Fantasy Football Today - FFT Dynasty: 2024 NFL Draft Wide Receiver Prospects Part 2 with Jacob Gibbs! (04/05 Fantasy Football Dynasty Podcast)

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

Looking to dominate your fantasy league just like your redraft league? Look no further than Fantasy Football Today Dynasty hosted by our very own Heath Cummings! Download and follow Fantasy Football Today Dynasty on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever else you find your podcasts.  Join us for an exclusive analysis of wide receiver prospects for the 2024 NFL Draft on our Fantasy Football Today Dynasty, hosted by Heath Cummings. In this episode, Jacob Gibbs joins the show to go deep into advanced analytics for Adonai Mitchell (7:40), Ladd McConkey (13:38), Keon Coleman (19:02), Xavier Legette (24:15), Roman Wilson (30:45), Ricky Pearsall (36:04), and other prospects! 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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Could've skipped it. Should've skipped it. Skip to the good part and get groceries, meals, and more delivered right to your door on Skip. Welcome to Fantasy Football Today, Dynasty. I am your host, Heath Cummings, joined today by Jacob Gibbs. Gibbs is back in the house on FFT Dynasty, and this is the Rookie Wide Receiver Preview, Part 2. Gibbs, what's been going on? Yeah, man, it's been a very nice off season for me so far I've been really grinding a lot lately getting into all the draft stuff but I do every off season take a little bit of time for myself to travel uh get out of the basement a little bit get out get some sunlight um I'm back in Kansas City so that especially is is needed because it gets pretty

brutal here during the winter. So that's been nice. But lately, just really digging into all these prospects. This is such a cool class. I'm so, so psyched to be here talking about wide receiver because that's my favorite position. And we've got a bunch of really exciting guys to talk about. But yeah, just real quick on Sportsline. Just put out a Beyond the Box score article.

I'm going to be writing articles for Beyond the Box score this year, which is cool. Last year, we started the podcast, me, Dan, and Adam on FFT, and we'll be doing that as well after the draft. And so you can find that. It's Future Stars. Talk about 15 players. And then I just published my Rookie Wide Receiver Guide. I evaluated 24 receivers and included 20 in that article. So go find that stuff on Sportsline. Great stuff, Gibbs. I want you, like,

we'll start off with one of the three questions for you right away. Because we did do in part one kind of a deep dive with Matt Waldman and Dan Schneier on the top three or top six wide receivers. And according to ADP, Marvin Harrison,

Malik neighbors, Roma, Denze, Xavier worthy, Troy Franklin, and Brian Thomas. And I don't, you don't have to comment on whether those are your top six, but I just wonder if you would put, we're not going to talk about those guys very much today, but I do want your opinion. Would you put those guys in order and kind of tier them as far as how you see them pre-draft? Yeah. So Thomas is the one who stands out to me. I think most people have him as the wide receiver for right after the big three of neighbors, Harrison and Odunze. I worry about him prototypically being a receiver that we can trust for fantasy. He was never someone who drew targets at a high rate in college. And of course

he's playing with the league neighbors, but I actually did go and look specifically at his splits when neighbors was off of the field. And even within that data set, he did not draw targets at a high rate. I think he's just, you know, your prototypical X receiver who's stretching the field, playing a very important real life role, but with the way that NFL defense are playing so much zone defense and too high safety coverage, it's, it's tougher for these types of receivers to be as fantasy relevant. So he's someone who I'm a little bit worried about, um, just for fantasy, not a real life evaluation. Troy Franklin is somebody who stands out to me among that group. I really, really like him. He brings a really wide range of outcomes, but he's

intriguing. And then Xavier worthy, of course, he's's I have him the lowest of this group um and there's there's so many different ways to go with it I just tweeted yesterday his off-target rate career off-target rate is 22 percent none of the other receivers in this class are even above 17 percent so he's significantly above everyone else really dealt with some just brutal play at Texas at the quarterback position he's he's a really interesting one as well but I think that is the clear top six and then there's a lot of guys beyond that that could push up depending on where they get drafted so we're going to talk about some polarizing wide receivers today A.D. Mitchell, Ladd McConkie, Keon Coleman, Xavier Goethe, Roman Wilson, Ricky Pearsall.

He's not polarizing at all. Maybe we can get Thomas Schaefer to come on and tell us how awesome he is. But I do want to ask you, Jacob, because we're really just kind of breaking down the top 12 in depth. And I know there's at least one guy that we're not going to get to today that you really like. So I want to give you an opportunity at the very top of the show. Tell everybody about Johnny Wilson. Yeah, Johnny Wilson caught my eye last year. I was really excited to see how he did this year, but it really wasn't a great season for him.

So it's tough to tell exactly what to expect. He's six foot seven. He lined up almost exclusively on the perimeter. And so a lot of people have talked about him transitioning to tight end. It's not like he was used as like a big slot type of guy. I guess that could be the move for him at the NFL level, but we haven't seen that. And if you remove design targets from the data set,

he actually had the third highest target per route run rate among the class behind only Marvin Harrison and Malik neighbors. So like the per route data is really, really intriguing for him, but he's played in some really, really run heavy offenses that scored more rushing touchdowns and passing touchdowns and so his overall body work not that exciting um but if you just want you know an intriguing prospect who could potentially be like really a fantasy relevant player like i think wilson is the guy among the late round guys who stands out that's i's, I really weren't, you're going to ask me about like my process and just

to get into that, like now with Wilson, I think he's a good segue. Like there, the NFL draft process is so convoluted in terms of like, there are so many people providing quality analysis that I think for me, where I can like kind of pigeon myself pigeonhole myself in with added value is really getting into the per route stuff and the contextual stuff um and so like that showed up last year with Puka Nakua obviously you're not going to be able to find someone like that every draft people won't stop asking and I'm not going to say Johnny Wilson is that guy but the way you found puka was he had an incomplete collegiate data set because of injuries because of playing and really run heavy

offenses but all the per route stuff really pointed towards him being strong and that stuff isn't always going to hit but it is interesting to make note of when it when it's there so i think what everybody heard there is that Johnny Wilson is Pukanukuwa. And so that's fantastic that we got that right at the top of the show. So you did kind of transition well there to what you think is what your process is like. And so I just want to ask, like when you talk about that per route data, you get into a lot of the advanced numbers. Do you still feel like that stuff is something that's undervalued by NFL teams? Do you think we're moving in a direction to where they're kind of starting to view that stuff even more? Or is that going to be a pretty team by team

basis as teams wade into advanced analytics? I think that we're getting there. Yeah. And I think, you know, people like Puka puka i think potentially might highlight that um for more teams where it's like well how did we not even know about this guy he wasn't even on our radar you know what i mean um and so maybe people will start to reevaluate the process a little bit more um but yeah that's what i'm doing is is looking at per route data and looking at specific splits like who is performing the best on deep throws, who is performing the best at creating yards after contact relative to other players running similar types of routes at similar depths and stuff like that. I'm looking at performance versus specific coverage types. Some players really struggle against press coverage and that, you know, there is a decent amount of press coverage at the NFL level.

Some teams use it a lot. And if they're only able to play in the slot, like that's a concern. So I'm really trying to find little things like that, just kind of, you know, turn every stone so we can know as much as we can about these players. Excellent stuff. Let's take our first short break and then we will jump into maybe the most controversial wide receiver prospect in this year's draft, Adnan Mitchell. 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.

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build secure tomorrows. Their insurance solutions are designed to help protect you and your loved ones financially, giving you the peace of mind to focus on what truly matters. Find their products through banks, credit unions, and associations, or visit SecurianCanada.ca. Securian Canada, insurance designed for life. Okay, so we are back. And I think it's interesting, like when you're going through just from an overview of these prospects, I tried to put together a little bit of an introduction. And some of them, it's not difficult, even though I know like Matt Waldman's not super high on A.D. Mitchell. I don't think you are either.

But when you just look at it from the 10,000-foot range, this does sound like a guy that NFL teams usually get really excited about. 6'2", 205 pounds, runs a 4.340, still just 21 years old. He played high-level college football. Great deep-ride receiver. I'm wondering, can he do anything else? Yeah, I, I really have a tough time with Mitchell. He at least did like score 11 touchdowns last year. So that gives him something in his production profile. But outside of that,

there's almost nothing. He didn't average more than two yards per run in a single season. And it's really hard to find any players who have been drafted, who didn't at least top two yards per out run in one season, like even Jonathan Mingo did it. And Mingo had one of the worst statistical profiles I've ever seen. And so it's, it's going to be really interesting to see how the NFL evaluates Mitchell, because obviously he's a freaky dude in terms of what he can do with his, I mean, 11, four broad jam, four, three, four 40. Like it's just nuts for someone at his size. Um, but there are actually kind of guys like that. There's no one that's quite as freaky as him. Um, but we're going to talk about Xavier Leggett, somebody I really, really like.

And there's guys like that who have actually shown us some semblance of being a productive receiver, which we've never seen from Mitchell. Now, again, contextualize it with the fact that the quarterback play at Texas was not good, especially for downfield weapons like Mitchell. His off-target rate wasn't as high as Worthy's, but it was high. I also think it's interesting that A.D. Mitchell graded out better than Worthy did, according to PFF's receiving grade in 2023. So take that for what it's worth. I have a tough time with his prospect profile, and I'm really going to wait and see where he gets drafted. And then if it's a spot where he could be fantasy relevant, I'm going to really just try to dig in and see if I can find anything that's comparable to him. Like Terry McLaurin comes to mind as somebody who really did not perform well in college,

but then became a stud at the NFL level. But even McLaurin had a better profile than this. Yeah. And so I look at this and I mentioned on Tuesday's show, and I'll mention it again now, the order we're going through, we're trying to highlight the guys that, according to pre-draft ADP, people seem to be the most interested in drafting. And Mitchell is currently wide receiver seven, according to pre-draft ADP. If you were doing a rookie draft before the draft, is that too high, too low, just right?

We'll do that with each of the prospects. And then what concerns you if it's too high with him being that high? Yeah, it's way too high for me it it it reminds me of mingo where you're truly just taking a shot on upside um except that the the opportunity cost is way different than it was last year this year's rookie class is much much better um i have a tough time even if he gets an ideal landing spot i have a tough time considering him a first-round dynasty pick. And really, if you're looking at a super flex league, for the most part, seven, I think, wide receivers is what we're seeing go in the first round right now because it's four QBs, it's Brock Bowers, and it's seven wide receivers.

I think most likely, once we get through the NFL draft, it's going to be five wide receivers because there are a couple running backs that go day two and get good landing spots aka whoever the cowboys and the chargers take on day two and those guys end up in round one but he's still an early round two pick so like it does sound like we're a little bit negative on him but i do think i said i think he's one of the most polarizing players who could go in round one of rookie drafts and the reason for that that is there is a lot of reason to believe in upside here, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Just athletically, like I said, he's really kind of like unlike anything we've seen. So there's definitely upside. But you're truly just kind of taking a shot in the dark on upside. And I feel like there's just so many other guys that I'm intrigued by in this draft. See, Garrett says in the chat, put them on the bills and tell me what you think and that's going to be the answer for all of these wide receivers who might go at the end of round one unless we get the bills trading up for one of the top three or four wide receivers what do you think and we'll finish up with him here what do you think is the best case scenario for mitchell

if everything goes right in his NFL career, how does it look for Edna Mitchell? Yeah, I think the Bills would be a great fit. But yeah, it's clearly as a field stretcher. His average route depth has been 10 or more yards every season of his career. And that is really, really high. That means the average distance from the line of scrimmage that his initial cut in his route came was 10 yards or higher. Um, so he's basically just running deep routes and I think he could fill that role at a high level. He clearly has the explosiveness, um, to, to beat guys down the field. Um, but again, for fantasy, that's, it's a pretty, it's a pretty hit or miss role well i think the name that comes to mind when you talk about that type of profile i'm needing to be great at it is what

we've seen from george pickens the last couple of years um but i'm not sure do you actually believe that he has as much upside as pickens no i think pickens is a much better receiver from what i've seen okay well we'll leave it at that. Maybe a poor man's George Pickens, which is not great for fantasy football. Let's move on to the guy who is currently wide receiver seven by rookie ADP. And that is Ladd McConkie, six foot tall, even on the nose, 186 pounds, ran a borderline for the four, three, nine, I think. But the thing that everyone remembers from the combine is the absolutely flawless gauntlet, where he's just like, oh, wow.

And he did test better than I expected. But again, you talk about production profile, never more than 800 yards in a season, never more than seven touchdowns in a season. So at wide receiver seven before the draft, is that too high, too low, or just right for you, and why? Yeah, I'm really, really interested to see how things are going to play out for McConkie. So he was somebody I was really intrigued to look into his data because some of the guys that I trust have thrown out some lofty comparisons.

Like I've heard Chris Alave and Garrett Wilson used as comparisons for him. Even Tyler Lockett from Matt Harmon. And I guess I didn't – I could see Lockett like early career where he's mostly working from the slot. But what I found with McConkie that bothered me was he really, really struggled against press coverage. And that's what Matt's grades bared out as well. I worry that he might get pigeonholed into like only a slot type of role, um, which

he could still be productive from, but like people have been, you know, talking about his ability to win down the field. And that, I think that shows up on film when you watch him. Um, but his, some of the underlying data just really isn't that great. So he wasn't very good against man coverage either. He was much, much better against zone. And typically you, you want a receiver that you're going to be drafting in the first few rounds to be able to dominate man coverage at the collegiate level. Um, and so it does bother me a little bit when something like that pops up

and then really his production profile, isn't that great partially because of injuries, but then even when you do parse it down to the per route data, he really just had one season where he had good per route data. That was his final season. And that came on a really small sample size. Outside of that, he really wasn't very productive even on a per route basis. So I think McConkie is interesting.

I think he has the tools and people really, really love his quickness and just the crispness that he runs his routes with. And so this stuff might not matter. He was playing, he was competing with Brock Bowers for targets. Um, and he was just asked to line up on the outside and do the big boy stuff. And so like that could have definitely impacted his production.

Um, so I think it's going to be like, we're going to say with a lot of these guys, it's going to be contingent on where he lands. Um, but if he gets a high draft pick, like the tools are there. But he is not a top seven wide receiver for you right now in this class. Is that right? He's, he's right there on the borderline.

The way I see that, that McConkie is more like Sterling Shepard, like best case outcome, something like that. Um, or potentially more like a Devin Duvernay kind of player. Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm not quite as excited about him as a lot of people are. Yeah, I think the comp I saw over on Player Profiler was Percy Harvin. What I was going to say is I think people are going to see him and see that he's strictly a short area PPR specialist out of the slot because of the picture. He did have quite a few big plays though, right?

Like this guy has some ability to do things after the catch as well there's some athletic profile here oh yeah that's for sure it is like most of his catches were explosive honestly like that's that's what george was asking him to do and he did it pretty well um but it was i i do worry a little bit about his data against slot or against um press and man coverage and like how that will translate to the nfl level is he going to be able to run those types of rats at the nfl level and win i i would guess no um which might leave him as mostly just a slot threat but yeah he can he can create after the catch for sure good stuff so what do you think um in terms of the safer profile would you say that he has a safer profile than Mitchell does but

maybe not quite as much upside yeah I have him definitively ahead of Mitchell he um yeah he falls in the same range as like Leggett and Xavier Worthy and Roman Wilson Jermaine Burden I think he's ahead of Wilson and Burden. And then do you think that McConkie has the upside to be a legitimate top 24 dynasty-wide receiver at any point in his career? I think so. I think if he's in the perfect role, he could, like the Elijah Moore role his rookie year,

like that kind of player, like where he really is dynamic from the slot and you can move him around and he could probably win from the flanker as well. Um, what I've seen suggested he's probably, you know,

that's the extent he's not going to be like a true wide receiver one. Um, which is why I back off of the Chris Alavi Garrett Wilson comparisons a little bit, but yeah, I think top 24 is feasible. And that is interesting because like we've seen Chris Alavi and Garrett Wilson function as the true wide receiver ones on their team.

And we've ranked them as top 12 dynasty wide receivers just without hesitation. But in terms of actual fantasy production early in their career, they've really been more low-end number two type or even number threes in some years because of circumstances. But you're saying, so when you say number one, you mean it doesn't have the potential to be a fantasy wide receiver one or an nfl wide receiver one from mcconkie right yeah i'm potentially a fantasy wide receiver one if it's an ideal spot right but yeah yeah i was talking about real real life wide receiver one that is lad mcconkie let's go to the guy who is currently what are we up to wide receiver nine now by rookie ADP, and that is Keon Coleman.

Again, I said Adonai Mitchell was the most polarizing wide receiver. This range is full of widely polarizing wide receivers, and it's not hard to see why with Coleman. Doesn't even turn 21 until the middle of May. 6'3", 213 pounds. Not very fast, though. He'd run a 4'6", 40. Spent two years at Michigan State before finishing at FSU. This is another guy who, like McConkie, doesn't have the great counting stats, but his share of his team's production was much better, right? It was, yeah. His profile is a little bit better than Adonai Mitchell. Those two are easy

to compare for me just in terms of they've got the size. He obviously doesn't have the speed that AD Mitchell does, but they've got the size to fill this hypothetical role, but we never really saw them be highly productive at the collegiate level. But yeah, Coleman, I thought what he turned in this past year was pretty encouraging. I'm curious to see where he'll get drafted after running so slow. He seems like somebody who's just going to continue to fall down boards. He didn't grade out very well for me, just given the incomplete nature of his collegiate data, but he is really young. So yeah, I'm excited to see where he

lands i'm trying to find him in my rankings yeah he's just below ad mitchell um and some guys i have ahead of him who i i think this is probably way off consensus but like uh ricky persa for sure um javon baker i really like davantes walk Like, even I think you, depending on fit, could put somebody like Malik Washington ahead of these guys for fantasy purposes. And that's, I guess, again, what it comes down to is there's a lot of these prototypical X receivers that, like, could just fill the Alec Pierce role at the NFL level. You know what I mean? And it's, like, it's interesting interesting like to to speculate on what kind of prospect

they might be if they can be a contributor for real life football but I don't know if Keon Coleman's ever going to be very good for fantasy okay and that's again I some of these guys get locked into these spots and then they just don't really move very much in the until the draft it feels like Coleman is the type of player who based on where he gets drafted and who he gets drafted by is going to have to move a lot for a bunch of analysts, right? Because people either see him as this,

as this top 12 dynasty wide receiver, or like you way, way down. But if the NFL decides, no, he's a, he's a day to pick and this good team likes him, then, then that that like he's just

and if you don't want to say that with every wide receiver in this class but for me he feels more dependent on who he's with than some of these other wide receivers we're talking about today for sure what do you see in terms of uh realistic upside from colin um yeah like i i i hate this because i always go to t higgins as the comparison because that like he's the like big ball winner i guess george pickens but he's a lot more athletic than colman um that can be fantasy relevant is like has been higgins um but even higgins like we've seen, even when he's been healthy, they're like, he's just not getting the targets that he kind of needs.

And like, that's the concern. That's so like, yeah, I think that's like the top of the range of outcomes for him from what I've seen is that kind of a player. And you think it's more likely that you'll be drafting him after the NFL draft in round three of rookie drafts or round one? Round three is more likely for me.

Okay, again, and we're not going to, there's a couple of guys that we get to in just a minute that Jacob's going to be higher on than what ADP is, but that's kind of the reason that I chose this approach. Towards the end of the show, we're going to talk about three or four wide receivers that, like Johnny Wilson, are not in the top 12 in terms of rookie ADP, but Jacob does like them more than some of the guys that we're talking about right now. But I think what a lot of people are going to do when they get to their

rookie drafts is they're going to want to know, okay, my favorite analyst, what do they think of this wide receiver? And then they're going to go look at ADP. And so a lot of times you'll see guys catching falling knives in round two because they were late round one picks before the draft. Things went terribly for them on draft day. And people look at the ADP and say, well, his ADP is like 13th and now he's available at 19th, so I should take him here. If Keyon Coleman's one of those falling knives, you should probably just let him fall to someone else. Would you agree with that? Yeah. No, this is good practice. It hasn't

been very fun for us because we're just kind of negative about these guys. I don't want to be too negative about Ladman Conkey. I think he is exciting. I just wasn't quite as excited by what I found as I hoped to be based off some of the comparisons that I'd heard. And I am excited about some of these next guys we're going to get to. Absolutely. Let's take one more short break and then we will get to, let's get Jacob excited. locate request can save you from unexpected downtime financial penalties and keep you safe don't let avoidable damage cost you time and money click before you dig ensure your next project is safe visit ontarioonecall.ca it's free it's easy it's the law data sourced from the orcga 2023 dirt report okay so we are back and wide receiver 10 by current rookie ADP is Xavier Leggett.

You mentioned him already. Almost like the opposite prospect of Keon Coleman. The size isn't that much different. Coleman's a couple inches taller. Leggett, 6'1", 221, but he ran a 4'3". He is blazing fast. He's also already 23 years old. Had a monster season last year at South Carolina. 71 catches, 1,255 yards, seven touchdowns. Not many guys that we're talking about today have done what he did in terms of actual production in his last season, but there was very little production before that to bank on.

So, again, at wide receiver 10 in this class, I you like to get more than some of the guys we've talked about is that about right for him yeah and i think there's potential for him to push much much higher i think for me he might end up being the guy that's like right after the like stuck in stone like top guys you know what i mean like bowers and the quarterbacks and once they're off the board it's like laguette um i think he brings really exciting upside when i try to compare him after like watching him and then digging into how he was winning um in his final season it's like some kind of like duane bow player like marquez colston kind of guy like he's really good at winning at the catch point but he's way faster than those guys and so then who the heck do you

compare him to like aj brown um i don't want to throw out that comparison because to me aj brown is like one of the best receivers we've seen in a very long time um but yeah he's an absolute freak athletically and he really backed it up with the production um in his final season and it took him till his fifth season and that is unusual there are not very many prospects who have done that and that have been successful. But if you look into the why, I think that there's a lot of context that makes sense as to why on and off the field, it took a long time for Leggett to really find his footing. And when he did, he was unbelievable, unbelievably efficient, drew targets at a high rate. He was winning all over the field. He dominated press coverage. He dominated man coverage. And he was unbelievable unbelievably efficient um drew targets at a high rate he was winning all over the field he dominated press coverage he dominated man coverage and he was

pretty productive against zone coverage as well i nothing that i found from his his breakout season his real like true season as a wide receiver one stood out as fraudulent at all um which has not been the case with somebody like trail on Berks or someone like that, who, you know, has this big production, but like,

we've got questions about whether he can really play the wide receiver position. And I think that's, that's the question with look at, I'm really curious to get Matt Harmon's full take. He, I don't think he has his profile on the get out quite yet. But I have heard him mention that like,

he's not nearly the type of route runner that some of these other guys are, even like Brian Thomas potentially. So I think he might still have a ways to go in terms of refining his game. And that is a little concerning because he's already old, right? He's going to be almost 24 by the time the season starts. I love the fact that we're talking about these guys. He's already ancient. But you're right. And that was kind of going to be my next point was, for the most part, when you talk about the profile,

when you talk about the advanced stats that you like to look at, when you talk about the size-speed combination, this looks like a guy who should not be wide receiver 10. The age 23 can make up for part of that because it is easier to dominate in college football if you're two to three years older than a lot of the guys you're playing against. And those ages of development in terms of size and speed and strength do matter quite a bit. But is it just the route running? Is that the other major question mark that's holding down, you think, his ranking? I think so. so and maybe concerns that like i've already mentioned with a lot of these guys he's just

gonna be an x we feel just like stretching receiver that's not gonna be that good for fantasy not gonna draw a ton of targets or something like that i think that could be a concern as well um but i i i think he has potential to be more than that based off what I found. And like, when I say he's dominating, it's truly like elite territory, like him and only CD lamb and Devante Smith and people like that have been this good against press coverage, this good against man coverage, stuff like that. Um, and I think at the very least he does bring that skillset right away. The deep ball skillset.

He's been one of the, like this season was one of the most efficient deep ball seasons we've ever seen from a receiver. Right. Do you think that like within his profile, it's a possibility that he becomes an NFL team's true number one wide receiver or is his best case scenario kind of being a really good 1B on a really good pass offense?

It's hard to tell because I feel like his development has come so late in terms of learning the receiver position and really coming into his own as a wide receiver one. And we only have this one season of data on it. For what it's worth, his target rates in this season were just below like A.J. Brown, A.J. Brown and more target competition. It's, I think it's, you can could you could possibly like envision that kind of a role for him in the right offense in the right setting where like there's not that much target

competition and they can kind of ease him into that kind of role get him some catch and run stuff and you know like let him develop his route running and potentially be that guy um but i i don't think it's likely i think that's on the very top of his ranges of outcomes. I will say like in comparing him to Coleman, where we're not even sure how excited we are about taking him in round two, this sounds like exactly the type of receiver I want to take in round two of my rookie draft. The guy that, yeah, the floor is not very good, but you shouldn't really care that much about floor in round two anyway. And the ceiling's absolutely insane on like a play or game or maybe individual season basis yeah so like if he goes to the panthers or something like

if he if he was in the mingo role from last year that like we thought he could maybe get some slot work and some catching around stuff and then also be a deep guy i think he would be way better than mingo his target drawing is way above anything we saw from mingo but if he goes like the chiefs or something like that where they're already established guys, I don't think he's going to be relevant for fantasy at all. I think he'll be in the Justin Watson role. And eventually could maybe be more than that, but I think it's really going to be context-dependent

on where he lands if he's going to be on a wide receiver one type of track. But that upside, I think, does exist. Let's talk about wide receiver 11 by ADP now. And that is Roman Wilson, a guy who I think I might have been higher on before I really started looking at him or started off early. He's like, oh yeah. And then I'm not so sure. He turns 23 in June. He's five foot 11, 185 pounds. He does have borderline four, three speed. He did have 12 touchdowns at Michigan last year, but also his 52 receiving yards per game was a career high. I think like Coleman, because of the situation he is in, you need to look at his receiving shares and not his

totals, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious how he compares to Ricky Pearsall for you because the two I think are actually pretty similarly. And I don't really know why Wilson's ahead of him. It seems like he's definitively ahead of him in most of those rankings. Yeah, I think as of right now, I would prefer Ricky Pearsall. I have more hope that he can do stuff after the catch, but I don't want to steal too much of Thomas Schaefer's thunder because Ricky Pearsall is the next player on the list. That might have been a better way to do it with these two players. It's just kind of a compare and contrast who should be wide receiver 11. I think you're much higher on Pearsall than you are on Wilson. So what are your concerns with Roman Wilson's profile? Yeah, he wasn't very good after the catch. His overall production wasn't all that exciting.

I'm not necessarily down on him. I think the two are very, very similar, and it'll depend on where they get drafted. To me, they're kind of like Curtis Samuel, potentially Christian Kirk type of guys that they can win from the slot. I don't think he's as good after the catch as Curtis Samuel, but they can win down the field as well. Like Robert Woods maybe is a good comparison as well. His average depth of target was 14 yards for his career,

Roman Wilson, and that really surprised me for somebody who worked mostly out of the slot. And I think that that does, that helps contextualize the low target rates a little bit and the low production is that he was used in a sort of weird role. That's just, they really were running a lot and then doing play action deep stuff. And so it wasn't a typical like malik neighbors working in the slot and being the clear like engine for the offense kind of a role for roman wilson and so like maybe that's why his targets and production weren't that good because athletically he looks really

good pff graded him really well as a receiver um there are you know reasons for optimism but yeah he's 23 years old and the production is not that great. Well, that's what I was reading Waldman's profile. It sounded like he thought he saw him more as like a developmental player in the NFL and maybe in a year or two. Well, I don't want to draft a 23 year old. That's maybe going to be good when he's 25. Like, I guess maybe a little bit more attractive if you have a taxi squad spot. But even then, it definitely feels like maybe going to be a round three pick by the time we get to real rookie drafts. But if he's a round two pick in the NFL draft, that won't be

the case. All right, we've waited long enough. And I did just spring this on Thomas in the private chat. But the first guy that I heard talking about, Rickyarsall was Thomas Schaefer. And so he's going to come on here after I give the breakdown. 6'1", 189 pounds, another 23-year-old. So he is old, but he has 4'4 speed. He played two years, what, at Arizona State and two at Florida. Career best last year with 965 receiving yards. Thomas, come on and give us the most optimistic scouting report anyone's ever heard

on this kid well actually back in october dan schneier was in town and it was after uh pure soul had that game against charlotte where he has that one-handed catch that went viral and i'm like dude you have to check this guy out like florida's team has been so bad for so long this is the only guy that's out here making plays that like like you know you know when you see like a hall of fame I'm not saying he's a hall of famer but when you see a flashy guy and you're like oh that's what a hall of famer is that's what a great player is like that's what he was doing at Florida on these garbage teams so I was like dude you got to check him out he's going to be a sleeper this draft class and then all of a sudden he has a great senior bowl.

Then he has a great combine and now he's not a sleeper anymore. So I told him my composition, my comp to him was Adam Thielen because he was an older prospect. Thielen was old coming out. So, you know, not maybe an immediate impact, but give him a year or two to develop and potentially he can be a really, really good starter in the NFL. And I still feel that way. I think there's a little bit more hype now with him. So he's not a sleeper, like I said, but no, he's a great player. And I really wanted him to somehow

fall to the Vikings. That would just be amazing for me. But no, I love this guy. I think he's a star. Well, I'm not sure for his dynasty value we want him to to follow the vikings because putting him in the same receiving room with justin jefferson and jordan addison might not work out well for his target share considering they don't have a quarterback but no i i appreciate that now jacob i i think that you're relatively fond of him but it seems like everybody i talked to and maybe that's just this guy talked to thomas more than anybody else is really saying they are higher on this guy than consensus so why isn't he ranked higher his production is not good um and you could point towards florida just being dysfunctional as the reason for that but it's like really not good um especially on a per route basis

like i think his single season high target per route runner it was like 23 or something and it's like that's barely gonna get it done at the nfl level as a starting slot um for fantasy purposes yeah 22.5 in five seasons um three of which he had significant amount of routes um so yeah he's not drawing targets at a high rate, which is weird. Um, for a slot guy, he did work down the field though, quite a bit like that year where he drew 23%, his average depth of target was 17 yards. Um, which is just pretty absurd for a slot guy. So yeah, he, I think Christian Kirk is a decent comparison at the top end. I think he's to me, Pierce was similar to Roman Wilson. He's, he can stretch the field

from the slot and that is an intriguing skill set um he's a little bit bigger but i i just wish that we had more um from him to believe in the data like why isn't he producing if if we expect that he'll be able to at the receipt at the nfl level it's the florida offense just like they ruined anthony rich Anthony Richardson two years ago. We do a lot of sideways stuff. If you just watch a Florida game, you'll be like, how is this team functioning in actually winning games? Because like you said, we didn't use Ricky enough.

He was still our leading receiver. I think he only had four touchdowns or whatever. Our quarterback play hasn't been great. No, he had the third highest off target rate career um in this class 18 percent yeah you saw a lot of off target throws right thomas yeah uh graham mertz dan schneier knows a lot about him he was a wisconsin transfer so uh i think for what what we had we got a lot out of him so if he was playing with a caleb williams or jayden daniels he was with jayden daniels at arizona state before um i i think we would have seen a lot bigger production with an actual offensive mind so you played the villain role well there, Jacob. I appreciate that, Thomas, giving you the fluff.

And I will say, like I said, I hear more people optimistic about Ricky Pearsall than I do hear them pessimistic. And I think you look at Matt Waldman, and I try not to give away too much of his rankings, but he's got him ranked ahead of five wide receivers that we've talked about in depth this weekend. Now, so there's plenty of, like, you would rather have, so you are kind of undecided, Jacob, on Pierce Olmos versus Wilson.

Is that right? Just like, let's see who the NFL likes more? Yeah, basically. What about him versus Mitchell? I think I would lean towards Mitchell just because of the upside. But if he gets a great landing spot, then I would go with Pearsall or Wilson over Mitchell.

And the last one I'll ask is him or Keon Coleman. Yeah, I'll go with him or Keon Coleman. Yeah, I'll go with the slot guys over Coleman. I think it's really a tough task to try to project Coleman to be relevant for fantasy. So again, I think you expect Ricky Pearsall at the end of round two, early round three in your rookie drafts. If you're more optimistic about him and you want to reach in the middle of round two, or if you're drafting with Thomas and he picks after you, you should definitely take him in the middle of round two if you want to get him. Now, there are a few guys here that do not rank amongst the top 12 in ADP that Jacob wanted to make sure we got to. We actually already had a question about one of

them in the chat, and we had several questions in the chat on Tuesday about this guy. So I just want to know, did you study Malik Washington at all, and where are you at on him? Yeah, Malik Washington at all and where are you at on him? Yeah. Malik Washington is cool. He, um, spent four years in Northwestern doing basically nothing. And they went to Virginia and just put up one of the craziest seasons that we've seen statistically, um, five foot eight, 194, four, four, seven. So he's probably just a slot. That's basically where he played um at virginia almost exclusively but he was really really just wildly productive last year um and it came on a really low a dot so if this is the this is the group to think about i think with malik washington only four receivers dating back to 2016 have been selected in the nfl draft and finished a season with a yard per run rate

above three his was 3.58 so higher than any of these guys, while also posting an average depth of target below nine yards. And that's Paris Campbell, Kiki Kuti, Devin Duvernay, and Josh Downs. That's not a great group. It's not a great group. And I think Downs shows a lot more as like a real receiver winning at the, you know, contested catch point, stuff like that than Washington. Um, I haven't watched a ton of Washington's tape or anything like that, but yeah, I think he falls into that kind of group. I do think that like with the way the NFL is being played and move and changing, like it's possible that this kind of player can be more productive. I was a Paris Campbell guy back in the day. I thought he could be productive if given the chance.

I don't remember coming out, but 5'8", 194 is pretty thick. Yeah. I would assume that – I know Paris Campbell, in terms of athleticism, really blew some people away, but he's not been able to stay healthy in the NFL. Does Washington pop a little better after the catch maybe or look like somebody that could maybe not nobody's going to be debo out of this role but could he could he play that debo samuel role a little bit i think so i think he i think leek washington is a good segue to corley who you're pretty excited about right in terms of like the thickness that you're talking about like

he might be able to survive well with malachi corley it's just like there's there's a couple of things that i worry about that i think that who because there's a lot of talk about him being a day two wide receiver now and if a team's going to take him on day two i don't think they care that much about what his downfield route running is like i'm not sure they worry that much about can he succeed with a higher a dot i don't think they worry that much about the he succeed with a higher a dot i don't think they worry that much about the lack of competition that he faced in conference usa and so those are the main concerns for me if you give him to a team that has a good creative play caller and is just going to use him in that curtis samuel debo samuel type role with short area targets and let him work after the

catch i'm pretty sure he's going to be good at that in the NFL or at any level. Yeah. One last note on Malik Washington. He had the second highest second highest PFF receiving grade of any receiver. Only Malik neighbors was higher last year and they graded him as perfect on deep targets. So maybe he could do it, but probably not. He can, he can do just a little bit of everything. So you would prefer, as of right now, Malik Washington over Malachi Corley. Is that right? He did great better just because his one-season production was so insane. Right. But I think when draft capital is factored in, it's going to be Corley.

And I do think Corley is going to go pretty high, especially with the change to the kick return rule. I think he like really might be viewed as a dangerous weapon. Somebody's going to take him high. I kind of wondered, because there's been this talk about San Francisco, not being able to keep a hold of Brandon Ayuk and Debo Samuel. And the way they talk, it sure sounds like they're more likely to deal Debo than they are Ayuk. I wonder if they could get a second for Debo and use a third on Corley and just plop him right into that role. If that happened, like people would be so excited for Corley. If he just slides right into the Debo, he'd be around one rookie pick. I think he might be, which would be so hard to make sense of like, given how he grades out. Um, but I think that he might be, and it might make

sense, honestly, if he's in San Fran. Now, I wish I would have asked Matt Waldman about this guy because he has him very high. And I know that you are also pretty high on Jermaine Burton. So we can take just a little bit more time on Burton and just talk about, you know, probably not a guy we've talked about on this podcast quite enough. I've not heard a whole lot of buzz about his draft capital, but I do want to make sure that we get him into the conversation here. Not somebody who's being drafted as a top 12 wide receiver and early rookie drafts, at least. Yeah. The more that I've dug into burden, actually, I don't love that he graded out. So while my model, I might test that after this year and see why, because like nothing

about him stands out as that exciting. He has a decent data profile. His efficiency is pretty good. He has not drawn targets at a high rate, but that's because again, he's one of these guys who's really used almost exclusively as a deep threat. But yeah, I think he is a good player and is good at stretching the defense. But I, again, like don't know how

relevant he's going to be for fantasy purposes um but he was he was really effective with the opportunities he got when he was at alabama well that's that's what i think you would say is like the six one or six foot 196 is not that exciting but it's not a negative mark and a mid 4 4 40s pretty good and And the, the share of the production at Alabama is okay. And he was good on the type of thing that, but the question is, and it's the question we've had for a lot of these wide receivers, can Jermaine Burton be more than a one trick pony, or is he strictly a guy who's going to be the deep threat and take the top off of defenses? Yeah. I think that's why he graded out so well. My model is because it's

like, he's elite at doing these specific things, like as a deep threat and even like did really well in the red zone and stuff like that. At Georgia, his second season at Georgia, he was second on the team receiving behind only Brock Bowers. He got 87% of his targets, even with a 14 and a half yard ADOT. Like that's absurd. So there's just a lot of signal that he might actually be a good

player i don't know how it will translate at the nfl level so we've talked about a lot of wide receivers on this show xavier laguette keon coleman lad mcconkey ad mitchell some guys that people really are unsure about how to rank and we're probably going to get a better answer after the draft we are definitely going to talk get a better answer after the draft. We are definitely going to talk with Jacob after the draft about these guys. Are there, are there any wide receivers that we like we've kind of scraped? I feel like all of the guys who are super relevant at this point,

anybody else who you think, you know, it might just pop might end up getting drafted in the third round or the fourth round and turning into a thing. I'm curious to see where Javon Baker goes. He had a near elite PFF receiving grade and yard per run rate last year, 2023. Pretty decent target rates, even while really operating in a downfield role. And so he's an exciting guy who would definitely shoot up the rankings if he lands in an appealing offensive environment.

If he goes to the Bills or something, yeah, I think that'd be a perfect fit luke mccaffrey is interesting not just because he's christian mccaffrey's brother he's a pretty decent athlete transition from quarterback to receiver in his final two collegiate receive um collegiate seasons he was a receiver and he performed pretty well from the slot and the perimeter he's got size and he actually was more productive from outside than in so i don't think he's just a slot guy and he's still learning the receiver position. So I'm, I'm interested in him as well.

And then I, I think that this is fraudulent production. I think this is maybe Jalen Tolbert's type stuff, but Devontae's Walker, no receiver prospect account for a higher percentage of their offensive touchdowns went on the field than him he was also third in terms of percentage of his team's yardage went on the field he began his career at kent state so that definitely has something to do with it and his

efficiency dropped across the board at north carolina and he didn't create how well according to pff either so that's why i say take this all with a grain of salt, but he's got size, he's got speed. And if he gets drafted on day two, like I think he's somebody that is going to be interesting potentially for fantasy. And I do think I just want to close up with that. Like we've talked a lot about draft capital and Adam Azar had a, had a tweet that he'd put up or, or from the CBS sports article actually about the number, like basically half of the quarterbacks taken in round one in the last 15 years have been busts. And I started kind of wondering, is the wide receiver hit rate any better than that?

And if you go back, teams have made some enormous and laughable mistakes over the last 10 years drafting wide receivers in round one and in round two. The order that they rank them in has not been hugely indicative of the success that they have in fantasy football. So we are going to care a lot about where these guys end up and about what their draft capital is. But do you see a huge difference between round one and round two or round two and round three? Where's the cutoff for you? Or is it strictly, do they get drafted on the first two days or do they fall later? Yeah, I don't have any hard rules.

Like I said at the beginning of this, draft evaluation isn't necessarily in my wheelhouse in terms of what I think I bring to the space, the fantasy work. And so like I haven't gotten that granular with it when like like really establishing rules. And partially because I do think the context is so important to me. It's more about how they fit on the team, what type of role they might play, given like what we know about them and what they did at the collegiate level. And does it all make sense? Like, like Puka, it made so much sense,

the role that they drafted him to play. Um, I feel like Tank Dell last year, like made perfect sense as, as a pairing with CJ Stroud. Obviously we're nipping guys who performed well and outperformed the draft capital, but yeah,

I, I, that's kind of how I look at it. And also there's even like the context of like the team, did they move up? Like what type of capital they have available? Like not every day three pick is the same. Did the quarterback tell the team to draft him? Are they, are they rooming together at training camp?

Did they eat breakfast together? Like there's, there's lots, lots of different factors we're going to take into account over the next several months. But Jacob, that was fantastic stuff. I want to remind everybody, go follow him on Twitter at JAGibbs underscore 23. Tell everybody again about the piece that you just came out with on Sportsline and what they can find there. Yeah. So I just recapped all the receivers. It's like 6,000 words and just like really goes through all of the advanced data stuff for them. I try to just find data that is not publicly accessible. You're not going to get, um, most places to really give you just like additional context on these guys. So if you've already kind of exhausted, like all the draft, um, prep that you think you can do, like maybe not,

there might be more you can find on sports. And I think you'll have fun in there reading about all these guys. And I think I'm going to add to it depending on where the draft capital ends up going. Like some of these guys, Javon Baker, Malik Washington didn't get a profile, but they're probably going to get

a profile at some point. Awesome stuff as always, Jacob. Always appreciate you being here. Appreciate everybody in the chat. You guys gave us some good questions today. Everybody listening to the podcast. You definitely want to listen next week as well.

It's the Running Back Preview Part 1 on Tuesday with JJ aka LateRoundQB. Part 2 on Friday with Emory Hunt. You've heard a lot of people give the we're going to see where these guys land and then we'll talk about how good these running backs are. Next week,

we're going to talk about these running backs outside of the context of landing spot and I could not be more excited. So make sure you tune in next Tuesday.