Fantasy Football Today - Quarter Season NFL Rookie Check-In: How are Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels and Malik Nabers doing?

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

Matt Waldman joins Heath Cummings to reassess the Rookie Rankings regarding your dynasty roster. (03:58) - Three Questions For Matt Waldman (12:57) - Reassessing the Rookie QB's (23:28) - Reassessing the Rookie WR's (29:51) - Reassessing Bucky Irving (32:44) - Listener Questions Fantasy Football Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever else you listen to podcasts Watch FFT on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/fantasyfootballtoday SUBSCRIBE to FFT Express on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fantasy-football-today-express/id1528634304 Follow FFT Express on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6qyGWfETSBFaciPrtvoWCC?si=6529cbee20634da8 SUBSCRIBE to FFT Dynasty on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fantasy-football-today-dynasty/id1696679179 FOLLOW FFT Dynasty on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2aHlmMJw1m8FareKybdNfG?si=8487e2f9611b4438&nd=1 SUBSCRIBE to FFT DFS on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fantasy-football-today-dfs/id1579415837 FOLLOW FFT DFS on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5zU7pBvGK3KPhfb69Q1hNr?si=1c5030a3b1a64be2 Follow our FFT team on Twitter: @FFToday, @AdamAizer, @JameyEisenberg, @daverichard, @heathcummingssr Follow the brand new FFT TikTok account: https://www.tiktok.com/@fftoday 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." Visit the betting arena on CBSSports.com for all the latest sportsbook reviews and sportsbook promos. 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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Welcome to Fantasy Football Today, Dynasty. I am your host, Keith Cummings, joined today by my good friend, Matt Waldman. It's one of our two or three favorite shows of the Dynasty. I am your host, Keith Cummings, joined today by my good friend, Matt Waldman. It's one of our two or three favorite shows of the year. I can't remember exactly how many times you've been on this show this year. I think this is time number three. Matt, I like to bring you on always, but after about a month of the NFL season, because I know that we get caught in this this little bubble where it feels like man everything that's happened so far this month just defines everything that's going

to happen afterwards you and I have done this long enough that we know that's not true so we're going to do a check-in on the rookies but first my man how are you doing I'm doing great you know it's uh you know it's a good time of year. It's, you know, certainly we've had some crazy stuff down here in Atlanta. And hopefully, you know, we were fortunately okay. Hopefully, you know, we send out good thoughts to everybody in the southeast here in the region that were affected by the storm. And, you know, if you have the opportunity to donate to the Red Cross or some funds that you believe that could be very helpful to impact with people, we definitely recommend you do that. Excellent, excellent thoughts.

And 100% right there with you. I wanted to give you a chance, like I always do at the very start, to kind of tell people what it is you do, where they can find your work, what you've got going on during the season. I talk about it every year during draft season that the rookie scouting portfolio is my top resource for evaluating these rookies, but you don't stop after the NFL draft. So what's been going on? Well, I appreciate that. Obviously, I'm working towards the 2025 RSP, which will be the 20th edition that I've done. I have a YouTube channel, the RSP Film Room, that has working on about 850 episodes of film study analysis of players. And so, you know, I provide those.

I provide rankings and projections for subscribers to that particular service for Dynasty. And I just did a I did a September end of month update. I do one once a month pretty much until January and then one for earlier in the year. And, of course, football guys, you know, where we're both alums of football guys. I'm still there. I'm senior staff writer there.

I do the top 10, which is a film study, fantasy type of look at what I saw for the week's games and give you kind of a fantasy look ahead and give you clips to kind of consider what I'm talking about with these players. There's the gut check, which I've done a lot of those since about 2003, usually a focus on players, head the roundtable there at Football Guys where I do the moderation and set the questions and work on that. And of course the replacements. So I take the old movie

line and say, who are the dregs on the waiver wire that could help you out? Or maybe they're undiscovered talent that we've ignored who we could preemptively add and have an impact for you. Like say, last week i think i talked about cordero patterson as a guy who if you if you're really desperate for a running back he could be the guy for you because of jaylen warren and naji being a little banged up and before he got banged up it looked kind of good but you know things like that we keep track of that stuff he certainly looked better than naji did in terms of when he touched the ball. I just, I want to take a second here to say to all you guys, like you heard all that stuff he's doing and he left some stuff out.

Go follow him on Twitter at Matt Waldman and just go to subscribe to anything that he does. You will not be disappointed on today's show. As I said, we are checking in on the rookies. We're going to talk Caleb Williams, Jaden Daniels, Bo Nix. We're going to talk Malik Neighbors, Marvin Harrison, Brian Thomas. We'll talk some of the guys that haven't been fantastic also, but we're going to talk Bucky Irving. We're going to talk AD Mitchell. We're going to talk much, much more. As always, we start with three questions for our guests. And I'm generally, and I don't know if this is backwards or not, but it's Wednesday when I update my dynasty rankings for the week. And so I do this show. I get to talk to smart people. I have to ask them questions because Malik neighbors, I had some questions about him as a rookie that looks

dumb with Daniel Jones. Um, I had no questions about him in dynasty though. Like he started as a top eight dynasty wide receiver. He's already a top five dynasty wide receiver. I guess here's my question. How many wide receivers should be ranked ahead of Malik neighbors and dynasty rankings? Yeah, that's a great question. And, you know, from a win now perspective, if we're just talking about this season and maybe next based on, you know, that Daniel Jones doesn't matter for Malik neighbors. And I don't think drew lock would matter either.

If he got in there, I would say this year for winning now and a little early next year, maybe CD lamb. That's it. That's it. Malik neighbors. I just projected Malik neighbors for an incredible number of targets. In fact,

he he's so much so that I have him edging Marvin Harrison Sr. by one for the most targets ever for a wide receiver. As long as he stays, this was before the concussion. So we'll see. And then long build where, say, you're looking at a three- to four-year window, I'd put CeeDee Lamb, Justin Jefferson, Jam jefferson jamar chase and aj brown ahead of him um but that i'd have him slightly edging nico collins and the reason is is i mean i thought i thought it was malik neighbors by a mile pre-draft that was my guy and then when he went

to the giants i understood the concerns but i would joke even daniel jones can't screw this one up like he's gonna get peppered with targets. He can run every route. He can do everything you want after the catch. And he's a contested catch player to boot. So you're looking at like an AJ Brown, Odell Beckham type of player. And I think so far so good, you know. You know, I think one of the important things you said there,

and I'm not sure people realize this, and it's part of the problem with doing projections is we always want to say this outlier. Now we're going to regress back to more normal because nobody does this. And occasionally there are just outliers that stick. But if you look just at target share for the season, I scoffed at some people who said malik neighbors is going to see 33 of the targets in his rookie season because nobody does that right the number two for the season right now at target share i'm on ross st brown 31.1 malik neighbors is a 38.2 percent of the giants targets and as it should be and that funny thing is like wandale robinson's at 24

or something they're just 60 of their passes go to two guys and apparently malik neighbors is so good and i'll give brian dable some credit as well he's done a good job of running neighbors away from those double teams because most teams are trying to bracket cover i'm not sure the browns were i didn't really like the browns' plan for trying to stop him, but that's for another show. You can bring me on for that show one day as a lifelong Browns fan. Might be four hours of therapy for me, but we'll see. I guess you've not been pleased with too many things the Browns have done this year, or maybe in the last couple. Let's talk about what types of things should dynasty managers react to when it comes to the rookies? Like it's just, it's the first month of these guys, NFL careers.

I assume for the most part, we're supposed to be overlooking a lot of things. What should we react to this first month? Well, I think beyond utilization, which we can always look at target share and snap share and that type of thing, I would say, are they getting opportunities to touch the ball in the fourth quarter of close games? That's an important thing. If the quarterback and the play caller trust them in pivotal moments at end of half, end of the fourth quarter, close game, that's a big deal. If the rookie makes a mistake, as they usually do, does the quarterback or the play caller go right back to them with the same type of plays? A good

example of that is Keon Coleman on Sunday night, where he dropped the pass and he was angry with himself. It was a deep fade. And then second half, Josh allen went right back to him two more times on that that's a huge in um example of i trust you you're good i'm not worried about that one you know that that mistake there um i think also are these players getting um are they showing their ability to beat somebody who is good on defense whether it's you know dealing with the pass rush dealing with um coverage or being able to set up linebackers or defensive um box defenders into blockers in a manner that just shows adept skill. Do they look comfortable? Do they look like they did in college?

If they look like they did in college, there still may be an adjustment in the coming weeks as they devise more game plans against them. But if they look as fluid and fast and comfortable as they did in college and do what you saw on tape there, that's a good sign. If they look better than that, if they look like they and do what you saw on tape there, that's a good sign. If they look better than that, if they look like they can do even more, like I'd say Malik Neighbors is probably a good example of that, then be really bullish on that player.

I love it. So let's say, is there one guy, and like a lot of these guys obviously have a lot more tape from college than they do the first four weeks of the NFL, but is there one guy who's changed your mind about them through the first month of the season? Ooh, I would probably say Bucky Irving. Bucky Irving probably changed my mind from the standpoint that he looks a little bit more fluid as a runner than I thought he would be. I thought he was a little bit more of a space player who was going to be more like

DeAndre Swift in the sense of like great in space, but maybe not between the tackles. But Irving showed that he's more than just out-athleting people, that he has a good feel for running between the tackles that I thought projecting forward, it might be a little more problematic. Love that answer. Bucky Irving has, you know, I was looking today at the rookies who have mattered at all so far in fantasy. I think there's eight of them that have even averaged 10 fantasy points per game. And zero of those eight are running backs. Like this running back class was not supposed to be that great and hasn't

gotten a lot of opportunity early on. And it hasn't like Braylon Allen is currently the highest scoring rookie running back on a per game basis because of those touchdowns. And he's looked fantastic. But it is interesting that it's been all quarterbacks, wide receivers and Brock Bauer so far, which is pretty much what our rookie drafts were. Let's take a short break, and we'll talk about some more rookies.

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It's free. It's easy. It's the law. Data sourced from the ORCGA 2023 Dirt Report. We had a question from the chat, and you mentioned him. I wanted to tell people anyways, like, if we have a little time at the end of the show, we're going to try to chat and you mentioned him. I wanted to tell people anyways, like if we have a little time at the end of the show, we're going to try to answer some of your questions.

So get the questions in the chat, but you just mentioned Keon Coleman. It's been a mixed start for him the first month. How are you feeling about Keon Coleman? Really encouraged after Sunday night for the reasons that I just mentioned is that when you start to see your quarterback, he's in Allen is increasingly trusting. Yeah.

And Coleman. So for that moment, for him to drop that ball and they went right back to him and he continued delivering, that's a great sign because Coleman was always going to be the contested catch player. He's that guy that we talked about pre-draft. If people recall is that the big thing

about him is can he separate and my contention was always it's not about how much distance he can put behind a receipt a defender it's about what position he can get and whether the quarterback is going to make those trust throws and on paper it looked like josh allen would be that guy to do it and the fact that allen seems to have an affection for what Keon Coleman can do and the confidence and arrogance to put that ball in there is a great sign. So I'm expecting we see a little bit of a liftoff from Coleman in the coming weeks. Outstanding. So let's talk about the quarterbacks.

Jaden Daniels has been incredible for fantasy football. That's not always the same thing as being like really impressive for real football, but he's done some good things in that regard as well. What have you seen on the tape as it, as it regards to real football, is this sustainable greatness from Jaden Daniels, or is this going to be kind of a hot and cold situation? I don't know yet. I will. And I'll explain that in a little bit further detail. Like before the season, I thought he's very capable of having a good start,

but maybe this finish being a little bit worse because teams typically, historically, you look at it, players who get schemed up, meaning that they do a lot fewer progression reads, a lot more throws near or around the line of scrimmage, more distributing like a point guard, and where the play action and the rollouts are more about the way to create openings as opposed to manipulating defenders with reads downfield.

Now, Jaden Daniels can do those progression reads, but he's doing a lot more of the former. And as a result of that, when that happens in your offense, defenses usually, after about four to six weeks, they start to get the scouting reports, and the defensive coordinator is starting putting together tape against that. And you start to see a slight slide or a big drop-off after that. And so I'm worried that caleb williams may

be in for that because he has a much higher percentage of throws at or near the line of scrimmage that are schemed up and then a lot of quarterbacks um for instance you can go look at how many he had versus say sam darnold and and it's a pretty big difference and i detail that at my top 10 article and also the previous week's gut check. I did a film review on them. But I'm encouraged because while that sounds like a negative, I'm encouraged that the Washington commanders said, you know what? We're going to put Jaden Daniels in an electric car and we get into heavy traffic on the highway. We're just going to let the car basically drive for itself a little bit more and

and he doesn't have to do any of the crazy driving whereas in contrast you know there's some other quarterbacks we'll talk about who i think were dropped in atlanta traffic um where it's going 85 miles per hour and there's heavy rain and cars fishtailing and he's having to deal with a little bit more of that so i think that they're opened up the offense gradually to where he's making more throws downfield. And the first and second reads are there. And he's doing a pretty good job with that. But there are some that the difference between how his stats look

and how he really is as a quarterback is you can tell that he's, like at LSU, he can't really make that second to third read or some of those first to second reads as quickly or as clearly as you would like from a seasoned veteran. And that's where we may start to see a potential diminishing of production as the season goes on.

But I'd say for now, I'm not telling people don't start Jaden Daniels or anticipate a big fall, but I would say don now i'm not telling people don't start jayden daniels or anticipate a big fall but i would say don't get rid of your backup plan and if you don't have a good backup plan go shopping for one just in case because robert griffin had a great start in his career andrew luck did not same year um and we saw how that played out baker mayfield had good starts and then kind of dropped down for a while for him. Marcus Mariota had a five touchdown debut. You know, Will Levis had a five touchdown debut. Daniels is playing really good football and he looks like the guy I saw on tape,

both good and where he has areas to improve. But I would say crowning him great right now is premature. But saying he's good for fantasy and could possibly stay that way i'd say there's a pretty good chance yeah and i i only have him on one of my dynasty roster so there's no chance i'm selling but i could see if you were heavily invested in him like his his value has gone up quite a bit the first month i could absolutely see shopping to see like what kind of profit you could turn we've got we've got to talk about the other guy and Jordan like says it, what should I watch to not panic for Caleb and Caleb Williams?

And I think it's so funny because like the, the narrative basically everywhere was that Caleb Williams was walking into the greatest situation for a rookie quarterback ever. He had DJ Moore. He had Keenan Allen. He had keenan allen he had roma dunze he had deandre swift and colt commit like nobody gets it this good and it took about a month and everyone has turned shane waldron into i don't know whatever negative typecast you want to give and it's all system problem it's offensive line problem and so i

jordan's asking what do i watch for to not panic how much of the struggles early on do you think are caleb related versus system and offensive line related it's a great question and i i've been trying to tell people i don't you don't tell people who are panicked to relax because they panic more maybe that's why aaron rogers probably not going to win a lot of contests off the field for some things. But I would just tell people this is what was expected. The way I had talked about Caleb pre-draft in the rookie scouting portfolio was this. He's the one that is the most prepared to get drafted by a bad team and survive the onslaught that's about to come his way and still be able to build a career that none of that says he's going to do

great as a rookie it just means that he's going to get the crappiest situation and he's still going to be able to handle the fans the media the badness of the team and i think he's done that i i think that people are panicking about it and they're even talking well what if jayden should they drafted jayden daniels instead let me tell you something right now and this is going to anger a lot of commanders fans and jayden daniels fans jayden daniels would look worse than caleb williams if he were dropped behind that offensive line in that system. That system demands Caleb Williams to make more progression-based reads and have to do more to lead that team. He's the one in Atlanta traffic. And if you've ever been in Atlanta traffic,

you know, it's like LA traffic going twice, about four times as fast and people taking risks. And so he's dealing with that and he doesn't have the Tesla that's like put on automatic drive. And in fact, the wheel's a little shaky. He's got some bad front tires that are balding and the engine has the light flickering on and off, you know, because that offensive line is so important.

So yeah, what you were looking at here is part of its scheme. they're asking him to go into deep water and be more accountable for decision making and creation of separation than jay daniels is being asked to do at this time he's also dealing with a worse offensive line and worse pressure and an organization that really has historically not really had a great plan for things so i like that he's slowly getting better like what he's he's he's handling the pressure a little bit better he's he's tried to he tried to do what a lot of great quarterbacks who are young do early on put it all on their shoulders and then they end up just missing passes those types of things but what should encourage you is go back and watch the earlier games

where it looked horrible statistically, and watch how many times after, you know, that he didn't fall apart. He threw the ball away when he should have. He didn't throw, take risks out of his own end zone or in his own red zone. He was making smart decisions to keep the game um competitive and even though he was missing throws most quarterbacks who are young that get in these situations they just melt down you know look at will levis and what he's done in year two with meltdown plays where they had leads um caleb rarely did that if at all and that's unbelievably encouraging because you would expect

that from a rookie and instead he's kept them in in games even if he hasn't been able to win the game yet but he'll get there okay bo nicks the other starting quarterback i i i don't i i don't know what to make of anything that's happening in denver right matt what's going on with bo nixon denver um it seems to me and that some weeks they're letting him take the governor off and like against the bucks where he was throwing it downfield and it looked great um early on like he was hitting the throws that you'd want to see him hitting and some weeks it looks like he's bubble screening the team that the team's just wanting to run bubble screen after bubble screen or short throw after short throw and i think that it has to do with them maybe

with their game plan and what they're trying to do the fact that the receivers they don't really have a great wide receiver one they have a competent wide receiver one in Sutton and a lot of guys who are young and they haven't figured out their running game completely yet and there's the offensive line issues on top of it so I think that sometimes they can get really predictable and Bo Nix gets stuck trying to execute a very predictable game plan and then when they do go aggressive suddenly you're like oh that's the quarterback they were talking about in practices and that they rated reasonably well so he's up and down but i'm still kind of encouraged by him too because i'm seeing

he's generally a smart decision maker um he's made some mistakes for sure but you're also seeing some promising decisions and promising moments from him and it's not just it just the problem is is that it's veering on one end to like ultra safe don't do anything to wait a minute who's this guy what did he do you know and i think that's that's a part of the game plan yeah it i think you you explained it well. It's hard to watch. It's really, like the only thing I've really enjoyed watching is like Bo Nix as a rusher. That's kind of fun. He does some good things with his legs. And you're right, he's had some downfield throws that have looked okay.

But man, there are so many screens. And so many screens where everybody knows they're getting ready to throw a screen. Yeah. And so that's not Bo, you know, that's not him. No, he's doing, he's doing what Sean Payton apparently wants him to do. Let's, let's go over to the wide receivers. That's, that's more exciting. Yeah.

The top three, you said it earlier, you had Malik neighbors clearly ahead of Marvin Harrison. That looks obvious. Now, has anything changed with your evaluation of neighbors, Harrison or Roma Dunzey and how their first month has looked. No, because really with neighbors, he, he just basically showed he is a transcendent player. And so we're,

we can just move on because we don't need to like indulge in that Harrison. I think he's shown exactly what I thought he was, which is he's a great boundary receiver with his back to the quarterback. And certain routes he's very strong at. But at the same time, there are certain contested catch scenarios that I saw on tape against Michigan and Georgia and Penn State where he doesn't know how to use his hands perfectly well that would elevate him into the neighbor's territory

if he knew what he was doing with those but he has um lapses small lapses that are difference between harrison being a top receiver in any other class but not being in neighbor's league just yet um so promising very good but it's going to be up and down because he's also paired with the quarterback who i joke is like you talk in basketball they're like the black hole they get the ball and then the ball disappears i would say that kyle murray is as close to a football version of a black hole from a quarterback that you will ever get because go look at how many players he's ever supported at wide receiver and tight end and from a fantasy perspective he had one year where he has produced better than number than wide receiver 26 he has had one year that he's produced a top

10 tight end they weren't the same year um and so he gets lots of points but nobody else around him right so and you're seeing that kind of still play out so harrison's gonna have good weeks and bad weeks um brian thomas or dunes let's just jump right into that because brian thomas yeah i'm i'm really like what i see from thomas the route running's good you can see that he's got some savvy with zone and man-to-man routes which was what you saw at lsu um he looks very polished and and he seems to be very comfortable knowing what he's doing. Maybe he's not getting matched up with the top corner all the time, and he's not getting opportunities to show how good he can be against top competition yet, but he looks promising.

And Odunze, I mean, he's been up and down a bit, but a lot of that is rookie quarterback bad offensive line two other strong receivers or even and you could even say three if you want to be charitable to DeAndre Carter and say he's a nice journeyman veteran who can command targets and get open in zones so I just say that Odunze to me still could wind up if they get hot down the stretch and figure out something with this offensive line, they get hot. Odunze could be one of the hottest players down the stretch if that gets addressed. Well, I like Thomas has surprised me in that he's not just running up and down the boundary. He's doing, he's doing

some intermediate things early. I thought we'd see that in the second half of this season. So I think that's very encouraging. He's actually second amongst the rookies in yards per route run at 2.37. He's got a 21% target share in the first four weeks. I was thinking that would probably be like 18% for the year. And so I guess I just wonder, like kind of going back to Thomas and Adunze, I'm not, I don't think anybody's saying take Thomas over Adunze yet, but we were kind of viewing it as a clear big three at wide receiver. Is it closer to a big four now? Has that gap between Adunze and Thomas shrunk? I think for a lot of people it really has.

I think I had more of a big five, and I had Thomas in there easily, and I had Xavier Worthy in there. So I would say I've changed my mind a little bit about Worthy, but not because of him as much as about the scheme. And that's the thing is he's made a couple of big plays, scored two touchdowns in week one on three touches, had the 50-yard receiving touchdown last week. Now we've got Rashi Rice likely done for the year.

We still don't know that, and apparently we won't know that for another week, I think because of the swelling in his knee, and they just can't figure out exactly what's wrong. But there's a lot more opportunity with Marquise Brown on the shelf, with Rice on the shelf, for Worthy to have a bigger role than I thought he was going to have as a rookie. But we've not seen any glimpses of that. Even the good games have been a 10%, 12%, 14% target share.

Do you think he's ready to take on a bigger role, or do you think he's going to kind of remain in that home run hitter role in the offense? I think he remains in the home run hitter role with a slight addition of some of the schemed up gadget type of plays that they ran with him early and do a little more with that. But I think you're going to see more Juju Smith-Schuster in the Ray Shee role. Maybe they'll try to get Sky Moore in there if he can hang on to the ball.

But with Xavier Worthy, I think what you're seeing is it's not that he lacks skill. I know we heard someone say all he does is run on a straight line. But really the issue is that Andy Reid's offense has never been kind to wide receivers as far back as Philadelphia if you go back and look at the number of players I think is Jeremy Macklin, Deshaun Jackson, Reggie Brown and maybe Jason Avant and I might be missing one other guy who actually was good as a rookie early on in their career or actually amounted to anything fantasy wise and then they had to bring in free agents like to to really make a difference and when you look at the the track record for um kansas city that's pretty much the only handful of wide

receivers that have been able to do it because the offense is complex there's a lot demanded of like all the roles that they have to play. And I think that's part of it is that Worthy has to learn all these roles and all the different reads and all the different things that's going on in the middle of the field where you have to read stuff amidst all this traffic. That's more than ever. And it becomes a little much. So they've,

they've probably like given that to them in bite-sized pieces. And I saw somebody had said, well, why don't we just give Worthy the routes that Rice was running in? First off, I'm not sure how long he'd survive taking this, that Rice was taking in that role. And second off, it's just not that simple. We've talked about Bucky Irving just a little bit earlier, but you said he was the guy who's changed your mind

and been better between the tackles than you were expecting. He's still that 1B to Rashad White. As much as everybody wants Rashad White to go away, White's still going to be the passing downs back, I believe. Do you think we've seen the best case of Bucky Irving, or could he actually become a feature back in the NFL? It's so funny. I was always kind of suspect of Rashad um White but

then last year I thought he actually improved and now I'm like I know I'm like laughing because I'm on the other side of the spectrum where I'm kind of like I'd like to I stop picking on Rashad White like but I would say this is that White um White's just a bigger back who can handle the between-the-tackles work and enough of the volume, and he's still a very good receiver. I think that it's premature to look at Irving. It's just the fantasy in everyone who wants to look at that and go, I want him to be the lead back. We want a Darren Sproles type of season.

We want him to be the little guy that could. And I just don't think that's going to happen long term. And I think most teams see that and go, I'm not giving this guy 16 to 24 touches a week. Maybe it's more in the 12 to 16 range. And if it's a good game and we're winning and we're ahead, it's more likely going to be white getting more of those closeout touches and getting more of those opportunities

or another back even sean tucker someone just continue to keep an eye on um as the bigger back compliment who still has cut back ability and speed so i think we're closer to his peak in terms of what he's capable of but there's maybe another five to ten percent more to go yeah i i think and we may see that like in the coming weeks i did was nice to see white get loose for a couple of decent carries last week and i think you're right like we're we're going to continue to see more white than we are bucky but you could see you could see bucky as a low-end rb2 at some point let's take our second break then we're going to get to some of your questions and i got a couple emails here that we can read as well be right back with matt walton so we're going to start off with uh like it's kind of a a big topic but it's also a very immediate

rashi rice um we we always talk about how if you're a rebuilder, like go get players that get hurt. These contenders are, I need fantasy points now. You can get a discount on the guy that got hurt. And by the time you're ready to compete, they'll be okay. And so we are getting a lot of questions about like, what should I expect to get for Rushie Rice? What should I expect to give for him?

And I think he's such a difficult player to value he'd be a hard player to value like at least his value has been on a roller coaster without the injury um some of that's the off-field stuff some of that's the like how much of this gimmicky chief's role with the three yard a dot can we actually count on to continue to produce fantasy points like this and then he has shown us at the beginning of this year oh wait he's now turning into a real wide receiver also but we're looking at a situation where we don't really expect him at this point to play for the rest of 2024 and there seems to be a pretty good likelihood that we may have a suspension

at the top of 2025 so a guy who was maybe just moving into the top 12 dynasty wide receiver ranks now, all of a sudden maybe falls outside of people's top 24. What would you give up for rice right now? And he says, Addison picks. If you are a rebuilder, I'm not giving up picks for rice. What do you think about Jordan, Jordan Addison versus rice? What's so funny is my long build rankings. I have Addison 32nd on my board. I have Rashi Rice 40th and he's the next receiver below. So there's a little bit of a gap below between them. So I would keep Addison two over Rice. And it's because of the off field and injury concerns and the nature of that offense,

because I think he's more than one dimensional, but he's more of a running back. He's being used like Debo a little bit, you know, in some respects. And so you want to see more of a complete route tree and used in different ways that I'm just not sure is there. And I think Addison is over while he's got a little bit of some, a little bit of a lead foot, let's just say, that maybe I still think that he's a guy that I would rather have. And if you're going to do picks to give it up, I would give up this year's draft picks for it. If you are trying to give away Rashi Rice and you want picks, get 2027 picks.

That's what I would recommend. Get Addison and 2027 picks. That would be my recommendation. I gave Matt a lot of compliments at the top of the show, but one thing that you can obviously tell here is he is a professional podcaster, a professional radio guy. He knows, he sees the next thing coming. He knows how to lead into the next question because the next question from the chat is, does Matt have an early look at the 2025 prospect class? Obviously he does. It's not great. Does he have a top five players? He's really excited to learn more about. I have seen so much negativity about this class, Matt, and I don't want to put you on the spot with trying to list a top five or anything like that, like what what are your thoughts and is there anyone that you're excited about because all i hear is negativity well i'm not one of those negativity guys about this class

it's just because i remember hearing about the patrick mahomes class and how bad that class was going to be for quarterbacks okay so. So it turned out. Okay. People tend to do this. And usually it's because people don't watch enough tape yet to really know what they're giving instant analysis. So this running back class though is very good. So I'm excited about this running back class. Ashton Jonte at Boise state needs to be near or at the top of your board.

If you remember um javid best out of cal with the lions who just had too many head injuries and and too many injuries and that kind of knocked his career off jonte is kind of like the the second coming of javid best who i thought was one of the best two runners in his class. You've got a lot of different types of backs who are intriguing, like Nick Singleton at Penn State. I would definitely add to that list who is just smooth, well-built, who can break tackles and run past you.

I like Quinshawn Judkins of Ohio State. I know some people see him as more of a plotter type, not unbelievably exciting. They like Travion Anderson more, but I like Quinshawn Jutkins. There's guys deeper in the class, like Mario Anderson out of Memphis, who was at South Carolina, who's intriguing. Kyle Manon guy at Rutgers is a fun back. Then there's size speed guys like Phil Moffitt Clemson so the running back class is really good the the wide receiver class I haven't watched a

ton yet but from what I've seen of it I would say it's not nearly as strong as last year's class but you're gonna find some valuable valuable guys. Certainly that kid from Arizona is making a lot of noise, who I haven't really studied too deeply yet, so I don't want to comment too hard on him. Quarterbacks, they're guys that aren't as high profile yet as what we saw last year heading into it. and what dictates why people like classes are not more than anything tend to be quarterbacks when they when they rag on a class it's usually because quarterbacks isn't there when it is there it's they think it's a great class because quarterback is there i think uh dan danier said this a couple of weeks ago,

and I'll just see if you agree with it. It was basically that, and he's a Giants fan who is looking at maybe having an early pick. And I think what he said was the problem is the best quarterbacks in college football are not eligible for the draft. And it also seems like that might be the case at wide receiver also. Yeah, I think that's probably the case. Yeah. So that's why some people are going to be really frustrated because those are two bar key positions that often get drafted early. So if you're into team building and then the foot, the true guts wide receiver, the glitzier types of talents, it's not as strong, but there's still opportunities for us to be some really good players that will come out of it. I did get it. We got a question from Tyson, and this may be a redraft question.

We get those in the chat pretty often, but any good QBs on waivers for this week? And it brings up a guy that I'd like to ask you about because Justin Fields has had quite an interesting start to his NFL career, allegedly only starting to open this year because Russell Wilson's calf injury. But they won and they won and they won again. And then he finally has this blow up fantasy performance last week and they lose. And he had a couple sloppy plays do you what have you seen from justin field so far this season do you think that he's going to be the steelers quarterback for the rest of the year i think they're going to keep doing it until he really falls apart and and it shows that he's consistently costing steelers opportunities to

win or putting them in danger of losing so they're going to keep rolling with it because really the offense isn't going to be that much different if Russell Wilson goes in. The difference is the running, the capacity to run at this stage. Wilson will probably be a little better in the vertical game, and Fields will probably be a little worse than that, but a little bit better as a runner. So you'll see maybe a little more play- a runner so i'm not you'll see maybe a little more play action rollouts with wilson than you'll see with with fields but really we're

probably not going to see wilson unless fields really struggles more than he has so far that's exactly what i'm thinking so you know in terms of guys on waivers i guess it depends on the size of your league right so i probably need some examples of like if you're in a smaller league who are some guys that that might be available you know is andy dalton still available i doubt it unless it's like a really like a 10 team league and you need somebody for you know well and it also depends on if we're talking about a one quarterback or a two quarterback league because dalton's not available in any of the two quarterback leagues. I think one QB leagues, he is mostly available. I'm just looking at one of our standard 12 team one QB leagues on CBS. And you look at the guys that are 50% rostered or less, it's Bo Nix,

it's Andy Dalton, it's Daniel Jones. That's really just about it. Dalton and Jones are fine to be able to add, and especially if you have, say, Jaden Daniels and you want to have a backup plan, Dalton would be a fine pick to have because he keeps that offense humming. He really understands how to read coverages and get through. Is he going to carry your team all the time?

No, he's more of a matchup guy who's going to give you really strong weeks sometimes with great matchups and against really really tough defenses he might have he might throw up some clunkers but i don't think he but i think he's good enough there joe flacco if if you want to take a chance on anthony richardson you know continuing to stay banged up or that he can't go this week might be a good option to consider just because he runs that offense differently than Richardson. And he's shown that competence to be able to come in and do that type of work. And Jones, I mean, look, Jones is, Jones isn't going to do great for you, but he is getting the targets there and being

able to, and Dable's working well with him in this level. And I would just say, if you have Jones and you start to see that it's not looking good, you can pivot to Drew Locke preemptively, and you might end up with a good situation there too. Steve was offered Tyreek Hill for Brock Bowers, and I'm just going to say, if this is a dynasty trade, the answer is no.

Please don't. But the larger question because tyreek's a 30 year old wide receiver who hasn't really shown us any signs of dropping off but we know the end's not too far away he was supposed to be the number one or two wide receiver in fantasy this season we got the report from adam schefter that the expectation is that two is going to come back and play week eight. Um, and hopefully play the rest of the season.

I don't know that you can start Tyree kill until two, it gets back. And then we're not too far from the dolphins playing in cold weather games as well. Would you rather have Tyree kill or Brock Bowers just for the rest of this year? That's a great question. I'd bench Tyree kill in a couple of leagues, um,

last week because i was like yeah writing's on the wall even even as a guy who still thinks skylar thompson has a chance to develop down the line depending on the way the situations can unfold mike mcdaniel hasn't really opened up the offense for any quarterback other than to it so So really go downfield. So yeah, looking at this with Tyree Kill, I would say, yeah, you're waiting for week eight. The only reason I would trade for Tyree Kill is if I'm in a win now scenario where I have a bunch of core players

who are like over the age, between the ages of like 29 and 31. I'll give you an example i have a league with tyree kill where i've been like knocking on the door for like four years and my team is consisting of guys like kamara aaron jones i um right i re-kill mike evans like old core players and i was able to get a trade for derrick henry and get deandre hopkins in the deal for like picks next year that i'm like that's okay i'll do this because this team's good enough to really do it now but hot hill would be one of those guys if i had had henry instead of hill

and somebody said i'll give you tyree kill i'll go i'll take that bet because down the stretch, if Tua comes back as predicted, I can go. But that's the isolated scenario. Otherwise, yeah, you want Powers. You want to hang on to him. They're only going to get a better quarterback within the next two to three years. And if not, Gardner Minshew has done a good job targeting tight ends and doing pretty well with Powers.

There's going to be ups and downs in that offense. But when the matchups are decent, Brock Bowers can have some pretty good days. And we will, as we finish up, we're going to go back to Tyson because he tells us Sam Darnold is available. You can forget pretty much everything else that we said about other quarterbacks. Go get Sam Darnold, invest heavily in Sam Darnold. I think Sam Darnold might be a top 12 quarterback for the rest of this year, but I want to ask from a dynasty perspective, Matt, is he taking the Baker Mayfield, Geno Smith, Jared Goff reclamation path to where we're going to see Sam Darnold with a long-term contract and guaranteed starting job? The early signs point to that being promising. I mean, from what I've watched of him, I would joke that he's basically, he's Will Levis who's gone to hero ball rehab

or had his ghosts in the pocket exercised by a priest. Like he looks like a, he still makes some of those mistakes with reads and things like that, like all quarterbacks do, but he looks good. And I don't see, you know, I don't see, um, JJ McCarthy overtaking him next year. If he continues to play like he did McCarthy might be, uh, just a good sit and wait guy. And that might be great for him in that regard. So Donald's going to get a second chance to start. If it's not in or for a long-term starting job.

I believe that because pre-draft, I mean, his whole thing was just, he didn't quite read the field great. And he played too much hero ball. And then he wound up in a horrible situation. I mean, when you tell your coach, I'm seeing ghosts, that's on the mission of vulnerability. You don't normally see. And when your coach is staring at you as if he's on an altered substance, just staring ahead in the field, like Adam Gates was, um, and not saying anything and just keeping,

leaving them in there to get punished. Um, that, that can cause a lot of damage. And Sam Donald has overcome that. He's done the work behind the scenes. I'm starting to believe. I, I. I am.

And it also makes life a little bit easier when you have Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison at wide receiver and Kevin O'Connell drawing up schemes. Sure. I'm happy for Donald. He's definitely the guy you should add. He's a top 10 quarterback in my rankings this week. Matt, thank you so much for being here. Always enjoy talking to you,

whether it's about the rookies, whether it's about waivers, whether it's about dynasty in general, please just tell everybody one more time before we go where they can find you. Yeah. If you want to get the rookie scouting portfolio, you know, you can go to mattwaldman.com and you can find all the information you want to get there. It's by far the best thing that I do. But I do pretty okay at footballguys.com. You can find all my work there. And of course, on Twitter or X, you can find me at Matt Waldman. I am also on threads at Matt Waldman RSP and YouTube, Matt Waldman's RSP Filmer. And he started that by saying, if you want to get the rookie scouting portfolio,

I'm just going to tell you, if you're listening to a dynasty podcast and you play dynasty football, you do want to get the rookie scouting portfolio, go to mattwaldman.com and get it. Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Nada.

Thank you. Everybody who was active in the chat. We will talk to you next Tuesday. Paramount Podcasts. back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal. Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca.