Fantasy Football Today - FFT Dynasty: Finding Buys and Sells using per-route data with special guest Dwain McFarland (07/04 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: July 4, 2023

Fantasy Football Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Dwain McFarland of MB Fantasy Life joins Heath Cummings and Jacob Gibbs to discuss dynasty buys and sells using per-route data. But first, Dwain catches us up with what he's working on this offseason. (0:25) Then, the guys discuss Dwain's favorite buys, including Antonio Gibson and Christian Watson (2:55). Later, the guys debate which WR they like more, Calvin Ridley vs Rashod Bateman (47:13). Finally, they wrap up the show discussing sells, including Diontae Johnson, D.J. Moore, DK Metcalf, and more! (53:50) Follow our FFT team on Twitter: @FFToday, @AdamAizer, @JameyEisenberg, @daverichard, @heathcummingssr, @ctowerscbs Follow the brand new FFT TikTok account: https://www.tiktok.com/@fftoday Watch FFT on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/fantasyfootballtoday Get 20% off Fantasy Football Today merch: https://store.cbssports.com/collections/fantasy-football-today%20?utm_source=podcast-apple-com&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=buy-our-merch&utm_content=fantasy-football-collection Join our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/FantasyFootballToday/ Sign up for the FFT newsletter https://www.cbssports.com/newsletter You can listen to Fantasy Football Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast." To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Now, here's some combination of Adam, Dave, Jamie, and Heath. Happy Independence Day, and welcome to a special Beyond the Box score edition of Fantasy Football Today Dynasty. I am your host Heath Cummings joined by Jacob Gibbs of Sportsline and a special guest Dwayne McFarland from Fantasy Life. Dwayne, what's going on over at Fantasy Life? What have you been working on lately? Oh man, you know it's that time of year where we're digging deep into everything. What are we not looking at? You know we don't have training camp yet, it's that time of year where we're digging deep into everything. What are, what are we not looking at? You know, we don't have training camp yet. So it's like,

what, what can I look at and like overanalyze? Uh, but no, we have a lot of cool stuff going on. So I actually have just posted four different pieces over the last couple of weeks. That's really,

you know, around best ball, like best balls, all the craze now. So just really strategies for roster construction at, uh, each position this year, but also,

uh, just did a big refresh on my top 250 ranks and half PPR for best ball. So that's all up. And man, we have all sorts of behind the scenes projects going. We got big data stuff going on. A lot of things I can't necessarily say it all yet because I got to make sure we got our timelines right. But believe me, I'm turning out the midnight oil over here uh to try to get stuff ready for this season so people can have some fun at fantasy life it is a really fun time of the year because we're going to start chasing our tails when we get to july and it'll be the the news that we have to decide if we care about or if we don't care about and then we get

into the season it's like okay monday i do this every week and tuesday do this every week and we we've got a little bit of room to breathe right now and kind of go over some stuff maybe dig a little bit deeper as you said Gibbs it is good to have you here we've been working on this for a while this show kind of your baby today so I want I want to start off just with you like you know people hear yards per route run and they know yards per reception yards per target why do I need to focus on this particular metric? And why is it maybe the best for wide receivers? Yeah, I mean, if you just look at correlation to fantasy scoring, it's going to be the top of the list.

It's a topic that has some nuance. It needs some context. For more on that, we did a Beyond the Box episode with Matt Freeman and Pat Fitzmaurice where we contextualized YARPA right- your perot run data so for instance two receivers versus three receivers on the field that type of stuff is going to affect and we're going to go into detail on that a little bit here um but yeah this the perot data is one of the one of the most prevalent stats that i use and i just from following duane know that's the case for him as well so yes i've been super excited for the fft Dynasty crossover episode

and to have Dwayne on particularly. This is just a treat for me. I'm so psyched. Dwayne, we usually try to start off with three questions for the guests. The first two questions go into one. Your favorite two Dynasty buys based on per route data. Yeah, so I definitely have a couple. There are a lot that I could go into,

but you guys have a really good list going. But two, I didn't see on the list, so I'm definitely going to throw these out there. It's not time to give up on Antonio Gibson. So when we talk about a player like him, you look at his targets per route run, 24%. But really, he's never been fully enabled to be the receiving back

because we've always had JD McKissick right so it's been one of those weird situations where we all know this we're like the guy played receiver in college when he's on the field he demands targets not quite at a Christian at a Christian McCaffrey or Alvin Kamara level or Austin Eckler just a hair below those guys but still at a level like that we get really excited about and then it's like well you know we've got JD McKissick and then we got another running back. So there's going to be like three guys and we've just never really been able to get everything

turning right for Antonio Gibson. And he hasn't been able to be in that role that, you know, he's really designed for. Well, now with McKissick gone, I think that totally opens the door for him. And we saw his route participation last year surge to 57% once we saw McKissick out of the lineup with the neck injury. So now you're looking at Brian Robinson. Yeah, they drafted, you know, a guy this year that's really more in the vein of Brian Robinson.

So I feel like he's really the only guy, unless Curtis Samuel's going to steal a few snaps at running back, he's the guy that's going to be out there on passing downs. Finally, won't be having to share that role. And this is really his opportunity to shine. And I would say this, like, I know people are burned by Gibson because we've been talking about this. Like we've been Antonio Gibson. You got to get him.

You got him. People are like, come on, dude. Like, like this is falling on deaf ears at this point. But no, finally, for real. Like this could be the time. And if we look back historically, the first thing like people will be at at well man there's no way he's going to get 50 of the rushing attempts and you're right but let me just give you a list of guys that have been in a similar range of range of targets per route run but if they can get to that 60 65 percent route

participation which is where gibson should be they didn't need to get to 50 and i'm going to give them to you and this is not me just filtering saying I want to handpick. This is literally me filtering, filtering to guys that were at 40% or less of rushing attempts. And they got to a target rate of 25% or better and got over the 60% route participation. Here they are. Are you ready? Alvin Camara in 2020 RB one Austin Eckler,

2019 RB four Kenyon Drake, 2018 RB 14 Dion Lewis, 2018 RB4. Kenyon Drake, 2018, RB14. Deion Lewis, 2018, RB27. We'll take it, though. Christian McCaffrey, 2017, rookie season, RB9. Remember, you saw Jonathan Stewart taking most of the rushing carries there. And then here's a fun one. Here's a real fun one.

You guys remember Danny Woodhead in 2015. RB3, baby. So there is a path. Not saying he's going to be a top 10 RB, but there's a real chance that you've got a top 24 running back. And we also see these guys catch passes. Dynasty lens here. They can

play longer. Because even if you may lose some of your explosiveness, things like that, if you're padding your stats with the receptions, it's something I really like to buy into. And people are just, you know, they're kind of out on Gibson. Right now in best of all, he's going around nine, round 10. So, I mean, I don't know exactly what his dynasty startup is or what his dynasty stock is, but typically the things are still pretty close.

So I think Gibson's a buy. Yeah, down is the answer is what his dynasty stock is from where it's been. I think that it's a lot of it is that feeling. And I talk about this a lot. Like he burned me last year is not a valid excuse for not drafting a player or rostering a player this year. I understand why people do it, but we know enough about this game that these things don't remain stable. I do, and I'm going to go to Gibbs on Gibson because I know he's been hurt by him in the past. He is one of those emotionally scarred former managers.

But when it comes to running back, and one of the things that as far as I understand, like one of the major benefits of yards per route run over yards per target is it shows how good the player is at earning targets. Yes. Is that as true for running backs as it is for wide receivers? Or are running back targets more scheme quarterback coordinator dependent? The answer is it depends. So there are a couple things that are really good indicators for you. If you can find running backs that have a positive ADOT, they seem to be more sticky year over year as far as holding on to a large target share.

Because what will happen to some backs that you'll see, far as holding on to a large target share, because what will happen to some backs that you'll see like Najee Harris is a really good example, right? As a rookie had that nice season. As far as his targets, you had been Roethlisberger checking the ball down, but they had some injuries and different things going on in the receiving court.

There can be certain drivers. So if you've got a, you, you saw this with AJ Dillon some last year, you're like, dude, like how's AJ Dylan like getting targets whenever we get and we get aaron jones in the game sometimes and he's not and what it comes back to is if a quarterback doesn't have multiple other weapons like to throw the ball down the field to quarterbacks really do want to throw downfield but if they only have one primary option then you're more quickly moving to that dump off option

whereas when you have positive adot guys they're really more built into the structure of a play, right? Where they have a better chance to be the first read. So maybe the running backs running an angle route underneath, and then you have a tight end running the seam route. The quarterback's reading high to low, but now the running back is the first or second read based on where the safety starts. Whereas if you're the swing pass guy, you're the third or fourth read

or you might be the hot against the blitz. And then you've got to factor in, well, what if the quarterback just wants to take off? Which, by the way, I think is the biggest potential issue for Gibson in the short term this year would be if Sam Howell starts and all of a sudden he's rushing and scrambling all the time. That could hurt Antonio Gibson. So it really

does depend but what i found is you're going to get a more sticky running back you can really count on more often like a camara a cmc eckler they're typically positive a dot guys the others can more come and go it just depends on the on the rest of the weapons and if the quarterback feels the need to more highly integrate the running back in because they're just not the other guys just aren't open okay gibbs are you going to buy back into Gibson? And I will say, I think one of the things that I've seen from this offseason that I like is talk about Eric Biennium's offense. And there's a little bit of mystery. Like I think people have gone too far in saying it won't look anything like what the chiefs did because he didn't have anything to

do with what the chiefs did. I don't believe that's true. I think he was a big part of that. And I think that he'll probably have success in Washington. But one of the reports we've gotten is there's a lot of screens, a lot, both to wide receivers and to running backs. That'd be awesome for Gibson, right? Yeah, I'm definitely buying in. I think Dwayne laid it out really well. That was really interesting thinking about the running back position through the lens of average depth of target. I've never thought about that. With Gibson, my concern is his rushing efficiency was like way way down last year and that's happened in back-to-back years um he was also less efficient in terms of creating yards after the catch um i don't know man i have such a hard time with it because like yeah i have

an emotional attachment to him and then seeing like those stats all come down as well like i it's easier to just be like nah um but everyone's that. And so like to get him at his price, I think it's definitely. I think like the nice thing with him is that you're buying really low. Like it's not going to cost you a whole lot in terms of opportunity costs to go take a chance on him. A guy who I'm struggling with a little bit right now in Dynasty and in redraft is Ramondre Stevenson, because you look at yards per route run last year, and he was one of the most efficient backs, I think, in football.

You look at yards per target, and he was one of the least efficient. And the main difference was, I think he was third or fourth in the NFL on screens. Now you've got a new offensive coordinator, and we get a whole offseason of them talking about wanting to use somebody else in the passing game. Does Stevenson's profile look like somebody's going to hold on to his target share twain i think he's more questionable but yeah to be at a 26 percent targets per route run it's really hard to do

that and be and it'd be a fluke now he's not a positive a dot guy he is more of a swing pass a check down and let's think about this The Patriots don't have anyone else. Like, they don't have really good. I mean, it is what it is. They don't have really good receivers. They had Jacoby Myers last year, right? You have Hunter Henry. Some guys they've, you know, Hunter Henry, they invested in, you know, but it didn't really turn out.

Johnnie Smith didn't work out. Devontae Parker, you know, got his new contract. But they just don't have the weapons. So you will see teams that do that, throw the ball more to the backs and create those screen plays. But I think he's still probably a plus receiver, not as high end as what some people might think like that. 26% is probably a tad misleading,

but I think his baseline is still probably a 20, 22% targets per route run kind of guy. He's, he's really, he's got, he's got good hands, very natural catcher, like of the football and stuff, but not like this great mismatch player

against linebackers and safeties that can just really create all this separation and zone. He's more of a check down guy. So we did answer one of the questions, one of your favorite buys, and we got into the running back question like we wanted to. Who's your second favorite buy based on per route data? Mine's Christian Watson, and his is even larger than that.

But targets per route run, I know Jacob's going to do a breakdown later of really the use cases for targets per route run. I think it's really important because it is funny. You'll say something about targets per route run on Twitter, and somebody will be like, oh, man, yards per route run correlates more to fantasy points. And that's true, but duh, because it's got yards in it. Yards are part more to fantasy points and that's true but duh because it's got yards in it yards right are part of scoring fantasy points what we're looking for are certain signals that some kind of data is giving us and targets per route run back to your first question which was

about running backs i really love it for running backs because some backs have to stay in and block more right some backs actually get to run more pass routes some running backs you know we don't get to see them on the field because they have a third down back so targets per route run tells us so much more about that running back than target share because they were hamstrung by playing time and so when you look at a guy like watson you know speaking of hamstrings like you've got injuries that keep him on or off the field throughout the season you know you've got rookies early on that may not get as much playing time. And so an easy way to just kind of cut through all of that,

and I don't got to worry about which games he was in, which games, you know, he was out, all that kind of stuff. Like, as I can quickly look at targets per route run. And so most people, when you talk about Christian Watson, almost always they will come back and say, yeah, man, 15% target share. And I'm like, yeah, bro, 24 percent targets per route run 23 percent target share in the games yes i will go break it down if i have to 23 percent target share in the games

where he was fully healthy and did not leave due to concussions and things like that so once he got into a full-time role he showed that he could be the top guy in the offense and yes i get it he can't score a touchdown 2.6 percent of his routes it's not possible right you just can't do it it's an outlier season but he has the ability to still be a good touchdown scorer right i mean we have a guy that can beat you over the top we have a guy that can catch a slant and erase angles we have a guy that can take an end around and score touchdown so we like guys that can score from anywhere So when you piece those two things together and you think about Watson's potential, like I, I absolutely love him.

He's got the second round capital. I think the biggest thing holding people off is the age. And he comes from a small school, but this is kind of normal. We see these small school guys come out and they're older. Is anybody afraid of Cooper cup now? He was old when he came out and he came from a small school so not saying watson's going to be cooper cup like that's a super extreme example but i think people are holding on a little too tightly to their pre uh

draft you know thoughts around christian watson versus his draft capital and what we saw him do in year one so jacob we we see a lot of times when it's these yards per route run list, the guys who are going to explode next year, it's the rookies. It's the guys who either didn't really start playing full-time until midway through the year, which I think was the ARSB case going into his year two. I know you had a couple of rookies

or second-year guys on your list in terms of buys, Drake London and Chris Alave. Is Watson in that group with those guys i have a tough time classifying me as a buy for dynasty because i think people are really really getting hyped on him and pushing him up the board a lot went to the point where the question marks that still exist around his data um is a real concern like i love all the perette stuff that we can spout off about Watson, but at the end of the day he ran fewer than 300 routes.

This brings up an important question that I would pose to Dwayne. Is there a qualifier? Is there a route run total where you find stickiness? For me, it's been typically around three or 350 routes, but in a season, is there a qualifier that you go to? 250, but targets per route run stabilizes

before yards per route run yards per route run does take longer um and it's because of variance right you get big plays that can really make it look better than it is but a player's ability to earn targets is something that stabilizes a lot quicker i say a lot it's it's slightly quicker um so typically by like six games you have a really good feel for targets per route run it might take you closer to eight depending on the team you know or the player player especially if they're in a limited role right for yards per route run um so yeah and i don't know honestly i'll be honest like i've been so focused on redraft and best ball like so i love christian watson's profile but i will say i would

agree on the same the caveats i would give around him it is definitely around small sample size yeah however i think what kind of offsets that is when you get a player that shows they can earn I would give around him. It's definitely around small sample size. However, I think what kind of offsets that is when you get a player that shows they can earn targets but also do a lot with them, and then it matches what their profile is, which is this dude's super fast, and it's actually working on a football field. So I don't know where he's priced at right now,

like what wide receiver he is in Dynasty, but if it is something where he's getting steamed, I do agree that you have to take the caveat that the sample size is small. I'm pretty sure. I think it's between 15 and wide receiver 15, wide receiver 20, most places. I would buy there.

Yeah, I would be buying him there. I feel like I see him go inside the top 15. I love everything about Watson that we saw. The small sample size caveat is all there really is to say because outside of that, everything is excellent. I feel like I see him go inside the top 15. I love everything about Watson that we saw. The small sample size caveat is all there really is to say, because outside of that, everything is excellent. What's particularly exciting is the ability to draw targets at such a high rate while running such deep routes. So over the past five seasons, only Julio Jones, Calvin Ridley, Chris Alave, and Watson have a target per hour run rate of 25% or higher with an average depth

of target of 14 plus yards and that that's the type of upside that we're looking at for him if he can draw targets at such a high rate while running such downfield routes like that's really really exciting and we've seen him also dominate man coverage which is another really good signal um for a young receiver and the type of receiver that he is is a field stretching perimeter threat so everything that we saw was excellent for watson and i definitely like him i just if we're going to get to London we're going to get to Garrett Wilson and Chris Alave like those guys their perot data is like off the page elite comes in a legitimate sample size and like I don't have any question marks about them compared to Watson

more more of a bulletproof type floor than it is necessarily a higher ceiling I think we're going to talk I think we kind of just hit on one of the use cases, but Jacob's going to break down the rest of them right after this. Whether in the game or in life, the right coverage can make all the difference. Securian Canada gives you that coverage. For more than 65 years, Securian Canada has been helping Canadians 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.

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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, Jacob, you kind of came up with three use cases for per route data. How is this going to help us identify future fantasy success, right? Yeah. Yeah. I've been super excited to have Dwayne on for this very reason because I think people, some reason like i have an aversion to per route data i think maybe just because it's new um but there are some instances where it's really really important

and so i brought up three um feel free to add anything to this duane the first one is players whose route totals were suppressed by injury and so a couple um recent use cases davante adams of 2019 only had 997 yards five five touchdowns in 12 games. And so he was able to be had at the end of round one, even the round one to turn. And then he just absolutely went nuts the next year. And we saw in that season where he only played 12 games, he drew a target on 30 percent of his routes, which is by far the highest of his career and followed an upward trajectory that he had been on. And then the next years, he elevated that even further and just lit fantasy on fire um another guy is 2020

Debo Samuel so his target per hour and rate rose from 21 to 26 in 2020 but he only played seven games he then goes on for 1400 yards the next year um so those are the two from an injury standpoint that like clearly stand out. And it's just, you can find players like this through this lens where people don't understand like truly what the potential is if their per route data is actually extrapolated over a larger sample size. And I'm curious if you guys have any players that come to mind as 2023 examples. Well, I would, I would just echo what you said. I think those are the right use cases. If you've got a full sample of data for a player, obviously we would rather just use target share, right? It

still correlates more highly to fantasy points. Stickiness year over year, they're actually pretty close. So that is kind of a misnomer that's out there. Sometimes I'll hear people say like, oh, targets per route run aren't even actually sticky. I'm like, like, no, they are like, they're, they're pretty sticky year over year, not quite as close as target volume or as just actual targets, but they're really close. Um, but I think those are the great like examples, you know, that you just, that you just laid out. I will say, I do love them for running backs and tight ends as well.

Not just wide receivers and like tight ends, you guys know. For example, let's look at Tyler Higbee last year. Not saying this guy's a dynasty buyer or anything, but had a 24% targets per route run. But you look at after week five, all the offensive line injuries that the Rams had, and you see suddenly his route participation dropped to 67%. Why? Because he had to block.

He had to stay in and block. So that's another great use case. If you've got a tight end that just was only out there running around 60 of the time we that's that's a scenario that comes up a lot right so then you suddenly find a guy that maybe or you had a guy like dallas goddard that forever was stuck with zach hertz i wonder what dallas goddard could be without like zach hertz hmm like i think there's a pretty good stat like that we could look at for that. So I think those are really good use cases. And I already talked about the running backs earlier,

you know, because they can get split up in their roles, but really good ways to, when you don't have that full data set and you're trying to say, okay, based on what we have, what could we potentially do? And I actually use targets per route run in my projection model.

I project the routes that are going to be run the route participation. And and that trickles down from the team offense, right? How many plays I think they're going to run, how often they're going to pass, and then I assign route participation to each player, and then targets per route run. Those two things together give you their target share. I think that's it. I want to stay there for just a second. I know it's kind of off topic of where we were originally going with this show. That idea of projecting the number of plays a team or number of routes a team is going to have and dealing with a team like Tampa Bay this year. I think when you look at the Buccaneers through that lens and the type of environment that Chris Godwin and Mike Evans' production has come from the past two years, where they're throwing 750 passes per game and Tom Brady's the quarterback. I have a hard time thinking they're going to be above league average

in terms of pass rate this year. I think if they have their way, they're playing in a bad division. They still, their defense is probably better than their offense. And they've got a defensive head coach and they've probably got Baker Mayfield or Kyle Trask throwing passes. So like I get really concerned about a team that might throw it 150, 200 fewer times. How much do you think about normalizing those run and pass rates? Like for, and I think on the opposite side would be a team like Atlanta that just threw the ball so little. And like, if you project them based on what they did last year, there's very few routes, not enough for London and pits probablys probably yeah i think it's a great question so for tampa bay like the major challenge they're

going to have is their only favorite i believe in three maybe two two games on the 18 game schedule per superbook right so they're only projected to win six and a half games so i do think that to some extent that will force them to pass because that means they're just going to be trailing all the time. But I also believe that everything else you just said will be true. I think you still have a defensive-minded coach, and he knows that he doesn't have Tom Brady. So even though he's going to be trailing, and we saw this last year, it wasn't just the Falcons.

We saw the Panthers do this last year. They were trailing a lot, and they still decided, okay, that may be the case, but we don't think that passing the ball is necessarily the best thing to do still um you know and they had they had some injuries you had pj walker you had baker mayfield in there oh wait baker mayfield we're back to the bucks um you know kyle trask you just mentioned so with the quarterback issues and all those things i'm with you like i have their plays per game projected at 61 this year still throwing dropping back to pass 62 obviously that can turn into a scramble a sack other things um and 38 of the time actually choosing to have a designed run but like if this was you know the bucks last year i would have that

number at 70 with brady 70 pass play or or like 68 67 someone there so definitely toning it down and then for like the fal, just since you mentioned them, I actually have them going up in pass rate. Number one, because they were so outlier crazy run heavy last year. It is so hard to do. And when you take the running quarterback, like Marcus Mariota, away, that is going to change the dynamic. Yeah, Desmond Ritter is willing to scramble, had an 8% scramble rate last year.

That's definitely above the league average, which is usually around 5%, 6%. But it's not huge. We're not talking Justin Fields, who scrambled 16% of the time. So I think on that alone, without Mariota being part of the design run game, you're going to naturally see more passing from Atlanta. They'll still be a run-heavy team. But last year, they dropped back to pass 49% of the time. That's like bananas.

I have them at 54% this year, which is right in line with what Arthur Smith used to do with the Titans, right? In an offense that didn't necessarily have the run, when they didn't have Mariota, didn't have the running quarterback, and it was with Tannehill. So I think we get slight regression to the mean

in opposite directions for both teams. It's like 80 more times than they threw the ball last year, but also I think fewer pass attempts than I have projected for any other team in 2023. So that's just kind of the way it is. And that kind of goes to one of the things, Jacob, that was on your list, right? The way that scheme can kind of disguise a yards per route round superstar. Yeah. Before I get to that, I do have to mention Kadarius Toney because it's a per route data episode and we have to. But yeah, he would be the guy I would bring up as the clear, like player's been injured but his perot data indicates that he could be awesome like i don't know if he's going to be devo samuel but like from a perot perspective he like has that potential um only

four players over the past two years have a higher target perot run rate than cadareous tony that's cooper cup davante adams tyreek Hill, Chris Alabe. I'm not sure that you get to question the sample size of Christian Watson and then bring us Kedarious Tony. Well, it's about the same, the two-year sample size. But yeah, no, it's definitely a small sample size. And that's what I'm saying, though, is that's why we like this data, because it could be something. For sure, yeah. I think Kedarious Tony and Elijah Moore moore you could make the argument have the widest range of outcomes yeah like because i've been kind of thinking through this doing this thing i call the projection spectrum

i don't know what your thoughts are jacob but like i think that's two that have like the widest range like i i did i put out a tweet last night on elijah moore i'm like okay you've got you know this you got deshaun Watson, like he was last year and Elijah Moore plays like he did last year. Basically like he, you can't even use Elijah Moore, but if you get rookie season, Elijah Moore, and you get vintage Deshaun Watson, like we could have a guy that's like a wide receiver too. Like you could literally, I mean, it's hard to find ranges, realistic ranges of outcomes for players that are that wide and i think cadarious tony is actually another very similar one and i think it all comes back to he's gonna get targets when

he's out there the question is if he gets more routes will it scale and then i think the other question is great if if he doesn't you know get more routes like then what like because i i do worry last year i mean come on like even when they really needed someone to step up and be on the field even when he was unhealthy it's like they never would really like i think his max jacob like you probably have in front of you i think his max route participation was like 30 one game right you know so that's my concern do they look at him more as like so i've got him projected in the middle 50 route participation patient playing the me cole hardman role and that's my median.

But to your point, Jacob, like the ceiling on it, like if he does go to like 85% and he does sustain his targets per route run, yeah, hello, like it could be a wide receiver one. Yeah, and I don't even want to get started talking about Elijah Moore's target per hour rates because I spent so much time doing that after his rookie year. Yeah, look where we are um yeah so the next one would be players whose route totals were suppressed by roll and um this actually brings up elijah moore as a good example from his rookie year sky moore last year um and then the the examples the use cases that we have from the past heath already

mentioned i'm on our st brown limited role on, but 33% target per route run rate from week 13 on in his rookie year, which is like something that you don't do unless you have the potential to be an absolutely elite fantasy wide receiver one. Tyree Kill is actually the other one that I would bring up. So year two Tyree Kill was drafted as the wide receiver 23 in fantasy going into the year because he only ran 259 routes as a rookie but his per route data as a rookie was nuts 32 target per round rate 2.3 yards per route run and so then even in year two when his per route rates dropped off his target per round rate was quite a bit lower over a larger sample size he still finishes the wide receiver eight

and that was i think honestly on the lower end of his potential ranges of outcomes he didn't score a lot of touchdowns and that just goes to show like when this is extrapolated over a larger sample size it doesn't even have to stay at the absurd rates like we saw with christian watson or whatever if it's just close to that and they do get the role then these players can go nuts and that's why we're so excited about somebody like christian watson another guy i bring up is Chig Aconco from the Titans. His per route data last year is absolutely absurd. And I'm really curious what you think about him, Dwayne. Yeah, I like Chig.

He is an interesting player, though, because a lot of that came on screens and gimmicks. So how much of that do they keep installed? Also, do they see him really more as kind of uh you know an h back that they're moving around versus a true f move around or in line tight end i think that's our biggest question if chig gets to 75 percent route participation this season um i think it's i mean i think he's gonna be a lock to be in the top 12 tight ends. And then it just becomes a matter of ceiling. Because to your point, even if they don't do as much of the gimmicky stuff for him,

he's still going to have a baseline that's better than most tight ends in his ability to earn targets. Yeah, it was a small sample, but for me, once I get past tight end 9 or 10 this year, I'm kind of like, you know, just give me the guy that, you know, if I am right,

all of his underlyings actually line up with the best tight ends in the game. Yes, we acknowledge small sample, so it could go wrong, but I'd rather take a swing on that upside, especially a tight end where, look, say it's a miss. I can go grab someone else. I can grab just somebody to plug in off the waiver wire, you know, if I just need if I just need them or if I need to stream. But you're not going to find many profiles like Chig. Yeah, it's that whole can he go from being a 40%, 50% player to being, like you said, run 70% of the routes. I do think the way that Jacob has the Antonio Gibson-like withdrawal. I just see Jonu Smith whenever people say Chigokonko. And it's not fair because they're not the same kind of guy. I think I just see John who Smith, whenever people say Chico Conco, and it's not fair because they're not the same kind of guy, but I think Albert O is the,

yeah, the Albert O because you got the okay. And who knows, he might do the same thing to Greg Dulcich this year. Um, I don't think we have any idea what's going to happen with the, uh, with the Denver tight ends. Did you have, you have one more, uh, one more group here, Gibbs? Yeah. The last one is players whose route totals were suppressed by their offensive scheme. And so A.J. Brown is the clear example here. A.J. Brown ranked second in targets per route run across the 2020 and 2021 seasons. Second out of all players, but he topped out with 1,075 yards as his single season high during that time because his single season high in rats run

was 406 which is really really low for a player who was like mostly healthy um so then he goes to philadelphia he runs 577 routes so even with his target per round rate falling from 28 to 30 percent down to 25 he still erupts for 1500 yards and i think just on him specifically i'm really excited to see what happens in year two if he's able to elevate the target per hour rate to something resembling what we have seen in tennessee and the route total stays intact like it could be nuts we just had ben gretch um on beyond the box score with jg zacharyson to talk about RPOs and the effect that RPOs have on target distributions. And like Philadelphia was the clear use case where on an RPO, there's really only one read. It's a run where there's no target at all, or it's a throw to the guy who's like running this

land. Um, and so because of this, the target distribution ends up being very concentrated. You should go read Ben's, um, sub. If you haven't, it's phenomenal. Um, but like, just because of that, the players like in Miami, in Philadelphia, in Atlanta are able to get these really absurd target shares.

And I think it's possible. We can see even more than what we saw last year from HIV. So like the clear guy here is Drake London, right? Yes. Like if we're looking at 2023 examples, I think Drake London cow pits, you could bring up Like if we're looking at 2023 examples, I think Drake Lennon, Kyle Pitts, you could bring up Chris Alave as well as a guy whose route total was a bit

suppressed and we could see more passing in that offense and his per route data is absolutely nuts. But yeah, we can go on and on and on about Lennon and Pitts. There's so many cool stats. I want to ask you, Dwayne, are you, first down target data at all? That's something that I look at. First down targets have been worth about 20% more fantasy points than other targets. There's fewer defensive backs on the field on first downs, and it also just signals a team's willingness to go to a certain player. And Drake London's numbers really stand out in that regard. Is that something you look at?

I've looked at it. And I'm not saying that it doesn't work. I just haven't found it to have enough of a differentiating signal for me. I look at third and fourth down as well. When the quarterback absolutely needs it, who are they going to? I also look at end zone targets. And overall, what I've found is the guys that really earn targets, they're just earning targets all the time.

It's kind of like with this first read stuff like i always see i see the first read stuff too and i've had access to that with pff and i like it it's cool but guess what like 70 68 to 70 of targets are first read period for everyone right and so like if you earn a lot of targets you're going to get a lot of first read targets uh so um i think these things are really cool like the thing i love to look at honestly is like the percentage of targets that the front for the player they come from play action yeah because play action is proven to be worth about 20 percent more than a non-play action target and that's something that can happen you know really on any down and distance you're not going to get it on like third and long when you know you're getting a blitz like you don't want to turn your back to the defense at that moment. They're not biting

on the play action in that moment. Most of the other down and distances, it's available to you. It just freezes the linebacker in safety enough that you let these playmakers get in behind or in between coverage in the zone where 70% of coverage in the NFL nowadays is zone coverage.

It can be huge, especially for guys like A.J. Brown that are athletes. Traylon Burks could fall into that bucket this year. That's how he could really see a boom this year. We know it's going to be a run-heavy offense, but can he hit it in efficiency? So, yeah, I like looking at all those things. Most of it still seems to tie back, though, to their ability to earn targets overall, and that kind of like works across

all the buckets yeah play action targets are cheat codes and i think it's important to bring that up related to drake london who is going to fill the aj brown role in arthur smith's offense um the reason i brought up first down targets i think it the point you made up about drawing targets on third down is just as important i think that's totally valid to me it shows that a team is willing to run an offense through a player and if you look at the players who have high first sound targets it's davante adams tyree kill dj more cd lamb it's those guys drake london had the second highest last year of any player and that's really really unusual for a rookie and that's why i bring it up is because like he's coming in doing as a 21 year old and they didn't have a lot of options. But still, that happens regularly with rookie receivers

where they come in an office that doesn't have options, and they don't draw targets at the rate that he did on first down. So 35% first down target per round rate. The only other rookies that have done that, Calvin Johnson, A.J. Green, Julio Jones, A.J. Brown, Andre Johnson, Tyree Kill. So I really appreciate you putting D.J. Moore in there with the Devontae Adams, Tyreek Hill,

just for me. But I don't want you to think that I didn't see that DJ Moore was on the sell list. We're going to postpone that until about the 56-minute mark, so hopefully not as many people hear it. Let's talk some dynasty buys here real quick. And I think we talked about it before, the second-year wide receivers, particularly this class of second-year wide receivers, everybody seems to be pretty excited about them. And we've already talked about Watson. You had Chris Olave and Drake Lund on your list. And I think you throw Garrett Wilson in there.

Those guys all had good data. And so we'll start with you, Jacob. And then, Dwayne, you can kind of talk about your favorite of the group or whatever Jacob misses because that would probably be something. I don't know. I don't know that there's going to be anything he misses. He's pretty thorough. Also, I think all three of those guys, and you referenced it with Olave, like maybe this offense, there's more routes to be run now.

Maybe they throw it more. They were a really low-volume offense, and they had the quarterback change. Garrett Wilson's got what we hope is a monstrous change in the quality of his targets, Drake London. We think there's no way they can throw that little. So I guess both kind of who do you like best based on what they put in terms of the data,

but also whose situation might be changing the most positively of the rookies. Yeah. Well, those three particularly, I think a lot of a wilson and london are kind of in a different class from the other guys yeah um i think wilson is the one who's going to see the most dramatic change but that's already priced then he's like the widest of your

three or four in dynasty um chris chris a lot of is the guy who i'm interested in and drake london for all the reasons we just gave drake london is insane if you just look at his target per hour rate is like first year freed of michael pitman and monroe st brown he drew targets at the highest per hour and rate of anybody we've seen in the past five years and then he comes in and immediately does at the nfl level he's nuts chris alave is also and his comes more from the yard per hour and rate side of things um so wide receivers age 22 or younger over the past 10 seasons to average 2.4 yards per route run we've got chris alave jamar chase justin jefferson aj brown odell beckham josh gordon and sammy watkins and young sammy watkins was insane yeah he breaks a lot of these lists a lot of these lists you see like okay

a hall of famer future hall of famer hall of famer future hall of famer sammy watkins yeah and alave is like watson where he's drawing such high target rates while running such deep routes. And it's exciting. Derek Carr was really bad last year, but Derek Carr is very aggressive in pushing the ball downfield. Andy Dalton was the least aggressive quarterback in pushing the ball downfield against man coverage. And that's somewhere where Olave shines. And so I'm really excited to see him get more of those opportunities this year. And one thing I would bring up with Olave's per-out run data, and it it's more relevant to Rashid Shaheed who gets brought up a lot through yard per route run receivers with only two receivers on the field see a huge boost in their yard per route run

so formation is definitely affecting things so with one receiver on the field last year the average yard per route run rate was 2.01 with two receivers on the field it was 1.9 and then when you get three or more receivers on the field it drops to 1.4 so that's a pretty drastic drop off um and that's worth noting with chris alave and then also jaylen waddle who we're going to get into because he has really absurd per route data um but yeah of those three i think gary wilson sees the biggest upgrade alave is the one who I'm buying. Yeah. And I would agree with, I think you have it in the right order.

Obviously Wilson getting Aaron Rogers, you know, that's huge for him. Alave is a guy that I've talked a lot about like this off season. Like, so if you take it a little further than just like looking at the targets per route run, like another thing I really like to use is PFF receiving grade,

especially for rookies. It's got a really strong track record is PFF receiving grade, especially for rookies. It's got a really strong track record. I put out some research on it last year. And if you look at the comps that come up by using the targets per route run and the PFF receiving grade and the yards per route run, these are a laves. Justin Jefferson, AJ Brown, Jamar Chase, Odell Beckham Jr. And look at Doug Baldwin sneaking in there. Like, Doug Baldwin, so underrated. That was back in 2011 when he was a rookie. And he was undrafted.

So, yeah, it's a who's who's list. And Olave, just, you know, any one of us can make a list right now of our favorite data points that we know correlate highly to future fantasy points. And Olave just pops on it. So I like the upgrade with car you mentioned i do i think london might be the best out of the group i think he might actually be the best player but we still have the most questions continuing yeah we could get regression you know towards the mean as far as you know remaining run heavy but throwing the ball more but we just don't know like desmond ritter we have no clue like we just don't know if he can be a good quarterback or not taylor heineke like actually surprisingly like he kind of helped you know terry mclaurin get on a heater in the middle of the year

last year and then johan dotson did it at the end of the year and he actually over the like over the last six games he was in he supported multiple top 24 guys a couple of times which surprised me i didn't even remember that like taylor heineke wow, look at you. Maybe that's a break glass in case of emergency, but if I just had to pick on pure talent across all three of these guys, Garrett Wilson was my number one graded guy coming out of the class. After year one, it was so close between him and Drake London. Just pure talent. I think Drake London might have the highest ceiling as far as being the one that we could look up and be like wow like 32 percent target share like that

just really happened I think Drake London could do that okay Jacob we we've talked about like the high end the highest of the high end I think we've covered most of the top 12 dynasty wide receivers I I think there's going to be someone in Houston I'm not sure who it's going to be but somebody in Houston this year who's really going to benefit from playing with CJ Stroud I think there's going to be someone in Houston. I'm not sure who it's going to be, but somebody in Houston this year who's really going to benefit from playing with CJ Stroud. I think he's going to be better as a passer than people are expecting right now. I think the fantasy community got a little bit down because, well,

he's not going to run, so why should we care? But I think he had a chance to come in as a rookie quarterback and be really good for these wide receivers. You had a note here on Nico Collins as a buy. Sell me on it being him over anyone else because there's like six guys there and I'm not really sure which one the best is going to be. Yeah, so Nico Collins injury, he's another one to bring up where injuries plagued his season, but the per route data was really, really exciting. He actually finished with more targets and receiving yardage in year two than year one, even though his route

total was much lower. That's because his per route rate rate skyrocketed so 17 percent target per round rate as a rookie up to 23 percent in year two and then if you look at his um routes run without brandon cooks on the field that goes up quite a bit as well i think it's around 25 and so we're replacing brandon cooks i think i think robert woods is going to be on the field a lot honestly you know he knows the offense he's the best blocking receiver they are running offense and like i think he's going to be on the field a lot, honestly. He knows the offense. He's the best blocking receiver. They are a running offense, and I think he's going to play a lot, and he's not going to draw targets. And I think Nico, they've shown a willingness to let him be the guy.

We saw him come back in Week 10 and record target totals of 10, 7, 9, and 10. And what's exciting about him is he's similar to Watson. He's similar to Alavi, where he's drawing these targets deep down the field. So he accounted for 44% of Houston's air yards while on the field last year, which is a top five rate among players just looking within the lens of while they were on the field. Um, so yeah, there's a lot of really exciting data points around Nico Collins, second season, again, small sample size, but is he somebody that you're into Dwayne? Man, I love him. Uh, I put him. I put out a thread last week on Twitter about just so far in best ball season,

these are the absolute sleepers you should be drafting all the time. And Nico was, I only listed four players. I did one player at each position. And Nico was the wide receiver that I brought up. You can get him in around 11 or 12 right now over on underdog. I love him for the same reasons

that you just talked about in dynasty. So going back to 2011 last year. And so what I do is I take these data points that correlate most strongly to fantasy points. And then I basically look at, okay, what are those thresholds look like for a wide receiver one, and this is in PPR, right? So that would be wide receiver one to 12, Then wide receiver 2, 13 to 24. People kind of get the gist of that. But he had a wide receiver 3-worthy target share and target rate. So that's targets per route run last year. He had a wide receiver 1-worthy air yard share last year in his second season.

And then the other qualitative metrics, yards per route run. He was a wide receiver 3-worthy player. And also, quarterback will impact your yards per route run. Targets a wide receiver three worthy player. And also quarterback will impact your yards per route run targets per route run. You earn it. Maybe it's accurate. Maybe it's not, but think about it for yards. The more accurate the past, the more likely you are to run after the catch. You don't have to stop and come back and catch something. Then the DB immediately tackles you. So your yards per route run actually get better. So like Marquis fell out of Scantling to post like a, whatever it was a one six five and be like,

Oh man, look, he got, but that's what Patrick Mahomes like with Patrick Mahomes. Like you should just have a two period, like just for being alive, like 1.65 is bad. Um,

but when you're playing with the quarterback situation that you had in Houston, what Nico did actually, if you adjust for his quarterback play, it looks more like a wide receiver to also a wide receiver, three worthy PFF receiving grade. Here's the other cool other cool thing a lot the immediate response i got is well yeah that's just because brandon cooks was hurt number one we don't care people should learn their lesson like with a monroe remember that oh man tj hockinson was out deandre swiss is out and we're

like yeah but like kind of got to be good to get like a 30 percent target share um well with brandon cooks on the field last year 24 percent target share for nico collins so he did it with brandon cooks on the field he did it with brandon cooks off the field and uh yeah he can he can win down the field so a lot of opportunity for him so a guy that i think the trajectory on him is great will be one of my most drafted players this season and i don't know if this is a hot take or not but i think nico collins actually has a bigger upgraded quarterback this year than chris alabi i think that's possible it was really bad in houston i will piggyback off of duane's point about the team um affecting yard per round data so i measure wide receivers relative to their wide receiver teammates and um the discrepancy that nico collins had in terms of his yard per

round rate compared to his receiver yard per-Rowan rates was higher than somebody like Christian Kirk, who really didn't have any other clear wide receiver, like talented wide receiver teammates. No offense to Zay Jones. Higher than Brandon Ayuk. Higher than Deontay Johnson. Higher than DJ Moore, who is playing with no other wide receivers on his team. Higher than Michael Pittman it's almost as high as like Jamar Chase and Drake London and Drake London is another guy who didn't have quality wide receivers on his team he was 31 percent better in terms of yard power run than his wide receiver teammates uh Drake London was Nico Collins was 26 percent

better so like that it is important to use that context of like yeah his yard power run rate wasn't very high but like man it was bad in Houston last year. I am buying so much Nico Collins and so much Damian Pearson right now, and it has me very scared. You need C.J. Stroud to be good. Nobody's ever gone wrong buying day three running backs after a surprisingly good rookie year. That's the formula for success. We've got a couple more buys to get to. We've got

a handful of sells, including Jacob explaining himself on DJ Moore. We're going to take another quick break, and then we'll run through the rest of those. Okay, a couple of guys that did not do very much last year, Jacob. One who didn't even play last year, Calvin Ridley, Rashad Bateman,

both on your buy list. We're going to have to move a little bit quicker through these guys. So give me your 30-second elevator pitch on that. And you tell me, Dwayne, which one you're buying, which case you're buying more. Yeah. Can we throw it to Dwayne first? I'm really curious to hear what he thinks about Calvin Ridley. Okay. Yeah. So are we talking yourselves? Or you're talking the guys? We're still on buys. We're still on buys. Ridley and Bateman.

Okay, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I'm going with Ridley. But, I mean, I like both players. The thing with Ridley is we know the last time we saw him, before his six-game season, the last full season we saw him in, it looked like he was maybe about to just kind of go like alpha for us right um now it's been a while since he's been around the game like obviously he's older but i'm still leaning into him now having said all that like he's so pricey like people are not

giving me really any sort of discount maybe they are in dynasty but like right now he's a round three pick on underdog it's like okay like okay, well, okay, here we go. I guess we're just going to be all in right away on Calvin Ridley. So there's definitely a little bit of concern for me. But he's got the first round pedigree. He got better each year. Had a little bit of a bad, a little bump at the end in his short period with Arthur Smith before he left the team

for mental health reasons and then ultimately gets suspended. So I'm still going to lean into him. I think that he's actually shown us Bateman man is a guy I loved out of college and he did have a really good target per route run and yard per route run last season, but it was on such a small sample, right? It didn't even get to the numbers that Jacob and I have outlined so far as being, okay, like it can kind of stabilize at this point so like both players but definitely more in on calvin ridley than uh rashad babe i think ridley's price in dynasty is more where i'm excited to buy because he's 28 years old and like people are just like you're dead to me after you're 27 or older and so like you can kind of get him where if he comes into the rates that we've seen in the past and

a better offense here like he could smash for three or four years and be like pretty cheap um where he's going in dynasty so bateman i want to bring up because like you said his his per route data in college was really really exciting and zay flowers a lot of it was affected by his offense but he didn't even draw targets at a high rate in college so zay flowers best single season target per route run rate at the collegiate level is 26%. Rashad Babin's worst was 27. And his last year he was targeted on 40% of his routes, which is nuts.

And then, yeah, only 120 routes last year, but really exciting. 23% target per round rate, 2.4 yards per route run. So I, I,

we just had Matthew Harmon on beyond the box for, he's a huge Babin guy as well. I think everything we've seen is he's been really good. He's been able to win in multiple levels. And if he's healthy, he's going to be the clear wide receiver one in Baltimore, I think. He's my favorite Raven wide receiver to draft, for sure. Obviously, our number one wide receiver is listed as a tight end,

Mark Andrews. But after that, I'm with you. I'm on Bateman. The Rashad Bateman, no. And actually, one guy I want to sneak into the bias is Puka Nakua. And relative to both these guys, Dwayne, I want to ask you how much you value target per route grenades at the collegiate level as we translate it to the NFL level. Have you found much stickiness there?

There's some, but the signal's not as strong as like some of the traditional things we have like yards per team pass attempt, you know. And some of it's tricky because we really only have this advanced data for college back to the 2014 season, or it might be 2013. But then once you need to have four years of data for players that played until they were seniors. So you can't even necessarily use all that. You've got to go back to 2017 before you can really start using this data. So I've done a lot of research on it, but the sample size is still small.

So a lot of the historical stuff like Dominator, yards per team pass attempt, those sort of things are still carrying a stronger signal. I do weight them into my model, though. So I have the rookie supermodel over at uh fantasy life and i did it for running back wide receiver tight end and it does get a small weight uh in the model and mostly i look at career for that versus and i will there's a small small percentage that goes to like their best season that they had and i do the same thing for yards per outrun so there is something there but i'm really curious to see like what this looks like over like the next four or five years as we get more and more data,

you know, into the pool. So I bring him to Kua and I think he's a really good example for per route data. Again, why it's useful. He never was able to really put together a full season at the collegiate level due to injuries and other things.

But if you just look at his per route stuff, it jumps off the page, highest target per route run rate in the class, not even close. And then if you look at elite yard per route run rates of wide receivers who have been drafted recently, 3.1d lamb davante smith aj brown jamar chase 3.3 uh jackson smith and jigba 3.4 t higgins 3.5 puka nakua 3.6 jaylen waddle like that's a pretty crazy list to be on and every other player is elite like obviously pukunuku is not like those guys

but he does have an opportunity in la someone stopped me from getting so much pukunuku yeah you know what the nice thing is like i don't and i don't know where you're drafting him i was in a i'm in a rookie draft right he's free yeah i i think he i think he did go in like the middle of the third round um just Tank Dell and Michael Wilson. But in that range, which is definitely more expensive than he was in May, the word's getting out a little bit. It used to be that you get to round four, round five, and he might still be there.

He was also really explosive. So 27% of his targets turned into reception of 15-plus yards or more. That's something else that I have in the model so he he checks quite a few boxes the thing that really hurt him um you know is just uh the fact that he you know went later in the draft so like that's definitely pulling down his score like in the supermodel um his age also pulls him down a little bit but to your point jacob like he was also battling through injuries so sometimes guys that have that over the course of their career, it's really hard to be like, oh yeah, I'm coming

out after year three, right? When you haven't really been able to put your full career out there in front of everybody. So definitely think there's some things I like about Nakua. I like him a lot more in Dynasty. Not as into spinning like my last pick and best fall on him like I see a lot of people do. It could work, but I think it's tough.

Yeah, I really do fear if he's making an impact in the second half of the season, it's because things have just gone every bit as bad in Los Angeles as they did last year. And they don't have half their starters playing. But I do want to say, Dwayne, we've got five cells here, and I'm going to give you your choice. Jake gave us five names. You can pick the one that you agree the most with, or you can pick the one that you agree at least with. But Deontay Johnson, DJ Moore, T. Higgins, DK Metcalf, and George Pickens were the five guys he had on here as dynasty cells.

And I'm sure he's got good justification. You're free to take him to task or just agree with him. Yeah. So Deontay Johnson's my one I disagree with with the most just because we've seen deontay really be a high-end target earner period like over you know the course of his career um he's another guy that's had to struggle a little bit with bad quarterback play including ben rothisberger um so yards per route run don't come in quite as strong but like his targets per route run data is strong um i mean and like just his raw target data is really good.

In fact, when Best Ball Mania opened, he was one of the most underpriced players, in my opinion. He was a round seven pick. Now he's gotten up to mid-round six. So Dynasty, and I think people are overrating the fact that he didn't score the touchdowns last year. I think it will be hard, even with Kenny Pickett at quarterback, given the number

of targets he's going to get this year to not score five touchdowns you know could score six or seven just based on like what we typically see guys that get uh that sort of target share um dj more like also another player that's really good but like you're just going to need a lot of things to go right for you i mean i talked about just about Justin Fields earlier, 16% scramble rate, and he also handles 20% of the team's design rushing attempts. Offenses that have that kind of stylistic quarterback, they don't throw the ball a lot. Now, they could open up and decide to throw it more,

but I think it's by how much. That's my biggest worry with DJ Moore is he could have a 30%. I was playing around with this the other day. I was like, just give him a 30% target share share which isn't realistic like his targets per route run data has never supported something like that but what if he did have that and it's still like oh wow 115 120 targets like what we're projecting this team now again this is a one year view right now that i'm talking about on dj more but he's also starting to get up there a little bit by the time if the bears ever were at a position to maybe open up their offense, like how far away

are we talking from night from right now? So like, I, I, I totally get that one. I'm actually Jacob. I'm with you. I'm hitting these all super fast, but I'm with you on T Higgins. Um, I think your profile is more like a wide receiver three. I give him wide receiver two credit because he does play with Jamar chase, but then I'm also like, Hey guys, like we don't, we don't have to make the same excuse for Devonta Smith. He plays with AJ Brown and he still got his like, so there are players that come out and still demand high targets. It is tough though.

When you have high target competition, it is a factor, right? And you're in your target share. But for me, T Higgins is one year away from people drafting him and redraft more in the range that you take Terry McLaurin, right? And guys like that this year, um, Metcalf, T Higgins is one year away from people drafting him and redraft more in the range that you take Terry McLaurin. Right.

And guys like that this year, um, Metcalf. I don't know, man. Like I, I still like him, but I don't know.

Like now you had JSN. That's my biggest question. Like I really love JSN. He was number one in my rookie model. And like, now you got to deal with him too. So yeah. And Pickens,

I'm with you. I'm out on Pickens. Like I, I thought his data, um, it doesn't mean he can't be good like there's always exceptions like everybody wants you always use davante adams oh man he was never good at any of those things for three years and all of a sudden he exploded yes there are exceptions to these rules but realistically when someone profiles

like george pickens you're going to be an outlier to actually turn out to be really good yeah the per outdone data for pickens is disgusting it's like anytime you have somebody that bad they're not good um in his defense like they were just using him on nine routes like it was really just a terrible design all around and so like of course he's not drawing targets i brought up dionte um not that i think he's like a clear sell necessarily in dynasty in redraft he's clearly undervalued I think um but I just wanted to point out like that his per route data did fall off pretty significantly 28 percent target per run rate each of the past two years down to 24 percent

last year and I think the clear reason is that he wasn't the safety blanket anymore and he was used down the field a lot more his average route depth was 6.2 yards in each of the two previous seasons that rose to 9.4 that's a massive jump um year over year um and so do you think that in this type of role he's going to be the elite target draw that we have seen in the past because he wasn't last year and he was really inefficient especially on his downfield looks last year yeah i still think that he's going to be because the the other thing that like just looking at this data there's also just variants like there's just years where someone's at a 28 and they're at a 24 and and typically we wouldn't blink because 24 is pretty good but when you were

28 the year before like yeah it makes it makes everyone suddenly look at it you know and and i get it like that's what we do we analyze all things. But I think there's a really good chance that it's just literally variance, you know, and also these efficiency stats can also have a lot of variance from year to year, just like, you know, all the stuff with drops and things like that. So I try not to overreact, especially if someone's still

young and they're in their prime, like we have with Deontay Johnson. I'd be more worried if he was 31 and this was happening, even though really the data shows that we don't necessarily get the signal we We think when players get old, pretty much, they just hit a cliff like Adam Harstad from football guys has done some really, really great work like in that area, studying those things. Um, but what I would say is at his age and given the start we've seen to his career, I still assume, and even last year, like graded him as a wide receiver one-worthy target earner. Was he as good as he was the years before?

No, but still very high end. So I tend to lean into the larger sample when the player is still at the age that we're talking about with Deontay Johnson. I would say I think Deontay Johnson's fantasy managers would be very pleased with some variance in his efficiency. They would like to see a year where those targets are turning into more yards and more fantasy points yeah we haven't seen it yet really um dj more we'll just talk about dj more heath because i know that you're upset we'll finish up with that yeah um i've been

on it on the dj more bandwagon the whole time um but i am a little concerned about what we saw last year his target per round rate was down to 23.6% from 26% the year before. That could just be variance. But he really didn't have much to compete with. And the stat that I brought up earlier where we're measuring wide receivers relative to the wide receiver teammates, the fact that he was so pedestrian in that area is a bit of a concern for me as well. And so from a projection standpoint, he's going to have to be like like duane talked about he's going to have to be one of the absolute best players in the nfl in terms of per route rates

to be relevant for fantasy to be a top 20 well i think the big thing and we we had um like dave just just got back from chicago and was there and and spent some time talking to the Bears. And he said one of the real things that he came away with was that they don't want to harness Justin Fields too much, but that scramble rate that Dwayne referenced, they would really, really, really like to cut that back. They'd really like to have an offensive line that he can trust a little bit more and for him to drop back and have a wide receiver maybe who gets open and just throw the ball and not run so often on design.

Now, that's a tough thing for a quarterback like him. It's such a great athlete to do, but it's also something that we generally see younger quarterbacks, I think, at least the ones that end up being successful, find a way to do that. And so that's one where the pass volume could go up quite a bit without the drop backs going up that much if he could lower the number the sack rate and lower the scramble rate yeah i think that is possible i think he could really help fields especially down the field um i will bring up we just had a regression or a regression episode with jared smola beyond the

box score and we talked about dj more a lot in that and one of the reasons was his off target rate on downfield throws 15 plus air yards was 55 that was the worst in the nfl among qualified players um cow pits didn't have quite enough targets to qualify but his was 75 by the way 55 off target rate on downfield attempts and then the other thing with dj more regression is probably headed his way is his yards after the catch perception was 2.9 yards last year his career average was over five his lowest single season rate was 4.5 so it was like cut in half randomly i think one of the difficult things and it's it's dwayne mentioned it like when a guy is 29 or 30 and we do this we get ourselves in trouble there was the aj greens just not trying as hard because he wants out of cincinnati and alan robinson's just not trying hard because he wants out of Cincinnati, and Alan Robinson's just not trying hard because he wants out of Chicago.

And it turned out both those guys just didn't have anything left. But it was a very discouraging first half of the season, especially for D.J. Moore. There was a lot of outward expression of being unhappy with Baker Mayfield in that situation, which, again, could turn into the same thing with Justin Fields this year. All I'm going to do is just continue to defend D. that's fair you've got to Jacob apparently I need to come on the show and defend Deontay Johnson so maybe I'll come join you Heath you know since Jacob you know hates our guys I love Deontay Johnson okay I don't want to get anti-Deontay I just wanted to bring it up and see what you thought about the role change I I'm messing with you, man. I'm messing with you. I just thought it was funny that we said he hasn't

done it yet. I'm like, man, I got like 17.3 points per game two seasons ago. That was wide receiver eight. I feel pretty good about that. Heath has just been like chastising Diante for his yards per target forever. And like that, that's mainly what I meant. Like he hasn't really done that. But it is like, I understand why yards per route runs more valuable than yards per target. I also know that yards per target is something that has remained remarkably low for Deontay Johnson just year after year. It's bad quarterback play, sure. But it's just that one year, if he had 160 targets and he had one year where that was eight and a half or nine, that would be a pretty massive difference in terms of his production. Yeah.

Yeah. And it definitely ties to ADOT. it has ties to yards after the catch dionte like dj more had a weird year last year the 2.8 yards after the catch versus the years before five 4.6 5.3 but average depth of target went up and typically those things operate inversely as our as average target depth of target goes up your yards after the catch go down catch rate goes down as average depth of target goes up you know but the trade-off is if you're catching a ball deeper down the field you're like who cares i already caught it four yards further down the field like that's an extra four yards on my uh you know for my reception

anyway so it kind of all you know some of this stuff all ends up leveling out you know in the end um that we're micro analyzing. But definitely some ways like for Deontay to still end up as a top 12 wide receiver this year. Well, Jacob and Dwayne, both of you, thank you so much for the information. This was a fantastic conversation. Everybody go check out what Jacob's got going on at Sportsline. Go check out what Dwayne's got going on at Fantasy Life. Check out Dwayne on Twitter at Dwayne McFarland.

Appreciate both you guys. Appreciate everybody for listening. Go enjoy the fireworks, and we'll talk to you next Tuesday.