Fantasy Football Today - Travis Kelce No Longer Elite? Stock Updates, Waiver Wire Targets, & More! (12/19 Fantasy Football Today Dynasty)

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

Looking to dominate your fantasy league just like your redraft league? Look no further than Fantasy Football Today Dynasty hosted by our very own Heath Cummings! Download and follow Fantasy Football Today Dynasty on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever else you find your podcasts.  Jacob Gibbs joins Heath Cummings on Fantasy Football Today Dynasty to discuss whether or not Travis Kelce (1:55) is no longer elite; they rank the top 3 rookie (5:30) wide receivers. Jacob gives one player he wants to buy (9:40) in the offseason, players they would rather have (16:40) in dynasty like Tua Tagovailoa or Kyler Murray, Isiah Pacheco vs Tony Pollard, and others. We review Week 16 waiver wire (49:02) options and answer (52:37) your questions! Follow our FFT team on Twitter: @FFToday, @AdamAizer, @JameyEisenberg, @daverichard, @heathcummingssr, @ctowerscbs Follow the brand new FFT TikTok account: https://www.tiktok.com/@fftoday Watch FFT on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/fantasyfootballtoday Get 20% off Fantasy Football Today merch: https://store.cbssports.com/collections/fantasy-football-today%20?utm_source=podcast-apple-com&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=buy-our-merch&utm_content=fantasy-football-collection Join our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/FantasyFootballToday/ Sign up for the FFT newsletter https://www.cbssports.com/newsletter You can listen to Fantasy Football Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast." To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does possible sound like for your business? It's having the spend to power your scale with no preset spending limit. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. Welcome to Fantasy Football Today, Dynasty. I am your host, Heath Cummings, here with Jacob Gibbs.

It's Fantasy's semi-final weekend, and we're going to talk Dynasty at the same time. Jacob, how are you doing? I'm great, man. I had a couple of bad beats this week. Always rough, but that's just part of it. That's why we love Dynasties, because let's get to the offseason. Let's talk about rookies. Let's look forward to next year.

I was just talking about one of my bad beats. It wasn't a bad beat because DeAndre Swift only scored nine points last night. He beat me on his last carry. But it was a bad beat because I lost negative four points on Justin Fields' Hail Marys. Thank you, Darnell Mooney. We're going to do something a little bit different on today's show, a little bit of would you rather, while Jacob gives two guys that I have ranked very close together,

and he's going to tell me who he prefers and why. It's probably going to turn into a little bigger conversation about hopefully some players that we've not talked about as much lately. Kyler Murray, Will Levis. We need to talk about who's the number one RB1 overall in Dynasty. Isaiah Pacheco, Tony Pollard. We've got two guys moving in opposite directions. We will get to that in just a few minutes.

First, we're going to start with three questions for Jacob Gibbs. I try to do this almost every show with the guest. And since he is maybe the only person employed by CBS who's a bigger Chiefs fan than I am, let's start with a Chief, although it's not a positive question necessarily. Is Travis Kelsey still elite? Yeah, I think so.

I think if you watch Travis Kelsey and if you hear the words he's saying in interviews and stuff, I think it's clear that he's worn down um i i worry a bit about him potentially retiring this offseason um we'll see how the how the postseason goes but there's one play that stuck out to me it was the hail mary um i can't remember who we were playing but it was two or three weeks ago and i was watching with somebody who doesn't normally watch the Chiefs and they showed the replay of the Hail Mary and Kelsey just looks so hurt and slow as he's running and the person who's watching he's like you wouldn't think watching this guy move that he's like a premier

athlete like you would never think that he's hall of fame best tight end of all time and I think that's just kind of where he's at but statistically yeah but statistically, yeah, I think he's still there. It's been a bit of a slow finish to the season as he is dealing with injuries and the chiefs offense is, um, dealing with a lot of issues, honestly. And it's so clear that Kelsey, if you stop Kelsey, you probably can beat them. Um, so like, I don't know, I'm not too worried about it. What do you think? Well, we were talking about it on Sunday night show. Um, and the consensus opinion was that he is not tight in one next year. He's certainly not around one pick next year. I, the thing that I struggle with, cause I kind of have a thing with wide

receivers and this, I call this the Allen Robinson rule or the A.J. Green rule, or pick your late 20s, early 30s wide receiver. When a pass catcher of that age looks washed, believe them. Now, there have been guys who have bounced back from looking like that, and I think you're probably right. I think it's either an injury or something. We know he was injured, right? He doesn't look at all. He can't run like himself.

Yeah. And he's going to be 34 years old next year. And so I think for sure, from a dynasty perspective, I can go through this list and you tell me if I'm wrong, but we'll talk about who should be number one a little bit later. But I can't rank Kelsey ahead of TJ Hawkinson, who's seven years younger, or Mark Andrews, who's six years younger, or Trey McBride, who's 10 years younger or trey mcbride who's 10 years younger or sam laporta and i i think it's a real question whether you rank him ahead of kyle pitts or dalton kincaid at this point yeah i think that's totally fair um which is it's tough for the kelsey uh you know managers because we we knew that coming in that this this drop-off was coming but it still felt like you had

to draft him as the tight end one going into this year because we haven't seen it at all. But I do think that we're there now. But I do think that it's entirely possible that he gets right this offseason, goes into next year healthy, and is still 90, 95% of the guy that we'd seen two years ago.

But if you're thinking, like there's some leagues that don't have trade deadlines right now. I know I was trying to trade him before the trade deadline in our Baked dynasty league. And the best offer I got was the first pick in the second round of next year's rookie draft. And I couldn't quite take that. And right now I wish I would have, um, cause I don't, I don't think you're getting anything better than that now. And I wouldn't give up anything better than that because I think what

you said is right. There is still a a chance that Travis Kelsey bounces back next year and looks like Travis Kelsey I think there might be just as good of chance that Travis Kelsey doesn't play next year yeah I think you're right yeah right a lot of unknown here for sure exactly okay let's get to question number two and it's it's one you've already told me that I hate this question, which makes me feel great as a host because I did a good job. Who are your top three rookie wide receivers right now? I hate this question, but it's a good question. It's a damn good question. It's one that needs to be posed because I think this feels so backwards. But I think all three of the guys that we had going into the year, most people's consensus was Jaxa Smith and Jigba, Quinn Johnson and Jordan Addison. I don't think any of them would be my top three.

Of that bunch, I think I would put Jason at the top and potentially in the top three. But honestly, if you just look at like Smith and Jigba's metrics, everything, all the underlying stuff and compare it to like Josh Downs, it's almost identical. And most metrics favor josh downs from this year and i think they've had pretty similar circumstances um in terms of

offensive environment you disagree there i would disagree a little bit with that just because i don't think playing alongside michael pitman is equal to playing alongside dk metcalf and tyler lockett in terms of target competition? Yes. Is that what you mean? Okay. I guess that's fair, but Pittman has been a pretty pronounced target hog over the last couple of years. Spoiler alert, he's my answer to your next question, is Michael Pittman, is who I would be buying this offseason, because I think he is legit a wide receiver one.

But anyway, just the point I'm trying to make there is like, nobody's putting Josh Downs in this conversation. a wide receiver one. But anyway, that, that just the point I'm trying to make there is like, right. Nobody, nobody's putting Josh downs in this conversation. So my top three would be, I think you have to put Puka Nakua there at one. Just everything that we've seen, we've seen him win in a variety of different ways,

even with cup on the field, just looks like a phenomenal player. I'm really, really excited about him long-term. I think tank Dell would be second, which is wild um but i feel really good so many of these these wide receivers i there's a lot of ambiguity about their quarterback situation going forward um and i think it's a really important point for both dell and rishi rice who would actually be my third is that like they are locked in as potentially the one going forward with what seems to be one

of the best quarterbacks in the nfl um and it is i really like the coaching staff there in houston as well i'm assuming that they don't lose bobby slowick this offseason um so yeah i think it would be those three which is nuts because going into the year they were like all outside of the top like six or seven um wide receivers in dynasty ranks is this too much recency bias i think you have more of like a hardcore dynasty audience i wouldn't be surprised if if they're just screaming now because they you know it's so attached to the to the profiles coming in um but yeah i think what we've seen from those guys is so impressive it is so impressive i right, I have it Puka and then JSN and then Addison. Addison is the one that I think he was actually wide receiver one or two for some people coming into this season. He's pacing towards a thousand-yard, ten-touchdown season as a rookie. I don't know how he could have lost ground in that circumstance. Tank Dell moved up into that discussion for me.

I might be overreacting a little bit to the injuries, but this is a guy who the one question was, he's half the size of a normal football player, not literally, obviously, and he suffered a broken leg. Does his team feel confident enough in his ability to stay healthy that they don't draft another number one wide receiver in this year's draft?

But the other thing I would say is amongst my Dynasty wide receiver rankings, there are now seven, six or seven wide receivers, rookie wide receivers in my top 25. Yeah. Which is fantastic. Like what a class, right?

I know. Like this was supposed to be kind of the letdown class compared to the receivers that we've had over the past few years. But now again, just super, super fun and all kinds of different archetypes of receivers here. And Quinton Johnson is not one of those. So he actually fell out

six guys ahead of him. But you said Michael Pittman is the guy that you are buying this off season. So I said there's six rookie wide receivers in my top 25 Pittman is number 25. So I've got six rookie wide receivers ahead of him. Am I too low on Pittman? Are you buying at that cost? Yeah, definitely buying at that cost. I think that's why I had him as the buy is because I think people aren't quite sold on him because he's had opportunity and hasn't turned in any like monster fantasy seasons. But yeah, man, he is sixth this year in target per route run rate. Completely just been a target hog in that offense. That's what we saw last year as well and i think i i really think that this offense has a chance to take a step into the top tier in 2024 i really believe in shane steichen i'm excited about what we saw from

anthony richardson um my guy matt harman from yahoo fantasy reception perception just loves loves of loves michael pitman before this year matt ranked uh the top receivers under the age of 25 in terms of just actual on-field competence not for fantasy and he had pitman ahead of guys like amandra saint brown which just shocked me because he of course loves amandra saint brown how do you not if you watch all his routes like that's your job to watch routes like it doesn't get much better than amandra saint brown and he had pitman ahead of him um yeah i think he might have had him ahead of davante smith you know so like i matt you know isn't a hundred percent gonna be right because nobody is this is a hard thing that

we're doing here but you know he's been pounding the table for brandon iuk nico collins all these guys that i also like when i look at the data i'm like man this looks like a legitimate like potential wide receiver one that's just in a bad situation. And then we see that, you know, eventually come around. Not always. And so that's that's kind of where I'm at with Pittman is I think he might be the next Brennan Iuke type of player where like a mega breakout is coming. I think the Iuke one is really interesting because we were just talking about this on Sunday night on Fantasy Football Today, the big show, we'll call it that, about how it was a month ago that, ah, see, Brandon Iyuk is the clear best wide receiver in San Francisco. Debo Samuel's gone.

And now the last month, it's been Debo time again. Yeah, and I don't think that has anything to do with Iyuk necessarily. I don't think they're mutually exclusive. I don't think anything that we saw from Iyuk is like invalidated by what we've seen from debo i think it's just like wow debo is here to remind us that he's really really good when he's healthy right that's cool i i do think the pitman when it's you get to this point he's a 26 now um and so and we've not gotten a wide receiver one season from him and that the profile the last two years looks a lot like a guy that everybody else has kind of been higher on than me because he's so good at earning

targets, Deontay Johnson. Yeah, he's earning an insane amount of targets that makes him look like a number one wide receiver. And whether it's because of quarterback play or whatever, the production on a per target basis is pretty, pretty mediocre, maybe even mid you might say. So I do have a question for you. Cause you mentioned the Richardson. I'm being excited about that.

If Anthony Richardson has started every game this season, would Michael Pittman stats look better or worse for this season? It's tough to say, cause you really don't have a significant sample size on Richardson as a passer. I would say he would probably have fewer targets and potentially fewer PPR points, but I do think there's a much higher ceiling available to him with Richardson. They were starting to let Richardson really push the ball down the field. The deeper he got into the season, I think that was exciting for Pittman.

I think also we would see even more RPO stuff incorporated into the the offense and so there's a lot of research that's been done by ben gritch and jj zacharias and we talked about it this summer um on fft about how concentrated target shares can become in heavy rpo offenses we saw this in philadelphia with shane steichen and now he brings it over to indy and i think you know so it's possible that you know we the total target volume and route run volume is higher because um of the style of offense that they're operating under gardner minchu but with more rpo stuff we have the potential for similar type of target concentration with more downfield looks as well with Richardson. And I think more touchdown scoring opportunity as a whole with the offense. I think it would be really interesting

just because like he might be the type of guy who doesn't look quite as elite in terms of the targets that he's earning, but I think you're right, maybe more efficiency. And so how people would view that in terms of it is, do they think that he is more talented because the actual efficiency looks better on a per target basis? Maybe so. I'm not sure. Like they might be wrong either way. So where do you have Pittman in your dynasty rankings? I haven't updated dynasty rankings, but I think he would probably fall in the 15 to 20 range. Okay. Yeah. So I'm going gonna go through a few guys that i've got ahead of michael pitman and you just uh you tell me who you'd rather have pitman or ego collins that's exactly who i thought

at first i think that i would take pitman but i do think that there's more upside with collins pitman or tankdell same exact answer i think uh pitman or devo samuel pitman wow yeah that is just absolutely that's the that's the thing i think that like this this disconnect for me between what devo has done two of the last three years in terms of fantasy production and efficiency on a per touch basis versus what Pittman has done on a per like earning targets, but not turning those into fantasy points. I think that that nexus in between those two guys, we could probably just spend an entire show on Pittman or DJ Moore. I think that they're basically identical. I think I would lean towards Pittman because I feel a little bit better about his offensive environment.

I don't really know what's going to happen. So you said Pittman over Tank Dell. So you're basically taking Pittman over every rookie besides Puka. Yeah. The more that I'm thinking about it, Pittman would probably be like a top 12 or 15 receiver for me. Okay. Wow. And so philosophically, last question on Michael Pittman.

We'll take a short break and then we'll get into the game but we've got coming here the would you rather um for a guy he's going into his age 27 season next year right what he has to produce a top 12 season next year to be worth a top 12 or 15 ranking in a dynasty perspective right so like next year needs to be the start of the peak yeah no i it it's a bit of a precarious position right now where he's at it reminds me of like dionte coming off of his really good season two years ago um but i think the offensive environment around him is better than dionte's was well i can't imagine it's going to be any worse than the offensive environment around dionte johnson has been let's take our first quick

break here and then we'll get get into some of my internal ranking disputes. We'll see if Jacob thinks these are even close. Did you know 66% of utility damage is caused by not requesting a locate? Don't let your project become part of this statistic. A quick locate request can save you from unexpected downtime, financial penalties, and keep you safe. Don't let avoidable damage cost you time and money. Click before you dig.

Ensure your next project is safe. Visit OntarioOneCall.ca. It's free. It's easy. It's the law. Data sourced from the ORCGA 2023 Dirt Report. Okay, so I've got about 10 different guys, 10 different duos here that I'm having a hard time deciding who I would rather have. I think you could make a case for both. And so I'll kind of ask you to go through these, Jacob.

You tell me if you agree that it's close, who you'd rather have, and then we'll see whether I'm too high or too low on these guys. I've got Tua Tungavailoa at QB 11. I've got Kyler Murray at QB 12. Which one would you rather have in Dynasty? Do you think they're actually this close? This is the one that surprised me the most. To me, it's clearly Tua. I kind of want to hear your pro-Kyler case because I seem to just be lower on Kyler than most people, especially for Dynasty.

Although Arizona does seem like more committed to him than ever at this point, or at least we've seen them in a long time. There was a while where it's like, are they just going to move on from Kyler? It kind of feels like they might. I don't think of him as a good real-life thrower of the football. That might be true. I think these guys are both really, really difficult to evaluate. Because what is Tua if he doesn't have Mike McDaniel and Tyreek Hill?

A lot of his is scheme and elite talent around him. A lot of Kyler's is what he did two and three years ago as a fantasy quarterback, which was elite. I think my case would be these guys are basically the same age. They're both 25 coming into the season. Kyler's contract is such that while maybe Arizona is not going to stick with him, he's going to be a starting quarterback. He's definitely a top 25 or 30 quarterback in the NFL, and he's being paid so much that somebody's going to be starting him for the next couple of years and so i think his upside with his legs and if you give him a real number one like right receiver like deandre hopkins he's looked better as a passer in that situation too um again i i might be a little bit more down on tua than

high on kyler in this situation but i but I think both these guys are so situation dependent. They're about the same age, and I think Kyler has a more secure long-term future. I'd be more worried about Tua in a couple of years than I would be Kyler. Yeah, I think that that's fair. I do think Tua, his setup is unbelievable, and he's going to be there for a while. Are you worried at all about the rushing coming down a little bit for Kyler coming off the injury? I mean, that's what we've seen so far. Well, I think you worry about that in the first year back.

I don't worry about the rushing being lower next year. But yeah, I think it's been a little bit down this year. The other thing is, you're right. The situation is fantastic for Tua. It's probably as good as any quarterback in the NFL. He's QB 15 on the season. When is Tua going to... I hate to just keep coming back to fantasy production,

but that is what we're doing here is playing fantasy football and two is not delivering. Yeah. It's been a kind of wild season in terms of the number of touchdowns that have been scored by the running backs in Miami. But yeah, no, that's fair.

This, yeah, I think that you made some good points. This is close than I would have originally thought, but you would take, you'd be strongly in Tua's favor, right? Going in, yeah. I've had a tough time evaluating Kyler. Both these guys, like you said, are just pretty complicated. Right. So a couple of QB2s here. Maybe end of the roster guys in a one quarterback league. I think I probably felt better about Sam Howell at the beginning of the year i do right now and maybe worse about will levis than i do right now

but i've got them back to back right now i think they both have a chance or at least compete for a starting job next year who would you rather have on your roster sam howell or will levis uh i'm going to go with sam howell because the like offensive environment there I like. And but really like these guys are kind of the Spider-Man meme to me. Like I dug into their stuff a little bit more and it's just I don't like they're both taking sacks at like a league high rate. Pretty high off target rate for both of them. Howell's is actually um on a lower average depth of target which does stand out um and then there's the you know 15 interceptions as well

so i get it if anyone prefers levis there's more investment with levis and everything um but really yeah they're both uh fringe guys that i i think they're the kind of guys that you could either like make a profit or take a loss on pretty easily this off season, because they do both have pretty good appeal as QB twos. If they could somehow keep a job for three or four years, they both could also not be starting quarterbacks by like October of 2024. It feels like.

And so I, I was, I was higher on how coming into the year. It's definitely a situation where Hal is falling and Levis has risen. He's been better as a rookie than I thought he would be. He's still not been good. So I think these guys will be interesting, but risky QB2s in a super flex league to hold over the offseason for sure. Moving on to running back, I can't remember who we had on. I think you were on the show with me, maybe. We did have one person during our pre-draft coverage or right

after the draft coverage that preferred Jameer Gibbs to be John Robinson in Dynasty. There were a couple of those people on Twitter, and they mostly got roasted for it but gibbs has been much much better it was uh emory hunt it was emory hunt thank you thank you schaefer and we want to make sure emory gets his credit for that because through the first three quarters of their rookie year i'd say emory looks correct is this it's at least closer than it was back in may right yeah it's definitely closer i wouldn't blame anybody for putting gibbs ahead of him um i do i wish that the so like if the target um and the receiving numbers in general hadn't like kind of tapered off for gibbs here at the end of the year i think i might be like clearly in the gibbs camp because for a while there it was like he's drawn targets

at a Camara like rate almost like on a per route basis his target rate was up in the 27 28 29 range um and it's kind of fallen off over the past month um but yeah if he can bring that type of receiving upside in addition to like rushing that's been pretty clearly like on par with bijan um i think it's fair to put them in the same conversation i still like ultimately think that the volume upside is so much higher for bijan than it is for gibbs um i think montgomery is there to stay you know is going to be a part of that offense whereas it's it's possible that bijan gets like the bell cap role next year even if there's a coaching change or what who knows what's going to happen in atlanta i almost answered drake london

to the like who you wanting to buy but it's like no no one even wants there's no point even like bringing up conjecture about atlantic we have no idea what's going to happen it's impossible to evaluate it like we've got all these extremely talented players but like who knows what it'll actually look like um yeah, yeah, no, this is really interesting. I think Gibbs do is like, is here RB one is Christian McCaffrey ahead of him? Like, I think he's, that's where we're at with him basically. Yeah. I, um, I, I, this was the first time I I've been updating every week and I've got a little bit of a formula that I, you know, I've got a pretty heavy hand hand on but this was the first time that I had

Gibbs that actually passed Bijon for RB1 um on in Dynasty now they're basically a coin flip it's close enough that I wouldn't trade one for the other probably but the answer probably is determined by how many games do the Falcons win in the next month so we've got rb rb1 tight end one and top five receiver probably for dynasty all in detroit well we're we're gonna have a discussion about tight end one for sure is there someone you've been tweeting about that i think might have something to say about that as well um but yeah absolutely the detroit lions have at the very least maybe the best fantasy lineup across all positions. And then they've got Jared Goff, so they've got that going for them as well, which is nice.

Go get Hindenhooker, it sounds like. Right. But yeah, I think if the Falcons win their next three games, then Jameer Gibbs is the clear RB1. If the Falcons lose their next three games, then Bijan Robinson's probably back to RV1 because Arthur Schmidt's getting fired. We've got another running back duo inside of my top 10, Travis Etienne versus Devon Achan. I think Achan is one of the more difficult guys to rank and really project for next year because it's so difficult for me to believe that he's going to be a feature back. But the efficiency has been so insane that I'm not sure that it matters. So do you have a strong lean between these two ETN and HN?

Yeah. HN, I wish that we had a larger sample size on him, man, because every metric that we have just jumps off the page. Obviously we've got the big plays. But also, if you look at avoided tackles, insane numbers there. Every game that he's played, a significant amount of snaps. He has at least three avoided tackles. His avoided tackle rate is higher than anyone in the league among running backs with 50 or more rush attempts. And it's not – oh, actually, Jalen Warren. Never forget about Jalen Warren. Jalen Warren is the man.

But then A-Chin is next. His rushing EPA per snap is by far the highest in the league, and his success rate is by far the highest in the league. And then even as a receiver, his yard per route run data is really, really exciting too. It's only on 110 routes that was the thing. But targets and yards per route run, both really, really high. Obviously, playing in Miami helps inflate some of this stuff but like that's not affecting the missed tackles and stuff like that that's all a-chan um and so yeah i think we saw him

handle a large workload his last year at texas a&m um but his efficiency did drop off in that year so prior to that when it was him and isaiah splitting the back isaiah spiller splitting the backfield a-chan was doing this stuff where he's just like breaking advanced metric models and everything else um and then it kind of fell off a little bit when he got the belco workload so you take that however you want to you know like we that's not necessarily guaranteed to happen again but um it's entirely possible that's what's going on here is that this is mostly a small sample size thing because if you look at like keaton mitchell data is pretty similar to HN's, but it just comes on an even smaller sample size. And normally these things even out over a larger sample.

So, yeah, I really don't. I haven't attempted to rank HN. Where does he fall for you among running backs? He is RB7. I've got ETN at 6 and HN at 7. And I think, again, it's a very risky ranking. Because if you told me that he turned out to be CJ Spiller, I would like you to get one 1,500-yard season out of him,

and then he just can't stay healthy or can't handle the volume, I would 100% believe that. But the upside is as high as any looks right now, as high as anybody in football. Yeah, no, for sure. And then, so Travis ETN is the guy we're comparing him to here. It's been another really good year for ETN. I think, um, it's the offensive line and Jacksonville has been so bad, so hard to find lanes behind. So last year, ETN averaged two yards before contact per rush this year it's 0.86 it's it's just abysmal there right and and like if you look at avoided tackles it's again he's been one of the best in the league like he i think etn is doing about everything he can

um and so like the point i want to bring up is like he so he's had some luck with touchdown variants i think um but it's not anything outrageous like raheem mostard um but etn is the rb3 in fantasy even in a kind of dysfunctional offense this year um and it's possible that i think jackson was offense gets a lot better i don't know if they can shore up the offensive line in one year or if it's a coaching issue or what needs to change, but there are some pieces in place here. And yeah, I think just seeing him do this this year, to me, I think you've got to take him over A-chan, even though there is massive upside with A-chan.

Because we've already seen the upside for etn like actually come to fruition right yeah no i think that's i think that's right um that's why like i said i've got etn one spot ahead or i want to i'm going to derail the conversation for just a second we'll get back to the game but you said something about jacksonville and this has kind of been an ongoing conversation on the show as well. A guy that I have behind to and Kyler Murray that probably will get me killed in a lot of dynasty circles. It's Trevor Lawrence. Wow.

But it seems like you're still like you said, they've got the pieces, some pieces, I assume, because Calvin Ridley is not guaranteed to be there next year. That the piece that you're talking about is Trevor Lawrence. You still feel confident that we're going to get elite fantasy production from him at some point in his career? I don't know if he's ever going to be an elite fantasy producer necessarily, but I do think he can facilitate a high-powered offense. If he gets huge touchdown totals as part of that then yes but i think that's basically where it has to come for him because i don't know if under the current regime he's ever

going to have like huge passing volume numbers and he hasn't rushed in the way that we would have liked um so for fantasy i i get it i think it's fair to move him down it seems wild to move him just because of how high people have been on him i've been lower on lawrence as well so like i if i actually had updated my dynasty rankings, he might fall into the same range, but you haven't like 14 or something you're saying. Yeah, I think he's 14.

Wow. Yeah. Um, no, I think that's, and you mentioned the touchdowns. That's the thing. And I,

I agree with the idea that something could click at some point, but it's pretty much been a steady thing throughout his career. And we see this with young quarterbacks all the time, especially rookies often have really low touchdown rates, often struggle in the red zone. And that was really true for Trevor Lawrence. It's just remained true. He just, he's been so much,

had so much more success between the 20s than he has when he gets into the red zone. And some of that seems this year to be really bad luck. How many times has Calvin Ridley caught a ball in the end zone with one foot out of bounds? Or not caught a ball right at the boundary? Or Lawrence has just missed someone? And so I do understand the sentiment that Trevor Lawrence next year is just going to have regular touchdown luck. I'm just not sure it's luck.

Yeah, no, I think that's fair. I think it's totally fair to worry about him a little bit. But yeah, I guess my point is we've already seen, I think, kind of the worst range of outcomes here for Jacksonville. And within that, Etienne finished as the RB3. Exactly. Yes. Yeah, I think ETN is the piece I think they definitely have. Let's get back to the, would you rather, we're about halfway through

one more running back duo. Definitely two guys that have moved opposite directions this season in terms of the consensus running back rankings, Isaiah Pacheco and Tony Pollard. Pacheco has been fantastic as a rusher this year, done a little bit more as a pass catcher, really bucking that trend of day three or UDFA running backs who are good as rookies. You need to sell, sell, sell. He did not go the way of Damian Pierce. He's still though, the Chiefs have very little invested in him. I don't know how much security he has next year. I don't know how much security Tony Pollard has for a feature role next year. He'll be a free agent.

Which one of these guys do you prefer in Dynasty? Which one do you feel more certain will be a fantasy starter next year? Yeah, I have no idea who is more likely to be a fantasy starter. I guess I would lean towards Pacheco because we really don't even know what's going to happen with Pollard. I think Pacheco is the guy who I would take out of these two. He's younger. There's not a significant investment in either. And we've seen Pacheco be decently efficient as a full-time back.

He's improved across the board this year in terms of making people miss, making tacklers miss. His receiving is up, which was inevitable. He was like at the very bottom last year among running backs and receiving, but it is up. And so, yeah, I think it makes sense to put him ahead of Pollard, which is so sad going into the year. And I would never have believed I would be saying this. I'm such a big fan of Tony Pollard, but man, it's been really bad. Tony Pollard is at the very bottom of the league and pretty much every metric is receiving stuff has fallen off as well. It's tough. I do think there's reason to hope that

this is related to the injury that he suffered at the end of last year and that another full off season, he could be 100% going into next year. It's not necessarily likely, but it's reason to hope. The thing that I think that people overlooked this pass-off season that's really going to hit them when we get to April 30th of 2024, that's Tony Pollard's birthday, he turns 27 years old. That's the age. People view Tony Pollard as much younger than he is because he was the fast backup for so long, But he's going to be at the age where we start worrying about age amongst running backs. And so, yeah, I don't think he's guaranteed necessarily to be a starter for an NFL team next year. Someone might look at him and say,

you know what we should do is put him with a bell cow, give it to him 10 times a game and watch him average six yards of carry again. So we'll just have to kind of watch that with Pollard. I think he's pretty risky this offseason as well. Let's move on to wide receivers. I saw somebody in the chat say this conversation is great, but it just shows why wide receivers are so much more fun. That is true, especially for dynasty purposes. Let's talk about one of your favorite wide receivers, Brandon Ayuk versus one of the rookies. And based on the way you were ranking Michael Pittman, I think I know where you're going to go on this one. Zay Flowers versus Brandon Ayuk. Yeah, it's clearly Ayuk for me.

Ayuk is only two and a half years older than Zay Flowers. He's been in the league for a long time, so it feels like he should be four or five years older than him. But he's two and a half years older, and he's a unicorn, man. He's so good. He's averaging over three yards per run this year. If he finishes the year over three, that puts him in really, really exclusive territory. It's like Julio Jones, Cooper cup during his 2021 season and Tyree kill last year.

And that's it over the past, like 10 years. Um, that's the range that we're talking about with Brandon and you here um and he's he's producing at this level even while like not obviously the yard per outrun rate is is relative to the offense that he's playing and playing in this offense with Kyle Shanahan inflates things but he's producing for fantasy at this level even while competing for targets with legitimate like studs. Um, whereas a flowers has had a chance to, and he's just a rookie. I don't, I don't want to judge Zay on this, but he, he's had a chance to emerge as a clear target earner, top guy, and he hasn't done it. We've seen him be invisible several times this year. He has four games with 25 or fewer yards, which I'm fine taking if the big games are

there, but the big games really haven't been there. He doesn't have a single game with more than 80 yards. So honestly, it's been a bit of a disappointing year for Flowers, in my opinion. His per route data isn't very good, and his per route data at the collegiate level wasn't very good either. I had a the collegiate level wasn't very good either i had a kind of tough time with him as a prospect um because he had really poor quarterback play and so like how how are you able to you know contextualize everything and really try to evaluate him um when you're comparing you know his stats to players who played much better

systems it was kind of a similar situation with johan dotson um and then he comes in and everybody talks about how good the player is but like it's not we're not seeing it equate to production um and so yeah i don't i love zay there have been flashes of exciting stuff but there have also been flashes of you know like kind of struggling um on downfield tracking and stuff like that where it's like i don't know man i'm i'm not so sure that this is going to be a fantasy superstar at any point whereas like iuk we're there we're seeing it this is real yeah i think it's it's interesting because iuk has turned isuke is an advanced stats superstar for sure. I don't think he's probably going to finish this season as a top 12 fantasy wide receiver.

I did wonder, when you said Julio, was that Julio with Shanahan? Yeah, it was all the Atlanta years. He had three years, over three yards per outrun. So basically the wide receivers who have averaged more than three yards per outrun are playing either in a Kyle Shanahan offense, a Mike McDaniel who just left Kyle Shanahan offense or a Sean McVay offense. It's true. Yeah, that's a good point. And I think that's interesting because we've got one year of IUK left in San Francisco for sure. And then they're going to have to make some choices in terms of what they're going to do with their roster. But Iuke is remarkably efficient. He's turning into the star that people thought that he would be. But it's almost like the efficiency that he produces

is at least somewhat a product of the offense that he plays in but also that same offense because there's so many weapons and because they run so much is is holding down the counting stats that actually turn into fantasy points right yeah but i i think it's possible that he gets out of this offense at some point and like does a stefan digs type of career right where it's like okay here he is like this is we knew this was possible and now we get three straight years of top five production. I also think that these a flowers, like at the end of the year, back of the football card stats are going to look very, very,

very similar to Brandon. I use rookie year now in a different way, but he's Iuke was 60 catches, seven 48 and five touchdowns as a rookie uh flowers i guess already has 65 680 and three touchdowns so it's going to be very similar what those two did as rookies let's move to another wide receiver duo here i did have flowers ahead of iuk it's just one spot i figured that you would favor the iuk side let's talk about rashid rice versus dj more i know you always want to talk about rashid rice This is a guy that you were on in October.

We were talking about Rasheed Rice's per-route run data and kind of are the Chiefs gaming the per-route run data? Is that what's going on? Well, Rice is finally a full-time player. He might be the number one option, not just the number one wide receiver for Patrick Mahomes. He might be the number one option moving forward for Patrick Mahomes going up against DJ Moore who has finally broken out with Justin Fields but obviously a couple years older than Rice which one of these guys would

you rather have in Dynasty yeah I would lean towards Rice um but yeah I mean like so Rice already has averaged more yards per run the DJ Moore this year, which is pretty wild to me when you look at the respective average depth of target, 4.3 yards for Rice, 11 yards for DJ Moore, and Rice is averaging more yards per run. Is that a product of the first half of the season when they were kind of only playing Rice when they intended to throw it to him and DJ Moore is a full-time player? So I don't really

think so like let me where would be a good cutoff point for rice i think the past month past month yeah are his yards per run steady over the last month compared to what they were at the beginning of the season because it looks like it to me let me just pull this up on true media real quick yeah no problem and go ahead since since week 12 2.6 yards per outrun um which is elite that would yeah be sixth on the year and he's pretty much been a full-time player since week 12 so no no dip in that at all we've seen the production come out i mean you look at the full season stats and this is not even close dj moore's been much much better than rishi rice in terms of fantasy production in terms of yards per game in terms of any way you want to measure it but then when you

get down to the more granular stuff uh rice has been elite yeah it's i i do wonder like what the role will look like if we are going to see an expansion of his role um at the collegiate level for what it's worth this was what rice did when he was at his best was he was a catching round guy who worked from the slot um which is a bit strange because he's a big dude he seems like somebody who could work from the perimeter he's a you know rangy athlete and then they moved him to the perimeter and he wasn't as good um in terms of efficiency i think he was dealing with an injury um playing through an injury during that season so take that with a grain of salt it's possible that he could move into that type of role and succeed, but we haven't seen

that really at all. He has topped out at 47 air yards as a single game high all year. So really not being used down the field at all. I mean, he's Juju, right? I say that and people are going to envision current juju with one knee who can't run or last year like but you remember elite juju the first couple of years of that big slot role that really is probably needs somebody else also drawing coverage as well um like he he seems to like hopefully he stays healthier and his career takes a better path than jujus did but there's a lot of similarities between these two guys, isn't there? There definitely are in terms of the way they're being used.

They're good after the catch, guys. I will say that Juju was often dependent on zone matchups. And I do think that's where Rice is at his best, is finding holes in zone. But he does have pretty encouraging data against man coverage, against single high safety coverage, stuff like that. I thought maybe it would just be like he's just beating zones, but he's been able to get open in those types of situations. And just looking at his data compared to Juju, it's better than young, early career Juju.

Like his yard per run rate this year is better than anything we've ever gotten from Juju. And I think that's, I saw somebody commenting about how much better dj more has been than rishi rice a lot of times what jacob's talking about are rate stats that are based on like a per route run not the fantasy points per game not not the not the receiving yards per game so rishi rice obviously hasn't been better than young juju in terms of fantasy production. He had a 1,400-yard season. But you're saying in terms of per-route data, Rice has been better? Yeah. But when we get to April and people are having to cut down rosters to make draft picks, either one of these guys could be on the chopping block, especially in shallow leagues, dynasty leagues. We've got Jamison Williams versus Jahan Dotson.

When we add the rookie wide receivers, there's probably going to be five or six of them that come into the rankings ahead of these guys, which might push them out of my top 40. Which one do you prefer to hold on to? This is tough. This is really really tough both these guys i think bring a lot of upside hypothetical upside in terms of like the talent and the potential role that they could film but we have not seen either of them succeed i also i think i i almost kind of want to lean towards Jamo because we haven't necessarily seen him fail. Whereas Dotson, we have a pretty large sample size of him, like not being productive at this point. Right.

Also, this might just be recency bias because did you see the move Jamison Williams put on the sideline this past week? Holy crap, man. I saw that and I'm like, there it is. Like that is the guy that we saw at Alabama. Like he's, he's so electric. He does stuff like that where it's like, whoa at alabama like he's he's so electric he does stuff like that where it's like whoa the defender totally thought he had the sideline closed off and it wasn't even something he had to worry about and jamo just moves differently um yeah dotson man dotson has almost almost a thousand routes in his career at this point and has just not produced. It's a very

large sample size and he has a 15% target per route run rate on those routes. He has just one game with the target share above 25% in his career. Um, it's the group that he would fall in, in terms of first two years of a career um data is really really ugly there are a few you know davante adam okay and deandre hopkins had a bad rookie season like occasionally there are guys who end up bucking that trend but like i don't know man it's really hard to bet on this profile but if you do value like matt harman and what he says he totally totally believes in Jahan Dotson.

I think he's one of the biggest guys, you know, still pounding the table for like Jahan Dotson is a stud, is a very good player. It's just been the target distribution has been very weird in Washington this year. There's no way around it. Like it's been what we saw from being in the chief's offense, but even more spread out. Um, and so that makes it hard for any player to see, you know, I said he only has one game with a 25% target share higher. Like McLaurin would be in kind of the same boat.

He has a few more, but not much more. What do you think on these guys? They're so hard to make sense of. Yeah, I currently have Williams one spot ahead of Dotson. I've been a big, I was a big fan of Dotson coming into the year, been really disappointed, but was a big fan of Dotson coming into the year, been, been really disappointed, but I think,

I think you were right. It's the offensive environment. It would be more conducive to a potential breakout next year for Jamison Williams. Well, we're just gonna have to see what these teams do in the off season. They're, they're both. I think I'm going to be trying to hold both until October of 2024.

I want to see the first month of next season, but I understand that more shallow leagues, people are going to have decisions to make. We're going to go a little bit quicker here so we can get through the waiver wire and get to your questions. I've got a bunch of questions from Twitter here that I want to go through rapid fire, but just real quick, are you certain that Sam Laporta is the dynasty tight end one? Because I kind of want to make it Trey McBride. So again, this might be recency bias because we just saw this huge game from Laporta and there were several plays in the game where it's like, my gosh, this guy moves differently.

I texted a friend of mine and she's not a huge football fan, but she has Sam Laporta. I'm like, do not trade Sam Laporta. People are going to be trying to trade for Sam Laporta this offseason in our Dynasty League. Don't trade this guy because this guy does stuff that I haven't seen a young tight end do unless they were you know destined to go on a date a mega pop superstar like this guy is different man and his per route data is really really impressive as well and so we're

comparing him to trey mcbride because what trey mcbride has done this year is absolutely insane trey mcbride has a higher target and yard per route run rate than Travis Kelsey. If you look at per route data, he's the best among all tight ends and is coming in an Arizona offense that has been totally inefficient. But Sam Laporta is not far off of those marks and it's his rookie year and he's competing for targets with Amon Arsene Brown and Jameer Gibbs. This this offense has way way more players to get the ball to um and still say laporta is demanding targets um on 23 of his routes whereas like mcbride really struggled as a rookie which is not unusual for tight ends but like what's unusual is what laporta is doing as a rookie yeah yeah i think um i love both these guys They're definitely my top two. I currently have Laporta one and McBride two,

but I don't have a strong feel on that. I think either one of them could be the best tight end in fantasy. If people forget about how great, and you were highlighting this on Twitter, how incredible McBride was in his final year of college as well. He made a couple of catches. I was unfortunate enough to be watching a lot of that Arizona game yesterday. He made a lot of catches that if he had been in primetime like Laporta was,

we might be a little bit more excited about him in that game. So let's run through the deep waiver wire just real quick here. You can kind of tell me if you have any interest. We just like to do this because I know there's people in their semifinal matchups that all of a sudden are looking for something. Taylor Heineke, 10% rostered, will be starting for the Falcons. It wasn't great the last time that we saw this, but it is a good matchup against the Indianapolis Colts. He is in the dome. Are you starting him as a QB2 this week?

I think so. There are so many backup quarterbacks starting this week, and I think he's near the top of that range just because of all the game environment stuff that you pointed out. And I think we'll see Atlanta be more aggressive through the air this week after what happened last week.

Last week was an embarrassment. Right. Yeah, I think I would still prefer Nick Mullens because he has Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison and TJ Hawkinson. But yeah, Heineke is definitely an add and maybe a start in a super flex league. Chris Rodriguez is 4% rostered.

I don't know what happened with Washington. What seems like happened is they tried to make Antonio Gibson the guy again, and then they remembered that they hate him. And so they gave all the work to Chris Rodriguez in the second half. I've not heard any positive reports on Brian Robinson. So if Robinson's out this week,

the Jets have been easier to run against than they have been to throw against. Would Rodriguez be a decent flex option? I think he fell outside of the top 30 when I was organizing the running back position for this week. So like only a desperation type of play for me. Makes sense. We've got Parker Washington and Alec Pierce. Washington at 9% rostered, Pierce at 6%. Zay Jones has suffered another injury. We don't know if it's going to be Trevor Lawrence or CJ Beathard, but I think Parker Washington should be rostered in more than 9% of leagues anyway. I really think he fits that Christian Kirk profile very well. And part of the problem they were talking about on the broadcast was that Trevor Lawrence

hasn't been looking for him like he was Kirk because Washington's open. That's a guy I definitely want to add. And then Alec Pierce, obviously, probably going to get a little bit of a boost if Michael Pittman can't play this week. Yeah, I like the spot for Washington a lot. That Tampa Bay secondary has just been bleeding fantasy points to receivers um the who's indie playing atlanta yeah that that's a really tough spot for particularly for a receiver of the archetype um that like is pushing the down the field for targets atlanta has been really really tough

against perimeter receivers um they used a lot of press coverage it's he could get open down the field for targets. Atlanta has been really, really tough against perimeter receivers. They used a lot of press coverage. He could get open down the field for a few looks, but I think that's a desperation play as well. And then Tucker Craft's 9% roster has been pretty decent the last couple of weeks. I know he's possibly a streamer

the last couple of weeks in the fantasy playoffs if you need one. Is there any chance that he's challenging Luke Musgrave in next year? Musgrave was better with his opportunities this year than craft has been craft has um just a 12 target per hour and right one yard per run on the year um but we have seen him be decent and show some flashes over the last two weeks and um his route participation was all the way up to 93 this past past week. Third round pick. So I think it's possible that this is more of a split between the two,

but they really like Musgrave, man. They really wanted to make it a priority to get him involved in the offense. So I would expect him to be the lead guy. But yeah, for this week, I think Kraft is a decent streamer if you need him. Yep. Okay, let's take a short break, and then we've got a bunch of your dynasty questions from twitter up next all right i'm just pulling up the questions here we had quite a few here so let's uh let's see if we can run through some of these rapid fire here a dispute came up in my league there's no trade deadline seems like no

one was really aware there wasn't a deadline until two managers made a move. Now some teams think if we allow trade in the playoff, that playoff teams should only be allowed to trade with each other. What is this nonsense, Jacob? Yeah, if there's no trade deadline, I think it's fair game. Everybody should be able to trade. I mean, you're playing Dynasty, so you're playing year-round.

And so I don't think, I think just like drawing the deadline at the playoffs and saying that only playoffs team should be able to trade with each other. It doesn't make sense. It's kind of arbitrary. Well, it's the same thing. Yeah.

Somebody had asked me if they could pick somebody, pick up players when they're eliminated from their dynasty league. Of course you can. Like the waiver wire is wide open. And if there's no trade, I don't know how you feel about it. I have leagues with no trade deadlines. I have with trade deadlines i there's benefits to both i think if you're going to have a league with no trade deadline you need to make sure that you've got

12 guys who are actually really involved and want to be a part of it because that's somebody can make a really bad decision and kind of alter the league late in the season. Yeah, no, that's a really good point. There has to be some sort of buy-in or agreement beyond this year. Is Brees Hall a sell-high candidate in the offseason with everyone hoping that Rogers is going to make things better? I don't think so, man. I think Brees Hall is really, really good. I think he's top two or three running back talent in the NFL right now.

This is why I agree 100%. He's a top five or six dynasty back for me right now. So yeah, absolutely. Heading into 2024, what dynasty approaches will you take heading into the off season or draft? Is there anything that you learned from this year or that you're changing for next year from a dynasty perspective?

If you've listened to this whole episode, you know that I probably need to stop letting my uh ego hubris whatever affect my decision making so much and just understand that like there's a reason that we have some rules with dynasty related to archetypes and stuff like that like you know damien pierce probably wasn't a good bet this year and i knew that based off historical data um and still i was like well i think i know you know and like that happens with sometimes where you you know you get your brain uh a little bit too involved and and overthink things or whatever like um so yeah i guess that would be

my lesson is like there are tried and true rules here the dynasty players have you know figured out over years and years of doing this, and you're not the outlier. You know who mine was, right? It was Sky Moore. Yeah. The rookie, and the answer to that question going into next year is going to be Quentin Johnston. The rookie first or second round pick that lost a bunch of dynasty value in their rookie season and wasn't hurt is not the guy who's by low and it's going to be better next year he's just a sunk sunk asset i do think the outlier problem is one that like you just kind of have to figure out how you're going to deal with it in dynasty because you're right you're probably not the outlier at the same time outliers win leagues and there's very few

things that are more fun than like choosing the outlier like saying no this guy is going to be the outlier and being no doubt like it's the best part of fantasy football i hit on puka nakua i hit on jake dell this year that feels good for sure yes yes not a really a question just a factual statement rishi rice is a top 20 dynasty wide receiver i think that's just about right i think he's somewhere in that range i worry a little bit about the upside just because we haven't seen his role expanded beyond the low a dot stuff but yeah trailing burks is available in my 12 team dynasty league is he worth giving up any of these rookies cedric tillman mar Marvin Mims, Jonathan Mingo.

I think you could drop Tillman. I think you could drop Tillman for him. I don't know on Mingo. They've kind of gotten him more involved as the year has gone on, and I would hold out some hope there. Yeah, I think I would rank Burke's third on that list. I'm getting really old at running back. Mixon, Najee, Singletary, Madison.

What young backups should I be targeting to replenish for the future? That's a good question. Do you have anybody off the top? He said that he offered a third-round pick for Chase Brown. Chase Brown's who came to mind, yeah. That would have worked a lot better about three weeks ago. Somebody saw Chase Brown run real fast. I think what I would say is, I mean, it depends obviously how, how strongly you're competing, but I, you don't have to have running backs in the off season. Um, I, I don't think I'm targeting any of those guys. I will be churning the bottom of my roster with backup running backs. I'm probably going to start a Zamir White this week in a dynasty

semifinal that I'm favored. But I'm not giving up draft assets for them, especially in January and February and March. If I have to trade for a running back, I would like to do that right at the trade deadline. Then I know who's healthy. Yeah, I think that makes sense. Jaleel McLaughlin is a guy that has really impressed me this year that you might be able to get cheap because he never actually really did anything big. Kendra Miller, if you're into that,

if that's somebody you like going if that's i wasn't super into his profile but if if you were um you know he had a quiet rookie season so you can maybe get him for cheap no i think those are good i wonder do you do you have any faith that all left in tank bixby it has been about as bad as it could have been and i didn't really get it going into the year from a profile standpoint he seemed about as bad as it could have been and i didn't really get it going into the year from a profile standpoint he seemed about as mid as it gets um i think people just really over hyped the potential role as like the short yardage guy there and then he didn't get that at all um so yeah i i don't know it's no i guess my answer yes answer. Yes, that's pretty much how I feel as well.

I don't think the rookie running back who's done nothing is quite as bad of a bet as the rookie wide receiver who did nothing with opportunity. But still, Digsby's been awful. And so I wouldn't be surprised if they're looking for a different. They've already replaced him with Jonas Johnson this year. That is going to do it for today's episode of Fantasy Football Today. Dynasty Gibbs, thank you so much for being here.

I'm going to talk to you a lot this offseason. I am looking forward to the stuff we've got coming in 2024. Thank you to everybody who listened. Please remember, subscribe, like, rate, review, anything you can do to support us. We do appreciate it, and we will talk to you next Tuesday.