was then preseason still right like potential like top 10 top 12, right? That ceiling is gone under those circumstances. Or do you still think, you know, just getting all that work alone could put him in that? And I'm saying overall player, not that. Probably, you're right.

Probably. But it's still a player that's a must start. Yeah, yeah, for sure. A must start. It's more a matter of like, am I buying low on him or not? I mean, if we're talking like an average of 18 touches a game for the Cowboys, could he be more than that? I think he's going to be a must start guy,

but I, I don't know. I, it just takes one game for him to be further like, Oh, well he's look at all these explosive plays, but I, I mean,

I understand the concerns. It just hasn't been a great, he, by the way, he's a number 10 running back in fantasy right now on PPR, not per game overall. All right. On the San Francisco side,

let's be quick on this. Brock Purdy, 34 points, best game of his fantasy career, best regular season game. He looks like he's just starting to play better and better. But I think, you know, you start McCaffrey, you start Ayuk, you start Debo, you probably start Kittle. I know he's coming off a huge game.

I wouldn't mind trying to sell George Kittle if you could. I don't know how you guys feel about it. He had four targets. He had four targets. Yeah, that's off a huge game. I wouldn't mind trying to sell George Kittle if you could. I don't know how you guys feel about it. He had four targets. He had four targets. Three touchdowns. I mean, there are going to be some really bad games here. This is what Kittle does. He is so boom or bust on a weekly basis.

He's a basketball king. Yeah, so I don't know. Ayuk? I mean, sorry. Purdy? Is Purdy just – would you rather have Purdy or Stroud rest of the season? Purdy. Purdy.

Yeah, he's good. Started in 43% of leagues. That's going to go up. You can find all this great stuff from Jacob on Sportsline. And there is... We talked about Sportsline last night. If we want to make a promo code of baked burgers, I think we can make it happen. So if you're interested in Sportsline and you'd like to use make a promo code of baked burgers, I think we can make it happen.

So if you're interested in Sportsline and you'd like to use that fun promo code, let me know. But Jacob, what's your promo code? I actually don't know. I hit up RJ about that and he's like, I don't know, we need to get you set up with one. So maybe it could be baked burgers.

That could be, you know, it could be the official promo code of Beyond the Box score. But we have plenty of promo codes. Apparently there's a Heath promo code. I think Dave said there's a official promo code of Beyond the Box score. But we have plenty of promo codes. Apparently, there's a Heath promo code. I think Dave said there's a Richard promo code. $1 for your first month, $9.99 after that. And it's great fantasy content, optimal lineups for DFS,

gambling content if you want it. Check out Sportsline.com. We're live tonight at 7.30 p.m. Eastern for a live stream. YouTube.com slash Fantasy Football Today. You can watch all of our shows and the Dynasty Show and the DFS Show at YouTube.com slash Fantasy Football Today. But the live streams are only on YouTube, so check that out. News and notes.

Anthony Richardson, sprained AC joint looking like four to six weeks. That's the initial thought right now for Richardson. So we have a question about Minshew later. Minshew with the revenge game at the Jaguars in week six. I said last night, I wouldn't feel so certain that Travis Kelsey is going to play on Thursday against Denver. If he really has a high ankle sprain,

I know he came back in the game, but that's probably a little bit of adrenaline, but we'll see. Justin Jefferson, we're waiting to hear about his hamstring. Deshaun Watson, Cleveland had a bye. They faced San Francisco this week, so I don't think you're going to start him anyway, but he did not practice with that shoulder injury.

Mack Jones will remain the starter. We'll see how long that lasts. Brian Dables optimistic about Daniel Jones playing this Sunday night at Buffalo, getting some Game of the Week vibes on that one, right? James Conner left with a knee. Yeah, no. James Conner, knee

injury, tank del concussion. Matt Milano probably out for possibly the season. And Daquan Jones, their defensive tackle, also looks like a long-term injury for the Bills who might not be a tough man. I mean, they'll be tough for the Giants this week and the Patriots the next week,

but they may not be tough defensively. All right, that's some stuff. Okay, oh, Jets offensive line. Elijah Vera Tucker did not, it seems, tear his Achilles, but he's going to miss some time. Mekhi Becton got banged up as well. Other important stuff. Oh, Dallas, tough night.

Not only did they get their butts kicked, Leighton Van Der Esch in safety, Donovan Wilson left with injuries. One of the Patriots starting guards, Mike Onwenu, left with an injury. Jacksonville offensive lineman, Walker Little. I think I saw that he'll be okay. Maybe that was someone else.

He left with a knee injury. Dan Campbell said that Jamison Williams will get a few more plays next week. Okay. Two Patriots wide receivers left with head injuries. Demario Douglas and Juju Smith-Schuster. Miami lost starting guard Isaiah Wynn with a neck injury.

And Rams defensive lineman Bobby Brown left with an injury. All right, let's take a break. When we come back, we've got advanced stats from Jacob. We've got some film review. We've got our five big topics. We'll talk about Brees Hall. We'll talk about the Rams wide receivers.

We've got plenty to get to. We'll talk about a lot of stuff we didn't get to on yesterday's show as well. But stick around. We'll be right back. Did you know 66% of utility damage is caused by not requesting a locate? Don't let your project become part of this statistic. A quick locate request can save you from unexpected downtime, All right, Jacob Gibbs, what do you got for us? It's easy. It's the law. Data sourced from the ORCGA 2023 Dirt Report. All right, Jacob Gibbs, what do you got for us?

So I've got two big topics, and then I'm going to go through some quick data points. The first one I want to get, obviously, get your guys' take on as the resident Giants fans. We've really seen a shakeup in the pass-catching unit for the Giants. Wanda Robinson and Jalen Hyatt were kind of going with the youth movement, it seems like,

that replaced Paris Campbell and Isaiah Hodgins. It hasn't resulted in anything for Hyatt. He ran 26 routes, didn't draw a single target this past week, but Wanda's getting some short yardage looks. And then the other thing is, I don't know if it is because we've got Hyatt stretching the field more, we've got different receivers in there or what it is, but Darren Waller saw a huge usage bump this week um dan you looked into that more so i'm excited to hear what you have to say but yeah he was the first read on 30 42 42 percent of the targets in week five up from 20 through the first four games so clearly they just made him more of an emphasis and then also his route participation was up from 76 to 98%. And so if we can get anything like that, that's top five tight end

usage. That's kind of what we thought we might get coming into the year. Do you think that's sustainable? I do think it's sustainable. I looked into the tape obviously this morning with the Giants, specifically on the Darren Waller front, because this is something you brought to my attention. And this was something you brought to my attention. And this was something based off last week as well. When they played the Seahawks on Monday night football, Darren Waller was used to block a lot because in game, the giants had Daniel Bellinger,

their other tight end get injured, which kind of prevented the giants from using Darren Waller in the ways they wanted to, as a receiver Bellinger was back for this game. He played that helped Waller. And what I noticed on tape was they use Darren Waller in a lot of ways. He was detached from the line of scrimmage is the boundary X as the boundaries.

He lined up as a big slot, the lone slot in motion pre-snap. He could have had an even bigger day as well. They had two plays, one on a long 40 yard or up the left side, then where Jones made a good, and that was when he was lined up as the lone X receiver and a three by one set, which means three receivers to the right side and him on the left side alone, back shoulder ball. He just missed it. Then he had

the double move in the red zone, 30 yarder that he just couldn't cut down with. It was a good play by the 25 saving, saving Howard, who got his hand on the left arm of Darren Waller's. He tried to reel in the catch, but you know, you get those two plays, and that's another 15 fantasy points on his day. It would have been a total blowup. They used him on a chip and release screen, which I was so happy to see. The Giants don't call any screens they need to because teams are blitzing them at a higher rate and sending guys off the edge. That was good to see him get designed there.

The design for Waller this week was really nice to see him lined up in different ways as the boundary. These are things that we saw in the in the preseason during training camp a lot, but we didn't actually see it in the regular season that much until this week when they kind of threw every all caution to the wind as far as the pass protection went and said, you know what? I know we don't have offensive linemen who can hold up in pass pro with a five man front, but let's just get Waller out there and see what he can do as a receiver. So I think this will continue moving forward, no matter who the quarterback is, if Jones can play or if Jones can't play. We saw Waller get a target, I believe, with Tyra Taylor on that one drive as well. So this is something very exciting, I think, moving forward to an extent. Obviously, there's still a ceiling here with the Giants offense. Yeah, we talked about

selling high on Darren Waller on last night's show. Heath brought that up, and I don't think it's a bad idea. I mean, I do love the usage. Eight catches for 86 yards this week, but you just don't want to. I don't want to put any faith in this offense. They're terrible. I do think they could get okay later in the year, but all the things that were working for them last year just are not working.

I mean, they don't do any of the same, like, play action, bootleg, and tricking people. That's just gone. They were a step ahead of everyone last year. It's gone because their defenses have adjusted to it. They tried it earlier in the year and you can't anymore. I don't know. It was a great day for Waller,

but I have Waller in one league. I'm probably just going to hold on to him and start him every week. I'm not going to really look at streamers, but I think you might be able to turn him, you know, might be able to train him. If you have like two tight ends that you like

and he's one of them, not a bad idea to get rid of him because I just don't see like, like you said, there's a ceiling there. I don't see a huge year coming for Waller, unfortunately. All right, what's next, Jacob? Or you want to talk about that? I was curious what you guys think of him

compared to Kittle. Like if you had Kittle and you could trade for Waller and upgrade another position, would you pursue that? I would prefer Waller still personally. I like, like,

like Adam said, I just don't trust Kittle. Like Kittle's going to have blow up weeks. And I guess if you're just starting these tight ends every week, no matter what, it's kind of fine to have a kid. Like, it's like you can almost play tight end,

like best ball in fantasy football these days, but just because there's no one consistent really at the position but i just also like the involvement more for wall like waller is not like if they're going to move forward with this type of offense and i think they are that means they're going to try to feature and get waller targets i'm not so sure the 49ers are trying to get kiddo the football yeah okay the other topic was joe burrow and the bangles um so just going to plug sports line uh beyond the basketball and sports room we hit on joe burrow's breakout here i think this is the perfect spot for him the cardinals only blitz 16 of the time the league average is 29 but we've seen people blitz seen teams blitz the bengals a lot more to kind of take advantage of the cap

with burrow um and the cardinals blitzer was up to 23 so it's still well below the gap and we saw him light it up obviously i dug into his game a little bit and wasn't super excited with what i found and i think you watched it so hear from you his off target rate was actually the highest it's been in a game in week five his average depth of target time to throw was pretty much right in line so it didn't i didn't see anything that was like a clear change from what we've seen. I think it was mostly a really soft matchup.

And Jamar just went nuts. Yeah, so my thought... Go ahead. No, that's interesting. I'm curious, because Dan did watch the tape of Joe Burrow. So I was surprised. I thought Jacob would be like, oh, Joe Burrow's back. All surprised. I thought, I thought Jacob would be like, Oh, Joe Burrow's back.

All right. All right. What are we, what are you thinking, Dan? So first of all, I want to just further what Jacob said this week on sports line. Prior to this week,

Jacob called out Joe Burrow as having a, the best chance of having a big bounce back week. You'll find that I'm beyond the box score. There's actually an article with the same name as our podcast on sports line. Excellent data in that article, in my opinion, the best data basically that we have to offer with the exception of maybe and podcast on Sportsline. Excellent data in that article. In my opinion, the best data, basically, that we have to offer

with the exception of maybe and probably Dave's lineup decisions. Both are just elite content, in my opinion, from a data standpoint. One is on CBS, one is on Sportsline. Now, as far as the film goes with Joe Burrow, I would say there were a lot of factors in this that led to his performance. The first one being that Joe Burrow did look more comfortable operating with the situation that he has. And by that, I mean, he is still injured, though he looked better in this game.

How do you know that? How can we know that for sure? It was still all shotgun in this game for Joe Burrow. And, you know, that means they don't trust him yet, or he doesn't feel comfortable yet going under center operating from a deep step five or seven step drop off play action and pushing and, you know, pushing off and putting all that weight on his calf. It does limit the offense, but I think in this game, there were two factors that led to this strong performance.

The first one is they did everything they could to feature Jamar chase. That meant Jamar chase spent time lined up in the slot. That meant different screens for Jamar Chase. He caught three different screens. That meant a play with 347 left in the first quarter where he was lined up in the left slot. They faked the handoff to mix in at all. Like they showed counter with the handoff to mix into the left.

Chase comes screaming around the formation with a tight end in to kind of block chip and get in the way of the end of man on a line of scrimmage who was defensive end. And that just led to a quick, easy throw for Jamar chase. There were a lot of different quick, easy stuff for Jamar chase and different ways to get him the football, the 63 yard touchdown pass. I thought it was more on the defense with a weird coverage. The cornerback passed off chase the safety, but there was no safety in that deep half on the left side of the field. He was lined up and more of a robber roll down toward the line of scrimmage it was a great job by joe bro to recognize the post snap where the space was and throw the ball into space and it was a hell of a throw i mean he threw it led jamar chase there it wasn't like he had to slow down for it but i also

feel like that was almost more on the cardinals and a little bit of a coverage breakdown it seemed like the biggest thing is like i think look, look, if teams are going to play the Cardinal, uh, the Bengals, the way the Cardinals played the Bengals, Joe Burrow is going to have some big games, but like the teams that are going to play him like the Browns did, or like some of these other teams did, which is more everything on the line of scrimmage, press up on the receivers blitz often off the edges. That's going to be where there's a problem because he can't really maneuver that well. And he's always in shotgun. He's never under center. So you can't counter that aggressive style of defense by running the football and taking advantage of the gaps.

They're going to be open in the run game because the opposing defense using blitzers, the Cardinals didn't really do that that often. They did it on a lot of the third downs to get off the field, a couple of the interceptions, But then they also played a lot of defensive personnel and scheme where it just gave Burrow a chance, in my opinion, to have that time he needed to kind of throw the football. So it will be interesting to see. I'm kind of with Jacob here. I kind of need to see more here because I do feel like this was somewhat

matchup-based. But he definitely threw the football more crisp, and he got the football out fast. I'm starting him next week against Seattle because he's improving. And that's the thing. He's not going to be the same week to week. He's getting better. You know,

he's practicing more. He said he felt better to move better too, by the way. And all the beat writers seem to, you know, two beat writers that I read said he was moving better. So I didn't get a chance to watch it yet. But I just think the arrow is pointing up.

He's got to buy after Seattle. So hopefully that's enough time for him to really be healthy and have a very strong second half. But Seattle is a pretty good matchup. So I'm starting Burrow next week. One thing I know he's going to do is throw. He's going to throw the ball a lot. And when you have Jamar Chase, that's a good thing. We some really cool uh change in the route usage for jamar chase too he ran a slant

22 of his routes were slants and 12 were screens the past two games he's been over 15 or 12 and 70 of his routes were screens so they're like really really going out of their way to get in the ball my favorite thing when i dug into the routes is his go route rate is down from 30% to 21%. This is something Matt Harmon and I talked about this summer is Jamar insanely is one of the highest target volume, most productive receivers, even while running a go route on a third of his routes. That's a route that just kills fantasy value. Look at George Pickens before Dante Johnson went out, where like, it's clearly a good player, but he just never gets targets because he's running so many of those routes. They're finally being a little bit less stubborn with that. And not just like sending chase to clear out all the time. Um, that was all the way down to 12% in the last game.

So down from 30 to 21 on the year, which is a good development for him. Yeah, this was the, that, that was my main takeaway. like this is great news for jamar chase the way that they game plan just like with waller those were two games that i watched and in both games the game plan was obvious to get these two the football in a variety of ways lined up from multiple different areas on the fort like before the line is you know before the snap motion all different things to get jamar chase the football and i think that was a great stat by jacob that kind of the you know backs that one up got to say, of all the non-stat storylines, I like the squeaky wheel the most.

And Darren Waller, he didn't really complain, but they said they wanted to get him the ball more. Jamar Chase, I'm always bleeping open. It doesn't always work. It was supposed to happen for Goddard in week two and things like that, but I do like that. You know, A.J. Brown throws a fit on the sideline. It seems to work more than it does.

Yeah, it's a great one. It really does feel like it works. You should follow the squeaky wheel. All right, what else we got, Jacob? So just some quick ones. Jose Flowers is being used down the field more. He averaged 44 air yards per game in his first three games. That's up to 112 per game over the last two.

Some really rough routes and catch attempts from him out there um but the opportunity is definitely there alexander madison's playing time we saw a dip this week i heard you said on the podcast last time that cj ham was on the field a lot more passing downs adam um it actually wasn't like i didn't say that oh somebody on twitter said that you said that. No, I didn't. It wasn't like Cam Akers. Cam Akers actually saw his snap rate drop in his second game. Dave said it.

Okay. So Cam Akers did not see more playing time, and yet Alexander Madison's playing time dropped pretty dramatically. Madison was on the field for 56% of the red zone snaps, down from 81% previously, only ran around on 43% of dropbacks down from 54%, and only handled 57% of the running back rush attempts down from 82%.

So it's going to be tough for him to be fantasy viable if he's splitting, and already we're seeing that in the second week with Akers. Do you guys think there's anything there? Because it's not like Akers necessarily cut into the work significantly, at least at the playing time. I don't know.

Not really. I traded Madison. I know he has, like, this was a good matchup against the Chiefs, and I think he has a couple more. I traded him as part of my Justin Jefferson trade that I made with Jamie. You did make that trade. What was the trade? It was Jefferson and Madison for Waddle and Bijan. Which I guess...

I feel bad. I guess you feel bad with the Jefferson injury. But Madison's not someone that I fully trust. I know he had the receiving touchdown here. He does have the Bears this week. That should be pretty good. But maybe now's the time to trade him. San Francisco, Atlanta, New Orleans.

But he also has Denver and Chicago later in the year, too. I would say overall he's got a fairly favorable schedule, but I don't know. I just don't fully trust him, and I'm not saying to give him up for nothing. I'd give him up for Jonathan Taylor. I don't know if anybody's doing that. I don't know how people are feeling about Jonathan Taylor right now,

but maybe it's part of the package. Yeah, honestly, let's just be real. He's not a special game-changing player. He's going to have to score touchdowns to win you your league. However, I didn't think about this. Do the catches go up if Justin Jefferson misses time? Does the usage go up if Jefferson misses time? Definitely something we have to consider.

Anything else, sir? I wanted to bring up Calvin Ridley. So his first read target rate was up to what we saw in week one in week one it was at 36 and the reason this is important is because trevor lawrence has targeted his first read at the highest rate of any quarterback since the start of last year and so 36 of his first retargets went to ridley in week one that was down to 18 then 23 then nine percent week four and week five is back up to 35 and so that's exciting um i thought redwood played much much better in this spot and then speaking of first

retarget shares adam theelin i heard you guys talking about him on last night's podcast i i feel like he's pretty dramatically undervalued right now he has 34 percent of the first three targets in carolina if you take away that first game when he was injured 38 in this past week gets 38 of the red zone targets over the past month as well there's really only a handful of receivers who have that type of usage obviously it's coming in carolina so like there's a huge grain of salt to take with it but like i think he's the way I'm projecting him right now, he's a borderline top 20 receiver each week, which is insane.

Would you guys rather have Adam Thielen or Devante Smith rest of season? Smith, but yeah, right now they project similarly, which is so nuts. How about Adam Thielen or Debo Samuel? I'd rather have Debo Samuel. I think so too, yeah, but you almost got me because I'm kind of low on Debo.

All right. Some snap count stuff. Calvin Ridley. Oh, sorry. Okay, it was Zay Jones. It's actually about Christian Kirk. Wanted to see when Zay Jones was playing, Christian Kirk, was he uninvolved?

No, he was out there. Ridley played 38 snaps, 24 routes. Kirk, 34 snaps, 24 routes. Jones, 27 snaps, 18 routes. And Ingram, 22 routes. So it was Zay Jones with the fewest routes run. Now, part of that, he got hurt very late in the second half, so part of that may have been when he was hurt. So it was Zay Jones with the fewest routes run. Now part of that, he got hurt like very late in the second half, so part of that may have been when he was hurt.

But it was pretty even. But Christian Kirk did not come off the field like he did in week one. That was good. Jonu Smith played eight more snaps than Kyle Pitts. I saw Jacob tweet about this. I don't know what happened, but Josh Reynolds only played 47% of the snaps. Any thoughts on that?

Yeah, he was, I think, third or fourth among the receivers in Rattaran. He's a little bit banged up. That would be my guess. But yeah, Jameson Williams played more than him. The Rams receivers. Pukunukuwa played 100% of the snaps. Cooper Cup, 95.

Tutu Atwell, 89%. And Tyler Higbee, 89%. And you know, this, I did go back and watch all of the throws for Stafford. He was under pressure a lot in the second half, a lot, like a 56% pressure rate in the second half, which is crazy. Like the Giants would be laughing at that. But Tutu Atwell actually had, he was open.

It was a tough play, but he got open. It could have been a 63-yard touchdown. Stafford threw like a dart up the seam, and it was just a little bit overthrown. But Atwell got behind a couple of defenders. And then Atwell had a drop. It probably would have been about a 15, 20-yard gain. I dropped him before the game for Michael Gallup.

I was just taking a shot. And I don't know. I was kind of impressed with Atwell. He might be a number three receiver. I don't think he's was kind of impressed with Atwell. He might be a number three receiver. I don't think he's going to be anything better than that. But there was some production left off the field for Tutu Ato. He's just fast. He's fast and he gets open.

And then DeAndre Hopkins played a season high 83% of the snaps. Now what else do we want to talk about here? We want to go to our big topics? Yeah. Yeah, I'm good. I'm really curious to see what's going to happen with Tutu because, yeah, they played,

they really mixed everyone up where everybody played in the slot a little bit. Cooper Cup actually had the lowest slot rate of the three, which I thought was really interesting. I wonder if they'll use Cooper Cup more as like the X.

They kind of moved them all around, but Tutu played almost as much as those guys. Man, Jefferson was completely out of the picture. Right. And the targets to the running back went away, which is good for Stafford. All right, let's talk about our five big topics.

This first one is from Mike Brophy. Team name for Mike should be Brophy Case, assuming it's pronounced that with a long O. Brees Hall and Devon Achan, rest of season ranking. Okay, Jacob, you said you were so excited to talk about this topic here. So give us your thoughts on a Brees Hall and Devon Achan rest of season ranking. Before I do that, I finally got a trim that was taking a while here. Zay Jones only played three of the plays with two receivers on the field

compared to 16 for Christian Kirk, which is significantly different than what we saw in the preseason and in week one so it seems like awesome he's kind of played his way into that role because they jones ran 30 he played 36 snaps and ran 24 routes so it's not like that was all after he got hurt um okay so yeah these two i'm really curious where you guys land on them i had fantasy pros expert consensus i looked up they had breeze hauled rb 21 h and 24 i think those will both rise after this week of course for rest of season or that was for week rest of rest of season okay i have them rb 12 h and rb 18

breeze hall is that even the order that you have them in? HN over Brees? I would take Brees Hall. I feel like I hear the CBS crew be super high on Brees. I would take HN, but go ahead. I feel like the ceiling is so much higher in Miami's offense. This was the absolute best situation we just saw against Denver. Man, I'm worried about the Jets

overall. 22 carries for Brees Hall. If he's going to be their workhorse and the focus of their offense, he's going to do it. I'll be interested to see how he does against the Eagles. And even if he struggles, I don't think you freak out about it. But I just

like... I'm so excited about the work for Brees Hall. But I'm not really going to argue so much against Devon Achan. But go ahead. There's room for growth for Brees too because he still, I'm not really going to argue so much against Devon HN, but go ahead. There's, there's room for growth for Brees too, because he still doesn't have the passing down role. He only ran 10 routes in this game. They really use him on early downs, pretty much exclusively. Michael Carter played like 80% of the third downs ran 17 routes to Brees Hall's 10. So I think we could see him get that role as well. That's where his upside really comes in

yard per route run rate, Brees Hall's second behind only Christian McCaffrey, just ahead of Austin Eckler since the start of 2022. So there's really explosive upside if he does get those routes. I don't know if I see that happening. It's just a guess. I know they said there are no restrictions on him,

but you got to restrict them a little bit, right? And to be third down would be the appropriate time to not use Brees Hall. I don't think he should be an 80-plus percent of the snaps kind of guy personally, but maybe. You don't think he might be by the end of the year? Maybe. Maybe, you know. I think he might catch more passes than A-chan.

I don't know what the hell the make of this A-chan is averaging 12.5 yards per carry. It's something crazy like that. He's got, gosh, what is he doing? He has touchdowns. He's the number one running back in fantasy over the last three weeks with only 45 touches, which is not terrible, but it's not amazing. He has

touchdowns of 67 yards, 76 yards, plus 10, 8, and 3 rushing, and then from 4 and 10 yards out receiving. I've never seen anything like this. He's in a total timeshare, not getting a lot of work, and yet he's absolutely incredible.

There are no comparisons. You can't be like, well, back last year or two years ago, never seen anything like this. He's the most efficient player I've ever seen in my life. Chris Johnson, I love that comparison. Do we hear some running backs i have around these guys i'm curious where you would put these two yeah so i've got at rba we're gonna get to this guy later david montgomery rb9 rest of season kenneth walker 10 joe mixon which i know you're

gonna hate adam the workload is just there he's got to start scoring touchdowns 11 jonathan taylor who knows where he goes but that feels right right, right before Devon Achan at 12, and then Kyron Williams at 13, Travis Etienne at 14, Aaron Jones at 15. All of them ahead of these guys? All of them ahead of Brees. If I want to keep going, DeAndre Swift at 16, James Cook at 17, Brees Hall at 18,

just ahead of Jameer Gibbs. Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely higher on Brees Hall. I would easily take these guys over Mixon. I know he does have to start scoring, but if you're going to give me the workload case for Mixon, then I don't know how you take A-Chan over Brees Hall because I definitely think there's more touches coming for Brees Hall than A-Chan.

Yeah, I mean, it's not just about workload. I think the workload in Cincinnati should be significantly more productive for fantasy than the workload in New York. And then, yeah, of course, that's scaled up even further with HN in Miami. All right, go ahead, Dan. Get in there. for sure so my thought on HN is this I heard people say last week that they hadn't seen a running back erase angles like HN since Chris Johnson I didn't actually see that on those filmed on those clips from the past two weeks this week against the Giants I saw that the touchdown run he had the long touchdown run he had the safety Jason Pinnock had him dead to rights from an angle standpoint if you screenshot that and did, I think it was Hayden Winks.

And you see the point of where Jason Pinnock was, the safety for the Giants and where HN was and then how he eliminated that angle. It doesn't actually make sense from a physics standpoint. And that's where that 433 speed is really on, uh, you know, on tape, but it's also like a different level of 4-3-3 speed. I've seen a lot of 4-3-3 guys come through the NFL that don't erase angles the way Devin Achan erased an angle on that run. It's game speed, too.

It's things you can time only with GPS trackers and not just 40-yard dash without the pads on and without the helmet and everything on. I think he's a big play threat whenever he touches the this level. But the other thing is like, I watch that game. Like I just watched that game on film giants, dolphins, and no one is running things as impressively as Mike McDaniel is right now. The scheme, there it is. There's the screenshot. Thank you for finding that. Like this makes no sense. Like that should never be a touchdown. Look at the angle that the first safety has at the 40 heart line like it's absolutely insane and anyway i watch mike mcdaniel and i just see the way that he's scheming up these

pinpull concepts to and these crack back you know crack pitch pitch pitch crack back box to get legally to get hn in space and i'm just like this is the perfect coach for him and it's not just the perfect coach for him it's a perfect coach for any running back right now. Moster, A-chan, Jeff Wilson, whoever they're going to put in there is going to be productive without even a great offensive line because the coach is that good at scheming up ways

to get and create space and yardage. So I think I'm pairing him with the best coach to fit his skillset, fit anyone's skillset. He has angle or racing speed. So I don't really care about getting a lot of touches. Plus, Jacob can back this up. But he's still getting a decent amount of work in the red zone. More than people probably would have expected.

So he still has those opportunities as well. Most of which he hasn't cashed in yet for touchdowns, which he will. Some he did in the first game. You're right about all this stuff, but I feel like are you forgetting that Brees Hall just had 22 carries for 177 yards? No, I'm not forgetting that, but what I'm factoring in is that he played the Broncos, the worst defense in the NFL, by a wide margin.

I know, but A-Chan's done this against all the teams. No, he's done it against the Broncos and the Giants. The Giants can't stop anyone on the ground. And the Bills. The Giants didn't give up any long plays to Ken Walker. The Giants didn't give any long plays to Tony Pollard. The Giants didn't really give up these big plays to anybody but A-Chan. A-Chan's terrific.

But Brees Hall, A-Chan's terrific from a way we've never seen before. Brees Hall is terrific from a more conventional way. I think Brees Hall would have been a candidate to be the number one pick in fantasy this year if he didn't get hurt. If Rodgers was healthy, sure. But I just don't know if I can believe in this offense to look this competent against anyone but the Broncos. I mean, it's a fair point.

What do you guys think about DeAndre Swift compared to these two? Rest of the season? I'd take them both over Swift. I'd go H and Swift Hall for me. Kyron Williams? I'd take both over Swift. I'd go H and Swift Hall for me. Kyron Williams. I take both of these guys. Last.

Okay. Last for me. Yeah. I love Swift, but, you know, I love how much they threw to him this game. Right. But, you know, it's a good segue to our next topic here. We'll talk about the Eagles passing him.

But the brotherly shove is just too much of a detriment, I think. All right, we've got to take another break here. When we come back, we've got 10 minutes left for four topics, guys. All right? We'll be right back on Fantasy Football today. This one comes from Riley. He says, the Dolphins and the Eagles have a math problem. Are Waddle and Smith just boomer bust wide receiver twos?

Yeah, is the quick answer. Did you watch Devontae Smith and Goddard? I watched Devante Smith. I watched his routes and then I got bored. I was like, I don't want to watch this anymore. He got open a few times. Jalen Hurts didn't see him. Look, I could be totally wrong about this.

I'm going to take a non-statistical approach to this and I'm just going to say Devante Smith's going to have his big weeks. It's going to happen. I'm going to start him every single week. I think I'm surprised at how much I'm surprised at the target domination that we're seeing from A.J. Brown, because in the second half of last year, continuing on through the Super Bowl, the targets were very even. I think Devontae Smith actually had a few more. It is all A.J. Brown right now. Another concerning thing, I will get a little statistical.

There are, like I predicted, throwing more to their running backs this year than they did last year. They had the fewest running back targets in the NFL. So Hurts is throwing to DeAndre. You don't trade for DeAndre Swift and not throw him the ball. But can we just go back three weeks after week two? Is Devontae Smith the better wide receiver? Should we buy low or is A.J. Brown going to be a bust? You know, this and that. We're going to have different conversations about these guys at different points of the season.

They are still extremely run heavy. They have the third lowest pass rate in the NFL, but they've run the most plays. So they are, I think, like their 12th in pass attempts. That's what's kind of surprising me. It's not really a math problem. Jalen Hurst is throwing enough where all of these guys could be good,

but he's just favoring A.J. Brown so much right now. I think it'll even out. They are probably boomer bust wide receiver twos, but that's still going to make them better than most, like high-end wide receiver end wide receivers in my opinion. So I'd buy low on Smith and I already did buy low on waddle and he was okay. And in week five, Dan,

what do you think? I think you nailed this one. Look with waddle. A lot of it was game script. I thought in the giants game, they just didn't make a lot. A lot of what the dolphins did in that game was explosive plays. Like the giants defense outside the explosive plays did a decent job there.

And then they turned the football over twice. The Dolphins once in the red zone, once in their own territory, it didn't really feel like a game where they needed to get Waddle involved that much as far as the Eagles game, which the one that I didn't get to see yet. I'm not exactly sure what happened there with Devante Smith, but the reality of the situation is this.

These offenses are still predicated on Tyreek Hill and A.J. Brown at this point. And so it is more of a boom or bust from that standpoint, especially because there are not that many teams in the NFL that can force these teams, the Eagles and Dolphins, to get into shootouts that are necessary to get more volume in general in the passing game. The Dolphins haven't been in a lot of shootouts this year, with the exception of the Bills game, where they didn't have the football a lot of the game. It wasn't even a

shootout. They didn't have the football and they didn't score a lot on offense. The game scripts are harder for me to find where these two guys are going to find their consistency. There were only three games where they played, what, 20 games last year? There were only three games where all three, Goddard, Brown, and Smith, had 50 or more yards in the same game. And they were 0 for 5. So that's three of 25, where all three of them had 50 or more yards in the same game. I guess, Jacob, there's something that concerns me.

It's the air yards. Because Jalen Hurts is just throwing it downfield so much more this year. The route depth is up for Smith. The ADOT is up for Smith. And that's going to maybe take away some easy catches. So I don't know. How concerned are you? I'm really excited to talk with Matt Harmon. He's going to be

on FFT Dynasty next week about Devontae Smith specifically and AJ Brown because yeah, this is a really good note to bring up. He's not being used on as many layup routes like he was last year. They really kind of went out of their way to get Devontae involved it felt like. And this year it kind of feels like aj is just like the alpha and devante they're just like please win in your winnable matchups um and that's that's kind of

like what's going on with jordan addison and with justin jefferson where it's like with that kind of role it's going to be tough to draw a target per run rate above like 20 and that we saw that rate up to like 22 23 for davante last year this year it's down to like 17 which i think is pretty similar to addison so like really it's that's kind of the range that he's falling in right now except that he is on the field for two receiver sets and addison is not i'm a little bit worried about it waddle though he's the one where like i i think Devante is going to get his. Waddle, I'm legitimately worried that he might not because I do think the offense is a little bit different. Like Devante Aitken adds something

that he legitimately did not have last year, especially as a pre-snap motion guy. They're using him a ton. We see a lot of these players, they still have both Aitken and Mostert on the field. And one of those guys is the motion man, whereas last year Waddle was filling that role a lot. Also, Tyreek Hill is just like absolutely insane i thought that there might be some

drop off i know but like i don't know if people really realize how he's been last year he has 3.2 yards per route run and that was historically good like one of the absolute best the past 10 years this year he's averaging 4.8 i don't i don't know i don't know what's going on i don't want to take away from this but there seems to be this like flushing sound that's that's happened on jacob's mic a couple times and i just want people to know it's not me actually yeah i know we're not quite sure flushing sound you shouldn't have said that but yeah every time it happens i look at you and i look at schaefer and i'm like i have no idea idea what that was. It's not me on the can, I promise. I think I'm just getting too excited about Tyreek Hill.

Tyreek's been targeted on at least 30% of his routes in all but one game. He is the absolute epitome of an alpha in the league right now. And with that and the HN situation, I think it's kind of tough for Waddle. I think this week they really went out of their way to get him the ball. His first retarget rate was up, Waddle's, and still it wasn't some explosive performance. You know what I mean? That's the best-case outcome right now.

He needs to connect on deep threats to really be what we've seen in the past. Yeah, he's not going deep as much, not getting targeted down the field. All right, Ken Bailey wants to know, given the per-game production and the schedule, David Montgomery is a top-seven running back rest of season. So where did you have him, Jacob? Montgomery? RB8. RB8, but I think you can move him as high as RB5. I have Josh Jacobs ahead of him.

I'm sure Dan will disagree with that. Saquon Barkley, Derek Henry ahead of him, and I think you can move him ahead of either of those guys as well. I would definitely take him ahead of Derek Henry. Barkley's tough. The bottom line is, I don't know. There's some really good running backs behind him, right? Like guys that could easily be as good or better than Montgomery,

but you should not sell high. I think we're all pretty much buying it, right? And we're not, there's no thought at this point that, oh, just wait, Jameer Gibbs is going to take over. It's just, no, I don't see why. So just ride it out with Montgomery. Yeah. I mean, I'm not, obviously I'm not going to be the one to tell you

not to. I had David Montgomery ranked ahead of Gibbs in the preseason. I don't know anyone else who had that. I mean, obviously I talked about how excited I was about Montgomery, so. Congratulations, Dan. I mean, we heard it on the podcast. I'm sure I can prove it somehow with some of the podcasts. We'll just have to look back, but it's not going to be time for me to sell.

Hi, I'm David Montgomery. I think this is the reason I liked him so much. He's running behind the best, one of the best offensive lines in football with one of the best offensive schemers in the game. I mean, if you watch some of what Ben Johnson did, there was a play this week where I'd never seen it before. They had, they had a quarterback lined up. I think it was Goff went into the shotgun they had or no goff was under center they had they had a direct snap yeah there you go bad guy they had a direct snap to montgomery from under center which with goff under center i've never seen that

before goff took like a step back and it led to like a six yard gain this dude is just running really well and i think you know uh heath did a good job of pointing to it last week. But Austin Echo did a great breakdown of why David Montgomery is such an underage runner in the NFL and how, you know, sometimes the stats don't. And what did he say? What did he say? Because this pissed me off. Like, you know, I don't think David Montgomery is a good runner. I'm sure he's a good running back.

He probably does a lot of good things that are important to your team, but I just look at his stats and he did have a long run in this game for a touchdown. It's like 40-ish yards. He is boring. He is not fast. He does not have breakaway speed, and I

think a lot of running backs would do even better than David Montgomery. It doesn't matter because I think he's going to be great for fantasy, but, but this is, this is kind of the whole, I know it seems like that on the service item, but this is kind of the whole reason they went from Deandre Swift to David

Montgomery. So what did Eckler say? Do you remember? It's, I don't remember exactly what he said. A lot of it, you know, there were some specifics about how he reads zone runs and the general,

the general idea of what he said though, was processing something i've talked about a lot on this podcast and other podcasts mental processing is something for running backs people think it doesn't matter but it matters a lot the ability to set up the blocks the ability to understand the leverage the ability to understand where these holes are going to be based on the entire play in the blocking scheme and letting some of those develop. There's a reason why this offense looks a lot more, in my opinion, effective with him in the game instead

of DeAndre Swift last year. A lot of that has to do with... You love to pick on Swift. I don't love to pick on Swift because now he looks great with his Eagles great. Dude, this is what... Okay, I'm going on a rant here. This is from Benjamin.

He says, Remember how inefficient and bad Adam thought Manny was? Dude, look at his yards per carry. He's averaging 4.2 yards per carry. And before this game, he was averaging 3.8 or 3.9. The Panthers have one of the worst

run defenses in football. If he didn't go off in this game, I would have been shocked. So here he was in week one, slamming ahead into the Chiefs' line of scrimmage without Chris Jones and getting like 3.7 yards per carry. Now you're going to tell me yards per carry isn't everything. I understand that. But this to me is like a Kenneth Gainwell versus DeAndre Swift thing. DeAndre Swift is so much better. I don't understand what the hell they were thinking in week one. DeAndre Swift is better than David

Montgomery. Montgomery might be able to process things better, but I guarantee you, if you put DeAndre Swift on this Lions team and gave him the workload that David Montgomery is getting, I guarantee you he would be a better fantasy running back than David Montgomery. I straight up guarantee it. And David Montgomery doesn't even get targeted.

He doesn't get targeted because you don't want to just give David Montgomery the ball in space. He can't do anything with it, dad. Some of these some I think what you're missing potentially is that some of these positive runs that Montgomery is having nothing. He's hurt. But you might be missing, according to the coaches of the Lions, is some of these positive runs that Montgomery is having are runs that weren't positive on Swift State because Swift wasn't processing them as well. And they might feel the same way about Jameer Gibbs. He's a rookie. He doesn't understand things and process things the way Montgomery does. And they don't want negative plays because that puts them behind

the sticks. That's fine. It's harder for them to stay on schedule from a fantasy standpoint. I want a guy who can break a big play. That's OK. And guess what? We're learning. We're learning here that they don't want that. They want to stay on schedule. And from a fantasy standpoint, if they believe Montgomery keeps them on schedule, they're going to keep Montgomery in the game, as we've seen. I'm not arguing that at all. I am all in on David Montgomery this year from a fantasy standpoint. I just don't want to hear all this stuff about how good of a running back he is. Because, I'm sorry, at some point, yards per carry has to matter. I meant good for NFL standards.

Yeah, that's fine. He can be. But from a fantasy standpoint, yards per carry has to matter. I meant good for NFL stats. Yeah, that's fine. He can be. But from a fantasy standpoint, yards per carry has to matter. Efficiency. If you want to make fun of me for calling yards per carry, the stat people will call it efficiency, and then you'll be like, oh, okay, well, they're right. It's the same thing.

He's not that efficient. He hasn't been with a – I went through this crap. Oh, he's got Justin Fields now. He's got a mobile quarterback. Watch his efficiency is going to spike. It didn't. Oh, he's running behind the Lions line of scrimmage.

His efficiency is going to spike. Okay, it's at almost a career high, 4.2 yards per carry. I guarantee you DeAndre Swift's behind that line. He's at 4.8 or more. No, no way. He was just behind that line last year, Adam. He was just running behind that line. He was hurt all year.

They barely used him. You didn't see the clips with Deuce Daly and the running back coach there and everything that went down with DeAndre Swift. He wasn't running the ball the way they wanted to. I understand that, and I get that. You can look at yards per carry as an efficiency mark, which obviously in a lot of ways is not diluted, but it's changed by the big running plays,

which Montgomery doesn't have the breakaway ability. But what they're looking at from an efficiency standpoint, Adam is how many times do we have a run that goes to negative yards or zero yards or one to two yards. And he doesn't give them that many of those. A lot of those. You are right about that. And it is an NFL versus fantasy discussion.

And you're a hundred percent. He's a good fit for them. You are right about that. And it is an NFL versus fantasy discussion. And you're 100% right. He's a good fit for them. And he's going to be great for fantasy. And because he's a good fit for them, he's going to stay on the field. I'm not arguing with you at all. This is not about his fantasy value. You and I completely agree on David Montgomery.

And he's probably a better running back. He's a steady running back. I like home run hitters in fantasy. That's why I drafted Etienne. That's why I drafted Ken Walker. That's why I drafted DeAndre Swift. I thought Gibbs would be that home run hitter. I'm going to be wrong about him. He probably could be a home run hitter,

but they're not going to take Montgomery off the field. But that's okay. I think we're arguing two different things. This was really more like, I'm sorry, I just don't really see why people think David Montgomery is the field. But that's okay. I think we're arguing two different things. This was really more like, I'm sorry, I just don't really see why people think David Montgomery is so good, but okay. In fantasy, he's going to be really good. Last question here. We'll do this quickly.

Oh, there's two more. I'm going to do this one in like 10 seconds. From Brandon. It says, Gardner Minshew has a potential QB1 for the next four plus weeks. I don't see it. I don't see it. I don't see it. I don't like the weapons enough.

They're going to run the ball a lot, and the matchups aren't great. Okay, next up. I am so sad about Anthony Richardson's injury. We can move forward, but it's just off your fantasy. He's so fun. It really stinks. But he'll be back. This is from Zarlos Cambrano, which is a funny name.

Carlos Zambrano. How long should we stash lottery tickets like Tank Bigsby, Zach Charbonnet with the bi-weeks coming up and the little production shown? I put together a stash-o-meter if you'd like to hear it. Oh yeah, let's do it. A 9 out of 10 rating. Top of the stash list for me is Roshan Johnson.

Especially with the Herbert injury. I think he could walk into like a concussion. He into a concussion. He had a concussion. High ankle sprain might keep Herbert out for a month. Tajay Spears is actually next for me. Him and Zach Charbonnet I have both at 7 out of 10 ahead

of Jalen Warren, which I think most people won't agree with. The offensive runway for both of those guys, the role they might get if they step into that role is bigger than I think anything in Pittsburgh that I'm going to be excited about. Well, this is a stash-o-meter, right?

Because a start-o-meter, Warren's ahead of these guys, but stash-o-meter, I completely agree. If the starting running back gets hurt, I think Warren would be a must-start guy, but I think Spears and Sharbon, I'd like more. I also would put Bigsby in there personally, Jacob. Where do you have him? I have Warren and Jaleel McLaughlin as sixes,

Tank, Bigsby as a five, Kendra Miller as a four. Okay. That's good stuff. Yeah, look, it's a tough question to answer. It depends on your record. It depends on your team. I certainly see scenarios. This is the problem with stashing handcuffs.

If they don't work, they don't hit by, you know, week five and you're two and three or one and four and you got bi-weeks, like, they're going to get dropped. I remember David Johnson got dropped in a ton of leagues his rookie season, and then he was like a league winner down the stretch. So it happens. It's really a personal thing. It's got to be your team's needs. One thing I'd say is don't drop a handcuff. Who did I drop this week? I dropped Sean Tucker because I think he's needs. One thing I'd say is don't drop a handcuff. Who did I drop this week? I dropped Sean Tucker

because I think he's nothing. I think Keyshawn Vaughn might have taken his place. I don't even know. I dropped him for Latavius Murray because I needed a spot start in a 14-team league and I had buys and injuries. I would not have dropped

Zach Charbonnet, even if I thought I was going to lose a week, I wouldn't have dropped a really good handcuff for a guy like Latavius Murray who could give you three points. Don't do something like that. If you have to drop that handcuff, it better be a player that you think could really help you win that week.

Agreed. Agreed on that. Sorry to hog the mic at the end there. I just needed to get out of here. You had to get your Montgomery rant in there. I understand. I mean, just get out of here. You had to get your Montgomery rant in there. I understand. I mean, just when he said that to me, I felt like he was like sticking it to me.

Like, oh, Austin Eckler said he's such a great running back. I could see he's a better NFL running back than a fantasy running back. But well, I don't know. I already said my piece. No, I thought it was a good argument. I mean, I get it. I just think there's a reason he's on the field for the Lions

and it's going to help. Obviously, we went over this. All right, and we're out of here. Thank you to Jacob and Dan and Thomas and all of you for watching and listening. We'll talk to you later tomorrow. Oh, Monday night. We've got the Monday night live stream. We'll see you at 7.30 and then the waiver live.