Fantasy Football Today - Players We Keep Drafting! Pickens, Herbert, Waddle, Likely & More! (08/26 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

Help us raise money for St. Jude Children's Hospital here: https://tinyurl.com/FFTDonate2026Adam, Dave, Jamey, and Heath reveal the players they can’t stop drafting this season, with Adam challenging each pick to spark debate. Heath makes the case for Sam LaPorta (4:06), George Pickens (21:15), and Rashee Rice (38:55), while Jamey and Dave highlight Justin Herbert (8:21), Colston Loveland (29:20), Kenneth Walker III (49:15), and Jaylen Waddle (59:56). The guys also break down the latest preseason injuries, news, and notes (31:40), including Ja’Marr Chase leaving practice early. Adam then reveals his own list of players he keeps drafting as the guys debate the best targets for your drafts. Get the latest on which players to target & avoid as you prepare for the fantasy football season.Fantasy Football Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever else you listen to podcastsWatch FFT on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

This is fantasy football today from CBS Sports. What a play! Can you believe this? It's a no idea. It's time to dominate your fantasy league. Up to the races and he stays on his feet. It's just going to go the distance. Now here's some combination of Adam, Dave, Jamie, and Heath.

Big day today. It is hump day. It is Wednesday, August 26. It's been counting down until Wednesday, August 26, because it's our Draftathon show tonight. Please join us from 5 to 8. P.m. Eastern, you, the audience, will be interacting with us, will be reading your chat questions, and we're going to have a mock draft during the show with two spots in the draft just for the audience.

And then you get to vote in a poll and make the pick. How cool is that? And we're all here today on this Wednesday morning to tell you the players that we keep on drafting here for 2026. I'm Adam Azor. Dave Richard is back. Hey, Dave. What's up, fool? How's your trip? Good. I'm tired. I saw a lot of stuff. Can't wait to tell you guys about it. Yes, we're going to hear about that. He went to Raiders camp and saw Ashton Genti get hurt and then be okay.

I don't know how okay he is, but he definitely got hurt. Saw the Jaguars, he saw the bucks, so we'll get some inside info from Dave. Hello, Heath. Were you there when Brian Thomas got hurt also? Right in front of me. Literally right in front of me. I don't go in the room with Dave this week. Geez, you got bad luck.

No kidding. So far in the last seven days, I've heard a running back, a wide receiver, a pizza restaurant. I'm on a roll. Yep. And you heard Dad belching for a half hour, too. That killed me. All right. Here's what we're going to do.

We're going to do the players we keep on drafting. But with a little bit of a twist, I'm going to argue against them. I'm going to play a little devil's advocate, make you defend. Not all of them. Two for each of you. we've sort of, I feel like we've moved past that portion of draft preview where we're debating things. And I think we need to get back to that. Let's have some debates here.

So let's do part one of players we keep drafting with a twist. And just give me two. You gave me kind of longer lists, but we'll go one each and then we'll go one each again. Let's start with Heath. Who's a player you keep drafting? I didn't give you a long list. I gave you like three and a half guys. Yeah.

But we can start with the guy that up until Jamie took him in our last draft. I had drafted in every real draft that I'd done so far this season. And it's Sam Laporta. Okay. So you want me to just get right into the why you? I think everybody's heard my case for Sam Laporta 75,000 times this offseason. So you can go ahead and do your well-researched. He heard his back last year.

his hip hurts right now. That's a problem. Well, yeah, I mean, it's like, I wonder sometimes if we, I think I'm guilty of this too, is like I really like a player so much and then he gets hurt in the preseason and I don't want to care, right? And I don't discount him enough. How much have you discounted him since the hip injury, which may not be a big deal at all? Right.

I haven't really because it was like he got hit really hard in the hip. I've heard nothing about any structural concerns, any ligament concerns, anything like that. If it was like something where it could have been related, like he's got sciatica and it's related to a back injury or he's got a hip flexor that he like pulled or something like that, then I probably would have. I think it's really, and it's probably just because we have so much more coverage than we used to. But I think it would be a shorter list if you made a list of guys who have not gotten hurt this preseason than guys who have gotten hurt this preseason. Like we had six guys get hurt yesterday. And most of them we don't think it's probably any big deal. We're going to get to week four.

And there's going to be like eight guys that we say, yeah, we should have known he was hurt in the preseason. Well, so we're 80 other guys. Well, why are we talking? He's back at practice. Right. This is like a good thing. Okay. So my other arguments against Sam Laporta have nothing to do with the entry.

He was tight-in one overall, tied-in three per game as a rookie. In that season, James and William's played 12 games and had 42 targets. Since then, Sam Laporta's been tied in nine per game and tight-in-seven per game. Obviously, James had a bigger role in that stretch. Additionally, you could even look at last year. He was tied-in-seven per game, played nine games. He had 49 targets. So he's getting what's...

How many targets per game is that? 9 divided by 49 divided by 9. Not a lot. Five and a half targets per game. And in that stretch, Jamison Williams wasn't even getting targets. James and Williams was getting about five targets per game. So I'm worried that he's a really good player,

Sam Laporta, but hasn't shown that he can be an elite tight end when James and Williams is involved. And even when James and Williams wasn't that involved, and then the next two games after the buy, before he got hurt, you had both of them get 13 targets. They made a point after the buy, even before the Leporta injury,

say we got to get James and Williams more involved. They did. They both had 13 targets in weeks, I want to say 9 and 10, and then Leporta got hurt. So it's really, my biggest concern is that he just hasn't been an elite tight end

without James and with James and Williams, really, you know, being a part of the offense. Where would you draft? Yeah. Round 7 at the earliest. He has around 7 ADP. He is currently being drafted as tight-in 6. A fraction,

like not even a, full spot. A fraction of a spot ahead of Tuckercraft probably will change by tomorrow with the rate Laporte has been falling in drafts. So I think the, like, he's not proven that he can be an elite tight end except for the year that he finished as the number one tight end. Oh, with James and Williams. Well, right. I don't think, I think that most of the history, we have suggests that when those two are on the field, it's been more LaPorteur than James and Williams and they just hired Drew Petzing as their offensive coordinator. By the way, look at where he's going right now over the last five days on NFC draft position,

average draft position that's 71 draft. Sam Laporta is going 99th. It's tight end eight. That's awesome. But at the same time, the tight end ADP is pretty low. Tucker Craft 80th, Kyle Pitts, 81st, Harold Fanon, 92nd, Sam Laporta 99th. That'd be amazing value. All right, Jamie, you're up. Give me a player. I don't know who you have an argument for. I can do the argument at any time, but the players I picked for you were Justin Herbert and D'Andre Swift.

There you go, pick one. All right, let's go to Justin Herbert. This one. No, let's go. So I gave five names, and you chose one of the five that I shared with Jamie to argue against Jay. I thought that would be better, you know, because, you know,

that's like I'm getting. Does I go Herbert then? Harvard or Swift? Herbert. Herbert. Okay. Yeah, I mean, Herbert, I think, is pretty safe. he pretty much always finishes as a top 12 quarterback.

But the only times he's been, you know, an elite quarterback, he's averaged over 39 pass attempts per game. That's not really the M.O. of Mike McDaniel. He's more of a slow pace, run the ball kind of guy. That's basically it. He also, as good as Herbert was last year, he's on pace for 529 rushing yards. And he's usually more like a 300 rushing yard.

guy. So that was really strange. So let me get rid of this Laporta ADP here. Thank you. So anyway, yeah, just he's, he's only been elite when he's thrown almost 40 times per game. Fair point. He was averaging over 25 points per game last year in the six games with Joel. The offense was scoring over 25 points per game in the six games with Joe Alt. And now you're getting Joel back for the season with Rishan Slater. So losing Biotic sucks their center. That was, you know, just an added strength to it. But I just think think when Herbert has things working around, and I'm sure Heath will laugh at this,

but when Herbert has things working around him, he will be in a very good spot to succeed. So he's in that jumbled mix of quarterbacks if you're looking at the rank list, the consensus rank list on YouTube, if you see it on our site. Basically after QB6, it's Prescott, Herbert, Lawrence, Williams, Purdy, Gough, DART, D'Rae, Mahomes, who am I missing? Goff. No, he's in there. I don't know, the six or seven quarterbacks that all go in that range of,

I love Caleb Williams, or I think this is Trevor Lawrence's year, or Dak's going to be awesome once again. You want to put him at the bottom of the list? That's fine. I just think that Justin Herbert's a very good value. I think he's going to have a good season. I think as long as his tackles are healthy or at least one of them, he has a chance to be successful.

And I do think that Mike McDaniel, yes, while having the ability to be an offensive genius, also does not necessarily say, hey, hey, I'm Ben Johnson. I'm going to throw the ball over the place. Hey, I'm this guy. I'm going to open up things like crazy. He did, as shockingly as that may seem right now, watching that guy play, he got Tuatung of Iloa to lead the NFL in passing yards.

Yeah, amazing. To a tongue of Iloa. So I have a better, I think, argument against Herbert. Sorry, Heath, I'll let you jump in. But it's more like you have to commit to taking him ahead of players who might be just as good. he's in a big tier and he seems to be at the top of the tier and that's I guess more of the argument is like

losing value in ADP, that's all. Yeah, I think, and I'm not the biggest Justin Herbert guy, I'm not sure if I've made that clear. I think he's fine and where he's being drafted is pretty close to fine. But he's going like a full round behind Caleb Williams

and behind Trevor Lawrence. And so my thing I was going to interject was, I think we should pass a rule for Adam's devil advocate. If a player is being drafted after the first six rounds, the argument can't be he's only been elite win. Because we're drafting the guys on seven and eight. I think that applies for running backs and wide receivers, because there are so many of them going in the first six, seven rounds, but for quarterbacks and tight ends, especially for quarterbacks, we expect to find elite quarterbacks all throughout

the draft. you're taking Sam LaPorte in round six. I mean, there are, you know, there are potentially elite wide receivers there there might be. There's Christian Watson and there's Mike Evans and guys like that and Parker Washington. But all right, fair enough. This is somebody said in the chat, beat up on Adam Wednesday. All right.

Jamie's made his case. Dave, who's your guy? As opposed to beat up on Adam Thursday, beat up on Adam Friday, beat up on Adam Sunday. It's kind of a thing we do. Let's talk about C.D. Lamb, who I have gravitated toward taking with a late first round pick in full PPR. When I'm picking eight through 12 and there isn't a running back there

that I just think is a slam dunk over them, those running backs are usually Johnvin Taylor, Chase Brown, James Cook. I look at all the other running backs that are left, and I like them, but there's a lot of them, and there aren't a lot of wide receivers left. And so I'm going to gravitate toward Lamb. And I'm going to look at those six games,

and we've talked about this a decent amount during the offseason. there were six games with Quinn and Williams in Dallas, meaning, all right, they acquired this awesome defensive tackle. He made their defense better. He changed how much they passed. And there were six games in those six games. This is week 11 through 15 and then week 17. Lamb averaged 16.4 PPR points per game, 10.9 non-PPR points per game,

9.2 targets per game. And over the course of the entire season, C.D. Lamb had just three touchdowns. He had a high ankle sprain that seemed to limit him. he's healthy now. I don't think he's going to catch just three touchdowns. I think he can double that. I think it's possible he can triple that. And he's still going to get a hell of a lot of targets in this offense.

I know George Pickens is there. I know what Pickens is capable of doing. I still think C.D. Lamb is the straw that serves the drink here. And I'm going to take him as the fifth wide receiver off the board with that late round pick. Late round one pick, I mean, excuse me. Okay, devil's advocate. He's not even the best wide receiver on his team. George Pickens has been a more efficient wide receiver throughout his career than CD Lamb.

And I think guys with high A-D-Dots usually are more efficient. But Lamb actually had a higher A-Dot than George Pickens last year, and Pickens was still better on a per-target and per-catch basis. And in week 7 through 17, after Lamb came back from the injury, excluding Week 18, where they played half the snaps, half the game, Pickens scored more fantasy points per game. So you got the wrong cowboy. Excellent. Excellent, excellent.

So the guy I keep drafting most often is George Pickens. Okay. Well, I'll let Dave, I'll let Dave respond real quick to that and then we'll go into George Pickens. The one thing that's really got me shook on both of these wide receivers is this track record that I discovered over the last, what is it, like 15 years or 11 years, something like that, where only one receiving duo has repeated top 12 season over season last year. It was close between Chase and T. Higgins. They both finished top 13. in PPR points per game. It's rare. So how do you split that? Well, you could look at the stat that you gave Adam, but I don't know how much of that is fair.

I don't know how Cid Lamb performed in those games before Quinn and Williams got there. And I know that the Dallas team operated differently once Quinn and Williams got there. There were three games in 2025, were both Lamb and Pickens. Each had over 15 PPR points. There was another two where they had 13 plus, which means there were eight games or one of them, did not have 13 plus ppr points.

And it was usually your guy, Mr. efficiency, George Pickens, which is why I feel like Lamb is the better pick, the safer pick, the targets per game, definitely favored Lamb. I'm going to go with Lamb. And I just want to be clear. I'm playing devil's advocate.

Doesn't mean I believe all these things. I would also take Lamb over Pickens. But Pickens, the main reason Pickens was better than Lamb from week 7 through 17 was what Dave already mentioned. Lamb just didn't catch enough touchdowns. if I can get the total week seven. I mean, Pickens was pretty low on touchdowns in that stretch too, wasn't he?

Yeah, I mean, Dax touchdown rate wasn't as high as it could be. Dack Prescott, Jamie and I, we talked about this on the network show on Friday with Dan. Dak Prescott was on pace for almost 4,900 yards. I know we're not talking about Dack here, but in that stretch,

he was on pace for almost 4,900 yards. The reason why he wasn't like a league winner, basically, is he didn't throw that many touchdowns. But if he can get the touchdown rate back up close to 6%, He could certainly be a top five quarterback. All right, I'm going to let Heath talk about why he's drafting George Pickens, but we do have to take a quick break here. So just a couple things.

Again, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern tonight is our draftathon show. Please join us. We need you there. We need you participating. We have got, man, so many guests. Ben Gretches is coming on. Jake Seeley, Joe P. Sapia, Nando dafino, hopefully Scott Fish.

A couple guys from Sportsline are going to be joining us to give us some player props that they like. We've got Rich Rebar coming on to talk advanced stats. I know I'm forgetting. Oh, we got the front yard fantasy guys on to do some fantasy feud at 6 o'clock. What? I apologize. I did talk a little trash last night on Joey Wright's birthday stream about how we were going to, about how we were going to beat them.

Love it. The other thing you need to know is while we... Nando's making posters, by the way. Nando has already made me so angry today. Oh, we know. Well, you don't know. I mean... Yeah, we do.

But you don't know the draft pick he made. Yeah, we do. Yeah, we do. You know, he took Breeze Hall over. Javante Williams and it made me crazy. Why did that make you crazy? That's the one that made you crazy? I have Riesel ranked higher than Javentai Williams.

Well, you're wrong. He's a bell cow. Didn't you hear Frank Wright? He confirmed it today. So is Javante Williams on the Cowboys. Anyway, yeah, Nando's coming out tonight. The other thing we need to tell you about is our must draft

players page. It is amazing. Must draft players page, CBS Sports. com slash FFT must draft. It features exclusive picks from the FFT crew, organized by where we target these players throughout the draft. So as you move through your draft, you can see which players we think you should be targeting in each range.

It's brand new, so it'll be one of the first to check it out at CBSports.com slash FFT Must Draft. We'll be right back after this. Back to players that we keep drafting. Heath, George Pickens. Yes, and I want to say, I agree with Dave drafting a lot of CD Lamb, the last three or four picks of round one, and I draft George Pickens in round two. So I am expecting them to repeat. I expect these two to dominate targets.

I have them projected, if they both play 17 games, for a total of 300 targets, which sounds insane. But Brian Schopenheimer's been in Dallas for three years. they've averaged 618 pass attempts per season. They've been top 10 in pass attempts all three of those years. And the last two years, the defense has been awful. I get it. But in 2023, Schottnheimer's first year as an offensive coordinator in Dallas, they had a top five defense in both yards and points allowed.

They were third in passing yards and first in passing touchdowns that season. I love that. This is going to be one of the most pass-heavy offense. is in the NFL. C.D. Lam's awesome. George Pickens is awesome. Dak Prescott is awesome. This is just draft them all.

I'm so glad you brought that up because we've gotten that question a lot about their improved defense and Cincinnati's improved defense. And first of all, you're talking about two of the worst defenses in the NFL. Like, they're not going to be top 10. I don't think this year. But yes, they both teams have a history, especially the Cowboys, of having great, well, the Cowboys had great defenses, as he just said, and they still

threw a lot. The Bengals in Burroughs tenure, they've had two good defenses. One time they didn't throw that much. One time they did throw a lot and went, I believe they went to the Super Bowl that year. Pickens was the other guy that I was going to argue with you about. I guess the only thing is like, let's see. It really kind of stole your thunder that you used George Pickens to argue against C.D. Lamb. I know.

You had to try to argue against George Pickens. If you look at the top 10 wide receivers on a per game basis in PPR, all of them, had a target per route run rate of 25.8% except Pickens. His target per round rate was 22.6%. It was more like 24%. You know, if you remove weeks one and two when he wasn't really that involved. What did I? George Pickens, in the last five seasons,

George Pickens has the second lowest target per row run rate of any wide receiver to finish top 10 in PPR points per game. that's kind of interesting. But I don't think it matters because he'll run so many routes. And his target per route run rate was higher, you know, after a slow start to this season, those first two games it moved up. I don't have an argument. Okay. Jamie, I have just two things I'm curious to see.

First off is the hype that Ryan Flannoy got early in camp, does he throw a little bit of a wrench into the targets these guys are going to get? And then Jake Ferguson, is he going away? He's not going away in the red zone. That's a problem. Did Jamie just go away when he asked Jake Ferguson? Wow. He just mic dropped there and left.

I'm Ryan, Illinois. I mean, there's no better mic drop. Now, we heard John Ferguson, too. You literally said, and is Jake Ferguson going away, and then you went away? Well done. What do you think, Heath? I think they're going to throw enough to where,

like, I have Jake Ferguson projected for 98 targets. there's still 92 targets left for a wide receiver. I just, I think that this team throws the ball. And maybe this will be the year that it changes. But it's not just like a super high pass rate. They've run more than 1,100 plays each of the three season that Shutt andheimer's been there. And so that's, I mean, that's just, that's four more plays for game that everybody's running. So I just think that, yeah, Jake Ferguson's probably going to be a borderline tied-in one that I think is being drafted too high, but he probably will be.

I don't think they'll throw to their running backs as much as most teams, because why would you when you have C.D. Lamb and George Pickens and Javante Williams was like the worst pass-catching running back in the NFL history last year. Yeah. Okay, let's go to Jamie's next round here, must-straft player or player you keep drafting. Pick one. Oh, let's see. The other argument I had was Swift. I mean, it's a quick argument. The last 11 games of the year when Kyle Monongai started getting involved,

he averaged 13. Swift averaged 13.9 p.p.r fantasy points per game over a full season that would have made him RB 18 per game. This does not count week nine, by the way, which Swift missed. So, yeah, I mean, is he going to be better than that? I mean, Menongai is not out for the year. Monongai might be ready for week one. I don't love that he's been pushed up so far in draft that it's become a little difficult to draft Swift.

Most of the shares I have of Swift I got in rounds four and in some cases rounds five. But I still think the fact that they've just been raving about him. I think they said he's at the best camp of anybody on the team. And Monong guys out for however long Monong guys out. Probably going to be a little bit of a ramp up period until Monong guy's back in maybe the same type of workload that we saw from him last year. But he's always been sort of criminally underrated in how he's finished and how he's performed. And even last year, in some cases, I think you've mentioned that he was better when Manangai was involved in the second half of the season or his workload didn't really change in the second half of the season. So I think there's just a good running back on a very good offense that has his competition maybe not there for however long of a time that Manangai is not there.

So to go back to Heath's point, I don't think he's elite because otherwise we'd be drafting him in the first two rounds. But I think when you get to that second group of guys, which starts really with Jacobs, I guess. So Jacobs, Caird Williams, that group. Like, he's right in the mix. He should be in the mix.

He's, you know, at this point, I'm taking him ahead of Jeremiah Love. I don't know if that's going to be the case, reflective of ADP, especially now that we saw Love carrying pizzas upstairs. But you have that group of guys behind him. And, you know, full disclosure, like I thought this is going to be a better year for Scataboo than Swift, for Judkins than Swift. And that's been a, you know, rapid change based on everything that we've seen happened a while ago.

But it's, you know, certainly something worth noting that, you know, I thought those guys had a better outlook than him because of Monongai. And then when Manangai got hurt, it was just easy to put Swift out of them. And then all you just keep hearing is great things about Swift. I guess this kind of goes back to what I was talking about with Heath earlier. Do you fear that maybe you could be overreacting to preseason injuries to Menangai and Love? Putting D'Andre Swift ahead of Jeremiah Love where they probably weren't even really close a month ago. No, but you have injury for one and backfield mate injured for the other. But look at him carry the pizzas.

He looks great. It was great. You know, no limp. Yeah. All good. Look, if Jeremiah Love hits, the ceiling is higher. You know, we saw this with a high profile rookie on a bad team last year with Ashton Jente that he was RB16, you know, so I think that's kind of the range of outcomes for DeAndre

Swift going into it right now. And if Menangai misses more time, you know, we've said this about, oh, when you draft Blake Quorum, what if Karin Williams misses? If you drop Monongai, what if Swift was? Well, when the backup misses, you know, the better player might be actually amazing. And so DeAndre Swift, if he has a stretch of game, without Monongai, which could be the start of the season, that's probably a top 10 running back.

Yeah. Yeah, I do think it's just kind of a couple of things. Like, one, I've had Swift and love very, very close for most of the summer, just because I've expected Alger to have a bigger role than we expect, than we hope he does early in the year. But the other thing is, I feel like you're just, we're drafting Swift where he's probably going to finish unless Monongai misses time and then he's going to smash. All right, Dave, last round here for you of your second player that you are.

What are you saying round? Who the hell do you keep drafting, Dave? That's what I want to hear. Yeah. Let's stick in Chicago and talk about Colson Loveland, who I've been gravitating toward with a late third round pick. And therefore, I've got some teams that have Cedie Lamb and Colson Loveland on them because they're both late in those first couple of odd rounds. So you take out those first eight games when he was working his way back from an injury and learning the offense. And Loveland averaged nearly 12 PPR points per game, over seven non-PPR points per game, was getting 7.3 targets per game.

That's six games from week 10 through 13 and in the playoffs. And that's probably a fair expectation for Lovelin because Burden was on the field, or Duneze was on the field. That's who he's going to be sharing with this year. That might be the floor because we know that his last. four games of the year. He had at least 10 targets in every game. He had 20 ppr points, 13 non-PPR points. He actually averaged 12 targets per game. Odun's they missed two of those four games. I just think that he's going to have a great chance to be the target leader in Chicago. There aren't a lot of tight ends that can do this. We think that Bowers is going

to do that in Las Vegas. Yeah, I think that's pretty safe. I still think McBride can be that guy in Arizona, and I think Lovelland can be that guy in Chicago. And he's way more of a matchup nightmare than an inline blocker or any of that other stuff that tight ends do. I expect him to be a humongous part of the Chicago offense. Their schedule at the beginning of the year, Carolina in week one, Minnesota in week two, Philly in week three, Jets in week four. That group of four kind of scares me a little bit more for Swift than it does for Loveland. And I think we could see Loveland come down with some huge games then and just carry it all season long.

Okay, sounds good. So let's see if I can remember here. for Heath it was Sam Laporta and George Pickens. For Dave it was C.D. Lamb and Colson Loveland. Jamie was Justin Herbert and D. Andre Swift. And we have many, many more names to give you. Well, let's go through the news and notes. Ashton Genti is on the mend, according to Raiders head coach Clint Kubiak.

Ken Walker mispractice with a foot issue. Jamie, I know Ken Walker is also on players you keep drafting list. Any concerns here about Ken Walker? No. Okay. Seems like it was just a maintenance day. Frank Reich called Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall

Bell Cow is Heath What did you make of that? I think we already expected Garrett Wilson to be the Bell Cow in that offense in terms of wide receivers though I've never heard that phrase used for a wide receiver but it's fine that was kind of the expectation

listen what's the nice way to say it like it it would only make sense for Brees Hall to be that. This is a team it's going to need to score some points. He's their best running back by far. He's their best past catching running back by far.

And if he's healthy, he may turn out that kind of like I think with Luther Burden, the injury just gave you a great discount on Breeshal. I think after this comment yesterday, thinking about what Dave has always used as the argument against Bresol, which is accurate in that Frank Reich has always used multiple running backs. And Frank Reich has been fired everywhere he's been. for multiple reasons. This could be one of them

that he hasn't featured his best players enough. Like, use your best guys. I don't know. That's just crazy. I love the sound of that. I wish he'd listen to you. And the Jets staff last year

basically listened and they gave Breece Hall 17.4 touches a game. That's pretty close to Belkow work if you ask me. And he still averaged 30. But everything is upgraded. To whatever degree you want to say

upgraded, it's upgraded. Yeah. I hope so. Yeah, that was going to say that. I mean, he was a bell cow last year, and he was RB21 per game. Because Bell cow for the Jets last year was 258 carries and 38 catches. That was a 17-game pace. Hall missed one game. They just didn't run enough plays. They've been bottom three and goal line carries, three straight years. It can't get any worse, right? Like, that's the thing. It can't

get any worse. He was RB21 per game. So if you're drafting a- Sure, he has a groin injury. Well, it doesn't really seem like he has a serious growing injury here. Not yet. But if he's healthy, I don't, I don't know how he finishes worse than RB21, you know. It seems like that was his four. Where is he being drafted right now? Right. He's not being drafted anywhere near RB21.

Right behind Swift isn't. I think he's RB20. Yeah, he's like, I thought he was 19 last time I checked. So that's 19, that's 19, yeah. I think that's perfectly fair value for what we're talking about right now. He was getting drafted a lot higher before the injury, but now you're getting a discount on what could be a great player. I see R. B and Travis

on fantasy. He and Travis A. Chan are two ships passing on the night. They are, next time you blink, H.N. will be ahead and H.O.O.O.B. 20. Now you got me thinking about how often I blink. Jamar Chase hyper-extended his knee. Is he still the third overall pick for you guys, Jamar Chase? He's fine. Yes.

Okay, cool. Sam LaPorte is back. Mike Evans mispractice with a groin injury. They're still downplaying it. Is anybody downgrading Mike Evans? yet. I can't because I was already so low, but where do you have like round seven? Yeah, I've got them at the end of round six. He's falling from round five to round six for me. Yeah. Brian Thomas Jr. got hurt, but how do you feel about Mike Evans?

Yeah, downgrading. Downgrading Evans. Like you know it's bad when you'd rather draft for Romandre Stevenson. Well, I think that's selling Romandre Stevenson a little short. But I don't, I wouldn't rather a draft from Andre. It's still rather have Mike Evans. Oh, okay. The question is, I just don't know if I want Parker Washington and Christian Watson and James ahead of Mike Evans. I do. The answer is yes.

Yeah, I know for you guys, but I've always been like super high on Mike Evans. Yeah, well, let's change. If Frank Wright can change, then you can change too, Adam. Everybody can change. But yeah, I still think he's got really good

sleep, sort of sleeper appeal late round six. I think if he's healthy, he's going to be really good. That's where I come out on it. That's a big if. It's already two injuries, this training camp. Yeah. Chris Olave left practice, got the wind knocked out of him.

He should be fine. Travion Henderson, not back at practice yet. He slipped the other day. Alec Pierce is expected to practice next week. Did you guys move Alec Pierce up on the news? No. No. Did you just, have you just left that in your notes

for all of training camp? because he has been expected to practice next week. Did you sit? Listen, we make too much of these things sometimes, but we talked about the Jeremiah Love walking with the pizza. Did you guys see the video of Alec Pierce walking from behind on the field? It's weird, right?

Yes. His legs do not look the same size. He did not look like he was walking with a normal gait. I'm very concerned. Okay. We've got Nate Atkins. of the athletic saying that Devante Adams was great in joint practices against the Cowboys and the Saints. He was virtually uncoverable. That's Devante Adams.

That's good. How long has Puka been out for? It's been like two weeks already with the groin, right? Yeah, he's been out. I believe two weeks is close. Yeah. I'm starting to get interested in Devante again. Was that sloth from the Goonies? No. That was Sylvester Stallone and from Rocky Four. Everybody can change. If I can change and imagine Sloth going. We can change. We can change. change. Yeah, it's kind of sad that my Sylvester Stallone sounds a little bit too much like sloth. Anyway, Ian Rappaport says the Falcons quarterback job is basically Michael Penix is for the taking and the Falcons still haven't named a starter. Rams, edge rusher Miles Garrett remains out with a knee issue. The couple of teams that might, you know, maybe, you know what we need to do is an offensive

line episode. We need to do that. But two teams that need some help. The commanders signed offensive tackle DJ Humphreys. The chiefs acquired offensive lineman Joshua Izudu from the Giants for a seventh round pick in 2028. I don't think these are going to really move the needle for those teams, but it's just a reminder that the chiefs are struggling at right tackle right now. And the commanders, obviously, could be struggling on their offensive line without tonsil.

Giants wide receiver, Calvin Austin, sustained a potentially serious knee injury. It's a torn ACL. That stinks. Yeah. Rookie tight ends, Eli Stowers for the Eagles, Oscar dealt for the Saints. They have hamstring injuries. And Jets, rookie tight end, Kenyon Sadiq, is going to have his workload scaled back early in the season. He's missed all of camp with an injury.

Hopefully plays week one, but it won't have a full role. All right, we can get back to players. We keep on drafting. And Heath gave us LaPorta and Pickens. You've got three other players. One of them is DeAndre Swift. Let me ask you with Rish. I talked about this with Jamie, I think, last week.

but it's like, based on what he's done, I don't get how he's a late second round pick or a third round pick. He should be a late first round pick based on what he's done. Why do you think there's such value in Rishi Rice? Well, I think some of it is the knucklehead factor. Some of it is the, like, people are just worried that he's going to do something else that he shouldn't do. Some of it is the video of him running a deep post where he looked kind of like Alec Pierce. except he was trying to run.

And then some of it is Kenneth Walker and fear that all these screens they're throwing to him are going to take away from Rashi Rice's target share. I thought there was a pretty good quote from Eric B. Enemy came out yesterday or the day before talking about how he thinks that Rice can be even better. It sounded pretty optimistic. I don't see anybody in this receiving corps that's going to cut into his target share. and the thing that I love about drafting him where you can is that we can take a 10, 15% hit and target share, which would be maybe 20 targets off the top and give those to Kenneth Walker,

and he's still a good pick late in round two, early in round three. So Nico Collins, George Pickens, Rishi Rice, how do you rank them, Heath, Dave, Jamie? Go ahead. Nico Pickens, Rice, Nico. Collins Pickens Rice. Collins, Rice, Pickens.

It's a tough call. It's a tough call that people are going to have to make. Those are great picks at the two, three turn. How about Bowers? Or do you take Bowers ahead of all those guys? I've got Bowers ahead of Pickens and Rice. I do not. I have powers ahead of Pickens and Rice.

It really depends, too. Like, I just took Bowers ahead of, no, I think that maybe ahead of Nico. in the FFT open. Rice went right before me at the two, three turn, and then I took Pickens and Bowers, but it's a two-wide receiver league, and I'm playing against 431 other teams. And so I wanted the upside of have Brock Bowers on my team,

and hopefully I can find a great wide receiver two later. All right, give me 30 seconds on Brock Purdy, and then we'll take a break, and we'll get to Jamie and Dave's list. I have I said this 17 times yet this year, through Week 17 last year. Brock Purdy was the number one quarterback on a per game basis. Over the last three seasons, Brock Purdy is the QB4 on a per game basis. Listen, there's lots of question marks about his receiving weapons.

I can't imagine it's going to be worse than it was last year. And he was awesome. And he's even talking about how, like I think he, Purdy is one of those guys that if you look at what he's done as a rusher over the last couple of years, which over the last two seasons, his 17 game pace for rushing is like, 360 yards and five and a half touchdowns. And it seems like, yeah, but you probably can't count on that. And the only thing I've heard about Brock Purdy rushing was Purdy himself talking about

how he wants to do more with his legs this year. Yeah. All right. You love taking Brock Purdy. And we'll look at just NFC draft position over the last five days. Brock Purdy is QB12 in between Matthew Stafford and Jared Gough. He's QB8 for me and he's closer to DAC at QB7 than he is to the other guys. All right, we're going to take a break.

We've got a lot more guys to get to here on the players we keep on drafting list. We'll be right back. Okay, we're back with Jamie's list. Jamie's already given us Justin Herbert and D. Andre Swift. A lot more names on the list. If you want to just fire through him, ready, Trevor Lawrence. I mean, it's hard to avoid the rapid rise that I've seen in ADP, which is a little frustrating because he was such a good.

price for what the upside could be. So now I think on our site he's up to QB7 or 8. Just very rapid rise. But it makes sense. You see what he could be coming off of last year over 30 fantasy points per game to close the season, including the playoffs. The run game could be a little suspect, clearly with the loss of Travis A. Chan. I feel like when we talk about in past

tense, we have to say E.T.N., but Travis A. Chan. And here's these receivers that maybe the best group of receivers that he's ever played with if Chavez Hunter is going to do anything significant. So I just think that this is one of the better breakout quarterbacks for the season. You know, again, you got the little portion of it last year. And we've seen that snippets from him over the course of his career. I just hope he could put it together. So Liam Cohen's gotten great production from the last two quarterbacks that he's worked with,

Baker Mayfield 2024, Trevor Lawrence, 2025. Big influence on the rushing production for both of those quarterbacks. I don't think we're getting nine rushing touchdowns again from Lawrence. But as I think we talked about on Fantasy Football to Express, I think you can get 400 yards and maybe three to five touchdowns from him on the ground. And I think that's going to boost his numbers significantly. So right now ADP has Caleb Williams is QB8, Trevor Lawrence, QB9, Justin Herbert, QB10. That's CBS ADP.

How would you rank them? Caleb, Lawrence, and Herbert. and they're all within about 14 picks of each other. Herbert, Lawrence, Caleb. Dave? Double checking. I've got Herbert, Lawrence, Caleb Williams, all top ten. You need it as well?

Oh, yeah. Purdy, Lawrence, Herbert, Caleb. Okay. Let's go to some more. I don't know there's much else you want to say about Ken Walker, but I'll just ask you now we got Hampton, Walker, Barkley, Henry, Jamie. How much do you, how do you rank?

Oh, and let's throw H.N. in there. So Hampton, Walker, Barkley, A. Chan, Henry. How do you rank them? Walker, Hampton, A. Chan, Berkeley, Gentie. Henry? Barkley, Henry, Jenty. Is there anything for you guys when you're deciding between those running backs, Chase Brown and James Cook and Taylor and McCaffrey are off the board,

and you're deciding between those, call them early round two, running backs, Hampton, Walker, Henry, Barclay, A-chan, Gentie. Is there one deciding factor that makes Jamie, you take Walker first? Dave, I don't know who you take first, Heath, et cetera, but Jamie, you can start. What's the one deciding factor for Walker? I think just getting the opportunity to be the featured guy, because when he's been the featured guy in his career, he's been pretty awesome. And now he gets that chance.

We saw it in the playoffs when Charbonnet was not there. scored more points per game in that four-game stretch when you factor in the divisional round through the Super Bowl than Chris McAfree did for the season, points per game-wise. So, like, I'm terrified of the Dolphins offense, which is why I take him over A-chan, just the other report we got yesterday. It just gets worse by the day. What was that? It was Omar Kelly and then another one of their, maybe it was the day before, but Omar Kelly and then Joe Shad, when Malik Wallis brought the team together in the middle of the, the field and just said, guys, we got to do something better. Basically, like, if they're not producing against their own defense, which is not going to be good,

like, it's going to be a struggle. So I don't care how many times Achan is going to touch the ball. He's not going to score a lot of touchdowns. And I'm just terrified of the entire process of where he's getting drafted. So I'd much rather take the guy on the chiefs that Andy Reid's had a lot of success with his back fields when he's had good running backs. Hampton, I think, you know, we'll see what this Keaton Mitchell injury is and the time share that that could still unfold.

Forget about what Mike McDaniel said. They're going to use a couple of guys there. So I like Walker's situation a little bit better. Henry is obviously such a wild card here, but their offensive line just got worse. And, you know, no fullback. We'll see how that goes. So it's just more nitpicking there.

And Barclay, I think just coming off the year that he had, he'll be better. But I think Walker's trajectory for me is a little bit safer. So that's why I lean Walker, the highest. Take Walker the highest. Dave, your favorite in that group of five and why? A-chan. Jamie talked about you want a guy that's going to have a feature workload. A-chan's had it the past two seasons.

The worst he's been is 17.6 full PPR points per game. That's better than any year Kenneth Walker's head. Granted, Walker is going to get a great opportunity in Kansas City. But the thing that I keep going back to, two of them with Walker. And I've moved him up. I'm taking him now as a top 15 pick. Number one, we know that he's a little injury prone. Seahawks were afraid of it.

That's why they didn't run him out there all the time until the end. of the year when they knew that they were going to let him go into free agency, and he's already dealing with a foot injury now. It's minor. That's fine. Two, Patrick Mahomes is still the quarterback of this team. And from all accounts who have gone to Kansas City's camp, he looks the same as he did before and that there are no lingering effects of the ACL. And push comes to shove.

I still think Mahomes is going to do his thing in the offense. And Walker will be, I say next in line, and I don't necessarily mean that as a bad thing. Obviously, they're going to want to run the ball more. and Walker gives them the chance to be more effective. And I think Walker will be good. But I'm just a little bit worried about Walker having that offensive player of the year type season. Because I'm not sure if he can play enough games to earn that award, because I'm not sure he's going to get the ball in the high leverage situations that we want him to every single time.

Whereas A. Chan, yes, he's going to get the ball a lot. I am more convinced than ever that he's also going to catch plenty of passes. Saw it in the joint practice against the Giants. he had a couple of checkdowns. He had three design targets in the game. I think that we're going to see him be a big, big part of what they do. And that was an in-game adjustment, an in-practice adjustment because that Giants pass rush was getting to Malik Willis really quickly.

So that encouraged me. And I don't think he's going to be as good as he was last year, Devon A-chan. I don't think he's going to be 20 points per game. But I bet he gets to 17. And I think that that's going to be better than Kenneth Walker. And so A-chan is at the top of list for me. I love the case for Hampton. he's ahead of Walker two.

My top three from that list, A-chan, Hampton, Walker, back-to-back, end of round one, beginning of round two. Okay, Heath. H-N, Walker, Hampton, everything Dave said about H-N. Cool. Jamie also likes Jordan Mason. I think I took him 80th overall, Jamie in the FFT Open. Is that too early for Jordan Mason?

He's kind of getting to that point where it's a little too soon, but that's kind of where I think you see a little bit of a tear break in the running backs. So once you get past the Patriots guys, the Steelers, guys. He's in the mix for me with, you know, Jacori-Crosky-Marit and the Broncos guys and, you know, start to get into that group of, ugh. I think for Mason, you know,

the reports and the preseason action don't mesh so far. So it's really what do you believe? Because everything you hear out of Minnesota is Mason is their running downs guy. Then we get to the, I don't think they both I don't think they played in the second preseason game, but the first preseason game, you get Mason

and Jones sort of alternating drives here. So that's a little bit tough to buy that Mason should be going so far ahead of Jones or even ahead of Jones to begin with because if he's going to share rushing down's work, he's definitely going to have passing downs work because that's not what Mason does. He's got 28 catches in his career. So, you know, David brought this up. You know, they've implemented a different rushing scheme to favor Mason or that caters more to what Mason does, I don't know what they did just for Mason. Cateres more to what Mason has had success. and when you go back to his days in San Francisco. But if you just look at it, he's the younger running back.

He averages 5 yards per carry for his career, 4.8 yards per carry during his time with Minnesota. This is a much more explosive rusher at this point than Aaron Jones. And then you factor in Jones' durability where he missed time last year and fought through a bunch of injuries the year before. Plus he's going to be 33. So I just think when you're looking at it, if you want a safe borderline, flex, good backup running back, maybe if things break right, because he did average over 13 ppr points per game in the five game Jones missed last year. That's the type of player you're talking about.

So not to the same heights of like a Blake Corum, who should go ahead of him or Manangai when he's right. If you're just looking for, okay, who has higher potential if the starter gets hurt. But if you're looking for like a safe type of RB4, really, I think Jordan Mason qualifies. Packers, Bears, Bucks, Dolphins, Saints. First five games of the year for Minnesota. I think that's a great platform for Mason to take off. I agree with Jamie on the Aaron Jones thing.

There's something that's not connecting here because I thought Jones looked pretty good in the preseason. But I would imagine that the Vikings will kind of treat the veteran with kid gloves and not use them a ton. And the Mason, I love the idea of getting him in that round eight range as a running. that you can start the season with in your lineup. But we all agree that 80's too early, right? 80s too early. Well, that's the thing. It's like, like I said yesterday, 80s too early in theory, but the way the draft was going,

Jordan Mason was one of the last potential starting running backs. I consider him differently than I consider Kenneth Gainwell and Rashad White. You should. Those are the guys who were going up. Jacori Kroski Merritt also went after him, and I think they're pretty similar. but Jacourke-Kamara went like seven picks after him. So it wasn't realistic to get a starting running back in the hundreds. Of course, I think Jordan wasn't, yeah.

I'm sorry, and I didn't interrupt, but you did, this is the podcast league draft? No, this was the FFT, my FFT Open League. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was going to say the podcast league. So how many running backs did you have when you had that? So you only had one? I think he was my third. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. It's really like when you start to compare him and several of the guys that, you know, mentioned, including Jacquiry Christi Crowsy America. Like, when you start to compare him to Wondale Robinson and Quentin Johnston and Cortland Sutton and those type of receivers

that does it make sense to take your third or fourth running back versus your fourth or fifth receiver and where does the upside lie with those players? I absolutely, that's a great point and a great question. And I absolutely think you, not in every case, but I lean running back there because I know receiver,

there's like 30 more receivers, including the Jalen Coker. and Jaden Reed. Right. So that's the perfect way to frame it. Like, do you want to have Jordan Mason and Deshaun Stribling, for example, or Jordan Mason and Jalen Coker? Or do you want to have Wondell Robinson and R.J. Harvey?

Yeah, whatever it is. I mean, I think we've all talked about how you get to rounds 9, 10, 11, maybe not 11, but 8, 9, 10, and you're still looking at some wide receivers. Like, oh, I'm happy to get this guy here. And I think it dries up at running back. pretty early. I don't know. Like ADP tells a different story.

What happened in the draft, the FFT Open draft, made me take Jordan Mason because I didn't want to be without a reliable number three. You can't really rely strictly on ADP because now we're starting to see kickers and defenses get pushed up to levels

that the casual drafters take that most seasoned fantasy players do not. Yeah, that's why tears are so important at every position. All right, let's wrap up, Jamie. me here. You got Cochor and Jaden Reed late, Isaiah likely and Travis Kelsey, but running out of time. So I'm just going to ask you about, well, real quick on likely and Kelsey, how much earlier do you take likely than Kelsey? Maybe two rounds. You know, I think, you know, once you start to get to that group of the middle, the middle group of tight ends, which I think still ends with Fannin. I would take likely over Fandon, but that ends with Fandon.

And so when I see Fannin come off the board and I don't have a tight end at that point, that's when I start to look for likely if I miss Lich N, if I miss likely, it's usually Kelsey's the fallback option. So with two wide receivers that could go in round three, Devante Smith and T. Higgins, they're on the players you keep drafting list. Do you ever take both of them, or is this a decision you have to make? Devante Smith, T. Higgins. Higgins falls much more often than Smith does, you know, and I think we'll start to see Smith rise a couple of spots now that he's back in practice and there's no legitimate concern,

not that there was ever a concern, but no legitimate concern about his hamstring. So I was in a draft last night, 12 team PPR. I had the 11th pick. I got Smith at the end of round three. I think Higgins might have went early round four. So you see Higgins, I think, much more in the round four, early part of round four range. So Higgins is the late round three for me. For me, Smith is an early round three pick for me.

I just, whenever I see Higgins in round four and I can draft him, I do it. Yeah. He's basically been a top 16 wide receiver every year based on his points per game. when Burrow and Chase and Higgins have all been healthy, performs like a top 16 wide receiver, except for a terrible 2023 season, I believe. That's it. Higgins is awesome.

All right, Dave, you said C.D. Lamb, you said Colston Loveland. Jalen Waddle is the other guy was going to disagree with Yon, just because I just fear the targets. He had a 33-yard catch, I think it was, in that preseason game. He looked great. But Sutton had two targets on that drive.

Waddle had one, not to say it'll play out that way. And then Sutton's always a big factor in the end zone. And Waddle really hasn't been. So I love all of your calls. And you've talked about Waddle a lot. This is the one that as a friend of Dave Richard, I get the most nervous about the way it will play out. And I'm not nervous at all.

I think the Broncos had clear intention that they wanted to improve their receiving core and not lean on the corporation of, or I should say, conglomerate of Sutton, Frank. Franklin, Mims, Pat Bryant. I know Bryant's gotten some great pub and camp and he's looked good. They needed somebody like Jalen Waddle to stretch the field, both vertically and horizontally, line up anywhere, catch short passes, make a play after the catch, catch downfield passes, make a play after the catch.

And we've seen it from Sean Payton before. When he's got that dude at wide receiver, he hyper targets him. It was Michael Thomas many moons ago in New Orleans, Marcus Colston before that. He hasn't quite had that guy in Denver, But two years ago, Corlin Sutton had a ton of targets then. And I don't really buy into the theory that targets are going to be spread all around. And I don't think the Broncos want to do that when it comes to Waddle because of the investment that they've made in him. I think he's outstanding.

I love the way that he looked in the preseason game. The camp reports have been great too. People are worried about a missing time. He's played at least 14 games every year of his career. He is not shackled by Tyree Kill and Devon A. Chan in a pop offense in Miami now. This is going to be a better version. and Bo Nix also looks good. The offensive line is healthy.

I'm actually hyped about this Broncos offense. And I think that their run game is the biggest question mark of all. And now here's somebody that can help take some pressure off that run game on short screens, those layup throws that we talk about at them. I think Jalen Wattle is going to be one of the best values on draft day. Love his ADP. I would take him a full round ahead of his ADP. So you take them.

ADP is amazing. What is, let's see, round five on CPS. Yeah. I mean, I think, I have him as like a round three pick because I'm insane. He's like a round three, four pick for me. So I'm getting him in pretty much every draft I'm in because I'm taking him higher than anyone else on the planet.

Like Jalum Waddle's mom isn't taking him as high as I'm taking him at this point. Someone asked in the chat, Dave Waddle or Garrett Wilson. I have Wilson in full PPR one spot ahead of Waddle. Okay. Okay. I mean, he's a bell cow receiver after all, Garrett Wilson. I'm curious why you think their run game is going to be bad, though. because I just, I don't think they've got a guy that they really want to put the whole workload on.

And so they're going to use a rotation of three. And they'll be effective. But I don't know if that necessarily means that they're going to be good. And I think it'll take them a few weeks to get comfortable with the idea of Jonah Coleman getting some work. We'll see if J.K. Dobbins can hold up and be better than he was last year. RJ Harvey is a runner. Really wasn't great last year. Has him been great so far this year.

He's more of a pass catcher. I think that I feel a lot better about Bo Knicks throwing than I do about Bo Knicks handing off. I wonder if Sean Payton feels that way, though. I don't think Dave said the running game would be bad. I think he said it's the biggest question mark. It's the biggest question mark. But it could be bad too.

I mean, especially I'll say if J.K. Dobbins misses time. Because I love Jonah Coleman. He's one of the guys on my list, too, taking him in the double-digit rounds every draft that I can. But I don't know if he's truly ready. I know Sean Payton is talking like Coleman is just ready. I'm not 100% sure that he is. And so there could be some lingering effects of the decisions

that the Broncos have made with their run game over the last couple of seasons. You also have Isaiah likely on the players you keep on drafting list, just like Jamie. Is he someone... I moved him back ahead of pits and full PPR too after what I saw in the joint practice against the Dolphins. Do we think it's going to stay that? way when Neighbors is back, which seems to be week one.

Yeah, this is the, remember how like Zach Hertz had this middle of the field role in Washington where he would just catch all these short throws whenever the number one read was covered? I think that's likely's role with a little bit more on top. I think there's going to be some plays where likely works downfield a little bit more often. He's got the athleticism to make plays after the catch. To me, it's, it's the only part of the Giants offense that I'm confident in at this point. as far as like naming specific players. Because I'm really,

I'm really confused on the run game at this point. And I think Neighbors is going to be great. I'm drafting them like Neighbors is going to be great. But I can't say with 100% certainty that neighbors will be great. I do think likely will be very good and worth a round seven slash eight pick. I believe that's ahead of ADP. And his track record when he's had volume has been outstanding for fantasy. I'm starting to think he won't be 12.5.

PPR points per game like he's been in eight of nine career games with at least six targets, but he can get to, let's call it 11. And that's really good value in the middle of the draft from a tight end that not everybody's going to gravitate toward, but they should. Heath, how you doing over there? Oh, it's been good. Yeah. I'm going to let you introduce the Parker Washington portion of this show because this is

someone that Dave says he keeps on drafting, Parker Washington. What questions did you have for Dave about Parker Washington? Oh, thanks. I did draft Parker Washington. I mentioned this in a draft a couple days ago. And Dave, I took him before Christian Watson and Marvin Harrison Jr. And Brian Thomas Jr., which I think everybody's taking him ahead of Brian Thomas Jr. But taking him ahead of Watson and Harrison in particular really made me feel like,

I know I did this so I could have him on one of my teams. but I feel stupid. No, you just drafted a guy that might end up getting volume and the same type of role that we've seen from Amunrae St. Brown. And that's exciting. And seeing him in person and watching him leap over two bucks defenders for a touchdown in Red Zone drills from Trevor Lawrence was exciting. Watching him leap and do the exact same thing on the other sideline,

not for a touchdown, but for a first down in drills. That was exciting. And he's working all areas of the field. He's willing to run over the middle. Definitely a ton of horizontal routes, just like what we've seen from St. Brown, JSN, that ilk of wide receiver. And I don't think there's any doubt that he's going to be the top target getter in Jacksonville.

BTJ is awesome. Hopefully the shoulder is fine. Sounds like it's going to be okay. The team just shut him down in practice. And Liam Cohen said afterwards, yeah, we're just going to get him ready for Cleveland. And Parker Washington was still dominant. clearly the number one guy, the Bucks knew it,

and he was still doing very, very well. There was one play where he had a pasco off his hands. It was a bullet from Trevor Lawrence over the middle of the field. I'm going to forgive him for that one. Everything else that he did was pretty great. I am taking him over every single one of those wide receivers that you said in full PPR. In non-PPR, I might be a little squeamish about some of those names,

mainly Christian Watson because I'm excited about him too. But I don't think Parker Washington is going away. Tack on the question mark of their run game. Tutin look better than Rodriguez yesterday for what that's worth. And he seems to have a little more juice than Rodriguez, but they split pretty evenly in practice. And I just think that Washington's going to be locked into like seven targets per game. He averaged 6.3 per game overall last year. I had a draft last night where I took Washington in round six.

And then in round eight, Thomas was still sitting there. I'm like, you know what? That's just too good of value. Yeah. So. Parker Washington, if he's good this year, like really. really good. It would be so improbable for a sixth round pick who in the first 36 games of his career, three seasons, three and a half seasons, average 37 yards per game was not on anyone's

fantasy roster unless they had return yards basically. And then he finishes the season really strong, including an amazing playoff game. We just, yeah, I'm not ruling it out. It just, we've never seen, well, I wouldn't say never, but I can't remember. anything like that with a day three pick, start their career that slow, that'd be cool. And the thing for me that helps me fully believe in Parker Washington is that I've seen him develop. And I remember the joint practice with the Dolphins last year. And he was close to making plays with Trevor Lawrence. And then by the middle of last season, he had the opportunity.

Travert's Hunter got hurt right before Hunter got hurt. It was supposed to be Hunter, who was going to be the big play guy. and then that middle of the field guy for Jacksonville. And Washington just took the role and ran with it. And he's been in Sympatico with Trevor Lawrence ever since. Okay, Dave also has Patrick Mahomes, who is now going ahead of Jackson Dart and CBS ADP. He should be.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. How about Purdy or Mahomes? I've got Mahomes ahead, but the most compelling thing I've heard from Heath this year has been the case for Brock Purdy. And it's really, really, you can buy into it very easily.

Yeah. Absolutely. I really love it. And it helps that stribling has looked better than, you know, that what his, what the thought was on him before the draft. It's almost like the Niners. And the Niners have screwed up so many wide receiver picks before. But it's, it looks like they've finally got one that might end up being just right.

And they've worked really hard to fast track stribling into the, the first team offense. and he will help Brock Purdy. At bare minimum, Purdy is a fantastic value on draft day. Yeah, he is. So many of those quarterbacks are, but Holmes was like a top three quarterback for much of the year.

Okay, someone is... The rushing, though, that's the thing. He's not going to do that again. He's not going to do that again, but I bet push comes to shove. He will leave some pockets and start running and sliding. Well, I mean, obviously he's still going to run, but you go back to...

There's a pretty tell-tale example. when he busted his knee on the goal line, push, whatever they were calling it. And then they just stopped doing that because, hey, let's not ruin our best asset. Right.

That was a regular TV sneak. Never done it again. Yep. That's fair. But that was multiple years ago. Yes. Andy reads a smart guy. He realizes,

let's not do that. Well, but we're not drafting Mahomes anywhere close to where he finished last year either. And it's not just because he's coming back from the ACL. Again, it sounds like he's over it. It's because Walker's there.

And Walker is absolutely going to take some. Also the two years prior to that, he was a mediocre fantasy quarterback. He was. But last year is what I'm kind of leaning toward. I don't think he'll be, I don't think he's going to be as good as he was last year. That's going to be impossible. But I still think he's one of the top 12 quarterbacks in draft day.

And the fact that I'm able, I've had him in like round 12 in some leagues. And I don't even care. I've drafted Josh Allen and Mahomes on the same team. I'm just not going to let somebody else get that kind of value that late in the draft. I'm not reaching for him. Yeah. He's absolutely got potential to still be an awesome asset. And based on two drafts that I'm doing right now, one of them ended, the both slow drafts,

Jackson Dart would actually be on my list of players I keep drafting. He's gone from a guy that I thought had one of the worst ADPs to like nobody wants Jackson Dart anymore. And I'm willing to take a shot with one of my last picks because he was so good last season. without Malik neighbors. So let's see if I understand it's been a really bad camp for the giant's offense. The same things were said about the Bears offense last year with a new offensive coordinator. That's true.

And the Titans. Keep that in mind. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So here's real quick my list of players I keep drafting. Chris Godwin. In a wide receiver heavy draft, I will take Chris Godwin in round six.

I like what Dave tweeted about Chris Godwin, what Baker Mayfield said about him. He's going to play in the slot. It's going to be really good for him. I will take him ahead of Marvin Harrison Jr. If I want a safe player, I will take Godwin ahead of Brian Thomas Jr. If I'm looking for more upside and I feel good at receiver, I'll take BTJ. He has been... I take him over Thomas.

Fair enough. He's been a top 17 wide receiver per game five times in his career. He has been a top three receiver twice in his career. That's insane on a per game basis. Chris Godwin... I mean, now you love that 80-yard touchdown. No, I still... He needs to be a better player than he was last year because he was really

bad last year. He's in a role that's very familiar to him and Mayfield. I felt like they were on the same page. I thought Godwin also moved well in the joint practice against Jacksonville. I like this call a lot, Adam. Travis Achan is now a player that I keep on drafting. I think late round three is certainly in play. I don't want to overreact too much because Alvin Camara might not miss much time and Camara might be the third down back. But a reminder, Travis Achan was the number 14 running back per game in full PPR, a little bit better than that in the other formats without being the third down back last year. He had 17.4.4. touches per game. That ranked 16th among running backs, and he finished as a top 14 running back. And he should be drafted around 15th or so overall, but I think he's got a lot of potential

because he's clearly the best running back in the Saints backfield. Zach Charbonnet is a player I've been drafting a lot. I don't know, I don't really think Zach Charbonnet could be a league winner, but if he gets back early in the season, first of all, I like putting him in an IR spot, freeing up a spot and just, you know, picking up somebody on waivers. But if he becomes their goal line back again, and he's pretty damn good at that, Zach Sharbonate could be a very good player. And Derek Henry is not someone that I really went into draft, but I have him in two of my three FFT Open leagues.

So Derek Henry, look, top seven running back per game in full PPR for a guy that never catches the ball in six of the last seven seasons. And he's being drafted as something like RB11 right now. Yeah, I know he's 32, but he scores a ton. And one of the reasons why he didn't have such a great year last year compared to seventh per game compared to other years is Lamar Jackson missed some time

and he really struggled when Lamar Jackson was out. So if you assume Lamar Jackson's going to be healthy should be more touched on opportunities for Derek Henry. Here goes, I sped, I followed too closely, I ran a stop sign, I almost hit a Chevy, I spent some more, I failed to yield,

I changed lanes without signaling while speeding. That was the liar-lire scene where he just talks really fast, you know? Okay. That's my list. I think we're done. We'll talk to you. you tomorrow. Oh, no, it's not to you tonight. Oh my gosh. We'll talk to you tonight with the

Draftathon show 5 to 8 p.m. Eastern. See you later, everybody. Talk to you. Welcome to Pluto, if you know the name of the movie you'd like to see, The Matrix, Transformers, Rise of the Beast, or Mean Girls. That is so a fetch. Just stream it for free on Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.