Fantasy Football Today - How to Win With Projections: Beyond the Box Score (06/20 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: June 24, 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.  JJ Zachariason and Ben Gretch are our guests on today's edition of Beyond the Box Score! We talk about projections and some really intriguing Fantasy trends that will help you win your league. First, which teams are the toughest to project (2:15)? The Bucs, Bears and Falcons come to mind! Then JJ and Ben talk about lessons they have learned from previous projections (6:55) including how your projections should not be the same as your rankings ... Which players have risen for these guys based on their projections (12:50)? How do we project the Eagles offense (14:30)? What do you need to know about RPOs (run/pass options) and why they matter for wide receiver production? And how much does a mobile quarterback affect WR production (24:00)? We've got fascinating statistics to tell you about! ... Should we just avoid the Ravens WRs (32:30)? Who is the next Jalen Hurts (37:05)? Who is the next Tony Pollard? How do we feel about Trevor Lawrence (42:40)? And we've got more projection topics and some rankings disputes (1:00:30) to end the show ... Email us at [e-mail] Follow our FFT team on Twitter: @FFToday, @AdamAizer, @JameyEisenberg, @daverichard, @heathcummingssr, @ctowerscbs Follow the brand new FFT TikTok account: https://www.tiktok.com/@fftoday Watch FFT on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/fantasyfootballtoday Get 20% off Fantasy Football Today merch: https://store.cbssports.com/collections/fantasy-football-today%20?utm_source=podcast-apple-com&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=buy-our-merch&utm_content=fantasy-football-collection Join our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/FantasyFootballToday/ Sign up for the FFT newsletter https://www.cbssports.com/newsletter You can listen to Fantasy Football Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast." To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Now, here's some combination of Adam, Dave, Jamie, and Heath. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to Beyond the Box. We're here on Fantasy Football Today. We are recording this on Tuesday, June 20th. You are hearing it. If you don't see it before that on YouTube, youtube.com slash fantasyfootballtoday on Saturday.

So happy weekend to all of you out there. I'm Adam Azer. We got some awesome guests today. First of all, of course, we have Jacob Gibbs. What's up, Jacob? Hey, Adam. Happy to be here. No tank top today, if you'll notice. Yeah, what's going on there? You a little self-conscious?

If you'll believe it, I'm at the end of my laundry and I'm actually out of tank tops, which is a ridiculous line to start this podcast with. But yeah, that's what's going on. Wow. And I have not had a working dryer since Friday, so I am also running low on clothes. But two guys who are, I don't know, probably well-clothed today, we have JJ Zachariason and Ben Gretsch. I've worked with Ben many, many times. JJ, first time working with him. But Jacob, you line this up, and we're going to talk about projections today. So why don't you introduce our two guests to the audience? Yes, we have two very special guests today. JJ actually hired me at Numberfire many years ago.

Got my foot in the door, working in the fantasy space, so super, super grateful to have JJ on. And then, yeah, worked with Ben quite a bit at CBS, which was, of course, a joy and a privilege for us all. And then, really, just two of the smartest guys in the industry, both doing their

own thing at a really, really high level. Now we're obviously going to get into their work as we talk about projections a lot here today. But yeah, just thank you guys so much for joining. Ben, what's up, man? Hey, I'm happy to be back, man. Of course. Thanks for having me and us. And JJ, how are you, man?

I'm great. I'm actually doing my laundry right now. I'm one step ahead of you guys, but yeah, I'm doing well. I'm pretty jealous of that. All right. So we're going to talk about projections. Um, some of the difficult parts of projections, some of the things you need to know, and we'll talk about some players and project some players. Let's start with this question, Ben, I'll throw it to you first. Give me one or two, however many, the toughest teams you find this year to project. Probably the ones that had really outlier volume last year. So we had the Bears

throw for fewer passes than any team. I guess there was one team, the 1990 Raiders, who are the only team since the 1982 strike season who averaged fewer pass attempts per game than the Bears. The Bears had only 22.2 pass attempts per game last year. There hadn't been a team under 25 in over a decade, if we want to talk about the more recent seasons. And so, you know, the gap from 25 just down to the 22.2 that the Bears had last year is quite large. A big part of that was that, I mean, they, they, they called passes at a low rate, but you also have, uh, Justin Fields having a league high scramble rate and a league high sack rate, which are two outcomes on, on cold passes where you don't actually get a pass attempt. So how much do you regress 22 pass attempts per game? If we hadn't had a, you know, a team below 25 and

over a decade, the Falcons are another team that were under 25. Then on the other side of that, you have like the bucks who were incredibly high. They were one of the highest past attempts per game since going, you know, way back, however far you want to go that 82 strike season. If you want, there's only one team that was higher than the bucks in past times per

game, the 2012 lions since 1982. It's like, obviously Tom Brady has retired. We have Baker Mayfield expected to be the quarterback there. Those are the teams for me that it's like obviously tom brady has retired we have baker mayfield expected to be the quarterback there those are the teams for me that it's like i i don't know how much to regress those teams uh you know the bucks are going to be different obviously the bears look pretty similar and the falcons do i guess as well in the quarterback change how how much are they

going to increase their pass attempts how much are they going to regress towards the mean? Those are big questions because it really impacts. Once you get the team volume, it really impacts the players. So out of the Falcons, the Buccaneers, and the Bears, who is your favorite fantasy wide receiver? So we're talking Godwin, Moore, and London, I guess. Who would be your favorite then? I've been pretty in on Godwin.

I've always been a pretty big DJ Moore guy. But I've had a hard time with his price at Underdog and some other places early in the offseason. Godwin's been a little bit cheaper. Godwin's rising. Moore's falling. They're converging. I think I would take Godwin straight up. And I think their prices will wind up right next to each other pretty quick here.

All right. Same question to you, JJ. Of those three wide receivers, London, DJ Moore, and Godwin, who's your favorite? Yeah, I mean, I think at price, I'm probably leaning Drake London. And I only say that because from a projection standpoint, and we'll get into this for sure, but from a projection standpoint, Drake London's projection doesn't necessarily line up with where he gets drafted. I mean, you could, you could argue that he's being overdrafted right now from a projection standpoint, but a lot of the things that I look for from a market dynamic standpoint,

uh, you know, he, he fits the bill. He's a second year wide receiver. Uh, we, you know, he's the first pass catcher being drafted from his team by ADP. Um, you know, those are the things that, that generally, uh, you know, those are the things that, that generally, uh, you know, when a wide receiver has those traits, uh, they generally break out at a better rate than the alternative. So I think, uh, you know, London to me, uh, as someone who I'm not necessarily like aggressively targeting because of the, the, uh, the team level questions that we have about how pass heavy they're actually going to be. But fortunately in that environment, he can still capture a 25% target share pretty pretty easily because there's not that much competition. And for you, JJ, which

team or teams do you find it most difficult to project? Yeah, you know, the team that popped in my mind was Chicago for sure. You know, everything that Ben mentioned, I definitely agree with the the pass rate that they had last year was the lowest that we've seen since, you know, at least 2011. I usually date back to 2011 with a lot of my stuff and it was by far uh the lowest uh since that time for during that time frame um and then you get this you know justin fields gets a new weapon in dj moore and you ask yourself okay are they gonna really change up this offense uh and and become more pass heavy and i think a lot of people are making the connection to what happened with josh allen when they added stefan diggs what happened to jalen hertz when they added Stefan Diggs, what happened to Jalen Hurts when they added A.J. Brown,

and making this assumption that Justin Fields is going to make this leap passing. But I'm not sure if the pass rate is going to necessarily be there. They did add some bodies to that backfield, and that's another reason why that team is hard to project is because the backfield has three able running backs who we're not sure exactly how they're going to divvy that up and what the pass catching is going to look like out of the backfield. You know, what kind of target share is DJ Moore going to get in that offense? So I just think there's a lot up in the air with that Chicago team right now.

All right, Jacob, why don't you take us to our next topic here as we move on with projections? We're going to talk about some of the lessons we've learned from previous projections. And also, it should be said, I mean, these projections are not, you know, you hear from Heath all the time, right? He says, well, in my projections, he's this, but I changed it in my rankings, right? They're not be all end all, they're guesses, right? So we'll talk about all that stuff. And by the way, you should follow these two on Twitter. Ben is at Yards Per Gretch, which he thinks rhymes with catch. We've been debating this for years. Yards Per Gretch. And JJ is at Late Round QB. Jacob, where are we going next?

I think we'll just start with the lessons from building projections over the years. We've been doing this for quite a while now. And I think just in reading Ben's sub stack, there are so many things that you catch yourself in reflection that are really, really important to helping your process along the way. Humility is a word that he used. And I think that comes up a lot for me. I get so excited about players and let the high expectations or bias towards a player kind of get conflated into the team level stuff when really it starts at a team level. And then it starts with a quarterback and the coaching tendencies and stuff like that and the fact that i think somebody like elijah moore and gary wilson are just so good that they can help zach wilson and a team ascend to a next level um really doesn't come to fruition because we didn't have

any evidence that that was coming outside of those receivers um so that was just one i wanted to point out and i wanted to ask jj and ben if they had anything that stood out as an important lesson from their time building projections over the past few years? Yeah, I'll start. I mean, I think that the number one thing for me is to always remember that your projections and what you're building there should not necessarily be your rankings. You shouldn't just take your projections and automatically convert them over to rankings. And the main reason for that is, you know, you're looking at median outcomes with these projections, usually, right?

These 50th percentile outcomes, the most likely outcome. And really, to me, the projection building process itself is more powerful and helpful for you as a fantasy football player than the end number that you're getting from the projections. Of course, you're going to see how these guys project out and what they look like. You know. If Rashad White has X projection and he's going in some area of the draft where that X projection is just far, far outpacing that, then sure, he's probably going to be a value. But the bottom line is that when you're building out these projections, the most important piece is usually the early round guys. Because once you

get into the middle rounds and the late rounds, you're looking at the higher range of outcome only. You're not really worried about floor nearly as much. And the other thing to remember here too, with regard to median outcomes is that when you're building out target shares and rush shares for these individual players, it's important to be as realistic as possible. And it's very easy to read the news and see what beat writers are saying and so on and saying and, and give a player like an 80th percentile outcome for their rushing yard for their rush attempt share or their target share, as opposed to a 50th percentile outcome,

just based on these random things that you're hearing. But you're, you're much more likely to be accurate if you're just very objective and not biased with the way that you approach things. So I really think that overall, the biggest lesson is just not be biased and to understand that you're looking at a median outcome here and not necessarily an 80th percentile outcome or something like that. I think those are great. I would just piggyback on and it kind of touches on some of that and the reasons for that um and jay just talking about humility it's a word that jacob used as well my piggyback thing would be that the biggest thing

i've learned from projections over the years is how wrong i usually am with them i mean there's a lot of stuff in the nfl season that plays out chaotically and a lot different than we're actually expecting it. And so then the big question might be, why would you even use projections? And I think that's actually an interest or why'd you do them? They take a lot of time and energy. I think that's an interesting question. And that's the part. That's why I would say it's the biggest lesson for me, because it's the part it that over the years I've actually – there was one year I didn't do it. I think it was one of the years I was at CBS actually. I didn't do a full set of projections because we had so many other things going on. You know, we had you at CBS because we wanted you to do projections, Ben. You really dropped the ball. That was the year you decided not to do it. But I felt like I missed out on a lot of stuff from a research perspective.

So for me, what I would say is, what do I get out of projections if I actually know, if I know they're going to be pretty wrong and there's a lot of ways that they can go wrong and they might not be accurate. It's the actual research. It's the deep, it's understanding

the things that are possible or plausible. The decisions that you have to make as you do the projections that JJ was talking about. Sometimes you feel yourself pulled a certain way because of player bias or a bias against a player. You know, you're starting to understand though, a range of outcomes, a lot of possible scenarios, what things can happen within an offense.

You're asking yourself questions like if this player was actually hurt, what happens in this depth chart, identifying teams where there's interesting backup situations um situations wide receiver groups where there's a lot deeper or a lot thinner you know like i did washington's recently and i felt like came away feeling like they're gonna have the same three receivers run routes on almost every play which was a trade of the jaguars last year that was really interesting for a guy like zay jones he was always out there and he had some spike weeks as a result. They don't really have a wide receiver four.

I mean, De'Ami Brown has not hit and done anything interesting. Cam Sims is a guy they've rotated the last couple years. He's no longer with the team. And so it's like, okay, it's going to probably be McClure and Dotson and Curtis Samuel all the time. So those little things as opposed to my final projection on Curtis Samuel, whatever that might be, it's the process than the result for me. Has there been a guy so far in your projection process for either of you that you did the projection? I guess what you're saying maybe about Dotson and McLaurin and Samuel, Ben, oh, wow, I'm glad I did this because'm I'm either significantly higher or significantly lower than I was before this process.

Yeah, I mean, I think for me, if you look at Green Bay, especially pre draft Green Bay, they had very little at pass catcher. And then obviously, you know, they go out and they get Jaden Reed, who I liked a good bit as a prospect. But you're looking at their their depth chart and similar to a team like Washington. They really only have three wide receivers that are reliable. We don't even know if Jaden Reed's going to be reliable or not. And so as a result, you know, you're not projecting a Christian Watson or Romeo Dobbs, or even a Jaden Reed for this like absurd target share, but you understand that the absurd target share ceiling can be there in those scenarios for those players.

And I think that's where the process really comes into play is that, you know, if there is a loaded wide receiving group or a loaded backfield or, or honestly, you know, another piece of the projection building process that, that usually goes overlooked is when there's like a mobile quarterback. And,

you know, you have Justin Fields, who's going to take a lot of that running, that, that rush share from, from the bears, which leaves less rush share for the other running backs on offense. Now you're divvying that up between three other running

backs. So, uh, the process is just super, super important. And green Bay was one where especially pre-draft pre-draft, I was like, I don't even know how this team's going to get to a 100% target share in total because they just had such, such a poor group across the board. Uh, but now you can understand and see where the ceiling could come from if things really work out with Jordan Love. Yeah, Jacob, I want you to get in on this too. But you mentioned mobile quarterbacks, JJ. Has anybody done an Eagles projection? And I mean, I know we could just look at them and say, OK, they're awesome. They went to the Super Bowl last year. Jalen Hurts is the man. Devante Smith and A.J. Brown are stars. Dallas Goddard's great. But you do have a mobile quarterback.

And I try to do this, you know, I try to look at over the last seven years every example of teams that had two wide receivers that finished in the top 16 in PPR. And you really, you never get a third guy, basically, with a lot of targets. I didn't find one example of a third guy that had a hundred targets. And then when you get the teams that don't throw the ball a lot, like

the Vikings one year with, I think Jefferson and Thielen, the Seahawks with Metcalf and Lockett, and last year with the Eagles, uh, with Brown and Smith, your third target guy. I mean, the most, uh, the most, uh, that targets that the third guy had was not even 70. So I do wonder about them. It's like, we're taking A.J. Brown in the second round. We're taking Devontae Smith in the third round. Dallas Goddard, a lot of people have as a top five or top six tight end. And they just added DeAndre Swift,

and they had the fewest running back targets last year. And that probably will change now with DeAndre Swift. I don't really want to bog myself down on projections with them because they're all so talented and so good. But I am wondering, and Jacob, I want to give you the first word. If you've thought about that with the Eagles and how everyone's going to put up all those fantasy points again. Yeah, I think the Eagles are a really important team to bring up. I'm not so sure that Swift will see the targets that he's seen in the past. I'm really, really curious to see how his target parameter will translate in this situation. But I think, honestly, we just throw this right to Ben. This is one of our topics that we were going to talk

about later, but I think we just start with it now is RPOs. And so Ben, on his sub stack, wrote a really interesting piece about RPOs and the Eagles were the primary focus and just how concentrated their target distribution was. The ancillary pieces in Philly's offense really didn't see hardly any looks compared to other teams. And so I think I would just throw this to Ben to let him talk about the research he found there because it's pretty compelling stuff. And I will throw it to Ben as soon as we take a very quick break here on Fantasy Football Today. Did you know that across Ontario, utility damage happens 19 times a day? That's over 4,222 incidents a year. Don't let your next dig be one that causes costly delays or safety risks.

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Alright, so we led into Ben talking about his research on the Philadelphia Eagles and on RPO's run pass options and those offenses. So, Ben Gretsch, lay it out for us. Yeah, I mean, it's more of a theory than a fact. One thing we do know is that RPOs are being called at a higher rate in the NFL. PFF has written about this trend.

Obviously takes a little bit more advanced charting to determine these types of plays. And this actually ties in with, you know, it's so funny, we're kicking it around 100 ways, but JJ has written recently about mobile quarterback. A lot of what you were just talking about, the skill position production in offenses with mobile quarterbacks, so we're going to have to kick it to JJ for that as well. But one of the reasons I think that might be the case, and a lot of what you just talked about, is potentially this increase

in RPOs, and really these option plays started with the read options which were i mean i think i i think rg3 was one of the first guys where it became pretty popular but we had the read option be pretty popular in like the colin kaepernick era and this was just in the earlier part of the last decade um the rpos have been which are run pass options have been just more in the last maybe five years three years are really starting to pick up the the thing about those plays is the linemen on past plays linemen will drop back into a pass block formation on run plays they'll block forward but on rpos they they run block but they can't get downfield if the pass does come out they can't get more than a yard downfield uh or they'll get an eligible downfield so the ways that rpos work is they it has to be a

quick decision neither has to be a quick handoff or throw to basically the primary target and so basically what i was talking about this in terms of the projection math is when that read is made it's not we often talk in projections about the pass rate and the call pass plays and this and that but an RPO can be either and when the pass is made it is going to the primary option it's not a read I'm going through my progressions type of pass play so AJ Brown running a quick slant on an RPO where Jalen Hurts reads the linebackers playing run pulls the ball and throws if the linebacker isn't playing run it's a handoff so it's not so it actually winds up if you think about the math of it it winds up concentrating the market share because it's either aj brown or devonta smith usually in that eagles

offense another team that has a lot of rpos miami if you go to pro football reference they actually have a a part of their website where they write that or they have a list of the rpo calls the eagles and the dolphins were the top two teams in the nfl and rpos last year they both had over 100 excuse me and past plays off rpos 120 or more and only nine teams i think had even 60 so this is a kind of a small subset of it they're double two-thirds of the league if you catch what i'm saying the dolphins don't uh do as much of the read option and the quarterback running off of this but very similar where those plays are either going to be a run play or they're going to go directly to tyreek hill typically sometimes waddle waddles

usually running more down the field um the third team the team that was in third and past attempts off rpos was the falcons as a third team I mentioned in this similar thing occurred for Drake London and Kyle Pitts we saw really high targets per out run numbers for both of those guys and sort of just trying to understand those numbers within the context of the offense how both of those guys had really strong per route volume numbers but also not great seasons and I think it all does kind of tie back into this increase in RPOs which is just a subset of the plays but I do think you know what i was writing about was as i go through my projections on these teams that are calling

more rpos i am going to be more willing to concentrate the target shares as i allocate the you know the volume within the offense to two or three guys because they are calling this subset of plays where it's either a run or it's a pass to those primary players. Before JJ weighs in, are there any other teams? We already go into the season thinking Tyreek Hill and Jalen Waddle are going to dominate targets. I'm a little, you know, the Eagles, you know, it's just a little bit different for me because Goddard missed five games. And in the, you know, before he got hurt, Devante Smith was like the number 35 wide

receiver in fantasy. But we know, you know, Brown and Smith will get the targets. Are there any teams, I'm thinking maybe the Giants, that run a lot of RPOs or did last year that you think you might be concentrating a lot of targets on one or two guys, Ben? Any RPO-heavy teams? Those are, I would have to dig.

Those are the three that immediately come to mind. Let me pull up the... The Colts? Oh, the three that immediately come to mind. Let me pull up the – The Colts? Oh, the Colts are a great example. Yeah, that's a great example of one that could really see their RPO rate increase. So the Ravens were fourth. That's another good one as well. I mean I think we see Lamar do that a little bit.

Cardinals were fifth. We see it with Kyler. What's interesting is RPOs don't typically amount to quarterback runs but because of the way that they're doing the read and it might just be because these quarterbacks are also used to making you know doing read option plays i think it's that the read and and the the handoff and the and the pulling the ball number one is something the quarterbacks are familiar with from read option runs and number two is something where um um it looks similar to the defense right so the read option where the read option is it's either give to the running back or the quarterback runs the rpo is a give to the

running back or throw traditionally not a quarterback run but we do see rpo rates higher in i mentioned with miami too it doesn't run a lot. But all those other teams, mobile quarterbacks, I mean, Atlanta last year was, with Mariota, might not be as, you know, Ritter I think has some mobility, but it might be a little bit different this year with Ritter under center, a big question to ask. But typically, these RPO offenses are also offenses with mobile quarterbacks, and they are doing some read option stuff as well probably especially like the eagles i know they do some read option jaylen hertz has uh had the

most design runs for a quarterback by quite a bit more than any other team the guy who was second design runs justin fields was another team that came to mind that we theoretically see some more rpos from them as well which could be a positive for a guy like dj more getting back to that discussion right uh jj your reaction to any of this? Yeah, I think that's actually really interesting because some of the data that I've looked at with mobile quarterbacks, if we're just going to make the correlation and the connection of mobile quarterbacks and RPOs,

which we should, as Ben just laid out, the argument would then be that the weapons on those teams aren't necessarily seeing a ton of volume because the volume on those teams might not be that high, but they're seeing very high target shares, right? So that's what we saw from Devante Smith and AJ Brown last year. See that from Jalen Waddle and Tyree Kill. And that actually coincides pretty well with the data that I've looked at with mobile quarterbacks. So what I did was I looked at team quarterbacks over the last 12 seasons. So since 2011, and I sort of bucketed

these teams by teams that had zero to 40 rush attempts across the season at quarterback, teams that had 41 to 79 rush attempts, and then teams who had 80 or more rush attempts. And when you look at those three buckets, so basically the immobile quarterbacks, the semi-mobile quarterbacks, and the very mobile quarterbacks. And if you look at the average rank of their wide receivers and PPR points scored, as you got to a more mobile quarterback, the average rank of their team wide receivers got worse. So the first group averaged a 13.9 rank when the average obviously is 16.5 across the league. It's just the, you know, one to 32 and average that out. And then the next group, the average was 17.3. And then the next group where you have the mobile quarterbacks was 20.8. But with that being said, so, you know, as teams are getting more mobile at the

quarterback position, their team wide receivers are scoring fewer points. But the thing is to Ben's point about RPOs target share, if a, if a player can capture a very large target share in his offense, that can obviously combat the lower volume in that offense. And teams that are running the ball out with their quarterback aren't going to have as much passing volume. And so what I have found is that actually when you look at the market and you compare how players, fantasy managers have drafted these players through the years. So what I do is I chart, you know, average draft position on the X axis and then points per game on the Y axis. And then you get a trend line and that trend line essentially tells you average draft position expectation,

right? So if a guy gets drafted 50th overall over the last 11 years or 12 years, he would be expected to score, let's say 12 PPR points per game, whatever that expectation is. And so when a player exceeds or plays below that expectation, we can look back and kind of find trends as to which players are the market is the market generally getting right and wrong with. Right. And so when I looked at that with these mobile quarterbacks and their pass catchers, we generally don't do a terrible job at understanding and sort of embedding the fact that these pass catchers have a mobile quarterback. So, you know, a guy like Michael Pittman this year, for instance, you know, he's being drafted

where he's being drafted. And we might say, oh, he has a mobile quarterback. He's a rookie quarterback, which is also not a good thing. And therefore, as a result, we're going to knock him down our rankings. But the market generally already embeds that and accounts for that. And I think a lot of that could be the fact of what Ben's talking about with RPOs. And I didn't really think about this until this podcast. This is great because now I can go dig into it a little bit more, but it could be

the fact that these higher end wide receivers and these number one, number two wide receivers on these teams are able to capture large target shares. It's more so the offenses that have mobile quarterbacks that aren't running those RPpos maybe those are the ones you would want to avoid more uh with those pass catchers because they're not going to necessarily see uh the the target share ceiling that the other offenses would see oh man so this is actually really fascinating jacob this is great stuff here isn't it um so i guess yeah i mean people would be like well yeah deandre hopkins right so ben mentioned kyler murray and he mentioned the Eagles as RPO teams, and DeAndre Hopkins is an absolute beast.

Marquise Brown was a top, I think, six wide receiver before DeAndre Hopkins came back from the suspension. And then, of course, you have A.J. Brown and Devontae Smith. So that's the counter to the whole you can't have a great wide receiver with a mobile quarterback. So are there mobile quarterbacks, Ben, that don't have a high RPO rate that wouldn't? Again, I mean, the only one I'm thinking of right now is Daniel Jones. Because I feel like we've covered most of the other super mobile quarterbacks.

Richardson, we obviously don't know. Yeah, he's a lot lower on the list from last year. But it is sort of a who's who of the mobile QBs near the top of the list that throw. I'm sorting by actual pass attempts on RPOs because there are some teams who run a decent number of RPOs but don't actually throw, or they get classified as running a lot of RPOs, but they tend to hand off at a higher rate, it seems like. And then there's other teams that it seems like every time they call the RPOs, they throw. And so I thought that was important to actually go,

well, which teams were throwing out of RPO looks and which teams are not. But yeah, when you classify by that, it seems like it's all mobile quarterbacks near the top. So yeah, I'm not seeing a ton that are further down that aren't running a lot of those. This is also just a subset of their overall play calling. And I don't know that this is everything in terms of the full explanation. And I think JJ did a really good job of differentiating the important point here, which is we're talking about target share. We're not talking about targets because the other side of it,

as you were alluding to as well, the mobile quarterbacks immediately mean we get fewer pass attempts. They scramble more. So the big thing with Justin Fields and the Bears I mentioned at the top, his scramble rate, there's basically three outcomes on a drop back,

on a called pass play, a scramble, a sack, or a pass attempt. Immobile quarterbacks, guys like Tom Brady, especially who get the ball out quick and don't take a lot of sacks, they don't scramble a sack or a pass attempt immobile quarterbacks guys like tom brady especially who get the ball out quick and don't take a lot of sacks they don't scramble a lot really high percentage of the called pass plays their drop backs turn into pass attempts right mobile quarterbacks their offenses often don't call as many pass plays but also on the pass plays that are called a larger percentage of them turn into non-pass attempts so they're either sacks because they're trying to extend the play they tend to carry higher sack rates

mobile quarterbacks or their scrambles justin fields last year a lot fewer dropbacks i think he was 19th in the nfl and dropbacks than most quarterbacks but he's still tied for the league lead and sacks taken and led the nfl in scrambles despite way fewer dropbacks and so scrambles are different than designed runs he also had a ton of design runs i mentioned earlier i think he was second in the league behind jalen hurts in design runs among quarterbacks but he led in scramble specifically on a called pass play he takes off and runs uh and was very good on those he got a ton of rushing yards off of those i think a big part of when we talk about what's going to happen with the bears the addition of d. I think a big part of when we talk about what's going to happen with the Bears,

the addition of DJ Moore, a big part of that and the improvement on the offensive line, it should help Justin Fields turn more dropbacks into pass attempts. We should expect them to have open receivers and for him to not have to scramble, not take as many sacks. And we also should expect a higher called pass rate. But there are multiple elements that led to them having a really low pass number last year. And so it's just, you know, trying to parse all of these elements of it, trying to parse the stuff like the RPOs. And when you're projecting it, I mean, this is, again, when we go back to why you're going to be wrong on a lot of projections,

these things are also changing year over year, right? And so you're talking about what teams might change, what are we thinking of? And I jj did another really great job there of alluding to the market sentiment being the biggest thing if everyone is pushing a team way down that might actually be the team for us to be in on even if a lot of the macro trends don't look that exciting so there's a lot of layers uh i'm still getting through my projection process myself but like the actual process of it is obviously important to get right. By the way, I'm sorry. We did not mention Josh Allen. I'm thinking probably pretty low on the RPO pass attempt list.

He was – last year he was ninth in overall pass attempts. I looked back at 2021, and the top of the leaderboard in 2021 was a little more bunched. There were five teams with over 100 RPO pass attempts but none with over 120 i mentioned last year there were two with over 120 bills were one of those five teams last year and so were the cardinals mahomes also has had a decent number of rpos and so the chiefs were one of those teams eagles and miami both were over 100 in 2021 as well. Gotcha. We have seen some from Alan.

He was third in the NFL in 2021 in RPO passes. All right, Jacob. This is really so cool. I want to direct people to the article. It's bengretsch.substack.com. And the article is titled How RPOs Are Changing the Projection, if you want to read more about it. I got to say, Jacob, I listen to all this. If there's one, I don't,

I just don't want to draft a Ravens wide receiver, you know, because I do like Mark Andrews quite a bit. And I think it's going to be a little messy with the distributions just for those wide receivers in Baltimore. So like we had Matt Harmon on last week, Jacob, right? Didn't he say he liked Rashad Bateman? I might be mixing our guests up. Yeah, no, he's a big Rashad Bateman guy. And I mean, he might be a really good

wide receiver, but I just know they're going to throw more. I just don't know. I just don't see it. I mean, there's just too much competition, I think, and I still think Mark Andrews is the guy. So I feel the same way with my concern about the Ravens. They added OBJ. They even added Nelson Aguilar.

They have Bateman, and now they draft, say, Flowers in the first round. They actually have receivers for the first time, a little bit of depth at that position for the first time in Lamar's tenure. They also, behind Andrews, I think have a tight end too, and Isaiah Likely. So they have a number of guys that can catch passes, and it will be tough to allocate all those targets in a projection but to jj's point the market is is already kind of on this i have been finding myself taking some bateman because he's going pretty late for a team's wide receiver one him and zay flowers go in like the 80s to 90 80p range uh over on underdog

beckham goes not long after them. All three of them get bunched in that range, but it does get baked into the market a little bit like JJ was talking about. Yeah. No, it's a good point. I'm never going to eliminate anybody. I just, I'm not going to invest too much

in a Ravens wide receiver, I don't think. But once you get into the 100s, you know, sure. All right, Jacob, where are we going next? I really wanted to talk about michael pitman jj brought him up um briefly i wanted to hear ben's thoughts on him as well he's somebody who's come up on every beyond the box score episode that we've done and i think that's because he has a really uh difficult projection to make we don't know what to expect from indy um but if the target chair does get more concentrated then i would expect him to be the player who

benefits from that. I think he's going to work the intermediate area of the field more and potentially pile up some targets there. Um, but yeah, when I, when I project Pittman, it does not look good. I think I'm a wide receiver 34, which is quite a bit below consensus. Um, does anybody have any thoughts on him through a projections lens? I am, I have my wide receiver 33, so I'm right there with you. Um, you know, he, he goes around there in sharper drafts. Uh, you know, you'll, you'll see him in best ball drafts go there, um, you know, right now. So, uh, I do think that he's a player who is very talented. Um, and if he had more of a household name, he would probably be an easy fade. Uh, once we get

into like home league drafts and stuff, because guys like that would be, you know, he'd be an easy top 24 kind of guy. But I do think because he's not necessarily a player, you know, last season, he burned a lot of people didn't have a very efficient season. What's it had one of the least efficient seasons that we've seen, you know, from a wide receiver. But if you want to look at, you know, a lot of people will look at what happened last year and obviously associated with what's, with what's going to come the upcoming season. If you look at the team level stuff, Indianapolis last year had the worst touchdowns per game rate in the NFL. And generally that kind of number regresses back to a mean, uh, the following season, we generally see a pretty big jump from teams. And I looked at

teams since 2011 who had a 1.7, uh, touchdowns per game rate or lower. And Indianapolis is 1.47. So they were well below this. The average jump in touchdowns per game that we see from teams that are below that 1.7 mark is 0.64 per game. So that means that Indianapolis is based on that number would be seeing 10 or 11 more offensive touchdowns this year than what they saw last year. So there's a lot going for him favorably in terms of that team just being better, even though the mobile quarterback situation is there, the rookie quarterback situation is there, where usually we don't see great numbers from rookie quarterbacks. And that's more reflected in the market where you can take advantage of that more so than the mobile quarterback thing. But I do think that, you know, Pittman is just not the household name, whereas ADP is going to

go nuts to where he's going to be like a third round pick or even a fourth round pick more than likely in most drafts to where I'm going to sit here and say, yeah, all this research on mobile quarterbacks and rookie quarterback says, you know, we should probably avoid Michael Pittman. But I just don't think that the that is ADP is going to match that as much. No, on NFC right now, he's 58th. He's wide receiver, 28. Christian Kirk, Christian Watson, Chris Godwin, and then someone who doesn't have the word Chris in his name. right now he's 58th he's wide receiver 28 uh christian kirk christian watson chris godwin and then someone who doesn't have the word chris in his name michael pitman and then mike williams um sorry jacob i want to go a little off the board with my next question here um and then we'll take a break so one of the things that predict projections might not help

with is uh predicting the next ridiculous breakout, like Josh Allen when he got Stephon Diggs and Kyler Murray when he got DeAndre Hopkins and Jalen Hurts last year when he gets A.J. Brown. Ben, talk about that from a projection standpoint and if there's anyone this year that you're going to project to make a huge leap statistically. Well, this is a big reason why I say it's important to not, I mean, for me, it's more about the process of doing the projection than the result.

It's important to not just finish your projections and say, I'm going to rank these players exactly this way. As JJ laid out as well at the top of the show, you're not going to just do your rankings directly off your projections. Adam, you even mentioned that Heath has said this as well. It's an important thing that basically anyone who does projections is going to just do your rankings directly off your projections adam you even mentioned that he has said this as well it's an important thing that basically anyone who does projections is going to tell you if it's your first time doing projections don't take those results and just rank off of them because i don't actually think what you just described is something

that you can capture in a projection and that is what determines fantasy leagues. Like the Eagles last year all had massive win rates, and they did something that not just projections didn't have, and this doesn't mean we were bad at projecting. Nobody was really projecting it. You can look at the market. If you knew the Eagles were going to do that, you could have went and picked the Eagles to win just the NFC East. They weren't the favorites to win the NFC East.

The Cowboys were. They were plus money to win their division. You certainly could have picked them to win the NFC and go to the Super Bowl at a really long, you know, longer odds, not super long odds, but longer odds. You could have made a lot of money betting them in any, you know, market. You could have bet their overs on their player statistical props, whatever you wanted to do. The market wasn't as bullish on them the same way that projections wouldn't

have been super bullish on them. They hit on a ceiling. I think that's something that when, you know, a lot of us were doing the projections, we talked about this is possible. This is something, what if their pass rate does increase? What if Jalen Hurts is a better passer than people are giving him credit for? But this time last year, people were questioning whether Jalen Hurts should even be the starting quarterback, if he was a good enough passer to do that, or if he was just too gadgety or what have you. And he ended up ended up you know making some ridiculous throws in a super bowl by the end of that season that's the type of outcome that determines fantasy leagues those are the types of players we should be targeting i talked about this a lot adam when we were on shows together all the time when i was

at cbs we're looking for upside we're looking for breakout players i love to to to aim at youth uh and younger players and there's a lot of uncertainty there. And there's a lot of research that has shown that we can get bigger hits at ADP, that the market is going to be concerned about youth and not going to necessarily buy into players before they've seen it. And a lot of times, once you've seen it in the NFL, now you maybe are overpaying for production. You don't want to pay for past production. And the same thing is true in a projection. When I go through a projection, I have a hard time projecting B. John Robinson. I just noticed today my Nick Chubb projection is right up there with B. John Robinson. I think Nick Chubb's overvalued going in the early second

round, and I like taking B. John Robinson in the late first round but I I have Chubb projected for more because we have all this data on Nick Chubb that's it's so easy to do a projection for him in the Browns offense and give him nearly 300 carries and you know and be very efficient as well he's I think he's going to have another great rushing season but I don't think he has the type of receiving upside because we've seen year after year after year he doesn't get the targets B. John who I'm not necessarily projecting for huge receiving upside, I think if he hits, he hits in a way where he can do everything, including a bunch of receiving, which is something that was a big part of his profile coming out of Texas. And so you're talking about

a guy that could be whatever, the next Jonathan Taylor, the next Saquon Barkley. And if he is that player in year one, then he can be a superstar. He can be the RB1 overall, potentially. That's not going to show up in a projection. And so to your question, I kind of think it's a different discussion. But as I'm going through the projections, I'm trying to figure out, one of the big things is where there's limitations. And so like when JJ was talking through the Pittman thing, I'm also low on Pittman. I think there is a limitation to what his real ceiling is. I think he's a good player as well, but how much can they actually throw with a rookie mobile quarterback?

I think the best thing for him honestly would be if Richardson played poorly and got benched and Gardner Minshew comes in. That's a scenario I can see Michael Pittman actually crushing his ADP because suddenly they're throwing a lot more. Justin Fields, DJ Moore conversation. Fields is not going to get benched. What is the upside? It's not about how much do I regress back to the mean in my projection for the pass volume,

but how much can his scramble rate and sack rate and their call pass rate all improve to what is the upside for the Bears passing game? For me, it's like maybe league average. I don't even know if it is. And so then what does DJ Moore have to do to be a crush?

That's the one right there. I mean, you have to circle. If you're going to make the Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts comparisons and getting Stephon Diggs and getting A.J. Brown and just coming into their own for Hurts, it was his third season. For Allen, was it his third or his fourth season? Right around the same time. I mean,

if there's one guy that's going to blow away projections, I feel like it's Justin Fields. I don't know how you guys... I'm not saying he's going to, but he'd be my bet for the, like, long shot MVP to be the next two nerds. He could, but the pass volume, I think he could,

but so much of it would be rushing. I don't mind betting it on him. If he's a better passer, they'll throw more. And now they have DJ more. What do you think, Jacob? i've got an interesting name and i want to throw to jj um what about trevor lawrence potentially he's someone who does not project super well for me um like the other day we better jacob come on the other the other day we had a draft and i was like he barely projects better than gino smith who like people were so psyched when i got trevor

lawrence in the eighth or something and gino goes like nine rounds later and there's like an eight point difference in the projection but we're talking about the new receiver potentially elevating the offense in the top to the range of outcomes I I'm curious JJ or anybody what you think we'll start with JJ of Lawrence and that offense yeah I mean look I think a player like Trevor Lawrence in order for him to be a top three quarterback in fantasy, which is really what you need, essentially, to have like a true difference maker at the position in a single quarterback league, he's going to need like a Joe Burrow-esque type outcome. You know, he probably has comparable-ish rushing numbers, maybe even a little bit worse,

but, you know, could have the same passing upside with the weapons that he has. You know, Ben was talking about not being able to project this kind of stuff. And I totally agree with him. And that's why I focus so much of my analysis on market related dynamics and looking at like what kind of trends we can look at ADP. Like for instance, last year, you know, you're asking like which guys can blow up this year, you know, last season, uh, the guys who exceeded ADP expectation most at running back were Josh Jacobs and Tony Pollard. And I will say based on historical trends, Josh Jacobs was very hard to pinpoint. I'll be honest with you. Uh, but Tony Pollard was someone who I was on very heavily. It was not on Josh Jacobs, but I was on Tony Pollard really heavily. Uh, because when you historically had an RB two by, by his team or team RB two,

which is what Tony Pollard was by ADP last year, right? He got drafted after Ezekiel Elliott. And when that RB one was being drafted in the running back dead zone, so in that middle of round three into round six range, and the RB2 was a middle round pick, those RB2s historically, you had Austin Eckler when Melvin Gordon had his suspension. You had Tariq Cohen when Jordan Howard was in the dead zone. You had these guys who really, really blew up and way exceeded expectation. And so you can look at those sorts of dynamics and try to pinpoint which players are going to be good or far exceed where they're being drafted. And you mentioned a Gino Smith, another thing that I found, and this is going to be in my draft guide that I'm publishing

in 10 days somehow, I don't know how I'm going to get it done. But Gino Smith is very, very interesting because there is a strong correlation between quarterbacks who, aside from mobile quarterbacks, quarterbacks who exceed their ADP expectation, where they're being drafted and where their pass catchers get drafted. And if you look at teams that had top 70 pass catchers, 70 seems arbitrary, but it was a number that I did a lot of testing with and it just seemed to have the most correlation. But if you look at teams who had multiple top 70 overall ADP pass catchers, that includes tight end and wide receiver, the teams that had three or more of them, their quarterbacks were unbelievable historically. And that's what you're basically getting this year

with the Geno Smith and the teams that had, there've been two since 2011 who had four pass catchers in the top, uh, in the top 70. And both of those teams ended up being the number one team in offensive touchdowns per game that year was the Broncos back when they had Peyton Manning and it was the Patriots when they had Tom Brady. Um, so you can really look at, you know, we're trying to figure out, we're getting three of those with you think JSN is top 70 in ADP. I mean, well, I mean i mean depends on where you're at right so so more casual leagues uh you'll get them outside of there but uh you know if you're looking at best ball leagues and more competitive leagues right now he's he's in that top 70 range so uh you know another team that you could focus on where uh you know we don't know the quarterback

situation totally right now but could really do well in touchdowns per game because that's what you're really projecting here is you're trying to find good offenses that could really blow up. And then everyone in that offense would rise. Right. Um, and so, uh, basically the, the, the top 70 thing that I'm talking about that predicts current year touchdowns per game better than previous season touchdowns per game does. And so, uh, if you're looking at a team like Seattle, like I said, San Francisco is another one because you have george kittle debo samuel and brandon iuk who are all sort of in that range and they could possibly get three of them in the top 70 but their quarterback we don't we're not

comfortable with drafted right right so i would i would bet pretty strongly that whoever ends up being starter for them which i think we'd all lean Purdy if he's healthy, it's going to way exceed expectation based on where those guys are going. So the bowl case for Trevor Lawrence is that he does have Christian Kirk and Calvin Ridley going early, which is a good sign that the offense is going to be good in terms of touchdowns per game. Evan Ingram is a middle-ish round tight end. He's probably not going to end up being in the top 70,

but the more players you have in that range, the better it seems. I mean, it's pretty intuitive, right? It's a great point. It's and say Jones isn't going that much later either. They have four in the top, like 120 of a right. So the more that you can get in there, the more that you can pile up, the more bullish you should be on that offense. And so, you know, from that perspective, it's really hard to say, Hey, I'm going to fade Trevor Lawrence this year because his projection doesn't look that good because Because I agree, my projection for him is three or four spots below where he gets drafted. But I'm still cognizant of the fact that this overall situation, what the market is saying, what the masses are saying, they like this situation.

If that situation really pans out, then Trevor Lawrence is probably going to pan out. The guy I thought of when you brought up Lawrence, uh jacob was herbert and then brian in the chat mentions him while jj was talking he has three that are close i don't think quentin johnston has the top 70 adp but he's like 85 i think right now on underdog so it's close and gerald everett is still in the you know 13th round tight end range or something like that so he's another one with calum more coming over that the market's buying into all his weapons. I love that.

That's a great piece. I wonder though, because MJJ, maybe since you brought this up with Herbert, you've got Eckler who could have 800 receiving yards or something like that with ETN. I hope they get ETN more involved in the passing game with Seattle and Gino Smith.

I don't expect much from the running backs. I mean, when was the last time we had a Seattle running back heavily involved in the passing game? So I wonder, you know, Evan Ingram might be a little bit lower, but maybe ETN picks up some of that slack. And just your thoughts in general on that right after this break. All right, we're coming back. We're talking about, you know, what JJ was saying about if you have three players in the top 70 in ADP, get the quarterback of that team. But we didn't talk about that with running backs.

You were specifically talking about wide receivers and tight ends, right? So how did the running backs, like a guy like Eckler specifically, or McCaffrey, right, with the 49ers, how does that factor in there? Yeah, so I kind of view it more as like this offense is going to be good. And anytime an offense is going to be good, there's going to be a higher likelihood that the player that you're drafting from that offense ends up playing well. But I will say, I tested all of this with running back ADP in mind as well. And it got less signal when you added the running back ADP in there. It's really pass catchers or driving offenses. Cause we know

that passing drives offenses right at the end of the day. Um, and so a guy like guy like etn you know it's good that he would be part of a good offense because the touchdown upside would obviously be there but then from a projection standpoint from an individual player standpoint you know i think etn is actually a little bit overvalued right now just given the fact that they got tank bigsby uh his pass catching really wasn't there last year he still had a sub 10 target share and i'm not sure that's going to change dramatically year over year, especially given the fact that they added more weapons to that offense. And so, you know, ETN, I'm not in on per se, but it's good to get players that are in these types of offenses. You know, it's, it's, it's really interesting because like when I, when I, when I was looking at that analysis and I was looking at, you know, dead zone running backs, then the

alternative being wide receivers in the dead zone and wide receivers generally hit at a better rate in the dead zone than the running backs do, which is part of the reason why the running back dead zone exists. Uh, one of the crazy things was that team wide receiver threes, uh, that you can get in that area or team pass catcher threes, I should say that you can get in that area of the draft. They do better than team pass catcher twos. So if you get a, a third team pass catcher, whether it's a wide receiver or tight end, what have you, they perform better than the number two pass catchers do not on the same team, but just in general, like if you were to catch that relative to ADP yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, but it's all within the realm of, of, you know, pick 30 to 72, like, you know,

the running back dead zone area right so give me give me an example of that yeah so like right now like let's say that that we're in august and we have all three wide receivers for seattle uh getting drafted in the top 70 72 the first six rounds right of a 12 team league let's say that dk metcalf is a third round pick tyler lockett's a fourth round pick and jackson smith and jigba is a third round pick. Tyler Lockett's a fourth round pick and Jackson Smith and Jigba is a fifth round pick. Historically, that fifth round pick guy, that Jackson Smith and Jigba has been the one that's provided the most value for fantasy teams, largely because he's obviously less costly to obtain. So his expectation is lower, but then he can exceed that expectation because he's part of this offense. It's just really, really good. But then also conversely, Jackson Smith and Jigba versus a number two player.

Let's say Mike Williams in the sixth round. He's the number two pass catcher from the Chargers going behind Keenan Allen. Jackson Smith and Jigba would be a better bet to far exceed that ADP as the wide receiver three for his team than Mike Williams would be as the wide receiver two solely from the perspective that we as a market are projecting Seattle's offense to just be better. Maybe Mike Williams isn't the best example because the Chargers offense supposed to be pretty good too.

But if you, you know, like let's say Mike Evans, Mike Evans is a great example. Let's say that Mike Evans ends up being in the sixth round or something like that. Chris Godwin goes around or two ahead of him. I would rather bet on a Jsn as the third pass catcher on his team than mike evans is a second because the signal that you're getting from a jsn uh being the third pass catcher from the seattle offense is that the seattle offense is going to be really really good whereas the number two option yeah it's not really really giving us that much signal that that offense is going to be special so one of i want to i want to swing the other side of

this because this ties into something that i talk about a lot with projections and circles us back to projections with these types of offenses but and i love this i love this idea of the three receivers going high we should target the quarterback one of the things i've often talked about the three receivers going high is that it's really hard in a projection to allocate enough volume to all three of them and the projections often drive adp and so this is one of the things I talk about in my work. I have sort of a love-hate relationship with projections, but projections influence where players wind up going because they influence rankings across the industry and all those things. But you were asking me a bit ago, Adam, about identifying upside. And I think

one of the arguments I've made is one of the best ways you can find cost-adjusted upside is to look at the teams like this, where there's too many players that are good for us to pile in enough targets for all of them. And often it holds down all their prices. The year that this was a really big one was two years ago when Jamar Chase was a rookie. We had Chase, Higgins, and Boyd all going in kind of a prime range for the Bengals. And the Cowboys were the other team. They had Amari Cooper, CeeDee Lamb, and Gallup. And both of those teams, I can't remember how,

I don't think it really panned out for the Cowboys, but part of the argument was there's contingency upside, right? So we're saying these are going to be really good pass offenses, but if a player gets hurt, another one could be a star, or a player can just consolidate. And Chase wound up being one of the biggest hits that year. It's always great to toot your own horn. This is one of the reasons I remember this, is it was fun that it worked out that way,

that Chase ended up being a great hit from that crowded room as a high upside player. Very similar to what JJ's saying, and I love that research that it's often the third guy. There's probably upside signal there with his ADP is what I would say, because the thing that's pulling Jackson Smith and Jigba's ADP down is that we can't project him for enough volume. But the thing that's pulling him up is people on the market are saying, but this guy out-earned Garrett Wilson and Chris Alave on a targets per out run basis in the same offense two years ago. And we think he's really, really, really good. And they took him in the first round. And so from a, you know, a long view of bigger picture, multi-year trend type perspective, we want to be in on first round and so from a you know a long view a bigger picture

multi-year trend type perspective we want to be in on Jackson Smith and Jigba and so you get him sort of in this middle range where the factors that are pulling him down probably don't matter as much the projections element the allocation of targets because there is chaos within the season we don't know what's going to happen Tyler Lockettett could get injured. DJ Metcalf could get injured. A lot of things could happen. They could be a three-wide receiver team. There's been a lot of talk about their two tight end sets. They could be an 11-personnel-only team this year, just out of the blue.

But it wouldn't be that surprising. The coordinator they brought over just last year came from the Rams, who's run a lot of 11-personnel in the past, Shane Waldron. It wouldn't surprise me if now that they've got JSN, they're suddenly a really heavy 11 personnel team. So there's various ways that we won't necessarily be able to project when we're trying to get the most accurate projection that the signal of all of these guys being high in the market

is enough for us to say, well, these guys are probably collectively undervalued to what their potential upside is. Because we like this passing offense from that side of it as well. JJ hit on the quarterback side. I think we also need to be, and you also hit on the receiver side of it, but that's another way to think through it. The projections, I think, are the thing that's holding those players down. And that's one of the signals that I look at is anytime projected volumes holding down a ranking, I actually think there's probably latent upside hidden in that player. So are we saying that JSN is the best value of the Seahawks receivers?

I want a piece of that passing game. I want to take Jackson Smith and Jigba because I'm seeing in the eighties right now on NFC ADP. Yeah. I mean, yeah. If you're getting them in the eighties for sure, you know,

there's a lot of other market related trends too. Like, like middle round rookie wide receivers are great bets, not only just in terms of beating ADP expectation, but they perform a lot better during the second half of the year. And the second half of the year is when the fantasy playoffs hit the most important part of the season. So like there's stuff like that. That's very, very indicative of a success. You know, the other thing that Ben's bringing up is when you can find a player who's not in a clear cut role via projections, but he's being drafted at his

projection, that's usually a good sign that he's undervalued. So an example, you can usually see examples of this at the running back position because it's more obvious because you have an RB1, you have an RB2. Let's look at Pittsburgh right now, right? So you have Najee Harris as the RB1, Jalen Warren as the RB2. Let's say that your projections have Jalen Warren as RB50, right? Your projection comes out and he's the RB 50. And let's say that he's being drafted as the RB 50. Well, that means that you should probably be attacking Jalen Warren because there's a lot of upside still embedded in Jalen Warren. If something were to happen to Najee Harris, right? So your draft, you're going to, you're, you're drafting. And that's what Tony Pollard was like

last year. Pollard was being drafted at like RB 24 RB 25 that's where my projection had Tony Pollard so I'm sitting there saying okay at the very least he's going to be able to meet expectation but what happens if what we saw last year Zeke doesn't play very well Zeke gets injured all of a sudden Tony Pollard's the the bell cow on that team and he's giving you RB1 production so it's very similar to that and you're seeing it more and more across the league with more of these split backfields and such that you know You're not necessarily drafting handcuffs because these backups are actually getting work. They're not traditional handcuffs. If you're able to match their projection to their ADP and then know that there's that contingent upside, you should be attacking those players. Is everybody here cool with Tony Pollard in the first round? Not really.

I think Zeke's going to be back on that team, and I think Pollard's ADP is going to wind up in the third when that happens. Oh, no way. I don't think he'll be in the third. At this point, Zeke's got to be one of the worst running backs in football. He was also top three in the league in carries inside the five and touchdowns inside the five

and top three in the league in carries at the one and touchdowns from the one and top three in the league and carries at the one and touchdown from the one. He's good at that. I mean, he's good at that. And Pollard was not very good at that last year. So it does scare me a little bit, but like Tony Pollard is just great. Isn't he just great?

Dallas is awesome. Dallas. I was on him last year too. I'm a little concerned about coming back, you know, rehabbing an injury and the goal line work. Those are the two only things that have me a little bit skeptical yeah in situations like pollard too and this is similar to what ben was talking about with nick chubb you still have

to look at even even though this this backfield is open even though you see these open backfields you still have to be realistic about what these guys have done historically and the kind of workloads that they've established historically and tony Pollard has not been, you know, his market share numbers are not nearly as good as his raw totals are because he's just so efficient. And that efficiency is probably not going to go away because he's very, very good at football. But are the market share numbers going to drastically increase for him to, you know, be this true reliable, no matter what, no matter what top three running back in fantasy. I think it's possible, but I do think that you at least have to understand

the bear side to that too. All right, Jacob, we're almost done here. I'm going to throw out some... It doesn't have to be projections, but who do you like better situations here, this guy or that guy? Let's start with a couple of rookie mid-round fantasy pick, rookie wide receivers. Who do you guys like better,ordan addison or jackson smith and jigba

jason we're just talking about for this year yeah i see this is a tough one addison projects better um there's a lot more upside with jason and i liked him as a prospect a lot better. I've been drafting Jason ahead of him. Yeah, I'm in agreement from a rankings perspective, but again, the projection does favor Addison for me. David Montgomery or Jameer Gibbs? Gibbs.

Yeah, Gibbs. Yeah, if you want to beat the running back dead zone, by the way, draft rookie running backs, Jameer Gibbs is the dude. But he's not he's almost out of the dead zone. I mean, I've seen him as RB14 right now on NFC. That's fine. It's so interesting. I love him.

I love him. Yeah, Jameer Gibbs, I think, is a smash this year. Okay, but you know, it's so funny because you were saying— But David Montgomery's a good pick, too. Yeah, he's not a bad pick either. That's a team that's going to throw to the running backs enough that you can get two viable running backs there. Well, I was going to say, JJ, you talked aboutony pollard tony pollard was a great pick last year because zeke

was in the dead zone and and pollard could you know basically take over him but this is like the complete opposite this would be the comparison would be if montgomery were going in the fourth round or something and well it's the opposite until from a stylistic perspective but it's not when you think about the draft cap. I mean, yes, the Lions paid David Montgomery a lot of money, but the 12th overall pick matters. And we do need to, you know, that's different than Pollard had been,

Zeke's backup for a lot of years. And Zeke was the previous top 10 overall pick that the Cowboys had always treated like one. The Lions investing the 12th overall pick in Gibbs is a big part of that equation. Yeah, I want to be clear too, like the running back dead zone versus the middle round running back thing.

It's not to say that the dead zone running back doesn't pan out. It's to say that the guy in the middle rounds that has a running, a teammate in the dead zone usually does exceed expectation at a really, really good rate. So both of these guys can, like we saw that with the Chargers when Austin Eckler broke out, Melvin Gordon exceeded his expectation per game. Once he got back from the suspension, or his holdout. It wasn't the suspension. Both of those guys were really good

versus where they were drafted. And I think we're going to see that this year with Detroit in that backfield. Deontay Johnson or George Pickens? Deontay. I'm on Deontay. Definitely. I'd be on Deontay too.

Okay. Dallas Goddard or Kyle Pitts? Pitts. Easy. So this would be the number three guy versus the number two. I'd have to look. I don't know. I think that they're pretty close for me. Well, they're back-to-back in the NFC ADP since June 1st. So I thought that was a perfect example of Goddard being the number three guy

on one-off on the great offense and Pitts being the number two. I'm going Goddard. I'm going Goddard. Oh, all right. He's the man of his word.ando i'm sorry i missed your answer pitts pitts all right two pits and i got her jacob any final thoughts here no this was awesome i think i only said like 10 words but that's exactly what i wanted i love listening to these guys talk this is so much fun i'm just kidding a candy shop over here. Yeah. Now Jacob was really, uh, was a team player today. He caught,

we had a talk before the show and he's loud. He's basically like, I don't even need to talk, but I appreciate all of Jacob's help. He scripts the show basically, um, you know, helps me out so much and really did a great job queuing up to amazing guests.

JJ Zacharias. And thank you. Appreciate it. At late round QB, Ben Gretsch. Thank you. Oh, anytime At LateRoundQB. Ben Gretsch, thank you. Anytime, guys. At Yards Per Gretsch.

JJ, just tell us quickly how we can find your material. Yeah, everything's over on LateRound.com. I have a podcast, the Late Round Podcast, and I have a draft guide that's dropping on June 30th. There's a lot of these market-related trends that I talked about today. There's tons of them for every position in it. And Ben, you? BenGretsch.Slopestack.com

is my newsletter. Yeah, that's pretty much it. And if you're in the Pacific Northwest, give them a shout. Thank you to all of our awesome guests and Jacob Gibbs as well. And to all of you for watching and listening. Have a great day. We'll talk to you later on.