Fantasy Football Today - Fade and Value Candidates! (Fantasy Football Today DFS podcast)

Episode Date: July 11, 2023

Download and follow Fantasy Football Today DFS! You can find FFT DFS on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else podcasts are found. Sia Nejad talks DFS strategy with a special guest! (4:45) - Fade and Value Candidates: QBs (18:30) - Fade and Value Candidates: RBs (30:59) - Fade and Value Candidates: WRs (37:40) - Fade and Value Candidates: TEs (40:10) - Week 1 Lookahead 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 'Fantasy Football Today DFS' is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Castbox, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Follow our FFT DFS team on Twitter: @FFToday, @Mike5754 @SiaNejad Watch FFT DFS on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/fantasyfootballtoday 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 DFS 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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Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals, be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. Welcome back, everybody, to Fantasy Football Today, DFS. I am your host, IMC, and Ajad. We're continuing our offseason series, but we're only 58 days away from kickoff. That's Kansas City and Detroit Thursday night football.

I have a special guest with me. You heard him here last year on this very show, on this very podcast. Fantasy Football Today DFS guest TJ Hernandez at TJ Hernandez. TJ, you are the director of DFS at 444. 444.com is where you can find his work. You can also find him at Bettsford's Media. 58 days away, TJ, that's got a sound. It's starting to sound like music to your ears, right? Yeah, man, I've been on this

best ball grind all off season. So that's been my main focus, getting my fix now. But I'm sure within, I don't know, two or three weeks, we're probably getting some DFS salaries dropping. It's usually the last week of July, I think. So yeah, I mentioned for some DFS action finally. That's going to be really cool. And I'll tell everybody, we're going to, we're going to, you know, listen, we're going to talk about regression candidates. TJ, he writes a lot for 444.com and you can find all of his stuff there. We're going to tap into some of the stuff he wrote about some, some of the outlier sort

of statistical statistical players from 2022 and what that means for 2023. So we're going to get into that. But at the end of the show, we're actually going to talk a little bit about the DFS main slate. No, we don't have salaries, but it will be fun to just sort of speculate based on totals and things of that nature, the teams involved, where people will likely go on the main slate. Maybe you want to play just the early slate. Maybe you want to just do the afternoon slate. Maybe you want to do the main slate. Either way, we're just going to tap into that a little bit at the end of the show. There certainly will always be a DFS tie-in. But before we get to your regression candidates, TJ, I do

want to say, you know, this show, Fantasy Football Today DFS, it's only two years old. We're only going into year three in 2023. And there's another kid on the block, another new show that's coming right to you, and we're adding it. It's the Fantasy Football Today family adding another show with a brand new

podcast called Fantasy Football Today Dynasty. Join our pal from FFT, Heath Cummings, and a cast of characters as they aim to help you dominate your dynasty league. Support the FFT team by following Fantasy Football Today Dynasty on Apple, Spotify, or wherever podcasts are found. Well, TJ, I want to get right into it. And everybody in the chat, thank you for being here. I see you, J-Mets. I see you, Eliard Anderson. Hopefully I pronounced that right. We want to

talk about some of the content you've put up at 4 for 4, some regression candidates. And I'd love to, if it's okay with you, I'd love to go by position. You have some guys that are regression candidates, and that can be a confusing term to some people because we're talking about regressing to the mean, right, TJ? Yeah. Yeah. I can give a little background on the methodology if you like before we hop into the positions. Yeah, so this is a touchdown focus regression analysis that I do every year. And I think it's an improvement on things like touchdown rate or things like red zone opportunities. It just gives a little more context to these numbers. Obviously, touchdowns are a huge driver of fantasy scoring.

But what I've done over the past five or six years is take every single play for the whole season, look at where that play started, look at the line of scrimmage, and then what kind of play that is per position and assign touchdown expectations. So for example, a pass from inside the five yard line has a 45% touchdown rate. A running back target from the opponents 11 to the 15 has a 12% touchdown rate. So I apply all of those numbers across every position, every field position to every player and see which players scored the most above expectation, which players scored the least above expectation. And historically, we've had a lot of success, and these players on the upper end seeing fewer touchdowns the following year.

Players on the lower end seeing more touchdowns, assuming that they get the continued workload. And it really gives us an idea of which players we might be targeting as sleepers and which players we might be over hyping because maybe you know touchdowns there there's a lot of luck involved there's a lot of run good involved and and when those numbers do regress sometimes these players are a little bit more average than we expect so there's a couple names on your quarterback list and we'll talk about just so everybody knows we're going to talk about

quarterbacks running backs we'll touch on wide receivers and tight ends as well before we get into that early look at some of the DFS main slate. But there's a couple of quarterbacks on your QB list in terms of positive expectations, right? You have some negative expectations too, in terms of regression to the mean, but a couple of the names really intrigued me, one in particular. But let's start with Kenny Pickett. I want to get to the next one, but I want to start with Kenny Pickett. Why would he be a regression candidate in terms of having positive expectations? Yeah. Just in terms of, um, the number of touchdowns he has scored his, his expected

touchdown number was actually 17. He only ended up throwing seven touchdowns and, uh, there, there was a lot, going into that uh for one we had pickett thrown into a situation where they weren't expecting him to start right away they had trubisky starting um ended up trubisky was a lot worse than they were hoping for forced pick it into a situation where he had to start quicker than expected behind a very bad offensive line and then where pickett really struggled was inside the red zone. Only of the 26 quarterbacks with at least 20 red zone attempts, Pickett was the only one with a single-digit touchdown rate

inside the red zone. We did see some improvement from Pickett just as a passer in general. Over his first three starts, 4.32 yards, adjusted yards per attempt. Over his final seven starts, that jumped to 6.68, which is still slightly below average, but better than those bottom of the barrel numbers we were seeing. So we did see some improvement. Uh, the Steelers did add a first round tackle. Um, and I think second year in Matt Canada system, uh, familiarization with the offense, uh, consistent

pass catching core. If he scores as expected with a full year of pass attempts, if he improves on that red zone rate, I would put Pickett in that like high end expectation of somewhere in the 25 touchdown range. Yeah. And I like what you said about, it makes sense, right? That, you know, what he he's coming in a little earlier than expected when it comes to Mitch Trubisky sort of leaving the field, leaving the field as a starter. And obviously there's going to be growing pains early. And so the fact that you saw a trend sort of later in the season with respect to Kenny Pickett,

that obviously bodes well with a full offseason going into year two in Matt Canada's system. I mean, that is part of the thesis statement right there, right? Absolutely, yeah. So this next guy I'm really excited about because there were so many things working against Justin Herbert outside of what you're going to talk about, which was just simply the touchdowns weren't as high as they probably should have been, which you're going to touch on in a second. But there were so many other things that we'll get to in a second when it comes to Justin Herbert in terms of things working against him in 2022. But tell me why he's a positive expectation regression candidate in 2023.

Yeah, with all these guys, I'm starting with the math of the expectation. If we look at Justin Herbert's 25 touchdowns, that was nine below expectations based on all of his past attempts and where they came from on the field and historical past great numbers. He should have thrown 34 touchdowns. That would have made him finish as the qb5 and these where these players would have finished that drives the narrative so much right because herbert was going as the qb2 in redraft leagues last year ended as a qb11 so a lot of disappointment there outside of where the

passes came from outside of actual passing rate i I mean, there's other drivers that can point us to a player regressing in the right direction. Herbert was second pass attempts, second passing yards. Those things typically coincide with higher passing numbers. He just had really bad luck. He was a little unhealthy. He had two receivers that missed multiple time. And on top of that, like we don't talk about Herbert as a rushing quarterback. He was one of 14 signal callers that had at least 50 rush attempts. He was the only one in that group that didn't have a rushing touchdown. So yeah, he's not going to go out there and, you know, rush for 50 yards every game and give you 10 scores. But I mean, if we get three or four rushing touchdowns out of Herbert instead of zero, and he comes in on the high end of his

expected passing touchdown number, if he has, you know, if he comes in on the high end of his expected passing touchdown number. If he has, you know, if he comes, if it's a big overcorrection and he comes in at like 37 or 38 passing touchdowns, this is a guy that could compete for the QB one with this new offense, with a new rookie in Quentin Johnson, with a new offensive coordinator in Callum Moore, whose offenses were top six and scoring three of his four years in Cowboys. There are a lot of things pointing in the right direction for the Chargers and particularly for Herbert, of course, got the great pass catching back as well. Yeah.

And when you talk about the rushing touchdowns, I mean, part of all of this, when it comes to Justin Herbert, I'm trying to think of, well, okay, let's build off of a couple of things. What would his season have been if the rib cartilage injury hadn't happened basically at the beginning of the season? Because that really hampered him. He probably should have rested way longer than he did. things. What would his season have been if the rib cartilage injury hadn't happened basically at the beginning of the season? Because that really hampered him. He probably should have rested way longer than he did. It probably hampered him the entire season, but then he got Slater and Lindsley injuries on the offensive line. Now the offensive lines get injured all the time,

so that's not necessarily an outlier thing, but those are two really important pieces that were missing. Keenan Allen, I think people forget he missed pretty much half the season. I mean, there were about seven games he's flat out didn't play a couple more games where he was, you know, clearly injured during the game. And then, and you mentioned Mike Williams injured too. So, you know, some of these things are going to happen in an NFL season. You can't really account for them, but the rib cartilage injury, the offensive line injuries, the injuries to your primary receivers. I mean, the fact that he was able to do what he was able to do is actually really impressive. And if these things,

if these people stay healthy and you add Quentin Johnson to the mix, you add Kellen Moore to the mix, man, I agree with you, TJ, Justin Herbert seems like a sky high candidate who for the record, to your point, might rush a little bit more than anybody expects not that he's a Russian quarterback but still yeah no he'll give you he'll give you random games where he'll give you 30 30 and one on the ground and that that obviously goes a really really long way so this next guy is really interesting to me because and again everybody can find this at four four four dot com TJ uh has all of this laid out including kind of the statistical deep dive um that still sort of TJ has all of this laid out, including kind of a statistical deep dive that sort of predicates all of, all of these names. Matthew Stafford is interesting to me as a sort of a

positive X and forgive me if I'm using the wrong terms here, I'm saying positive expectations relative to 2022 relative to the mean, you know, what have you. So, you know, Stafford is just like, I don't think anybody's going to want to touch the Rams in general. I mean, obviously Cooper cup, you know, cam acres, but the Rams in general, I think, you know, obviously vibes are low. Nobody's expecting them to win many games. Tell me what you're seeing with Matthew Stafford. Sure. I mean, this isn't an offense that I think we're, we're buying a ton of Stafford. Isn't a guy like, like Kenny Pickett might be a guy that we're, you know, if you're in a redraft league and you really miss out on, on the,

you know, the top 10 or 11 guys, you're taking that 12 quarterback off the board, maybe, maybe pickets there, but him and Stafford both, I think are, are more likely going to be,

if they do hit early season wave wire candidates in your typical 12 team league. I don't think their guys were going to be drafting but you know keep an eye on early in the year be ahead of of the uh crowd on the waiver wire stafford came into last year with an elbow injury that everybody knew about and for whatever reason we all kind of said you know maybe maybe it's not as bad still end up going to top 12 quarterback struggled with that ended up hurting his neck missing half the season even when he was active only through 10 touchdowns should have been around that 15 mark someone i i like guys like stafford um or at least guys with some kind of

significant history because it's not like kenny pickett we have one year to draw on we have a long history of matthew stafford being consistently above average in terms of touchdown rate in his first year with the Rams touchdown is way up near seven percent now you're not going to sustain that every year but down at 3.3 percent that's just not what we typically get from Matthew Stafford Cooper Cup should be coming into the into the year healthy this is an offense that just really struggled all around last year so I think just Stafford getting a full healthy off season, you know, having cut back, I think that he should be at least slightly above average again. What's interesting too, is just from a DFS standpoint, I want everybody to keep in mind, like these are guys that are, you know, especially

when it comes to Stafford and Pickett and Herbert to a degree, because, you know, everybody's going to want to play like the true Russian quarterbacks that have some upside with their arm as well. I mean, Jalen Hurts comes to mind, like there are going to be opportunities where, especially early in the DFS season, where for one, nobody's going to be playing Kenny Pickett. So depending on the matchup, oh, and by the way, Matthew Stafford, he's in a high total game week one on the main slate. They play at the Seahawks. It's a 47 point total. That's certainly a contrarian candidate for the main slate because nobody's going to want to play Matthew Stafford, even Justin Herbert. Given what we saw from him as the QB 11 last year, TJ, he is the type of guy from a DFS standpoint that I want to be targeting in the first few weeks

before people realize, hey, there were so many things mitigating such a great season from him. And so I think contextually, you want to keep this in mind for redraft and all of these other things. But DFS wise, especially guys like Pickett and Stafford, but even Herbert to a degree, these are guys that might be a little lower owned than people expect. I mean, week one, that's not going to be the case, right? Because the Dolphins play the Chargers week one. It's a 50 point total. It's the highest total on the main slate. Still, they're going to be games where Herbert because the dolphins play the chargers week one it's a 50 point total it's the highest total on the main slate still they're going to be games where herbert's

probably lower on go ahead tj yeah i think um one of the early season advantages to people that are doing a lot of best ball drafts are um are just or just doing a lot of off-season research are we have a pretty good idea of who we think our breakout candidates are going to be or who are underrated redraft players are going to be. And a lot of times those end up being low-salary DFS guys. So they are, you know, sometimes week one feels like a complete crapshoot. We don't know what's going on with new offices, new coordinators. Just simply looking at some of these guys that we expect to have breakout years

or bounce back years can be early season DFS targets for sure. All right. expect to have breakout years or bounce back years can be early season DFS targets for sure. All right. And let's talk about a couple of quarterbacks that maybe have some negative expectations, at least relative to what they produced from a touchdown standpoint last year. And the first one it's Tua. Talk to me about Tua. Do you mind if we talk about both these guys together? Because I think they actually had really similar years and I think they're most likely trends are a little bit different. Yeah, actually I was going to, I was actually going to group them together and I decided to go one-on-one. So yeah, actually that's, that's probably the better way anyway. Let's go.

Yeah. Just because with the way that they both ran both to, um, and Gino Smith, they both ran really good in terms of deep passes to ahead. Eight touchdowns over 40 yards. Gino had 13 touchdowns over 30 yards and those long scores, whether it be passing scores for the quarterbacks or receiving a rushing scores for the other positions, they're typically not sticky. We typically see the usage stick really well. But those long scores are,

are very high variance year to year so two was uh two around super hot last year should have had about 17 touchdowns based on expectation through 25 gino had 23 through for 30 um two with through for a super high touchdown rate over six percent we typically don't see that repeating and And even with two of running super hot, he was the QB nine in terms of point per game when he played at least 70% of the snaps. If we just look in terms of the offensive changes, the upside for two is pretty obvious. He has two of the most dynamic receivers in the league, but Miami, I mean, they drafted a running back, but most of their upgrades this year came on defense. whereas Seattle invested a lot more in the pass game.

Drafted Jason, drafted a pass-catching running back in Zach Charbonnet, have two tackles that a lot of people forget were rookies last year, but only missed one combined start. Offensive line continuity, especially at those tackle positions, is huge for offense. So Seattle's offensive line struggled last year. I think they could be a lot better this year, brought in a new center as well. So I think Gino could have really good protection

this year. And I mean, they just invested in their passing game. So if one of these quarterbacks is more likely to sustain their season, I actually like it to be Gino where I think the consensus is people are expecting it to be to it. Yeah, that makes sense. I want to ask you sort of off script a little bit, uh, when it comes to the NFC West, I mean, we talked about the Rams. I don't think they have any shot to win the NFC West. Arizona, I can safely say, has no shot to win the NFC West. When you look at the numbers, I think last I checked, you had the Niners at like minus 150. And I think the Seattle Seahawks were somewhere in like the, I can't remember what it was, but plus it was certainly a plus number, a pretty healthy plus number. Do you think Seattle can contend for the NFC West?

Niners are really good, man. Yeah, but for me it's no, I don't. Like I think Seattle's good, but I don't think regardless of who's at quarterback, which I expect it to be Brock Purdy, I think it's the Niners division because of it's a head-to-head matchup, really. I think their offense is going to be really fun. As long as, I mean, we had, you know, Pete Carroll, we thought he was never going to open up the past game. And then Seattle's all of a sudden eighth and passing rate over expectation last year. I think that continues. So they could be a really fun team. I don't know if, if they could hold a candle to the Niners this year. Yeah, I agree with that. All right. Well, listen, we got to talk about some regression candidates at the running back position.

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This is Fantasy Football Today, DFS, and I'm with TJ Hernandez, the director of DFS at 4for4.com. Running backs, we got a couple here with negative expectations, or I should say positive, and then a few with negative ones. And I think the negative ones are going to be really controversial with respect to maybe one or two of them. I I'm a big fan of really both the guys you have in the positive category. Where do you want to start? Uh, we could start right at the top with Travis ET. And I think he's a super interesting player just because of what people thought they were going to get out of him and what he provided. But I think when we dig into the numbers, uh, the narrative might be a little bit wrong. Fair enough. Tell me about it. Yeah. The big thing with ETN is people were expecting this huge passing game.

We're all out of them. Right. And we just didn't get it. And he actually matched his, his ADP last year. I believe he was drafted as the RB 16 and finishes RB 16. I might be off by one or two spots depending on scoring system there. But the past game work

wasn't there what it doesn't account for is that his five total touchdowns should have been nine total touchdowns and if he hits that expectation we're looking at an rb12 finish for etn and like i said so much of the narrative is driven off of how a player finished last year etn is coming off of the year where he finishes an rb1 i think there's a lot more hype around him i think we might see you know maybe a round higher adp on him among running backs that are currently on a roster only five had more opportunities inside the 10 yard line than travis etn last year he just didn't convert all of them and again that's a very high variance number those touchdown rates um tend to to swing back to normal pretty often. This is an offense that a lot of people are expecting to continue to trend up. Got Calvin

Ridley to join their receiving court now. We know Trevor Lawrence is ascending. I want running backs that are going to be on explosive offenses. And sure, maybe Etienne isn't going to be this 70, 80 target guy that we're hoping for but if we expect this offense to have a lot of scoring opportunity a lot of times that scoring opportunity means sustained drives and short easy touchdowns for the running backs more running back opportunity etn's competing with touches with a guy that is a perennial backup indiana johnson and take bixby who's a rookie that I like, but not a ton of draft capital where I think they're going to feel like they need to get him playing again. So

he's had an over 60% touch share last year. I don't see any reason why Etienne doesn't match that touch share, maybe even exceed it. And if his touchdowns normalized, we're looking at a player that finishes as a top 10 running back. I think that's the key here, what you said about the touch share, because even if we think Tank Bigsby, and he is kind of a tank, by the way, his actual name is not Tank, it's Cartavious, if anybody wanted to know that. Although Tank is certainly a fitting name for him, but even if he gets some of the goal line work, because you got to think they invested in him to some degree because of the inefficiency from Etienne, maybe inside the 10, inside the five, but even if Bigsby gets some of that, Etienne's going to get some of that too. But between the 20s, I feel like

Etienne's going to get like, not all of it, but certainly more than 60%. I feel like even if you think Bigsby as a rookie carves out a role, which is questionable, it's all going to Travis. Otherwise, it all seems like it's going to Travis. I don't think Dearness Johnson is a guy that's really going to do anything other than spell Travis Etienne when he's hurt, for example. Absolutely. Yeah. I like Etienne a lot. And I think he's a, I mean, I wouldn't say necessarily a hedge because he's not going super, um, uh, late, but a lot of people are just hyping up the offense. And I think you can, uh, you could get a lot of the offense through the running back this year. So speaking of a lot of the offense through the running back, I look at the new England Patriots and I think, all right, uh, how does Ramondre Stevenson not get like all the work

because behind him, it just looks bare. Like, I don't know, I don't know, Pierre strong, like Ty Montgomery. I don't even know really where we're going at the second and third running back position. We know Damian Harris has gone. Ramondre is somebody you really like. Talk about it. Yeah. Ramondre only scored six touchdowns last year. Obviously he was a beast through the pass game with 88 targets, but he was very similar to ETN in that both had at least 20 opportunities. That's targets plus rushes inside the 10 yard line. There were 18 other players to hit that 20 opportunity mark inside the 10 yard line. They were the only two with fewer than five touchdowns. So Stevenson is getting the requisite work near the goal.

And I know a lot of people think, oh, Damian Harris was the pounder last year, which people just automatically equate with goal line work. But Stevenson was getting a lot of work inside the 10 yard line. I would expect him to continue to get that work. He is obviously a safer bet than ETN because he is getting that passing game work that we didn't see from ETN. The only little bit of pause, and I don't think we need to have too much pause is that Bill O'Brien is going to be calling plays again this year. He has struggled as an offensive coordinator, um, before, but, um,

I mean, with Harris gone, um, released james robinson i i just don't see a hurdle other than that the patriots do have the most difficult schedule in the league in terms of um opponent expected win total so they could get into some negative game scripts they could see some spots where uh stevenson doesn't get the uh touchdown upside that we're hoping for but he has a safety net with his pass catching. So again, if that touchdown normalizes, he's being drafted high, top 10 running back in ADP. I think he has a chance to pretty easily match that.

I like that. Okay, so it's the negative expectation, guys. Again, this is all relative, right, to 2022 that I think are going to have some eyes wide open a little bit. And I'm going to start with eyes wide open a little bit. And I'm going to start with a guy who's coming off an injury, but seems like he's trending fine off of that injury that I think a lot of people are going to be in love with. And I wonder, and we're talking about Tony Pollard, and I wonder how you want to couch this.

Is the negative expectation relative to the 2022 numbers or is it relative to his ADP or both? No, I think it's relative to his 2022 numbers or is it relative to his ADP or both? No, I think it's relative to his touchdown expectation only. I think with Tony Pollard, he had a huge gap in his expectation versus actual touchdowns. Should have been between six and seven touchdowns based on where all of his touches came from. Score 12. With that said, a lot of that is going to be made up for in volume. He's not going to be splitting work with Zeke. I think with Pollard compared to the other guys around him, we're so excited about Paul, right? He's been this uber efficient back that we've

been waiting to get a full workload when he has, he's absolutely blown up. He's won tournaments for people last year i think this expectation that we talk about range of outcomes i think it's a lot wider than uh some people might be giving uh pollard credit for so many of his runs came from long range eight from eight from outside the 10 yard line which doesn't seem long but just not a lot of running back scores come from outside the 10 yard line five touchdowns of at least 30 plus yards as i mentioned with quarterbacks those long touchdowns are really hard to repeat now most of the work inside the 10 went to zeke especially on the ground zeke is gone maybe i mean maybe they bring him back that's probably the biggest question mark

for tony pollard right now do they start training camp and then bring in zeke um that could really hurt his touchdown expectation uh cowboys online always very good other concern we got mike mccarthy versus kellen moore a lot of people say oh mccarthy wants to feed uh running back the rock that's a good thing tony pollard's touches are going to go through the roof sure but if they're a super inefficient team in terms of scoring um that's also very concerning so there's a lot of push and pull with tony pollard the positives are obvious. I just think the range of outcomes are a lot wider than people are expecting. Yeah, fair enough. I definitely understand that argument. The next guy is really interesting to me. And I want to lead with just some of what

I see when it comes to Austin Eckler, because you have him, you know, especially with regard, what we're talking about really is the touchdown expectations here, 18 total touchdowns last year, which is obviously a ton. But I think a lot of his work in general, if we just reach outside of the touchdowns and we look at his receptions, 107 receptions on 127 targets. Would you agree with me that a lot of that was attributed to the injuries across the offensive line and in the wide receiver room and that he was just sort of the guy by process of elimination that was just getting a lot of those targets

because there weren't a lot of other people there that Herbert could rely on? Yes and no. I mean, to the extent that he was getting them, I would say yes. But in terms of relative to the rest of the league, we have a lot of evidence that Austin Eckler is a guy that can handle a lot of high value touches. And when I say high value touches, I mean targets and touches inside the 10 yard line. He was pretty much in the same position last year where he scored way over expectation. And then he didn't bounce back. He

scored over expectation again. And this is where I think it's really important if people don't just look at the tweet or who the names are in the article, but actually to read this process, because this is a really important one. And it's why I call it touchdown expectation because Austin Eckler, as long as he's the starting running back for the chargers, he's been at, or near the top of the league in terms of touch and expectation. So this is a player with the work he's given. He can regress to the mean and still pay off his RB three ADP. So I included him for that very reason. 13 expected touchdowns is a lot. The only other guy that's seen those type of numbers last year was Jamal Williams. And Jamal Williams is another guy. That's another

great example of this process and why I go through this process every single year. Because if you don't, you might look at someone like Jamal Williams and say he scored 17 or 18 times. You just can't repeat that every year. Maybe not, but his touchdown expectation was actually exactly where it was supposed to be. Austin Eckler is one of those guys. He's getting these high value touches. Sure. He scored over, but I think he's a fair value where he's going. I think he, he might not repeat his RB one,

but I think top three or four RB is very, very safe for Eckler. I think he's one of the best running backs, most high value running backs in the league. All right. And the last guy, I feel like this is one where I take issue with it because it's Nick Chubb. And I just think, I mean, I, I can't tell you TJ how many times, cause I do a prop show with, uh, part of the CBS sports, uh, network with prop stars and Dave Richard from fantasy football today, John, the coach, been the coach. And I can't tell you how many times middle of the CBS Sports Network with prop stars and Dave Richard from Fantasy Football Today, Jonathan Coachman, the coach. And I can't tell you how many times, middle of the season, towards the end of the season, where I was just like,

Nick Chubb's over in rushing yards. And it would keep going up, and he'd keep clipping it. And with Kareem Hunt gone, and I understand Kareem Hunt really wasn't much of a force last season for the Browns, but it just seems to me that with Kareem Hunt gone, maybe Nick Chubb, maybe the receptions tick up a little bit. Maybe the opportunities for touchdowns tick up, especially with some of the guys on the outside

that they've added like Elijah Moore and Deshaun maybe being better this year. But what is the reason that Nick Chubb shows up on the list in a negative way? Yeah, the only reason he shows up here is just because he scored so far over expectation. He scored five touchdowns over expectation. Should have been at eight, was at 13.

And this goes for all three of these guys. Since 2000, beginning of 2019, we've had nine other running backs besides these three score at least five touchdowns over expectation. The following year, they've seen their touchdown total drop by an average of seven touchdowns. Obviously, if Chubbs drops by seven he's at six so he's probably you know still in that running back eight or nine range given his um his workload he's just a back like chubb is just always a concern because he's not going to give you a lot in the past game and he's he's going to finish as the you know he's going to

finish as a top 10 running back even if he has a bad rushing year. Players like Chubb can be frustrating. He wasn't much last year. He can be frustrating because these 80 yards and zero touchdown games are always in his range of outcomes. His NFC numbers are going to look good. He's going to have games where he's going to sink you. If you're playing on DraftKings, he's going to give you a little bit more cushion because you're going to get that hundred yard bonus a lot of times when he doesn't get his touchdown. Uh, but, but just, uh, you know,

be cautious. Think about how, how the office is going to look. Is Deshaun Watson going to go back to, you know, he's been a premier rushing quarterback in the league before. Um, are they going to be a better passing team this year? Is that going to hurt Jeff? I think he's going to be fun. It's just throw up just one of these little red flags. We want to be doing our due process. He did run very good last year in terms of touchdown rate. Totally fair. Totally understand that. So here's the thing. Your wide receiver article, it's not out yet. Your tight end article is not out yet on four for four.com. You're about to publish these things, but I figured, well, why not just like, we don't have to go through the whole process, but maybe you give us, let's talk about the wide receivers.

For example, maybe a sneak peek of maybe a couple of names, literally maybe a couple two that might show up in that next article. Sure. Um, start with wide receivers if you'd like. Yeah. Yeah. The, the guy that scored the highest over expectation last year was Tyler Lockett. And that's not a surprise.

Every single year, our guys that are quarterbacks that are the highest or lowest relative to expectation are almost always going to have pass catchers that are highest or lowest over expectation. Tyler Lockett scored nine touchdowns last year. His expectation was 4.2. Now, Tyler Lockett, similar to a guy like Austin Eckler, he's proven that he can consistently score above expectation. He's a very efficient receiver, very good at what he does. Tyler Lockett, for me, is an opportunity to look at the Seattle offense as a whole and kind of dig into what we think they can do. A lot of people look at the

drafting of JSN, look at Charbondae, and kind of say, we're not sure how targets are going to play out. If we do some digging, I think we can kind of get an idea of what the Seattle offense is going to look like. Now, even though they threw at a top 10 rate over expectation last year, they were very limited in how they can do that. They ran three wide receiver sets at one of the lowest rates in the league. JSN is going to give them the ability to spread out that offense and continue to throw at a high rate.

Zach Charbonnet is going to give them a running back out of the backfield. Ken Walker is fine. Zach Charbonnet is way better out of the backfield. Now with Tyler Lockett specifically and why I do think he can regress is because if we look at the profile of Lockett, look at the profile of Jackson Smith and Jigba, both are players that can play as flankers and as slot wide receivers. Neither of them are going to be great on the line, especially JSN.

That is going to be a role where now DK can comfortably play the X, play on the line of scrimmage. That's going to be his designated role. Tyler Lockett and JSN most likely bounce back and forth between the Z and the slot. And for that reason, they're going to have a lot of shared targets,

a lot of shared opportunities, Tyler Lockett on the wrong side of 30 Jason, one of the better route runners coming out of the draft. I think by the end of the year, either can have, obviously if they're both healthy, I think they could both have these huge splash games with Ricky Jason being the the top receiver in the draft, with Lockett on the wrong side of 30, I think it could be a situation where by those playoff weeks, we see Jason be the player that's popping.

And for the simple fact that they're going to be sharing a role, I think they're going to have a lot of ambiguous weeks where DK is just steadily holding down that X. Yeah, Tyler Lockett turns 31 in September. It sounds to me, and I would agree with this if the answer was yes, but feel free to disagree. It sounds to me like DK Metcalf is somebody that you really like this year. Yeah. And it's when we look at, at redraft or best ball, a lot of people will simply look at ADP and say, DK is going way earlier than Lockett and Jason. Lockett has outscored him before.

Lockett's the obvious value. I look at the roles and look at DK and how he plays. And like I said, look at Tyler Lockett and Jason likely splitting these roles. And if this offense continues, if Gino Smith continues the efficiency that we saw last year for the reasons that I laid out, I really think that DK has a top five or six year in his range of outcomes this year. I don't think Lockett, Jason have the range of outcomes. Sure.

Lockett can finish this, you know, the wide receiver 13 again, but does he have a wide receiver 12 or wide receiver, you know, five or six in his range of outcomes? I don't think so. Not, not if he's switching back and forth with Jason. Totally agree with that. Uh, maybe how about one other receiver, uh, that you want to just touch on real quick. Uh, that's going to be in your wide receiver article. Yeah. I talked about Kenny Pickett talked about how a lot of these, um, players are tied to each other. I mean, Deontay Johnson is just the obvious one. Didn't score a touchdown last year. His expectation was seven. If we look at Matt Harmon's reception, perception, Deontay just grades that as one of the best

route runners. Matt Harmon's success rate versus man versus zone versus different type of coverages. Deontay Johnson just wins. These are the type of players we want on our team. If Kenny Pickett continues to ascend as a passer, Deontay Johnson is going to be the steady player on that team. If Kenny Pickett continues to ascend as a passer, Deontay Johnson is going to be the steady player on that team. You know, I know people like Pickens. Pickens has a lot of Gabe Davis attributes. I like Gabe Davis, but it's going to be, I think it's going to be a little more inconsistent than people are hoping for. I know he's sexy. I know Pickett to Pickens is sexy.

Deontay Johnson is that dude in the offense. Totally agree with that. And from a DFS standpoint, listen, if you're looking at, you know, trying to make a splash with any of these guys, like Steelers, for example, listen, they play San Francisco, their first game, and then they're home against Cleveland, but Vegas and Houston in weeks three and week four. So like, just think of from a DFS standpoint, their value was already depressed, right? I mean, TJ is talking about it, but you know, not a lot of people are thinking like these guys are going to be guys you want to put on your DFS teams, but it's going to be even worse after they play San Francisco and maybe after they play Cleveland. But then you wake up in Vegas and Houston, they're low price. Nobody really wants

to play them in spite of their low price because like they're not sexy picks like George Pickens or like some receivers that typically score a lot of touchdowns. And that's sort of how you win a D.F. I mean, if the matchup is right, that's sort of how you win a tournament matchup. I mean, TJ, do you like my logic in terms of like I can't imagine that the prices are high for Deontay? I mean, Deontay will carry some price value, but like that they're going to be high for Pickett or Deontay in week three against Vegas or week four against Houston. Yeah, I mean, we would have to see, you know, we would have to see something huge out of them and, you know, they're, I mean, this, these are things to keep in the back of our mind, right? These, these hoping to pop off teams because, you know, Pittsburgh starts the season

against the Niners. All it takes is them to just have a horrible game against the Niners to get absolutely romped. And then all of a sudden everyone's saying, yeah, same old Steelers. And it just presents opportunities. There's no way they're going to be high priced. There's no, there's none. Interesting note that the Niners are favored by three at Pittsburgh, but that's at plus 100. So I think some money is at least coming in on Pittsburgh.

Something to think about. Speaking of, we talked about the Browns earlier. We touched on them. I just want to put it out there because I tweeted this out earlier. I like the Browns plus two and a half at home. I think that could take up to three by the time we kick this thing off in what would it be, 61 days.

But something to think about. I'm big on the Browns this year. So I'm just going to put that out there here in July. All right, two tight ends. Just give me names and give me sort of like positive or negative before we get to talking about that actual main slate, which is going to be in again 58 days um two tight ends maybe one positive one negative two positive two negative whatever it is um a couple names that are going

to be in your tight end article yeah kittle scored way over expectations six touchdowns uh expected versus 11 actually scored and that's tied directly to brock purdy who scored six over expectation on just 170 attempts usually takes a quarterback you know 400 attempts to score six over expectations so uh they really performed over expectation uh those two particularly obviously a lot of mouse to feed there on offense that's not going to throw a ton got cmc there uh taking a lot of touches so kittle gives me a little bit of pause we already talked about matthew stafford um tyler higby only scored three touchdowns last year compared to his six expected higby's never going to be that sexy pit guy he's never going to be the guy that um you know we're expecting to give us a a tight end five season over 17 games

but he's going to give us these random three touchdown games, or at least, you know, he, he has in the past and who the hell is going to catch balls after Cooper cup. Um, I know, you know, some people like Puka Nakua, uh, some people are on the van train. I think Higby, uh, especially if you're playing boomer bus game and, um, you know, especially on draft Kings, we're really play the boomer bus tight end game. I think Higby could have some random weeks where he's worth, uh, throwing darts at. Absolutely love it. All right. By the way, everybody in the chat, hit the like button if you haven't already. J-Rob, GC, and Team Energy, ICU, Office Depot, Ryan DeRipper, who apparently is the most humble guy in the chat, saying he will own everybody in fantasy football, Graphic 13. Thank you, I think, for acknowledging the top button.

Listen, we're going to talk about the main slate real quick before we get out of here. But before we do that, let's hear another message from our partners. And we're back. And this is Fantasy Football Today, DFS. Listen, I know it's July 11th. And I know we're quite literally two months away from the main slate. But this is fun. This is supposed to be fun, right, TJ?

Listen, I know you're in the best ball streets and Dynasty and all that stuff, so you probably haven't turned the page to DFS yet. But remind us, when do you think pricing will actually come out? We usually see pricing drop the last couple days of July, first couple days of August. Usually, I don't know if FanDuel or DraftKings

drop first, but usually whoever drops first, one follows the other. I don't know if anybody working at either of those places is listening. I've been pounding the table. Tell me what you think about this idea. I think when pricing drops, they should run a tournament that locks when the Hall of Fame game starts. So you set your line up and then you don't, and then you can't touch it with all the priests with all the preseason action. So it's like, it's like basically a best ball thing that locks at the hall of fame game. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'm so in, I'm going to clip this. I'm going to have Zach clip this and we'll tag draft Kings on it. Why wouldn't they do that? I've been asking every year. Let's get this going. Let's get this going. Oh, TJ, what an amazing idea. All right.

So listen, speaking of, we have a main slate that has 13 games as you might expect week one, uh, eight games are at one o'clock in case you want to play the early game slate, uh, or early games slate. And then at four 25, they're all at 425, by the way. We have five games. And the afternoon, the 425 games happen. This is Eastern Standard Time, of course. Happen to be some of the games that have the higher point totals. Some games that stand out to me. I mean, I'll just tell you that the games with the highest point total,

like right now, these totals might change. Dolphins at Chargers, that's a 50-point total. That's the highest on the slate. Again, this is the main slate. The Kansas City game that kicks off this entire season at home against Detroit, that's a 55-point total. That'll be a showdown discussion that we'll discuss when we get closer. The Browns and the Bengals. Browns at home against the Bengals. That's a 47-point total. That's a one o'clock game. Rams at Seahawks. We've been talking about the Rams and the Seahawks this entire show. That's a 47-point total. Other notable games, Eagles, who a lot of people are going to want to play,

are at the Patriots, 45.5. Bucs at Vikings, 45.5. Texans at Ravens. I bring that up because Texans will probably be some cheap options, and you can play Lamar and stack him or not stack him, whatever you want to do with that. Anything jump out to you? I mean, obviously, Dolphins and Chargers is going to be the game

people are going to be focused on. I mean, to be the game people are going to be focused on. I mean, is that the game you're going to be focused on? Before I answer that game, there's two things that jump out to me, and they're not game or DFS lineup building specific. They're kind of more theory game selection specific. Let's just pretend we can only play the main slate. Two things that I, uh, or, or play, you know, the full slates, full time. It's not like these random games. Two things I tell people that can make them the most money on main slate DFS, split your slates up between, you know, the eight game and the five game slate for this play early

only slate afternoon only slate. I think there's a lot of value in that just because people are focused on the full 13 game slate and learn about late swap and this this sets up perfectly for like a crazy late swap game because all of the chalk is going to be late with these high scoring games and what that means is that we can play a couple contrarian plays early and if our contrarian plays hit it lets us know how chalky or late are chalky or contrarian we could be in these later games and this is week i mean any week it's bad but this looks like if you're setting your lineup and forgetting it when the 1 p.m games kick off you're you're you're giving up a lot of equity so i'd say those two things um really stand out to me i mean

it looks like at first glance that the dolphins and the chargers game is going to be the one that everybody is all over with a lot of people on i would guess gino probably ends up being like the popular mid-priced quarterback with people you, depending on how salaries fall, that will determine who his popular pass catchers are. But, uh, I would imagine that dolphins chargers game is going to be bonkers. And I'm curious for, for those that are new to DFS, I mean, they, they certainly were new to NFL DFS. I mean, they certainly understand ownership and you don't necessarily want to always play the chalk in, if you're playing this slate, is it, hey, I'm going to play that game, but I'm going to get different with how I play it.

I know what most of the chalky builds are going to be comprised of. I might dabble there, but I'm going to change it up a little bit so I get pieces of the game that other people don't have. Or is the strategy, and maybe it's both, by the way, or is the strategy, I'm just going to avoid that game. I'm going to take a piece or two, but I'm not going to get any of my stacks in that game and i'm going to do a stack in a different game but just grab a couple pieces in the big one that everybody's going to go after um i'm going to answer it again with a little bit of theory one thing that i have

seen historically is that typically it takes uh sites, the betting sites, a couple of weeks to get their lines calibrated. And what that means for us is that we can, early in the season, the first three weeks, we can find a lot of value in the second tier of, whether it be implied totals or game totals. So most than I will other weeks weeks i would probably have less of this dolphins chargers game because we can get so much value on these games with the 45 46 over for the

teams with the 24 25 point implied totals compared to the 48 49 50 game totals the 28 29 implied totals so uh yeah i think I'm usually going to be a little lighter on these super heavy high scoring week one games. Any of these games jump out to you where, where you're looking at it and you're like, that does seem pretty low. Not a lot of people are going to be playing that game. It might be a good opportunity for me to basically take advantage of, of the bookmakers who probably have a soft line. Jags Colts seems like the most obvious one to me. You know, Colts assuming we already got some Gardner Minshew chat going on from the Colts that he could be week one.

But Anthony Richardson with that Jaguars often sets ascending indoors, which obviously doesn't matter a ton in September compared to December, but 43 and a half for that game seems pretty, pretty enticing for the over. It seems low. What's really interesting about that too, is I expect, I'm not trying to break news here. It's just my speculation. I expect Gardner Minshew to be the starter week one. I just don't think Anthony Richardson is going to be ready. I know reports from the coaching staff when he was drafted, we're like, Hey, we're, hey, we're going to put him in there right away. But I just personally don't think that's going to happen.

And if salaries are coming out in early, or I should say early August, late July, like Minshew is going to be priced a certain way where it wouldn't shock me at all if he's super chalky come kickoff time. Am I crazy here? No, no. If we get a 5K Minshew and he ends up being the starter I mean at least for for cash games I would assume he would be um a mega chalk guy except unless maybe like a I don't know like a Sam Howell comes in super cheap or something yeah uh I'll tell you what

I'm gonna call it TJ I'm gonna call it right now Gardner Minshew will be the cash game chalk uh on week one of the NFL season on the main slate I'm calling it right now. Gardner Minshew will be the cash game chalk on week one of the NFL season on the main slate. I'm calling it right now. That was, I love the theory you dropped there. That's certainly so everybody on FFT DFS, we're going to start to ramp up our shows. We're going to still have our off season series over the next three or four weeks, five weeks. Then we're going to get into preseason, things of that nature. Mike McClure is going to be back on the show. Other guests will be back with us on the show, but we're going to get into preseason, things of that nature. Mike McClure is going to be back on the show. Other guests will be back with us on the show, but we're going to be talking about a lot of that leading into week one of the NFL season to get everybody super

prepared. TJ, looking at this slate, any other sort of nuggets to drop here in terms of maybe what people, not necessarily with this slate in particular, but the game theory you just dropped was certainly super valuable. I think to everybody listening, anything else to pay attention to maybe just early in the season that people can just sort of take, maybe it's, it's something that like not a lot of people are thinking about. This is something that can kind of get you an edge. Like I mentioned, I think if you're doing a lot of redraft research, you can take a lot of that information, a lot of the insight into the early season, kind of redraft research, you can take a lot of that information,

a lot of the insight into the early season, kind of stick to these, you know, these teams that we might like the Steelers type breakout candidates. Even if they don't hit week one, kind of keeps that in the back of your mind that they can be offenses that could pop take week one with a grain of salt. You know,

obviously we're going to, we, it takes, I don't know, four to six weeks to really calibrate on, on what we know about these teams. There's a lot of value early in the season and going against what we, what we know after a couple of games,

follow the volume, follow, follow the touches, follow, you know, team teams that are, you know, high,

high passing rate over expectation type deals. And then just from, from a game selection perspective, I mean, when these, when these salaries drop really digest what all of these sites are offering, don't feel like you need to enter every contest, really look at, at obviously tournaments where everybody's excited about really look at these structures i spend a lot of time tweeting out game structures and and you know which games are are flat or heavy payouts and depending what you're looking for um you could make a lot of money on game selection alone get out of that that uh feature lobby and really dig into these games and especially in

week one it's come saturday night Sunday morning, we're going to see contests feel like crazy, right? And then what we see is in that lab, which are similar buy-ins, smaller fields, better structures. So save some of your role for that. And obviously we're looking for overlay. So, you know, we're always looking for that, but just these second contests that get released after the featured ones fill up, there's a lot of value in those second contests the last hour before kickoff.

Love that. And I'll tell you what, what you said about the early in the season, alleged trends. I mean, I can't like the beginning of the season is always the part of the season. I tend to spike the most. I tend to spike the most. I tend to make the most money. It's because by week two, people think they know all the teams. They know all the trends. They know exactly. And by week three, it's the same thing week four.

And then you start to see things kind of normalize as the season goes on. But please take advantage of that perception that's going to exist going into week one, but certainly after week one, going into week two and week three. That's where you really can really take advantage of some false perceptions there. So TJ, before we get out of here, we know we can find your work at 444.com. And we know we can look for your regression candidate articles, touchdown regression candidate articles, particularly in that wide receiver tight end department. Those ones have yet to be published. Anything else we can look forward to from you on 444? Yeah, the rest of this regression series should be hitting the site in the next couple

of weeks. I just dropped a huge article that's called my ultimate guide to best ball mania for gives my step-by-step breakdown to how I'm approaching the biggest best ball tournament in the industry. If you want some more DFS theory, we have called the DFS strategy hub. A lot of that content is free. One thing that you could find is my tournament reviews, which kind of breaks down the difference between Fandle and DraftKings tournaments, what really works in those. So check out the Strategy Hub. There's a ton of stuff in there for free on 444. Absolutely love it. Well, thank you, TJ. That's TJ Hernandez at TJ Hernandez, also at 444.com. My name is Cian Ajad at Cian Ajad.

This is Fantasy Football Today DFS. We'll be back with you in a couple weeks to continue our offseason series. Really looking forward to it and really looking forward to this NFL season. We hope you join us. This is Fantasy Football Today DFS, and we'll see you next time.