Fantasy Football Today - RB Tiers: When to Grab your RB1; Veterans vs. Rookies (07/15 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

Bid on Draft-A-Thon items here! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://tiltify.com/@cbs-sports/fft-draftathon-2025⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Vote for Fantasy Football Today in the "Sports" category: https://podcastawards.com/app/signup Ian Hartitz of Fantasy Life is today's guest as we take a look at Jamey's running back tiers! Heath and Ian will critique and let us know where they differ. First, Ian offers his take on RB strategy (4:00) for 2025 and we run through the news and notes before getting into the first two tiers at RB (10:50). We've got seven stud RBs in Tiers 1 and 2, but Heath believes there should be an eighth! ... Tiers 3 and 4 (22:00) are loaded with talent. Can these guys be your RB1? Should Ken Walker be in this tier? Then we get to Tier 5 (29:10) which is where Jamey starts to get nervous about the position with guys like Alvin Kamara and James Conner among others. Meanwhile, Tier 6 (35:15) is an interesting mix of veteran RBs and rookie RBs ... Tiers 7 and 8 (44:55) once again highlight the stability of the veterans vs. the excitement of the rookies. Should you draft R.J. Harvey or Aaron Jones? Kaleb Johnson or Isiah Pacheco? And we talk about Tiers 9 and 10 (51:45) with Javonte Williams, Travis Etienne and more plus more late-round RBs and handcuff strategy (1:02:00) ... Email us at [e-mail] 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 Shop our store: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠shop.cbssports.com/fantasy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  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 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

Stop. Do you know how fast you were going? I'm going to have to write you a ticket to my new movie, The Naked Gun. Liam Neeson. Buy your tickets now and get a free chili dog. Chili dog not included. The Naked Gun tickets on sale now. August 1st. This episode is brought to you by Adidas. When the frustration grows and the doubts start to creep in,

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Now here's some combination of Adam, Dave, Jamie and Heath. Welcome back. It is Tuesday, July 15th. Fantasy football today. We're doing tears this week. Quarterbacks yesterday. Today we're tackling running backs. I'm Adam Azer with Jamie Isenberg, who you heard yesterday. Heath Cummings is back. Welcome back Heath. Hey, I'm just trying to picture you tackling running backs. It's really something enjoyable.

I didn't even try to make that joke. It just, just kind of happened. How was your live draft? It was fantastic, hectic, lots and lots of fun. Met some really great people there in Kansas City. It's a different experience doing the Scott Fishbowl draft live because none of us really know what we're doing in this format. That's kind of Scott's purpose with the lineups and the scoring system.

And then to do it live with everybody looking looking at you it's a lot of fun. It is a wild format to have no positional requirements you can start at most two quarterbacks you can start zero quarterbacks you can start up to nine running backs or wide receivers. Ian Hartitz is here today Hartitz I already said it wrong Ian Hartitz is here today he is the senior fantasy football writer for fantasy life he is also going to be an FFT open manager. You can bid to be, or not bid, you can purchase a spot in his league beginning next Monday, the 21st at 7 p.m. Eastern. Welcome to Fantasy Football today. Ian, do I have to call you Nick Westbrook? I had nine touchdowns last year. That is your your title on screen here. I just like to remind people, man, what a special season.

More than Tyree Kill and Jalen Waddle combined, can you believe that world that we were living in last year? But no, guys, it's great to be here. My Scott Fishbowl draft, unfortunately, we're dragging a little bit. I think we're only through eight rounds, so kind of wish I would have knocked it out in one day. Jealous of Heath up there, but no, guys,

excited to talk some more piece. Somebody got kicked out of my Scott Fishbowl draft because he missed his first pick. It wasn't you. It was not me. Wow. Hi. Thankfully there's a few guys in the league or girls who remind everyone when they're on the clock and I haven't missed a single pick yet. So thank you. We have a, we're only through nine and ours in, and uh, we have, you know, there's

always, like you said, there's always somebody who's, who's doing a great job reminding people the back half of our drafts, which I'm the 11th pick, we fly through that quickly. The front half takes three days. It's actually incredible. Ian, do you have a running back strategy this year, a way to approach the position, a way that you look at the position? Because obviously, last year was such a good year for running backs. Just in general, we'll go through the tiers in a little bit. How are you approaching running back this season? I will say the big thing I learned was last year just getting a little too cute in round

two in terms of having guys like Chris Alave, Jalen Waddle, maybe your Garrett Willsons of the world, fine enough wide receivers, not even saying they were necessarily ranked all that wrong just in terms of the wide receiver rankings themselves. But when you got guys like Jonathan Taylor and in last year's case, I'm in Saquon, Freak, and Barkley, just give me the running back that's going to see 300 plus touches with any semblance of good health out here over the wide receiver who we're hopeful can give us something. So I guess that would be my main lesson.

And you know, I do think sometimes a best ball kind of fever gets in my mind a little bit going into redraft where I'm just so focused on loading up a wide receiver. It's okay to be balanced in the year 2025. Hi T, grab me a couple of RBs early. Let's see what happens. That's interesting. So who is that Chris Olave player this year? Is that Lad McConkey? I'm just looking at some ADP. Is that, I don't know, Drake London maybe, who was really good overall. I think it's right after McConk, it's London, AJB,

McConkie, however old are those guys. After that is when we start getting one sort of, I don't even wanna say red flag, but orangeish flag after another. Rashid Rice coming back from the injury, T Higgins obviously gonna be working alongside Jamar Chase. Is he gonna score quite as many touchdowns this year? We'll see what happens.

Tyree Kill, Garell Wilson, Marvin Harrison Jr. Again, not saying they don't deserve to be top 15 wide receivers, but once we're putting those guys up against the Jonathan Taylors, the Josh Jacobs of the world, I'm taking the RB more times than not. I think that's pretty good advice. Jamie Heath.

I would agree. I think, you know, there's, we talk about this. There's, there's a drop off at, at the receiver position where the running backs seem to, you know, have that a little bit longer leash of just, you know, proven I guess is, is, is a way to describe it, you know, before we get to the rookies in some cases past Gentie. So it, it makes sense, you know, and it really depends

on how you draft. It's why I think, you know, we continue to see a move for the last few years towards Hero RB, yeah, Tortiero RB, where you're getting that one anchor running back and then sort of, you know, waiting to sort of build it out at that position. And you could do it a little bit easier this year because of the rookie class and how they sort of populated the position a little bit more. So it absolutely makes sense when you're in that, you know, start of the dead zone, essentially, you know, to stay away from those receivers and still, I guess, maybe not dead zone, but to stay away from those, the receiver dead zone and stay away from those guys and start to take those running backs that are still on the board. Yeah. If you want to stray from that, if you really like

those wide receivers and you're now you're feeling like we're shaming you. The good news is round three has got some very good running backs too. So if you want to take a wide receiver in round two, you can still get chase Brown. You can still get Kyron Williams, Breeze Hall, James Cook in round three. Not obviously, Ken Walker should be there too. Ken Walker is going to be around for pick, you know, so Alvin Kamara is gonna be around for pick, Joe Mixon, we're gonna talk about later. He could be around four or five pick. So anyway, we'll get into all that.

Some quick news and notes, actually, before we do that, let's talk about the Draft-A-Thon. I am now ready to reveal more details about the FFT Open, but go to tinyurl.com slash 2025 FFT. First things first, you wanna get your mailbag questions answered on Friday, go ahead and purchase that for $50. It all goes to St. Jude, we're over $2,000 raised so far. We've also got a mock draft that you can join,

I think next Tuesday we're drafting. So yeah, there's a lot there, but also we've got the, oh, look at that, the Dynasty League, there's gonna be a Dynasty but also we've got the the we have the look at the Dynasty League. There's going to be a dynasty league. There's spots in the in the dynasty that Heath is running. Like I can't even go through all of the things that are available right now. But the FFT open spots.

All right. 24 leagues. There's my division. Dave's Heath's Jamie's Chris Towers, Jacob Gibbs, Dan Schneier's division, Chip Patterson from our Cover 3 podcast, Alfredo Brown, you heard him last week, Dwayne McFarland, who works with Ian at Fantasy Life. Ian's got a got a league that'll be up on Monday night. Katie Mox, John Breach from CBS, Mackenzie Brooks, Jake Sealy, Kendall Valenzuela and Adam Ronis. Those are a lot of Fantasy Life members as well. Ligé Duesable, Mike McClure, Sian Nijad, Thomas Schaeffer, you know him, Tom Fornelli

and Scott Fish and Tom Grassi who is a Packers super fan has his Packers podcast and he's going to be doing an FFT Open League as well. So you are- I want to do this though with our guests. It's awesome that Ian's joining us for the FFT Open, but throw the graphic back up of the four of us. Now, Ian, you and I met each other in person for the first time at the FlexDraft last year. So you know how tall I am. You see the graphic.

We're all the same height in the graphics. How do you think we are from a height perspective? Dave, me, Adam, and Heath, who do you think's the tallest through the shortest? Dave's a pretty big dude. Is he the tallest? You give us all your four guesses, like rank them and then we'll tell you. Dave, Heath, Jamie, in that order.

And then me last. And then Adam last, sorry bro. But look how tall I am on the picture. You nailed it. Three boxes. Yeah. No, no. He's the tallest tall I am on the picture. You nailed it. Three boxes. Yeah. No, no, he's on the rap sheet box. You guys ever seen that?

He almost nailed it. He did it. He did it taller than Dave, yes. Yeah, you did really well. Good job, good job. I'm quite sure. We had Alfredo Brown on last week and he said it was, what, he's first?

No, me first. No, you weren't first. You were second. Oh, I was second? Listen, I've met Alfredo several times. If Adam, he thinks Adam's taller than me and he has absolutely no idea how to judge Adam. He said Heath first, cause Dave was last.

Okay, Heath, Heath, me, JB, Dave. Okay, yeah, terrible guess. Also listen, Podcast Awards. So we got the Podcast Awards are up now and you can go to podcastawards.com and just find, is it podcastawards.com slash app slash sign up, I believe. Did I memorize that?

Whammy, yes. And then just nominate fantasy football today. We're in the sports category. It takes about 30 to 60 seconds. Podcastawards.com or podcastawards.com slash app slash sign up. We won this last year. Let's repeat.

Please nominate fantasy football today in the sports category. All right. News and notes. We'll talk about Garrett Wilson tomorrow because we're doing wide receiver tiers, but he just got a four year, $130 million extension with $90 million guaranteed. Najee Harris should be back soon for the Chargers, but Mike Williams started training camp on the Pup List. We're not going to panic about Pup List.

It's July 15th and guys can come off the Pup List whenever they whenever they want, whenever they're ready. And then you got Shamar Stewart, first round pick for the Bengals, edge rusher, Bud Elliott on our Cover 3 podcast and CBS Sports podcast network. He said that Shamar Stewart thinks he might be able to

return to college football this year. The Bengals are really playing with fire with the way they're handling the Shamar Stewart contract. It's what they do. It is what they do. All right, let's get into the running back tiers here. And Jamie, you got your tiers published on the website. We're gonna use your tiers.

Bijon Robinson, Jameer Gibbs, Saquon Barkley, and Christian McCaffrey are in tier one. Bijon Gibbs, Barkley, McCaffrey, and then in tier two, it's H. Anne, Gentie, and Derek Henry. These are all players we expect to come off the board within the first 15 picks or so. But tier one is Bijon, Gibbs, Barkley, McCaffrey. Tier two is H. Anne, Gentie, and Henry. I can't throw it to Heath yet because I'm not ready for that chaos because I know he's got some differences of opinion.

Yeah, yeah. I think Ian's gonna bring some chaos also. All right, so Ian, what do you think about tier one and tier two here? I think he's got the right seven guys overall. I got H. Anne as my overall RB you know, tiebreaker with CMC. Give me the slightly younger guy and everything. But I think Gentie is a really interesting one.

He's someone that I've had as high as RB three. And as low as the RB seven, you know, during this process, the tiebreaker for me, cause I just hear people say like, Oh, but Gentie is so talented in all this. Do you see him at Boise? Yeah, of course. Look at every running back on this list.

We are talking about the cream of the crop after all, they're all going to see all sorts of touches. So for me, the tiebreaker was just, you can look at the early Vegas implied lines, but the Schraders offense, even with Geno Smith, even with Pete Carroll, Chip Kelly and the improvements, still being set up and expecting to be a bottom 10 scoring unit in the league.

Meanwhile, okay, the Dolphins, the Falcons, maybe not world beating groups, but we at least have seen ceilings from them. So for me, the tiebreaker here with Gentie is just a situation where again, not fully trusting that touchdown upside relative the rest of these dudes, but then again pretty hard to bust with, you know, 350 plus touches. Guys, everyone loves to throw out the Trent Richardson thing. He still finishes the RB5 and PPR points for game as a rookie, obviously went south after that, but again, very difficult to bust in any sort of meaningful way. But man, going up against guys like Henry HNC MC,

Gentie is, you know, going to be RB seven for me. Yeah, you know, I want to look up for net was another guy who was Bally hood, right? Coming out of college and top 10 pick. Yeah, I know. And I word of the day, he finishes RB8 per game as a rookie and he had an interesting career. But with that kind of draft capital, you're just going to get so many touches. Fornet had 268 carries and 36 catches in only 13 games. All right, Heath. Yeah, go ahead. Before Heath causes chaos, just because we're not gonna probably talk about him a lot

because it's just Jameer Gibbs. What was the thing you said yesterday with the starter training camp coming? What are we gonna hear a lot of, Adam? Best shape of his life. You know what the second thing we hear a lot of? He's gonna be used more in the passing game. Yep, and what did Jameer Gibbs say yesterday?

Did he say that? He's getting split out wide. Never happened before in this offense to this level. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, most running back catches are going to be coming out of the backfield. No, but that's the other narrative we hear, right? Yeah, no, it's true.

And I think it's interesting because you talk about touches, touches, touches with Bijon, Barkley, McCaffrey, Gentie, Henry, they're going to be there. Give is in A-chan, I do wonder. A-chan was on pace. Let's see. Let me get his pace with two. It was 221 carries and 104 catches. Jamir Gibbs, his pace with David Montgomery was 226 carries and

only 47 catches. So possible that Jamir Gibbs has the fewest touches Heath of these top seven running backs. Oh, yeah, I think whether Jamir Gibbs has the fewest touches Heath of these top seven running backs? Oh yeah, I think whether Jamir Gibbs justifies being in tier one may just be as simple as how many games to save Montgomery play. Like I think he's a borderline tier one guy with Montgomery and he's maybe the RB one overall without Montgomery and Montgomery's at the age and has the history that you can expect him to maybe miss some time. The Lions, we've talked about them too much. And it's because they were so much better than everybody else offensively last year. And we've got the Ben Johnson situation. But even without that, it's just fascinating to think of, we're going to split Jameer Gibbs out more wide. We're going to throw the ball more to him. And Jameson Williams is about ready to have a breakout year.

And Sam Laporte is going to bounce back. And Amunra St. Brown is a sure fire first round pick and Jared Gough's QB 18. Like it doesn't make any sense, but no, I would agree with Ian. I kind of tried to look at it just not necessarily from my rankings perspective because we've already got that with Jamie. So I just kind of went with my projections. All seven of these guys would be in my top two tiers. The one thing I would really disagree with is that Achan should be in tier one.

I think for as many games that Tua and David Montgomery are healthy, Achan is going to be better than Jameer Gibbs. And if Tua plays 17 games, Achan might be that we shouldn't be surprised at all if he's the highest scoring running back in full PPR and leads running backs and catches the other thing, just from a perspective of projections. And I understand we're just constantly trying to minimize him and he's not going to be drafted in this range, but in terms of projections, Kyron Williams should be in tier two. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I know everybody, everybody hates him. It's no fun at all. He's only going to average four yards per carry. He's only going to catch 35 passes, but I'm just so I'm, I'm, I don't have the energy to discount Kyron Williams because of a day three running back in the most concentrated offense in football when they just keep feeding him despite everybody's concerns.

Yeah. I, where are you drafting Kyron? I'm just going to say he's going like late in the third round. I just can't understand why people are so low on him, but he's where, yeah, where are you drafting Kyron? A two, three turn. I, I'd kind of mapped out where my Scott fishbowl draft was going to go. And I was certain I was taking Kyron Williams at 24, just cause I've, he always seems to fall and then Puka fell to 24. so I didn't get Kyron Williams.

But no, I pretty much always take Kyron at the two, three turn when I have a pick in that range. Jamie, your response to A-chan, he should be in tier one. He could be the number one running back in the games, which he basically was last year when Tua was healthy. After this break, we're gonna find out what Jamie thinks about putting HN in tier one, and then we're gonna come back and move on to tier three.

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I will just finish with this. So everyone's in agreement. These seven running backs should be in tiers one and two. Bijon, Gibbs, Barkley, McCaffrey. I don't know if this is the show to say, who's your number one runner? I'll ask the show to say, who's your number one, I'll ask Ian in a minute who's your number one running back. And then tier two for Jamie is A-chan, Jenthy and Henry.

You did hear Heath say Kyren should be in tier two. You did hear Heath say A-chan should be in tier one. Jamie, thoughts on moving A-chan, I mean, not that it really matters, but A-chan into tier one. I think when you look at the top of any tiers list, it's a little bit harder to say this is the cutoff of this particular tier. Because Ian said it best, all seven of these guys have the chance to be studs. And you know, you said it, Adam, like top 15 overall picks. So you're

talking about the best of the best, you know, if you want to throw Kyron in this group, that's fine. You want to say a chance to be ahead of some of these guys. I'll tell you, we published this, I think it was either last Wednesday or Thursday. I went in and I edited it again last night and moved some guys around. Like, and that's with nothing really changing. It's just, you know, you asked us this question, I think it was just me and Dave, like, why do you guys change your ranking so much when nothing's happening? Because we're doing drafts and we're seeing how this sort of puzzle gets put together. Yeah. And so, yeah, I was staring at last night. I'm like, do I really want

Barclay third? Like he makes me so nervous. Uh, why do I want to keep him there? And that's probably the next change that's coming. So I think it's just a matter of, you know, when you look at the top, it's really more of like a rank list as opposed to a tier list. So, you know, where the cutoff is for one tier to the next, it sort of starts to, at least for me, make sense when we start to get a little bit further down. Ian, who's your RB one? It's Saquon, but it feels like when we had the Justin Jefferson, Cooper Cup debate, I think it was back, you know, after the year where he had kind of cups

still outperform JJ, it was after triple crown year and I was like, well, cups have been better, but we are playing fantasy for this next year. So I'm, I'm jealous of Jamie having beach on number one. All right. I feel like I look at my rankings more and more and like, well, maybe I should go ahead and do that because as much as I do think a lot of these 400 touch or what the curse of 365, some of these studies are just ridiculous, man.

I've seen them actually include Leveon Bell's holdout numbers, Zeke suspension numbers. So all that stuff aside, there is something to be said about Saquon, his role not exactly being as good as someone like B. John Robinson, okay? Yes, he can rip off the 50 yard touchdown out of moments notice,

and he is arguably the single best running back in the league, but the pass catching ability, we see it, you know, it's going to be a run first offensive Philly when they want to throw the ball, AJB and Devonta Smith are going to do their thing. And yes, with the tush push being back, Saquon guys got stopped the one yard line and did not score a league high nine times last year. So again, didn't impact him.

He still racked up plenty of points, but again, we kind of saw those red flags come to fruition when you do take into account the workload and the age things that again, I wouldn't be purely fading on but let's face it. I would say Saquon's probably a little bit more injury prone than B. John Robinson. So it's close enough at the top for me to go ahead and maybe change those ranks like Jamie's talking about. But no, I love the point where again, it's kind of getting into draft room because it's one thing to be sitting behind your computer moving the Excel sheet around. It's nothing to be on that draft clock, man. That's when the real kind of rankings and ideas. Yeah, I know. I love it. It's one thing to be sitting behind your computer, moving the Excel sheet around. It's another thing to be on that draft clock, man. That's when the real kind of rankings and ideas come out.

I know, I love it. And real drafts, not just mock drafts, when it actually counts, feet to the fire. Saquon Barkley, four touchdown runs of 65 or more yards last season. That's the most since at least 2010. I didn't feel like going back any further. It might be the most ever.

Crazy good year for him. Okay, let's go to tier three and tier four. That's gonna be your next name on whatever podcast you're next, Saquon Barkley. Stopped at the one nine times. Well, it was Miles Sanders the year before, or no, it was Deandre Swift the year before. Same thing happened to him.

And that's the thing about Barkley is that has great of a years he had. He didn't have that many touchdowns, right? What did he have? 13 rushing touchdowns? I don't know if he had any receiving. That wasn't what got him to be the best running back in fantasy. All right.

Anyway, tier three, we've got some really good players in tiers three and four. A lot of second round picks, third round picks and according to ADP, Ken Walker going to get into the fourth round. He's in tier four, but tier three is Jacobs, Jonathan Taylor, Chase Brown and Bucky Irving. Tier four is Kyron Williams, James Cook and Ken Walker. These are Jamie's tiers. Tier three, Jacobs, Taylor, Chase Brown, Bucky Irving.

Tier four, Kyron Williams, James Cook, Ken Walker. Jamie, are you cool with any of these seven running backs, and this would be 14 running backs off the board, any of them being your number one first running back selected on your team? 100%. You know, I think if you go, you know, any of the, what is the what is six seven wide receivers we may see in the first round You know eight depending on where you have a day around Then you know you're looking these these guys so I have two or three is the guys I would take in round two and here For the guys I would take you know Kyrantz early round three for me

Which is why he's solo and then you know James Cook and Ken Walker back end of round three guys So these are obviously hero RB anchor guys that you can, if you go wide receiver, wide receiver, wide receiver, tight end, if you are so inclined, I wouldn't do it, but to take a quarterback in rounds one or two. Absolutely, so it's clearly a sliding scale. Heath has more confidence in Kyrie Williams than I do,

just from where he would rank him and draft him, but I guess we're drafting him in sort of the same range. I think once you get to James Cook, Ken Walker, you feel a little bit more nervous about it just because can cook score as many touchdowns as a year ago. Can Walker finally stay healthy? Uh, but these other guys, you know, even chase Brown and Bucky Irving with the one year sample size, I think they're still set up for such huge seasons that

I would absolutely be comfortable, you know, taking a Justin Jefferson chase Brown start to my draft for sure. Heath, your thoughts on tiers three and four other than obviously you're higher on Kyron who's in tier four. So again, I know if you're watching the show, it might be annoying that I'm repeating it. If you're listening, I know it's easy to miss these things. Jacobs, Taylor, chase Brown, Bucky Irving in tier three, Kyron, Cook, Ken Walker in tier four.

So complete agreement with the tier three guys. I've got five guys in tier three and those are four of them. I'd put Ken Walker in that range too. Maybe I'm a little bit too optimistic about Kubiak or Walker staying healthy, but man, I think he could be an absolute monster this year. So I'd put Walker up there in tier three. I've obviously got tier four.

I don't know that we have any of the same guys because I've got Kyron two tiers higher. I've got Walker one tier four. I don't know that we have any of the same guys, because I've got Kyron two, two tiers higher. I've got Walker one tier higher. And I am like as one of the biggest James Cook backers last year, I'm still, I'm terrified because the breakout did not happen at all in the way that I was thinking it was going to. He just scored a ton of touchdowns and actually had less work. I don't like, like, obviously Josh Allen's so good, it may not matter what you decide to do offensively, but I just hate their offensive approach. It's slow, it's run heavy, but it's not one running back. And they didn't throw to their

running backs very much last year. So I'm more scared of James Cook than this. Okay. Who's tier four for you then? Well, I would have just strictly looking on a projections basis, Brice, Chuba and Mixon. Okay. So Ian, your thoughts on Jamie's tiers three and four. Yeah, the kind of one's interesting.

I'm actually the highest of any fancy life ranker on him. My RB 10, someone that I wasn't drafting a ton going into last year because they drafted Blake Corum to some of the coach speak going on. I thought that maybe McVeigh would start to have more of a committee system, but like if it wasn't going to happen last year with Kyron putting up some of the worst efficiency numbers at the position and also coughing up the ball, what six or seven times throughout the year, I'm just not convinced that just because they use a day three pick on Jarkez Hunter that anything's actually going to change. All due respect to Hunter I guess but at the same time guys like have we

seen any rookie running back come out that draft Twitter and analysts didn't love all right and I get it it's easier to be positive about all these guys and everything but the deal is a day three running back for a reason the Rams have drafted a running back in each of the last eight drafts. So it's not exactly a situation where I'm expecting the workload to change. I also do think there's a chance that we see Kyron Williams get an extension between now and the start of the season.

Just trying to read between the lines. And a lot of it has just been McVeigh and Les Nigo. You know, we like Kyron, no guarantees there, but I have a feeling a lot of people worried about Kyron if we do see him actually get, not even a huge deal, but four years, 44 million, something like that. All of a sudden Kyron Williams, I think you can put him right next to Josh Jacobs and Jonathan Taylor because even that bad efficiency, maybe more of a one year thing.

He was averaging north of five yards per carry back in 2023 and look at that Rams offensive line last year really did deal with one injury after another. So Kyron, Kenneth Walker, I actually had these guys ahead of dudes like Chase Brown and Bucky Irving, just because I don't wanna be making bets on dudes just being that much more efficient with less overall volume.

And this Ian guy's really smart, Adam. It's a good choice. Yeah, and I look, I mean, Ken Walker is the tough one. I think for a lot of people, Dan Schneier does not like Ken Walker. Where's he finished? In PPR, his per game has been 17th, 21st, and 12th. And last year, he was only 12th per game

because he caught so many balls, Ken Walker. But what if that goes away, you know, especially because they want to run the ball more? Yeah, sure, he will benefit from that. But again, he's not in on third downs. He's not their two minute drill guy. So I don't think he's gonna be, I think people might be let down by the catches

if they're expecting anything similar to what we saw last year from Ken Walker. I think you're right, not to cut you off. I think you're right in that regard, what he was. We don't know what Kubiak's going to do with him. And then this question is like, how good is he? And how good is the offensive line? The offensive line needs to be better.

He's, I don't know, I go on this, I just did this last week, so I don't wanna keep having the same argument, but. Just say Tyree Kill and move on. Yeah, I take Tyree Kill over, no, not over everyone on this list, but most. All right, anything else you guys wanna say about these guys?

Taylor, Jacobs, Brown, Irving, yeah, alright. We've exhausted that. So these guys are good running backs. Jamie's comfortable with them as the anchor to his running back position if he wants to maybe go hero RB. And let's see if we feel that way with tiers five and six. Or are we running out of that type of player? So we had 14 running backs in the first four tiers.

We get to tiers five and six. This is a bigger tiers has five players in it. Tier six has has four. So we're looking at nine running backs. Breeze Hall, Chuba Hubbard, Alvin Kamara, James Connor and Joe Mixon. Breeze Hall, Chuba Hubbard, Alvin Kamara, James Connor, Joe Mixon. That's tier five. Tier six is two rookies, Hampton and Henderson, DeAndre Swift and David Montgomery. A lot to digest here.

Let's look at tier five first. Breece Hall, Chuba Hubbard, Alvin Kamara, James Conner, Joe Mixon, Jamie, what's the theme here with these guys? It's the first really point where I get nervous about the position. So you have a lot of proven guys here, which is exciting if they can keep it up, but you have age concerns,

right? Because you have Camara entering age 30, you have Connor at age 30, you have Joe Mixon age 29 and will they do what they did again? Breece Hall has so much talent and so much upside, but his situation, I could see it going either way. I mean, Justin Fields steals so many rushing touchdowns and doesn't historically throw to his running backs to the same level. I think that Breeze Hall needs based on what we saw year two after the ACL, the start of last season, you know, he was such a big part of the passing game and he still might be.

I mean, this receiving core is absolutely terrible. And will Justin Fields check down to him instead of running? That's a big question. How many touchdowns will they score? You know, Ian talked about, you know, the environment for some of the guys in the top, the Raiders in particular, like, will they score enough touchdowns this Jets offense? You know, so it's a little bit concerning for me, but I could see Breeze Hall having another standout season just because he's such a talented player. I'm curious about the competition for Chuba. You know, I know they're not exciting guys and I think Ian nailed it with, oh, they drafted a rookie. Trevor Etienne is going to be awesome.

But it's Trevor Etienne and it's Rico Dadal and Chuba was so successful last year behind I think one of the more underrated offensive lines in the game and a quarterback that's definitely improving. Kamara's offensive environment is probably the worst in the NFL. Connor prior to last year had missed basically three games, five of the previous six seasons, so can he stay healthy again? And I know he missed some time last year,

but he played more games than he has really since Pittsburgh, I think. And Mixon, we talked about this yesterday, Adam, like you like him in round four, for me he's more of a round four, five turn. I prefer him in round five. I am concerned about the offensive line. I am concerned about potential competition for touches

Whether you think Nick Chubb is going to be good or not He's gonna get opportunities and I do think that Woody Marks another guy. Hey, they drafted rookie is gonna Get some touches as well more so than just what we saw last year for the guys that were on the field with him So that's why they're in this spot for me. The upside is still there, but I see a little bit more downside I guess for this group. Breeze Hall, Chuba Hubbard, Alvin Camaro, James Connor, Joe Mixon. Ian, you see the same thing? You see question marks here?

Yeah, for the most part. I mean, if you are starting off the team with this being your first running back, I mean, I really hope that you just got some stacked wide receivers and tight ends first three rounds, but you know, James Connor is the one where I do think that he's almost like become their RB version of Tyler Lockett, where every single year we just have him ranked in the ADP is this low end RB two, then every single year he ends up finishing, you know, nearly as a top 15 player at the position.

So Trey Benson is someone who, yes, you know, maybe could carve out a little bit more in year two, but really didn't see any signs of that. And then when you consider the extension that guys like Connor and even Dave Montgomery have gotten back half of last year, I think it's more wishful thinking than anything to believe that it's gonna be overly changing for Connor. So that Cardinals rushing offense,

particularly down the stretch last year, was really as good as anyone outside of Baltimore. So James Connor for me would be the one guy kind of in this range that I would be a bit more optimistic and kind of firing up as a hero or be maybe Joe Mixon too. I don't love the fact that he's in a walking boot right now. It is still only July. So I'm not trying to freak out. One of you guys mentioned again, pop list right now, which she's not even on.

So not trying to, you know, get that Voodoo going, but I do wonder if Nick Chubb could be a bit more of a Thor on the side than we're giving credit for. But then again, if we see the 2024 version of Nick Chubb in 2025, not going to be too big of an issue. So Connor, Mixon, those are the two guys who are again projection wise, if things go right, they could go right in a big way, but I certainly see why they are this far down. All right, Heath, how do you see it? Breece Hall, Hubbard, Kamara, Connor, Mixon. Would you be comfortable starting your team with this being your first running back?

I am uncomfortable with the fact that every time I look at any kind of ADP, my favorite player in each round is a running back for the first four rounds. That's just the nature of how wide receivers are being drafted right now. So I don't ever really have the experience where one of these guys is my top running back. But I think by ADP, you're talking about not taking a running back until round four or round five now. Yep. And so yeah, if I start my team, I get one of Bowers and McBride and I have two top 12 wide receivers, then sure. Like any, any build will work. It just kind of depends.

It's just that there's not very many of our drafts where you get the opportunity to do that, Certainly not in best bowl. And so it's probably going to be more of the, of the home league environment where everybody goes crazy on running backs and quarterbacks go early too. I think the interesting thing is like the Camara, Connor and Mixon, all three pretty similar to me in that it's really just a question of can they, are they going to hit the wall or can they keep doing it?

Like Connor's over 30 now. That's, it used to be more terrifying than it is, but Derek Henry says it's okay. Uh, Mixon's got the, the, the chub concerns. Camaro has got the terrible offense concerns, although I kind of just think they're probably going to dump it off to him a hundred times again and he'll give us terrible efficiency and have so many catches that he finishes higher than we draft him. Um, the, I obviously am higher. I think Jamie actually is higher than consensus on Deandre Swift and I'm still higher than Jamie

on Deandre Swift. So it's definitely an area of if I, if even if one of these guys are your number two running back, you may be a little more concerned about your number three than you normally would be. If the draft unfolds in a way where you have gotten into round four or five and, and Breeze Hall Hubbard, Camara, Connor, or Mixon is your first running back off the board, you're probably your first running back on your team. You're probably going to be dipping into tier six as well.

I'd maybe tier seven. Are you going to build out some running backs? You don't want to wait too long to get your RB2 if these guys are your RB1. So tier six is Omarion Hampton, Trevion Henderson, DeAndre Swift, and David Montgomery. It probably would have included RJ Harvey, maybe even tier five for Jamie,

before the JK Dobbins signing. But for now, tier six is Omarion Hampton, Trevion Henderson, DeAndre Swift, and David Montgomery. Would you Dobbins signing, but for now, tier six is Omari and Hampton, Trevion Henderson, DeAndre Swift, and David Montgomery. Would you agree with that, Jamie, that if you don't love your RB1, then this is a great opportunity to get an RB2 that you like? I think so. You know, I mean, when you go the hero RB route, you know, this is where you start to look for that second guy, you know, unless you're just really want to play it out and see how far this can go. And tier seven is where you get the other, I have the other three rookies ranked there, at least Jutkens for now.

I will see how this all plays out. But, um, you know, this is sort of where you start to see a shift in rankings versus ADP and it kind of goes all over the place, right? Because everybody's going to have these guys in a similar range, you know, based on, I think, most ranked lists. Uh, Swift is going to be drafted much later. these guys in a similar range, you know, based on I think most rank lists. Swift is going to be drafted much later. Hampton may be drafted much sooner, you know, and as we see maybe a separation as I wrote in the story, if we see a pretty big separation of what we're hearing out of Los Angeles, like Hampton is a tier four guy for me.

He's got that much talent, you know, so, you know, we could see him sort of just jump the veteran guys. And if he's going to be used as a feature back in the Jim Harbaugh, Greg Roman offense, like I just can't get past. It's kind of why I struggle with Joe Mixon and Hampton, probably the most of in terms of veteran backups. Like, I hate this covering the NFL for so long. Like, you see these veteran guys,

they do everything the coach likes. They don't get hurt. They don't fumble. Chubb's in a different category at this point in his career but but this is kind of the Najee Harris story is he's gonna get more playing time than we want. It's gonna be the oh if Hampton never got this or if Hampton never got that or if Najee didn't do this you know I just feel like we're gonna get that all season long. So you know hopefully he's healthy with the eye situation and

everything's okay with him you know from that, but he's played every game of his career and that I think is gonna be a problem for Hampton. And again, he doesn't fumble. So he, you know, you'll say this all the time, Adam, he doesn't have explosive runs and you know, he doesn't do a lot of things that are fun to watch. He doesn't have the 65 yard runs of Saquon Barkley. Hampton may have as many as Barkley did, if not more,

but it's just, I think Najee's playing time is gonna be a problem. Yeah, I mean, Jamir Gibbs, I think, would have been pretty disappointing as a rookie if David Montgomery hadn't gotten hurt. In week seven and eight, I believe, Gibbs comes out in week seven and eight and just dominates, and then from that point on,

it was a much more even split. Before that, he was really, really frustrating. There was another one that was like that. Was it Melvin Gordon's rookie year or someone they drafted? We saw it happen with Greg Roman, with the Ravens. J.K. Dobbins was averaging six yards per carry and we still had Gus Buss and Mark Ingram racking up touches.

Who'd you say, Jamie? Was it someone with Melvin Gordon? He said Gordon, he didn't score a touchdown in his rookie season. Yeah, but did they draft? I don't know. It has happened before. So it's possible. First round picks though, they usually get a lot of work. But but maybe not like Rashad Penny was it was it was Bijon and Algier. Same thing. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Oh, god, ridiculous.

Like we're also talking about PPR leagues for these tiers and for, I think it's the Hampton I'm more excited about him and half PPR and would be a lot more if I was ever in a non PPR league. They threw 55 passes to the running backs last year and he's not going to have all that work. Like he might, he might be a 20 catch guy. Oh, Hampton? Yeah.

I hope not. I mean, I feel like- I mean, it's not like there's a long history of Greg Roman throwing to his running backs at all. Dobbins was on pace for 41 catches if you remove week 12, which he left with an injury. So the other running backs, I mean, like you're not gonna throw to Gus Edwards. So hopefully, we can get 40 cat. I'm not sure if Hampton and Harris are both available.

And I hope like Jamie said, hopefully, Najee is okay. I don't certainly don't think at the beginning of the year, Hampton is going to be the guy playing on third downs. Ian, what do you think here? What do you think about tier six Hampton, Henderson, Swift Montgomery? I do think it's curious how Najee's agent. All right. That's what we're going off of right now. Right agent, like six days after the incident. It's like, yeah, he'll be fine for the season for week one.

Doesn't sound great to me guys again. So I hope he's okay too and everything, but like I wouldn't completely just, Oh, his agent said he's fine. Of course he's okay at this point in time. So if Hampton does get the chance to race up, I mean, man, like again, nausea is in the fold. I am expecting him to be ready to go and everything. And if he wasn't, maybe they would address the position, but like you could make an argument for Hampton if this was just his backfield,

like right up there with Josh Jacobs and Jonathan Taylor. So not the reality we're living in, but hey, that is kind of the upside. I do think there's similar concerns with Trivia and Henderson and Ramon J. Stevenson. Like you guys are old enough like me to know that Josh McDaniels doesn't always give us, you know, the cleanest running back picture. So for every year that we do get Josh Jacobs

just completely bawling out, I think it was in 2022, just took over that whole backfield. That was great. But man, some of those previous years, just three different Patriots running backs involved during each and every season. And also not exactly expecting, you know, the 2025 pass to resemble the squads

that Tom Brady was engineering over the years. And Drake May has a little bit of that, you know, Justin feels to him as well, where he's going to be heavily involved in the Russian game. So check on Henderson, RJ Harvey, Caleb Johnson, all these guys are in pretty bad. Okay. I wouldn't say bad offense for Harvey, but Henderson, Caleb Johnson and Quidditch on Junkins who has his own problems going on right now. Like these have been guys where, yeah, sure.

I like the profiles. They know the talent, but they are in offenses that we don't expect to score points. And I think the competition is steep enough to continue to make them, you know, two or three RB committees. So for me in that tier six is Deandre Swift who's standing out because I just think it's been throughout this entire off season. We kept waiting for the Bears to add someone else. They never did. Everyone tried to paint this picture that first year OC Ben Johnson was for some reason,

the guy who apparently ditched us with Detroit never quite bought that. And hey, as much as Swift, you know, maybe not the world's best running back or anything. I've seen the numbers, his vision is allowed to be desired sometimes. But if we're going to write off Caleb Williams rookie season because of the scheme and the offensive line problems, I don't know, maybe those are two things that kind of impacted the team's running back as well.

So just again, looking at offenses that have improved and the offensive lines that have gotten a lot better and just projected touches for an explosive pass, catch and talent. DeAndre Swift is someone where I feel with a better PR team, man, he could be going top of tier five. Oh, well he should hire Heath. Cause he, he would be his PR manager.

Yeah. Yeah. I have him at the top of tier five. So perfect. Okay. My guy. I will say just before we move on on Henderson and Ian's a hundred percent, right? So you hear me mentioned, Najee doesn't fumble

Ramon has got one of the biggest fumble issues in the league and I could see that being a problem for a Mike Vrabel led team a Josh McDaniels led offense and You you mentioned Drake main his running But I think the office can be better as a whole just because again better coaching and better talent around him The receiving corps has still a lot of questions for me. And what I think Henderson will do and this is, you know, like Heath was talking about, these are PPR tiers. He could be a significant receiver on this team. And that's the hope, you know, so that's kind of why he's in this spot ahead of Harvey, for example, ahead of Caleb Johnson, and for now, head of Judkins

as well. I have to convince myself more to draft Trevon Henderson. I don't really do it. I don't know. I don't know if I really have it all in these mock drafts we've been doing, but he was my second favorite running back in this class. I'm not a talent evaluator, but I know an explosive player when I see it. He was so much better than Quinchon Judkins. I mean, it was, it was ridiculous. They shared a backfield. They played behind the same offensive line. He was Jameer Gibbs to Judkins, David Montgomery. This guy needs the ball, Trevion Henderson. He is so good and it won't take them long to figure out

if they're gonna do anything in the run game, they're gonna get explosive plays on their offense. It's gonna be through Trevion Henderson. And it's like, it's one of those things where you think about the projections and how it might work. It may not be so obvious to you, the path, but if you just want to bet on talent, that's a guy that I'm going to bet on, Trevion Henderson.

So, tier six is a pretty exciting tier, in my opinion. And that was Hampton Henderson, DeAndre Swift and David Montgomery. The rest of the show is going to be a pretty exciting show, in my opinion. We're going to tell you about tier, tiers seven and beyond, after this break on fantasy football today.

No frills delivers, get groceries delivered to your door from no frills with PC express. Shop online and get $15 in PC optimum points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca. All right, moving on to tiers seven and eight here and Jamie's running back here is what you can see on our website.

Man, again, you got some starting running backs here for you. These could be RB twos for you. R.J. Harvey, Quincheon Judkins. Bring it on back. R.J. Harvey, thank you. Quincheon Judkins, Caleb Johnson in tier seven. So the rest of the rookies and then tier eight, Isaiah Pacheco. He'll be in tier three by the end of August.

Tony Pollard and Aaron Jones. R.J. Harvey, Quinchon Jenkins, Caleb Johnson in tier seven. Pacheco, Pollard, and Aaron Jones in tier eight. So you're, I guess, Jamie, you prefer the youth. You have those three rookies in tier seven ahead of Pacheco, Pollard, and Jones in tier eight. And I think we need to, I hate to make fun of Thomas, but we have to make fun of Thomas because as a Vikings fan. Aaron Jones with the Packers logo, I don't know if he did you make that, Thomas?

You could you could admit it. He's he's not he's not ready to admit it. Maybe you know what? You know what? Here's what I think happened. He threw the graphic up and then he took it down while I was reading it. I bet he saw it and was trying to fix it. And then I was like, can you bring it back up?

He wasn't a Vikings fan, I wouldn't point it out. I didn't even catch it. All right, anyway, Jamie, Harvey Judkins, Caleb Johnson in tier seven, Pacheco Pollard, Aaron Jones in tier eight. Yeah, and I think Ian was sort of alluding to this. The upside for the rookies could be Yeah. And, and, you know, I think Ian was sort of alluding to this, like the upside for the rookies could be amazing.

You know, when you look at their, their situations can go either way, but, uh, wouldn't shocking, it wouldn't be shocking by any stretch if John Judkins, assuming, you know, he's not suspended is completely dominating that backfield. When you look at Dylan Sampson and what his role projects to be in Jerome Ford and kind of how he struggled in this lead role for the last, you know, better part of the last two years. You know, the Browns went out and drafted Judkins ahead of a lot of the other rookies

in this class for a reason, including Henderson. Caleb Johnson, you know, a big physical running back in an Arthur Smith offense has kind of been what he's always loved. Clearly, he had Derrick Henry for the majority of that time in Tennessee when he was the offense coordinator there. But I think that's a great fit for, if you believe in vacated touches, 263 carries around the table for Caleb Johnson

without Najee Harris there. Jalen Warren scares the hell out of me though. But R.J. Harvey has got, I don't know how you guys felt about this. I know we've talked about this a little bit on the show. I didn't want to overreact to J.K. Dobbins. He's such a talented player, and clearly the Broncos felt they were missing something.

Is it more of an indictment on Estimé and McLaughlin by comparison to maybe not trusting Harvey fully to be the lead rusher there? But we've seen two running backs excel in a Sean Payton offense before. I think Harvey's going to have an opportunity despite Dobbins being on pace for 41 catches last year. Harvey should be the guy playing on passing downs and The upside to me is immense if Dobbins ever misses times and ever miss any time shocking that's happened before Then Harvey could be a top 15 caliber running back in my opinion

So I didn't want to downgrade him too much I certainly don't want to overreact and say it's it's it's not gonna be or not overreact and say it's not gonna be an Issue that that Dobbins does take away a significant amount of touches. So I kind of put him in this spot of like a borderline RB2, you know, flex, but he's someone that I try to target in almost every draft is because I think he's going to be a lot of fun, especially behind that offensive line and paying for playing for Sean Payton. You know, as we look at this range, right, tiers six and seven, having all those rookie running backs in it, Hampton, Henderson, Harvey, Judkins, Johnson, Triple H, Double J. I think about last year, Ian, and last year had this reputation of this was the best wide

receiver draft in a really long time. And lo and behold, you couldn't necessarily see it from Lad McConkey. I mean, we were talking Lad McConkey or Josh Palmer. Who do we like better last year? You couldn't necessarily see it for Brian Thomas Jr. Neighbors outperformed his ADP. It ended up being a great year for wide receivers. This is the best running back draft class,

according to everyone, in so long. Should we just forget about the competition and throw caution to the win and make sure that we get some shares of these rookie running max? That's kind of how I want to approach it. How do you feel about that, Ian? I feel like the price is definitely closer to right for these guys. We're not having to take an Amari and Hampton against more of a clear cut workhorse back. I mean, even the guys in tier eight, Pacheco, Pollard and Jones. Pacheco is someone I've drafted a ton, but you know, obviously there is a bit of a concern like how much are we going to see him get

back to the 2023 workhorse role? How much was his return from injury role? You know, maybe more of an indictment on what we see, but Pollard has Spears, Jones has Jordan Mason. Like at this point I am more okay, you know, taking that shot on the rookie talent, particularly with Harvey, man, cause you know, we're talking about Dawkins and this Chargers office that doesn't throw the football. We are talking full PPR, you know, taking that shot on the rookie talent, particularly with Harvey, man, because, you know, we're talking about dominance and this charges off and that doesn't throw the football. We are talking full PPR, you know, here. And you look at these Broncos offenses these last two years, Gervonta Williams, Jaleel Estime, these were not good pass catching running backs and they still managed to rank first and fourth over

these past two seasons in terms of total reception by running back. So it is a situation where, you know, similar Josh McDaniels, we have seen some quirky running back uses from Sean Payton over the years. I am old enough to remember Mark Ingram was a first round pick, still wasn't able to carve out, you know, that true big time fantasy relevant role for, you know,

I think his first two or three seasons, you know, we got Chris Ivory and, you know, all of these guys getting the ball. You got to get them the ball, of course. But RJ Harvey for me, similar Joe Nixon, where you know, I wonder how much should I really be concerned with Dobbins and Chubb? Like guys, if the Broncos had just drafted

like around seven running back, instead of signing JK Dobbins, I don't think we would be as concerned. Not saying that we should be treating Dobbins as that, you know, round seven guy, but clearly they did have a plan for Harvey. They have all these, you know, available touches and targets there for him. So out of this group, again, Harvey and Pacheco really stand out for me. Heath, your comparison of tier seven Harvey Judkins, Caleb Johnson to

the veterans in tier eight Pacheco Pollard, Aaron Jones. I think the young guys have a lot more upside and the the old guys have a lot higher for is the easiest way to look at it. And we should, we, we draft for upside. And so we get more excited about taking the young guys. The one thing I will say, and I don't, I don't know how everybody's handling this. If you're drafting fantasy football teams in July, but I've, I've pretty much buried Judkins. Um, I'm not, I'm not at this, at this moment in time, I'm not going to draft him anywhere close to this.

Because of the arrest. Right. Okay. All right. Um, let's go on to tiers nine and 10. We've got Jalen Warren, Brian Robinson, Jr. Travis ETN, Javante Williams, Ramondrevenson in tier 9. We've got four players in tier 10. I'll tell you those in a minute. But tier 9 is jalen warren, brian robinson jr, travis

etn, javante williams, and remandre stevenson. A reminder that these are full PPR tiers, perhaps in non or half PPR. Jamie, correct me if I'm wrong. You'd have brian robinson over jalen warren, non and half PPR? Yes. Okay. So Warren, Brian Robinson, ETN, Gervante, Ramon Trestevesen. Tier 10 is two giants, Tyrone Tracy and Cam Scadabu, Najee Harris and J.K. Dobbins. All right. What are we looking at here? Should these be RB3 or 4 on your team? Definitely don't want these to be your RB2. What are we looking at with tiers 9 and 10, Jamie?

Players that you don't really want, but you might be forced to take. Warren's kind of the swing guy for me because it wouldn't be shocking if he's the better running back in Pittsburgh in this format, you know, because I don't think we're gonna see Caleb Johnson play on a lot of obvious passing downs. And Arthur Smith, we mentioned it, that when he had Bijon Robinson, who as we're seeing with better coaching, or different coaching, is an absolute stud. And he decided not to use that stud

because he loves Tyler Algier. So he can make this a miserable experience for us. But Jaylen Warren's very good in pass protection. They have a 41-year-old quarterback, and we may see him, you know, get more opportunities of those 263 vacated touches than we might expect. So I love the fact that he's dragging soccer goalposts around and those training videos that we're seeing of Jalen Warren, just something different, best shape of his life. But he's the one that could, you know, sort of outperform this tier. I think along with probably Travis Etienne too.

Look, he was, you know, two, he's two years removed from an amazing season. He was obviously one of the biggest busts last year. His PPR points per game got cut in half, you know, which is awful. And there is, you know, pretty significant competition for touches when Taked Bigsby was a much better runner than him last year. And now you bring in Tooten, who's part of this new coaching staff, you know, and new regime essentially. So it could be ugly for ETN, but I think he's one of the better values based on what his upside can still be because this offense should be dramatically better with Liam Cohen calling plays. Okay. Is anybody excited to draft these guys? Jamie

doesn't seem too excited. You know, I can get excited on the potential for Gervonta here. excited. You know, I can get excited on the potential for Givante here. I think. Yeah. All right. I'll just let you watch it. Well, I mean, you got to remember, though, we aren't comparing them against like top 24 wide receivers at this point. I mean, I don't think the other positions are all that hot either. Once we get to this range, you know, I just think when you look at what what the Cowboys running back from last year, Rico, Dattle, Dattle, you know, could you,

do you think Adam can name all 32 NFL head coach? I can now. Can, can Chavante Williams do that? I see why not, you know, just a matter of him, you know, looking good in training camp. And it's the cow, it's that Cowboys logo. When I look at this graphic, I look at that Cowboys logo and I say, I want the starting running back for that team.

The fact that the starting running back for the Cowboys could be available in round nine or later is exciting. I think in a time where it's not that exciting to draft running backs. No, I think the starting running back for the Cowboys will be available in round nine or later. I don't have any clue who it is. Yeah, right.

That's why they're available. So cheap. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, I don't have a problem with Givante at his cost. Warren and ETN are pretty clearly my favorite two in this group. And listen, I think you can look at ADP at some places and ETN's going behind Tooten and he, all three of the Jags running backs are outside of the top 100. I still think ETN's,

at least the pass catching role is probably the safest bet and then we'll figure out what happens to the, on early downs. And I wouldn't be surprised if Jaylen Warren, especially in full PPR. In fact, I expect Jalen Warren to be better than Caleb Johnson. Tier 10, Tracy, Scataboo, Najee, Dobbins. I guess I'll just throw out a hot take here. The one I definitely want is Dobbins. He's got arguably the best offensive line in football. He's got a chance to be the running downs guy.

Tracy and Scadaboo is gonna be kind of ugly, nausea, they were just waiting for Hampton to take his role. But like Harvey could have a good role, but Dobbins could also have a good role. It could be like Ingram and Kamara. Ian, your thoughts. Yeah, I mean, if we get into the preseason

and all of a sudden Dobbins is getting these, you know, great snap counts with the first team offense, who say he couldn't actually, I mean, if we get into the preseason and all of a sudden, Dobbins is getting these, you know, great snap counts with the first team offense who say he couldn't actually, you know, be one of the bigger risers and get up there into the top 30. So I think a lot of these guys though, you know, in tier nine antenna life, they profile these flex with benefits, you know, sort of options, you know, you're not going to be thrilled about starting Ramon Tray Steams that are Najee Harris and weeks one through two, but you know,

they're still going to be inside of our top 36. If we're in one of these 14 team leagues with two or three flexes, you can wrap your mind around being OK with starting them. But hey, as much as we love to say, you know, Jamir Gibbs, if he gets, you know, the full backfield and Dave Montgomery gets hurt, the inverse of that is also true. You know, maybe it's not as sexy of a, you know, thing to plan out like that. But Najee of Hampton goes out, Ramondre of Henderson goes out.

These are guys that actually could, maybe not be top five running backs in the same way Gibbs would be, but honestly potentially threatening that RB one level in fancy land. So I do think there's some sneaky, handcuff upside here. Jamie, I was curious if you gave any thoughts

of Jordan Mason being in tier 10, based on what we've heard about him, maybe getting that goal line role and certainly having some competition in Aaron Jones, but know, based on what we've heard about him, maybe getting that goal line role and you know, certainly having some competition in Aaron Jones, but maybe seeing a bit more of a split backfield in Minnesota than last year. One of my favorite guys and another, you know, again, like when we start to split these up, uh,

you see kind of where I went with the tier 11 guys, almost like the, you know, maybe a shot aside from Rashad white and Eckler. It's like, I, I put these guys sort of in the lottery ticket category. They probably need the full-time role to be starting fantasy options. But yeah, it's why I have Aaron Jones as low as I do, because I am very concerned that Jordan Mason is going to have a role.

When Kevin O'Connell comes out before, they resigned Aaron Jones and says that he was probably better off in a committee as he was in Green Bay than he was for us in a full-time role last year when he set all these career highs and touches and total yards and rushing yards like he was so good for them and I think the biggest thing that kind of gets overlooked with with Jones and is a benefit to Mason Jones played through three significant injuries last year which he hadn't done in the last couple years in Green Bay I think part of that was the contract

year part of that was proving himself to a new team. He also really benefited, if you recall, he got hurt in, I think it was the London game or wherever they were playing overseas and they had a bye next week. And he came back after the bye. There were some things that just sort of felt right for him that schedule wise may not happen this year. So, you know, you mentioned Adam, the Dobbin situation, like if things go well for him

and obviously he gets a chance if Harvey maybe gets injured. Like Jordan Mason in this offense, he was really good in San Francisco's offense last year. You know, it's like he may not catch a lot of passes, but I don't know if that matters based on how things may go here. And if J.J. McCarthy sucks, obviously it's going to be bad for everybody. But you know, if O'Connell's blueprint has showed us anything, it doesn't matter who

the quarterback is, there's often still going to be productive for the guys, it doesn't matter who the quarterback is, there's often still going to be productive for the guys around it. The ecosystem is just so good. So yeah, Mason may be a little bit lower than he should be. But I think you can make a case for Spears, for example, how good he was at times last year. You can make a case for if you don't buy Bucky Irving taking that next step. Rashad White's been 50 catches every year of his career and coming off a season with

a career high yards per carry. Eckler can still be very good in this format, you know, especially looking at how he did in some cases last year when he was healthy, he really battled injuries last year, but he's older. So this is actually, I think I wrote this in a story, like this is my favorite tier. Tier 11 is like my favorite group of guys to draft because like all these guys can be league winners. Like, you know, I'm trying to get two or three of these guys in the fishbowl because like,

you know, when you're in a best ball or a big tournament, like these are guys that could just sway everything for you. If they get the chance to be starters, did we read the names or just, I'll go through a tier 11 Mason Rashad white, Austin Eckler, Isaac, Garendo, Zach, Charbonne and Taijai Spears. This is a good show by the way, to be watching on YouTube, youtube.com slash fantasy football today, Mason Rashad White, Austin Eckler, Isaac Arendo, Zach Charbonne, Tai J Spears and then tier 12. Is this just the handcuffed here? Yep. Tank Bigsby. I mean, it's interesting to call Tank Bigsby a handcuff when he was kind of their lead running back last year so he could move up. And Jaden Blue, Trey Benson, Ray Davis, Roshan Johnson,

Braylon Allen, Basial Tutin, Tyler Algier, Jalen Wright, Will Shipley. Any reason why Tank Bigsby's in tier 12 and not tier 11? I don't know which Jaguar is running back like the best. Now you asked this question on Sports Network yesterday. Which backfill battle do you wanna watch? I don't know if we even mentioned Jacksville because it's so crazy to me.

I'm hoping it's ETN just because I think he's got still potentially the most upside. But like, yeah, Bigsby was a better runner by leaps and bounds last year than ETN. Just was significantly dwarfed in the passing game. And that's kind of our, you know, for the format here where I come out on it. And Tutin, I mean, look, you know, there's a coaching change and a new running back at it. And that always, you know, should raise some red flags about what are they going to do, especially when the lead guy was coming off a disappointing season last year and his tank Bigsby going to get those opportunities. So it's kind of just really an unknown for me that this is one of those things that could change as the

process goes on. So after tier 12, which is Bigsby blue, Jane Trey Benson Ray Davis Roshan Johnson Braylon Allen Basial tootin Tyler Algier Jalen, right? Will Shipley we get tier 13 Dylan Sampson Androm Ford are both in there Nick Chubb Marshawn Lloyd Rico Dowdell. Remember him? I do I never forget his name Raheem Oster Tier 14 is just more of the same, basically a lot of rookies there. Ian, before we go, Heath, you have a look on your face like I said something wrong.

No, I don't think you said anything wrong at all. Okay, good. I think Thomas had something to say. You didn't give a chance. Yeah, I was just wondering why you just ignored Thomas. I, sorry. The new stream yard set up is messing me up. I don't even know why it just ignored Thomas. I know the new stream yard setup is messing me up. I don't even know why it popped up here. That's what I thought. I was like, there's no way he meant to pop up. No, like I removed the screen and then all of a sudden I'm on. So that was unintentional.

Yeah. See Thomas and I have, we have like an ESP. I know he doesn't mean to pop on there. You know, what's, do you have a handcuff strategy? Do you have any particular ones that you like to draft? What do you think? Jalen Rice's been my most drafted running back of the off season so far, because I think just at its core, if A-chan gets hurt, Jalen Wright's probably the next guy up. And also this is an offense where we saw Raheem Moster as the de facto RB2 alongside A-chan, scored 21 freaking touchdowns. So we'll see who exactly gets that goal line role. There's a chance I'm wrong and Wright's not going to be the one B and we're going to have Ollie Gordon or God forbid Alexander Madison getting too many carries for us

to get but man, I just think again that late like you can actually talk yourself in the jail and right having one of those, you know, nausea or Mondrae Stevenson esque roles. He's just had a fraction of the price. So my biggest thing is look, we don't know which one of these guys is going to be the breakout. Last year, Chase Brown happened to get the Zach Moss entry. So we got to take over who's to say that couldn't have been Trey Benson or

Blake Coram if their team started running back and not being the one getting injured. But my biggest piece of advice would just be once you have, you know, hopefully your five wide receivers in the top 50 top 55 players there, you got your quarterback, you got your tight end, get as many of these handcuffs as possible because all those guys, you know, basically in the tier 11, tier 12 tiers going on, those guys are one injury away from being on the cover

of every single WagerWire magazine in the industry. So yeah, it's cool if you can bid for them, but the only thing cooler than that is if you already have them sitting on your bench. So I just see some people again, getting the multiple quarterbacks, multiple tight ends, God forbid a second DST or something like that. So again, see some people again, getting the multiple quarterbacks, multiple tight ends, God forbid a second DST or something like that. So again, we're just really

caution. Don't worry about having you know, all these even positions because it's those handcuffed running backs who have the best chance of seeing the rankings skyrocket between now and week one. Ian, I have a question for you that's not fancy related. Sure, you work with a guy that we're very close with in Nando De Fino. I think you're married, right? Correct. You said you're visiting but you work with a guy that we're very close with in Nando Dufino. I think you're married, correct? You said you're visiting your family.

So if you had a friend, like close friend, introduce you to your wife, would you be inclined to put that friend in your wedding party? Make him one of your groomsmen. I'd feel like I would be obligated to. Right. It'd be kind of like if you had a show

with three other guys, you wouldn't only invite two of them to the wedding, you'd invite all three of them. Couldn't even imagine doing so. That one I feel much, much worse about than the Nando thing. Nando's like a top 15 friend of mine. He just, I couldn't get him at the wedding party.

I have closer friends. It's tough, Adam, cause then you got the plus ones for everyone. You got the family that you feel obligated. So I feel you, but also come on. Not, yeah, well, Nando's wife was in the wedding party. So it would have been easy to throw him in there, but yeah, he didn't make the cut. I actually had to

ask... Now he just sends you ornaments. Yeah. I had to ask Nando and Jamie the day of my wedding or maybe the day before. I was like, please don't embarrass me today. Remember? I was like, this is my wedding day. Please don't do anything. And they... Isn't that sad? Isn't that sad that I had to go there? They came through. I thank them for that. Ian, thanks for coming on, man. It was great talking to you.

Really interesting stuff. So tell us about your content and where we can find everything and all that. Appreciate you guys. Yeah, fantasylife.com. Just had a new site come out, rankings, guillotine content. Absolutely love that form of fantasy. Just been really getting into it recently.

So trying to do something new, I would advise that. Just real quickly on guillotine guys. Like my favorite parts of it is one, if your team sucks, you get cut, you finished last in a week, your season's over. You don't have these two months of, you know, managing this team that's already dead in the water. And then just the waiver wires are absolutely electric.

Cause I'm sure you guys are like me where, you know, you can only look at Wolf Shipley so many weeks before. It's like, good God, man, this is a slog. Meanwhile, guillotine leagues, the team a slog. Meanwhile, Guillotine League's a team with CD Lamb gets chopped. Oh my gosh, all of a sudden I have, you know, a freaking awesome time on Tuesday or Wednesday trying to get those dudes.

So shout out to Guillotine Leagues, but otherwise, yeah, you can catch me on the Fantasy Life Show Monday through Thursday, 5 p.m. Eastern. I would love to get some of you guys on there at some point. So we'll do that another day. But yeah, appreciate you guys having me on. Fun time, dudes.

And Ian will have an FFT open league. If you want to join it Monday, July 21st, 7 PM Eastern, all 24 of the leagues are open for you to purchase spots in 11 spots per league. And when we sell them out $66,000 for St. Jude for Jamie Heath and Ian. I am Adam. Oh, and Thomas who popped on unintentionally. I am Adam. We will talk Thomas who popped on unintentionally. I am Adam. We will talk to you tomorrow with wide receiver tiers on Fancy Football.