Fantasy Football Today - Week 4 Recap: Did Gordon Prove Us Wrong? Pickens Struggles Continue, & More! (10/05 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

Adam, Dan and Jacob go Beyond the Box Score to break down everything you need to know from Week 4, starting with a recap of Sunday Night Football and the impressive Panthers offense (6:17). After injury updates from around the league (13:48), the guys dive into the stats and film notes that stood out this week, including Kyren Williams, the Chiefs offense, Omarion Hampton and more (20:54). They debate whether big performances from Drake Maye, Emanuel Wilson and Keon Coleman are signs of things to come or fool’s gold (40:55). Plus, they reveal their biggest draft regrets (50:16), react to Ollie Gordon’s big day (58:44), and share their concern levels for George Pickens, David Montgomery and the Buccaneers offense (1:02:13)!Fantasy Football Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever else you listen to podcastsWatch FFT on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

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

Coming up on Beyond the Box score, Drake May's big game, is he back? How good is Tedero Macmillan? Can we trust Bryce Young rest of season? Is Emmanuel Wilson going to be a staple of this offense going forward? Ali Gordon, is he going to be a staple of this offense going forward? Kian Coleman, is he going to be a staple if DJ Moore is out in week five? We'll talk about those guys. We'll recap last night's game.

Players we regret not drafting. I'm going to tell you that there were nine wide receivers who ran 45 or more routes in week four alone. Okay? Just think about that. That's like a lot of routes for a game, but it happens. Zay Flowers has run 45 routes with Lamar Jackson this year, and he has scored 65.3 PPR fantasy points on those 45 routes. Like, could you imagine if someone scored that in week four?

It's insane. Essentially what you're saying is that you will have to grow your beard out post-wedding for a long, long time. Yes, it's going to be a, if I was a rich man, I'm going to be like, Tevia or whatever it is. I honestly think you look better with the beard, so I'm excited to see it. Not a three-month beard. You don't know that. You don't know that because you never tried it.

You ever seen the movie The Heartbreak Kid? No. Can we pull up him with a... Jacob, no, you never see that? No idea. Let's find the image of him with the beard in Heartbreak Kid. Anyway, what's up, guys? How we doing?

Good. That flower stat is crazy. I'm putting together Beyond the Box Square episode looking at the biggest busts in fantasy. And he has, like, as many points as Ladd-McConkie and Mechaibuka combined in, like, one game. And it's like, those guys were drafted in the same range. You know what I mean? There's still many pivotal hits or misses where he could have, I mean, a lot of people liked

both or all three of those receivers and just landed on the wrong one. It's so brutal. I was thinking about that because one of the questions we have for today is, who do you regret not drafting? And that's where, for me, Zayflowers, only have Zayflowers in one league. And truth be told, it was a league that I share with a co-manager. I don't even know if I would have drafted him. Because, yeah, I liked McConkey,

and I didn't really draft Tetaroa McMillan either. I just made the wrong choices at that part in the draft. And some of it not, you know, really within like, it's not all that McConkey's fault. It's obviously not all Mecca Bucca's fault. I also think about Bejal Tootin, you know, Bejel Tootin versus Judarian Price is one that I just sweated. I was like, oh, I can't figure out who I like here.

And then ultimately I was Tutin originally. And then I was like, I think I like Price better. I think Tutin has more to overcome. And that's just like a horrific mistake. And, oh, man. And the logic can be there. It's not always your fault. Sometimes sports happens, you know, but these decisions, they could be, they could really change your fantasy outcomes in such big ways.

Yeah. Dan, yeah, what's three in one? First place. I was going to say, we're combined, what, seven in one here as a podcasting trio here with the chiefs and the giants. I don't, I mean, look, I was in the dumps after the Jackson Dart injury. I couldn't really come back for him. And this season will always be bittersweet for me because I'll always be thinking, what if?

But it's fun to watch a team that actually can compete in the fourth quarter that actually is good coaching and good special teams and all the little things that help you win football games. They may be beating bad teams. Every team's a bad team. They're like, who's good in the NFL. So like beat who you play, keep it going. And to be quite frank, outside of the Cowboys, I'm not that worried about the Giants Division.

I think the Eagles are trashed football team. The Eagles are missing like 10 starters yesterday. Oh, my God. They get to finally complain about injuries. What about every other fan base that said that over the years? And the Eagles fans have bashed them for that. Oh, all the crap I heard about Eli Manning when he played with those. All right, right, all right.

We're getting off the rails. I got to reel me back in. This is what I'm going to look like in three months after the season. Not good. I honestly don't mind that. But the hair, you can still get haircuts, by the way. It's just the beard that I think was the bet with Heath. It was.

So before we get into last night's game, I have a great team name. Okay. Inspired by our email exchange is about Ali Gordon. Do Ali G-show? Yeah. Is that not original? No clue, honestly. No, it's not original at all.

You thought this was great. You emailed us two hours for the show. Like, I can't wait to tell you guys this team name I thought of. I mean, it's better than oil of Olavé, of course. I mean, that's your worst of all time. but you're pinning, you know, at least you're going for a reference that people will understand. But, I mean, it's not great. It's not bad.

It's not great. I feel like I stole it unintentionally from people, so I'm sorry if you already had that one. There's no originality. Carolina 32, Detroit 26. Fun game here, Bryce Young, with three good games out of four, struggled against Cleveland, but he comes back with 25.5 fantasy points. Season high, 44% of his passes were in under 2.5 seconds, said he's, still, you know, made big, made plays downfield.

And this team passes. They are, I think, like, fifth in pass rate. They're fifth in pass rate, and they've only had one bad game defensively. You know, they gave up 59 points week one, then three, then 21, then 26. They were playing with a lead in this game. They just, they like to pass. Jacob, what are you seeing from the Panthers? The Panthers are super fun to watch right now.

This game in particular was funny because they had this massive height advantage. I heard this from Derek Klaas and on The Athletic. he said that on average, their wide receivers and tied ends were like five and a half inches taller than the D.Bs on Detroit in this game. And it's just this funny team that they've put around Bryce, obviously, with the high disparity here. They do a lot of really cool stuff. They kind of remind me of the chiefs where they're like mitigating the tackle concerns that they have, right, with a lot of like pocket manipulation, different ways of like setting up rollouts and stuff like that for Bryce Young, getting the ball out quick. because they're, I mean, in week three, they really, really struggled to protect. They give up really a bunch of pressure, a bunch of quick pressure.

And in this game, even against Aton Hutchinson, like they did a pretty dang good job of just setting him up to get the ball out quick. A few times you see like Jack Campbell just get directly downhill on that right away, you know what I mean, where they try to move the pocket and it doesn't quite work. But generally speaking, I think these plays have worked really well for them. in this game it was pretty much like hyper concentrated on Tedro-McMillan of course and so they're just like one of the most fun teams to watch right now, the super high

pass rate over expectation and everything and then if they do get the lead then we can see a big big Chuba Huber game like we saw here where he's getting like all the work and it actually amounted to like a bunch of fantasy points so it feels really good and then the volume is like pretty much all concentrated in like two or three

guys too especially with Kilkerow yeah I anticipate Coker coming back after their week five by. So, you know, what would you tell the Teterola-McMillan manager, try to sell them for something massive or just hold on? I would just hold. I mean, we have a decent stretch, even dating back to last year, where it's been, I guess, concerning.

He hasn't been, McMillan hasn't produced quite to the way that we've seen or that we think that he can when Coker's been healthy. Coker's really, really good. But his actual target shares haven't dropped off in a super significant way within that split. I think more than likely we'll see good days ahead for him. He's just so good, and him and Bryce Young are on the same page. I think him and Coker and Bryce are all, and Hubbard are all positioned really well for fantasy.

I would just hold if I had them. I think to me what's most interesting about watching this team is last year, Jacob and I spent a lot of time on Beyond the Box score evaluating the film of this offense, and they got to a point in season where they passed protected so poorly, specifically had a right guard that we kept talking about. I think it was Anthony Bradford. that might have been the Seahawks. This was their version of that,

that they had to completely change their game plan and become this run first team with Rico Dowdell. This year, it seems like that's not the case. They can do what they want to do, at least outside of the Cleveland game. And I believe a big reason for that is Bryce Young. He's seeing the field so much better. He's getting the ball out quicker.

And it's not just like quick game quick throws around the line of scrimmage. He's getting the ball out into the intermediate range of the field. And I think he has, I saw the stat earlier, something like some of the most 20-yard plus pass, 20-plus-yard passes in the NFL right now. now. And with him seeing the field the way he's seeing and his ability to diagnose things fast, you saw it on the touchdown early in the game, it in some ways mitigates their offensive line,

because that is somewhat of a concern for me. They lost their first round pick Monroe Freeling last night. I don't know the extent that injury. They had to go to Stone Forsyth at right tackle. That could be a major issue if he has to play a lot, in my personal opinion. They're going to get healthier a tackle because they start. Potentially with Moten coming back eventually. Yeah, I think one other tackle. But yeah, I don't know the timeline on those. But regardless, if Bryce Young is seeing the field the way he's seeing it right now,

it's not going to matter as much because he's getting the ball out fast and he's attacking intermediate and vertical areas of the field by diagnosing it pre-snap. And he's always thrown, in my opinion, with good touch. And when he's throwing with anticipation, he's a deadly quarterback because, in my opinion, he has the ability to throw the football with touch and accuracy in these moments. And Tedd Earl McMillan, we'll talk about him a little bit more later in our regrets. section. My God, is he a good football player? And it's just like Drake London with him. It's so hard to defend him. All right. What do we think about the Lions? You know, Jameson

Williams with a really good game. Six catches, 102 yards on eight targets. But this is a 15.7% target percent target share for Jameson Williams. That's his highest since week one. Week one, it was 20, where are you, Jameson Williams? His target share was 23%, then 10.5, then 12.9, then 15.7%. So, you know, good game, but I don't know if it was an encouraging game for him. He also dropped a perfectly thrown deep ball up the sideline. That would have been a huge play. Anyway, that's maybe the most interesting guy in the team because I think we kind of know what we're doing with the others.

For sure, 136 catchable air yards for Jameson Williams in this game. So that's his second game with over 100. There's only a handful of players who have two of those games this year. He's seventh in the league and catchable air yards on the year. so I would think it would get better, right? I mean, it comes down to him, basically, I feel like. I've been pretty stubborn about him. I do a rest of season rankings update every week,

and every week people want me to push players above JMO because he's not producing right now, and it's like, I think you see why in this game, like why he's worth holding onto, even with the current setup, I think he could produce, and then obviously we know the upside is massive if he goes down. To me, the biggest winner, Detroit this year, continues to be Sam Leporta.

And I just think we finally saw it, like, come to fruition here in this game. But, like, the setup is so nice for Leporta to run a ton of routes and get a ton of volume. Obviously, we know with, like, Sun God and Jumear Gibbs, like, who they are. So they're the most valuable players in fantasy, basically. But, like, Leporta is not seen that way, really. And there's a bunch of tight-ins who are out-producing him, really, on the year, or before this week there were at least. And I feel like he's somebody you could get in trades, maybe he still can get in trades. just running this many routes that tied in is going to lead to a ton of fantasy points.

All right. Yeah, Jacob's right on that. Yep, go ahead. Yeah, Panthers 32, Detroit 26. That'll wrap it up. What's coming up on Beyond the Box Corps this week? Who wants to do it? Raise your hand if you want to do the promo.

Jacob's the promo guy now. All right, Jacobs, the promo king. Yeah, so Dan and I do our signature show every Tuesday where we get to dig into film. And there's a lot to dig into for sure. Like, we just have so many new coaches and everything this year. So the first four weeks, like, we're just trying to sink our teeth into as much of that as possible. So that's on Tuesday. We do start sit on Thursday.

And then the other thing is the rest of season rankings updates that I do every Wednesday, I think are really good if you have time to really dig into what's happening around the league. So that's for, like, I mean, mostly for deeper dynasty players and stuff like that. But anybody who's interested in that will have time stamps on there so you can go to the specific team or player that you're interested in or whatever I cover every play in the league. Let's go through the news and notes. Lamar Jackson has an ankle injury. Marcus Mariotta re-injured his MCL. So he almost certainly, I didn't see a timeline.

But I wouldn't expect him to play quarterback this week. It could be Jaden Daniels, though, against the New York Giants. Tyson Bajent is going to start for the Bears. The one game that I haven't watched any tape of that I really want to is Bears Jets. I do not understand how the Jets ran, I think, 32 plays. just had the ball for 17 minutes and 15 seconds. Horrific offensive performance for them. And also, yeah, I think Khalif Raymond ran about half the routes.

Luther Burden ran about half the routes. It was a weird game. And I didn't think Bayesian said this with Heath yesterday. I think Bayesian played as well as his numbers. But I don't know if you guys have had a chance to watch any of that Bears game. No. No, not yet. That'll be a good one for this week.

Yeah, it's just too much. to watch. It's like 90 plays on the bearer. So I was like, I'll clearly just watch that tonight or something. Yeah, yeah, they had the ball for- That's going to take two hours. Forever. Kyle Monongai, I didn't see any update on his thumb, but we're keeping an eye on that. Sequin Barclay, haven't got an update on the hamstring yet. And Chris Brooks' ankle injury for the Packers. Kyle Eusecheck has a knee injury. Looks like Eusechick, at least, this is a very important fullback for the Niners. He avoided a serious injury, but he's going to miss a little bit of time. They are at Seattle this week, huge game.

Niners at Seahawks. Wide receiver, we got Rishie Rice leaving in the first quarter. We got DJ Moore with the shoulder injury. Tyreek Hill looks like he's going to sign in the next few days. Where do you guys want Tyreek Hill to go? Chiefs. Yeah, it seems like Chiefs, I guess, is where he's gone. Yeah.

He was pretty good last year. He really, he was good. He just had a gruesome injury, so I don't know what to expect. Right. Definitely. I mean, he's a guy. to be the number one waiver wire guy this week, right? I think Emmanuel Wilson could be that.

Yeah, but who didn't scoop him up? He's only like 64% rostered, believe it or not. Really? Yeah. I couldn't get him in any leagues this weekend when I tried to. Yeah, I don't know who else it would be. It's not a great waiver week. So, yeah, Tyreekill's going to be up there.

Other news, Jamar Chase and T. Higgins are both hurt. Jamar Chase has a concussion. T. Higgins and a ductor injury. they're at Miami this week, then they have a buy. So we'll see who's available. Pat Bryant, ankle injury, Ladd-McConkie left with a foot injury, Matt Collins, calf injury.

And Malik Neighbors does have this shoulder issue that popped up again in this game. He left the game, came back, but I guess we'll consider him healthy, but playing through something. Okay, we'll take a break. When we come back, we'll look at some of the numbers, the snap counts, the trends that you need to know,

who, the running back rotation for the Chargers, which you need to know about that. And a holding call that I looked at like seven times and still haven't been able to find that negated a long touchdown. We'll be right back on fantasy football today. All right, welcome back. Let's go through some of the numbers

that we noticed over the weekend or Sunday's games. This is where I throw it to Jacob to start things off. What do you got for us, Jacob, number man? Yeah, the Jets play in total has to be pointed out. It's the second fewest of any team in any game dating back to 2000. So last year we actually did have that Raiders game against the Chiefs where they only had 30 plays, but the Jets with 32 is the second lowest. So that's relevant for all of the baseline counting stats.

Kinyan Sadiq actually had a 40% first three target rate in this game, but you didn't really notice that much, right? Because they barely ran any plays. So yeah, Sadiq was one of four tight ends who had a first three target rate of 40% or higher in week four, which is really an unusually high number. For reference, Trey McBride generally leads in that stout by a wide margin with like a 33% rate. And then it drops off to like 20, 25% as like the next highest guys. Week 4 McBride, Sadieke, Isaiah Likeley, and T.J. Hawkinson all had a first read rate of 40% or higher. likely's lowest first read rate on the year in any game is 25%. Wow.

It's been at least 32% every other game, so that's very, very high for a tight end. Neighbors had a 32% rate in week four as well, so it was lower than Likelies. And neighbors seemed to be back. Like you mentioned, like he did get banged up visibly and came off for a little bit, but something I've been tracking is his route depth and the way that they're using the league neighbors.

In this game, it was more like what we had said. seen in the past from him. So it seemed like he was healthy. I'm curious what your read on it as Dan or Adam, Giants fans. Go ahead. He looked fully healthy to me. Obviously, he came out of the game with the injury. It's just something he's going to manage all year, that shoulder injury.

But I thought he looked phenomenal on his touchdown up the seam, had a great release on the Theo Johnson touchdown and could have caught another touchdown, but he went to Theo and that was fine. James, he's going to take those chances. Still haven't seen, like, the true, like, underneath drag route that he, like, houses or, like, turns into a post-cast. I still haven't seen that burst yet, but the releases off the liner scrimmage have been phenomenal.

And he made the play of the game, I thought, the catch of the game where James Winston kind of just threw an effort ball up to him. And he just adjusted midair behind him to catch a ball and high pointed. So to me, he looks pretty good. And I think some of the panicking we had on him was probably a little overdone based on the weather the Giants played with last week. And based on the fact, which was fair at the time, which was a concern, like, will Nagy and Harbaugh try to manage him

and make James become a quarterback. He's not. And we saw from week two and three, you really can't do that with James. If you're going to start him, you have to let him be James. And if he is going to be James, that means 250 and 300,

or I'm sorry, in three TDs type games, with a lot of shot plays. And that's really good for neighbors as well from a fantasy standpoint. I know. Tided, who almost got to that 40% range was Colson Loveland, had a 35% first three target rate in week four.

So it was highest rate before this was 14% in any game. It's been 11, 14, and 10%. And then it was 35% this week. The rates have really been all over the place for the Bears. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see on the screen here, like Romadud's at a 22% rate. And this one, Luther Burden's rate was only 17%. And so this is the percentage of the team's first three targets. His lowest rate before that burden was 28%. It was all the way down to 17%. So it's fluctuated game to game pretty wildly. Caliph Raymond's rate has been as high as 33%, but was down to 9% in this game. So maybe this signals a desire to get Loveland more involved.

I think, honestly, though, the more troubling data point here and the more important one is that his route rate, Loveland's route rate, continues to be low. His route participation rate hasn't been above 70% in any of the past three games. So he was tied in 19 in the percentage of the team's dropbacks where he ran a route in week four. They're struggling with their left tackle spot,

and he's been asked to block more as a result. And just running routes is the most important signal for tight-ins in terms of scoring fantasy points. So I don't know if we're out of the woods with Loveland yet based off of this one data point in terms of the first three targets. I'm going to talk about him more on beyond the box score when I dig into the busts. I do think he's run pretty cold in terms of like the expected fantasy points and the targets that he's got. And obviously everybody who is watching Red So on come very close to scoring a touchdown but not get it. Um, yeah, it's, it's been pretty rough. Two in a row, two weeks in a row, he's almost had a touchdown, Loveland.

And I think with another thing, it's tough to, you know, trying to pick up on patterns with the bears. They've had three quarterbacks in four games. Right. So, um, you don't, you don't really know what the, what the tendencies are, I guess. And I think it could just be frustrating for this team. They just hope that they score enough. I mean, look, obviously, if you listen to the show, you know, I have a lot of Kleefe Raymond now. I went pretty big on him on waivers this past week,

but I hope for everyone else's sake that Khalif Raymond kind of fades away. Because if Khalif Raymond stays a big deal, it's going to be really annoying. If he doesn't, then we'll have more consistent production from the guys that we actually drafted have production from. I'm an unselfish guy like that. I will tell you. Yeah, thank you, Adam. A few other things I wanted to point out. One was Kyron Williams is getting tons of targets.

He has 20 targets over the past two games. He has back-to-back games with 40 or more air yards. So he's actually getting targeted down the field, which is unusual for running back. It's unusual for him. He's never had a game above 40 air yards before the season. Now he's done in back-to-back games. So they've obviously been down a few pass catchers, and they're leaning more on him, which is interesting to me. He was running back one unexpected fantasy points in week four, which is the fantasy points data is modeled that accounts for where all the touches are coming from.

It's, I mean, if he's going to play this type of role, I think the game scripts have favored him a little bit. and have boosted these numbers a little bit, obviously injuries and stuff too, but like this is, this seems like it might be an evolution where he's not just out there for passing downs, but actually getting targeted, whereas in the past he's just not really,

he's past protecting a lot, and he's running routes sometimes, but not getting very many targets. Yeah, well, the Rams, you know, I think Stafford's back-to-back games with 50 or more passes right around there anyway, and we just didn't expect that from them. You know, they're supposed to have Aaron Donald

and Miles Garrett, and they're supposed to be this dominant team, but they're two and two, they're almost one and three. So I guess I could say things could look very different in like a month. I think that's fair. But the fact is like Korm's really not getting a lot of carries.

Kairn is being treated like the number one guy. Yeah. You know he scores. I mean, he just has a propensity to score. He's going to be freaking awesome. I wish I had more Kairn. Another regret. Another player at a really high first three target rate.

week. Unusually high was Taekwon Thornton. So Rashi Rice missed most of the game. And Thornton had a 35% first three target rate, which was by far as highest rate of the season. He has the highest passer rating when targeted as the first read in the NFL this year, nearly perfect, 156.3. He's averaged 17.4 yards per first three target. Compare that to 5.8 for Xavier Worthy. I don't really know where these targets are going to go with the chiefs. Like he was a really important part of their offense, and I don't know if they have anyone else who can really do what he does.

Worthy, you would like to think can fill that role, but it just hasn't ever really looked like that. So I'm very curious. Like maybe this is Tyreek where Tyreek Hill lands, and he just steps in and does it. I mean, I think of George Kittle right away when I think of like Tyreek, and like, could he just be the outlier

that is able to look like himself, even after a massive interest? like maybe. But if he's not, I don't know what that's going to mean for this offense. I think having an actual field stretching presence is really important, right? Like there's a lot of players who benefit from space in this offense. And it could get kind of congested if we get back to like what we've seen in the past from the Chiefs

and not being able to attack down the field. I know y'all know that I'm very high on like Cyrus Allen. I don't know if he's going to get that upper. Like Jalen Roy was clearly played ahead of him this week when Rashi Rice went down and that's been the case all year. He's clearly been ahead of Cyrus Allen. Allen barely play. But I do think he's like their one hope of like somebody who can beat man coverage now that Taekwan's gone is this rookie receiver. But we just haven't seen him get those opportunities yet. So are you worried about Mahomes? Yeah, a little bit. I mean, you're saying like for fantasy purposes? Yeah, sure. I mean, I think he's playing out of his mind right. It looks awesome. But. I think he's playing so well. He's going to run and everything, but like between lack of a deep threat and then also the tackle situation scares me. They've been able to do a pretty good job with these rollouts and everything of avoiding that being a problem. They've been really, really efficient on these rollout plays.

And they lead the league in terms of the number of plays that they're doing this, where they're like resetting the pocket. But I do think defenses might catch on to that with more and more film. And it's just, I don't know, it's almost. almost kind of a gimmicky offense again now. So we'll see. Their next three games after the bye week, Chargers at the Seahawks, at the Broncos, that could be tough.

But who knows? I mean, it doesn't seem like there's any defense that really stops people right now, maybe Minnesota, unless you're to Ali G's show, of course. Yeah. The last that I had was on Cardinal Tate. Try to end it on the high no,

but I don't know how much we really believe in the Titans being able to sustain this. But seventh highest first read, target rate in the NFL. on the year belongs to Carnal Tate, which is honestly pretty shocking for a rookie's first four games. I mean, it's higher than like,

I mean, well, everybody, except for six players, it's extremely high. Three players had a first three target rate above 50% this week. It was C.D. Lamb, Tedro McMillan, and Carnell Tate. He had a 44% target share, 76% of the air yards.

Like, he's, it's not like the Wondale Robinson scam thing that we thought it might be with Brian Dayball. It's like, this is our actual wide receiver one, which I do think is really relevant, because that's, we never, we didn't have any proof of that coming into the league, right? We didn't see him do that at all in college. And I mean, to be fair, it's the Titans. And I guess they're just, they don't really have a lot else.

But it's still meaningful to be able to do that, to be able to run an offense through a rookie receiver who's, you know, getting a lot of downfield targets too. I've been really encouraged by that. Yeah. I, it just, can we get Cam Ward to just throw some touchdowns? Cam Ward in his career has a 2.7%. touchdown rate. That is just awful. Gosh. I did see. Touchdowns. It's crazy.

I want to see that game though. That's one of the games I want to talk about for tomorrow, Jacob, because I felt from watching the tape a week three, Giants Titans, that that Tate looked unbelievable. And we talked about that on last week's show. Really? He was creating separation. Oh, Tate. Tate. I'm sorry. Tate. Yes. Not Ward, obviously. And then clearly the Titans watched that tape and we're like, all right, Cam, look at these plays. He's wide open, figure out how to get this ball and just like lock into all this.

And that's how it felt on those plays. They were like first read, like you said, Jacob, that might just be a thing moving forward to like make things easier for Cam Ward. You can just have him rely more on these first read targets to Carnal Tate, a guy who's winning the routes very easily. So I kind of love Tate moving forward. We'll see. I don't expect the Titans' offense to look as bad as it did the first three weeks.

I think it'll get better and better in Davel scheme. But it does rely on Ward, like you said, creating a little bit more. And he's really struggled. But their O line hasn't been as bad if people thought they would be. That's another thing that's a plus for them. Who's your favorite? Let's go to the Cleveland game from Thursday, right? Who's your favorite rookie wide receiver right now or rest of season or at least for the immediate future?

I would go to Concepcion. Wait. Are you asking Tate versus the Browns receivers? Versus any of the rookies. Well, yeah. Is there anyone I'm forgetting? Any other rookie receivers? I mean, we're still weeks away, according to report today from Tyson. And he could be a big, big one, but that's still more speculation than anything.

It's basically Boston Concepcion. Lemon, I guess. And Tate. Cyrus Allen. And Cyrus Sound. Or Malachi Fields. Just kidding. Boston looks pretty good.

Boston's got some real, really encouraging stuff. I mean, Boston is like... Boston, I like it's really good. Deshawn Watson's favorite target, right? So it's close between... You can make a case for any of the three of them. I think the hardest case to make just based on production would be Concepcion,

but the arrow seems to be pointing up for Concepcion. I think I'm going to go with the, I'm going to go with the Tate. I think you have to really like Boston. Yeah. Okay. All right. I'll give you a few numbers here. Nico Collins only ran 40% of the routes and he still had a huge game.

So, so good. Let's go. Antonio Williams ran less than half the routes. He had a big touchdown call back. But if McLaren's out again, you want to count on Antonio Williams. Maybe Antonio Williams for a rookie to keep an eye on too. Yeah, keep an eye on, yeah.

Dalton Kincaid, Dave talked about this yesterday. Dalton Kincaid only ran 54.1% of the routes. That's, what's going on there? That's not good. Kaleef Raymond, I already mentioned, 55% of the routes. That's two games around 75% for him. Two games around 57% route rate for Kaleaf Raymond. Luther Burden was in the 50s as well in route rate yesterday.

The Jets ran 32 plays, but Braylin Allen played 94% of the snaps. The Chargers, this was from ESPN. the Chargers 13% pass block win rate was their lowest in the 10 seasons that ESPN has been tracking past block win rate. At one point, the Chargers had four rookie offensive linemen. They had three guys leave with injuries yesterday,

including both of their tackles. And how did their rotation at running back play out? Basically, all three of them, Hampton, Vidal, and Mitchell played the same amount of snaps. They all played about 35% of the snaps. They all ran 11 to 6%. 13 routes. Keaton Mitchell played the most on third down. Hampton and Mitchell had nine and 10

carries, respectively. Kamani Vidal had five carries. He had a touchdown catch. The fact that both of them, that two of them scored a touchdown is wonderful, but this is obviously a fantasy nightmare. We cannot have a three-headed monster where none of them get more than what, well, actually, it was 15 touches for Keaton Mitchell, which is great, but you can't really expect that. They ran a lot of plays. The whole thing's a nightmare. Yeah, it sucks. And now, like, all these offensive line injuries. Wow. And then I don't know.

Maybe the broadcast was better than the All-22 version, but I didn't see a hold on Bachel Tutin's 44-yard touchdown run. And I didn't see a replay. Like sometimes they show a guy like grabbing a jersey, but I was like, where was the penalty? So that was disappointing. And I was looking at that because I want to see what the Bengals run defense is all about. First two weeks looked like they had a really good run defense.

Then they got destroyed by Jalen Warren. and then they really got eaten up by Bejel Tootin, even though the numbers aren't as good as they could have been because of that holding penalty because next week, who do they got, Dan? Respect. They got the Ali G show. Oh, okay.

So I want to see what you got... I don't know. I watched the Ali G show, but I don't have any quotes from her to remember anything. It's probably something we shouldn't be saying on air anyway. So what you could quote from. It was very funny. It was my least. favorite of the three characters from the original Allie G show.

You thought he was the least funny? Well, I liked Borat. There was the other guy, the gay guy. I don't remember. Bruno. Borat and Bruno and Al-I.G. Oh, no. I think Ali G was my favorite because he was so stupid and they took him seriously.

They had the debate once about, like, there was a panel and he was talking about math. And he's like, what is three plus three plus? I just remember that clip. Like, that was a great one. But times 25. He's like, no, you can easily do this with the calculator. I don't remember that. Anyway, okay, so we're going to take a break and talk about our big topics.

Before we go to break, question from the chat from Whisco Disco. Dan, not a single badger decoration in your background anymore. Fake fan. He's not wrong. I need to get my badgers decorations back up. It's more of a case of me being too lazy. But look, the badgers baby, we're back. That's all I can really say.

Colton Joseph, still a little speck. skeptical, but he does make great running plays and has occasional good throws. We just blew out a team. We beat Penn State the week before, which unfortunately now looks like a less important and interesting win. But just feels good to have a team that's not horrible again from Wisconsin. Would you say, Dan, as a fan that you are fickle? What?

Isn't Luke fickle their coach? Yeah, what did you say, fickle? As a fan that you're fickle. This is a bad dad joke. Let's move on fast. Okay. Jacob is like looking up stats right now, not even paying attention. We'll be right back on fantasy football today. Big topics today. John Keen says players in week four, gold or fools gold?

Drake May, Teterol McMillan. Okay, we think gold there. Emmanuel Wilson, Ali Gordon, we're going to get to him in a different topic. And Keon Coleman. So the three really that to focus on here are Drake May, 32.2 fantasy points at Buffalo. Manuel Wilson, 27 fantasy points against the Chargers and Keon Coleman with a huge game. Six catches, 116 yards, and a touchdown on seven targets against the Patriots. And he ran 94% of the routes in the second half with DJ Moore on the sideline here. So, all right, how do we go just one, two, three, and then we'll get into it more in depth. Gold or Fool's Gold, Drake May.

You know how we feel about Drake May. Wow. I'm gaining more fools gold. I want to see it. I'm leading more gold. Okay. He's running. I mean, only Lamar Jackson has more rushing yards than Drake May this year.

I think he's basically there. He's basically doing what you want, except that he keeps turning the ball over. I never felt from watching the tape, specifically even the Jaguars game. Like, he was just, oh, no, his arm shot, he's gone. I just felt like he was still making insanely good throws, but also just so many mistakes. And he wasn't trusting his line. And this week, the Chisholm touchdown was the exact same. throw he made on the move rolling right to Holland's last week and Holland just bobbled it and dropped

it. So like he needs some plays from his guys. He's going to get AJ Brown back soon. The rapport is continuing to improve with Romeo Dobbs. He's still running, which is so important to his fantasy value in the first place. I'll say gold in the sense of I think he'll be a startable quarterback for you. I don't think he's getting back to last year's pace of like QB1, QB2, QB3, but I still think he'll be a startable QB1 within weeks and for sure once AJ Brown is back. Okay. Yeah, this upcoming week against the Raiders, I'm not sure. The Raiders have a really good pass rush. And I think they just have a good defense in general.

So, yeah, okay, so we can get into Drake May a little bit more. But Emmanuel Wilson, gold or fools gold? He's good. I mean, neither, but if I have to lean toward one gold until Charbonnet is back. Yeah. Okay, which could be as one. Charbonnet is back, that gold is turning into bronze or whatever is next. Silver, silver.

No, it's probably worse. Like, you know, silver's next. It can't be as good as silver. It has to be like worse than bronze. I don't think he plays once Sharpenet is back. That's what I mean. Like, no, he'll play little, but like he's done when Charbonnet is back. So Charbonnet is going to be back.

What's the point of Emmanuel Wilson? None, really. But they'll still give him some random touches. Like, Charbonnet's not going to come back with a full workload, I don't think. I mean, I think the plan would be him in Price. Charbonnet is going to be back before Price. Yeah. Charbonnet has to be back.

before price the way I understand it. They opened up his three-week practice window. Right. So I, and if you look at Charbonnet and Wilson and you just did like a blind, you know, look at these guys, take away their names, look at their advanced metrics, look at their yards per carry, their big pay rate, who would be better? I think maybe Wilson or or at least no one would really. No, Charbonnet, Charbonnet has some great advanced stats to him. As far as like not limiting negative runs, he's one of the best in the NFL since he entered the NFL. I don't think he's better than Emmanuel Wilson.

At limiting negative runs? I looked at it this morning. It was over a much bigger sample size. Wilson is a successor machine. Like he does have really good events stats for what it's worth. Charbonnet's been better for fantasy is my guess. A much bigger sample size. I don't trust it as much from somebody like Wilson who's doing it over a small sample size.

Definitely a smaller sample size. But, you know, Charbonnet, he's been really good whenever he's had the lead. role when they're you know when kenneth walker's been out but he's not in the red zone he's not an explosive runner no either is wilson um they're both i mean wilson was used as wilson was used as charbonnet uh when price was healthy so right so jacob you seem to think when charbonnet comes back and price comes back wilson will be on the sideline yeah i mean that's my guess right i mean they they love charbonnet they absolutely love him like he's mike mike mcdonn't talks about that all the time.

They drafted him around too. All they've done is make him really relevant when he's healthy. And then, yeah, he's running back eight out of 33 qualifiers and fantasy points per touch since entering the NFL ahead of guys like Bruce Hall, Derek Henry, Jonathan Taylor, Sequin Barclay, Kenneth Walker on the same team, has averaged more. But when you are the goal lineback, that's going to help, right? Yeah, sure, yeah, for sure. I mean, all those guys are the goal lineback except for Kenneth Walker and Bruce Hall.

And he is good at avoiding negative play, but he has a 21% rate, Zach Charbonate. 21% of his carries have gone for zero or negative yards. And for Emmanuel Wilson, that is... Oh, I'm looking at his receiving numbers. Sorry about that. 21% for Charbonnet and for Wilson, 20.8%.

So basically the same. Higher avoid rate is Emmanuel Wilson by 3%. But it is all much smaller sample sizes. You're right about that. Explosive play rate, point seven percent for Wilson, 7.5 percent for Charbonnet. All right.

And then the last one was Keon Coleman. And I think it's easy to say, fools gold for Coleman if DJ Moore plays. But this is another injury for DJ Moore. I'm thinking, let's just assume he misses week five. I'm not saying he will, but in that scenario,

at the Rams, gold or Fool's gold for Keon Coleman? I think he's a great pickup. I mean, I feel like he's looked a lot better this year. Yeah, it's interesting. I wrote about this last night for the site, and it was like, last year, Dave was, this was his guy, this was his breakout pick. He went to camp, saw the joint practice, talked to at the time.

It was their OC, Joe Brady. And it felt like it was all there for Coleman. And I think his confidence got shaken a little bit at the beginning of last season. And ultimately, the offense just didn't really emerge the way we expected to from an forward passing game. I thought last year, at least everything was kind of designed off the play action and the boot. This year, there are definitely a more forward-thinking offense passing-wise. and he looks way more confident to me. Always had the talent.

I was a big fan of his coming out. The way he ran the gauntlet drill at just the GPS tested time versus the 40-yard dash time. And I think if he's playing confident, he can be a really good player for the bills. So I, with Josh Allen, I think it's probably more so

a fantasy asset when Moore is out. If Moore's back in the lineup, that's tough to, but with Moore out, yeah, I believe in it. I'm not as much of a fan of Coleman. I just think he's too slow. I mean, I didn't see him

get a lot of separation except on his last target, which was at the time, looked like it was going to be the game winning touchdown. He made a great move. Burn the defender. Alan through a frozen rope. I won't say what Tom Brady would call it. Frozen rope into the end zone for a touchdown. But other than that, I mean, he really like, I just don't think he gets any separation.

He's like, honestly, it's like Marvin Harrison out there. he had a 34% slot rate in this game which I like I think it's possible they're starting to figure out how to use them and they don't necessarily have to have them on the outside because of gosh dang it blank on the guy's name from the Chargers Palmer Josh Palmer yeah yeah Peace missile I love that Yeah

All right anything else you guys want to say about Drake May I kind of hurried that along Guess where Drake May ranks in highly accurate throw rate on throws of 10 or more air yards with no pressure out of 29 qualifiers. Oh, good question. What is it? 10 or more air yards, no pressure,

highly accurate throws. I'm going to say he rates third. Last year, maybe. He ranks 25th out of 29. He's missing those. I thought he played great yesterday. I mean, he did.

Great football, dropping it in the bucket. I thought he was awesome. And it with his legs. but I am nervous about him against the Raiders. I really believe in the Raiders defense. I mean, they got after Patrick Mahomes, and they don't blitz. They get pressure with four,

and this is a Patriots offensive line with some questions. So we'll see how he does. Yeah, and it's fair to wonder, based on the numbers, if this Bill's defense is going to be bad. I think they're around 27th in EPA or something of that nature. I saw a stat for this earlier. I don't have the exact number in the 20s. I have a lot of faith in Jim Leonard,

and what he can do defensively from a schematic standpoint, from watching it at Wisconsin. I don't know if it's translating yet to the NFL game. So I wonder if that, we'll see that this week if Drake May kind of comes back to Earth. I saw that Drake May had a pass rating of 56 within this split. Throws of 10 more yards with no pressure. I'm like, that's got to be the worst. Justin Herbert's is 23.1s. Oh, man. So also with May, Christian Benford, the number one cornerback for the Bills was out. And Oliver only played 32% of the snaps. He left with an injury that's an important defensive

lineman for the bills. Not a great bill's defense and banged up to boot. He did play great, though. Okay, here's Matt's question. Who are some players that you regret not drafting? I already said for me, Zay Flowers, Tedderole, McMillan. I just, I think I kind of botched the three-four turn

with too much, too much McConkey. And DJ Moore, you know, like it just has, it's just so annoying. It's like, listen, if you're on my freaking fantasy team and you want to get hurt, get hurt. Stop doing it in the first quarter or the second quarter. Like, stop doing it in the middle of the game. I'm getting really frustrated.

Like just let me. We're all getting killed by these. Oh, it's killing me. It's killing me in so many, it's killing everybody, though. It's not just us too, Adam. It's been a problem for fantasy.

It's only me. Adam, would you say that's an eye for an eye? Is that a joke about my wonky eye? Yes, I still have a bad eye. Yeah. Still have to die. All your problems tend to linger longer than they should. You know, I haven't been sick.

I haven't been sick in a while, and you have been. So. Yeah, I know, but I get over it faster than you do. Okay. I have trouble getting over things, like not drafting Zayflowers. What are some of your regrets, Dan? I would say you named a few of them. My biggest regret is I love CD Lampreseason, didn't come away with him in a single auction,

except for the one we did with your friends at the end, because I was just like, I have to do it. And I think the reality was, I was hoping and wanting to buy him at the price of where he was ranked ADP. And the reality is I should have scrapped that and been like, this guy can clearly be a top five, top six fantasy player, which he now obviously is. And it seems so obvious now. And I think, Jacob, you made a great case for him at the end of draft season when we did our ADP value tiers.

And I just wasn't able to at that point get him. So that's a big regret of mine. Lam, I think, is just an obvious league winner this year. And should have known that. Should have been obvious. The other regret of mine that I ended up fixing a little bit at the end was Chuba Hubbard, I kind of had the feeling that we were overrating Jonathan Brooks the entire process, talked about that throughout, but didn't do anything about it. And what is there to do about it? There was something obvious to do about it. It was by Chuba Hubbard at an insanely decreased and depressed cost.

I kind of avoided the whole thing in Carolina. This is similar to Tedro McMillan, another big draft forget of mine. But those are the two that stand out the most to me, specifically because I felt like there was a way for me to fix how I was feeling and I just didn't lean into it enough. I think one other one would probably be. not fully buying into the Zayflowers hype and thinking he was overpriced. Similar thing with Parker Washington, just too much hype from fantasy analysts. And I was like, I don't want to pay this price. But the reality is the price was worth paying on both of those players. Adam, Dan and I did an auction draft together. And it was complete chaos.

I was doing all sorts of stuff that was like stressing Dan out, including just buying Zayflowers without really asking. our team our team's like perfect we've hit on like every single thing and of course it's just like Bryce Young was super lucky of a pick but we hit it

some really random league for like no money or anything yeah it's gonna be for nothing and it doesn't matter I love that though that's awesome yeah

I don't know if Jacob you want to go through your regrets I do have one thing a lot of the same stuff sorry I didn't mean to catch up I was gonna tease like I'm gonna disagree with Dan on one thing that he said

but go ahead. Well, who do you? Okay. Not drafting. A lot of the same stuff. I don't have any Hubbard either. Hubbard, I guess you could have gotten there. I was worried about the offensive line.

So I don't really have any Panthers outside of, like, Dynasty. I already have a ton of them in Dynasty, so I didn't really draft many of them this year. But also Hubbard, it's been kind of a lucky runout, I think, where it's like both backup running backs got hurt. I actually think Trevor A. Chan is pretty good. Travis A. Chan's little brother. But they've both been out, so it's been like 90% Hubbard. I mean, AJ Dylan is the backup. That's just where we're at here with this situation.

So that looks really bad, but I don't know. I think that that one's kind of lucky. The bad one that I'm shocked you didn't mention Danis Amaran Hampton. Oh, I thought we were doing the regrets of the ones we want. This is the other side of it. That's what I was going to say is we didn't draft. I have plenty of other side of the regrets. We didn't draft like CD-Land because of Hampton

or he didn't draft, in my case, Kenneth Walker because of Hampton. I was high on Kenneth Walker. but I was drafting Hampton and Derek Henry ahead of him and so Henry looks good but Hampton looks like a that team's dead because of this pick

and if you had Kenneth Walker you might legitimately be like three and one or four and oh oh and four or one and three yeah I was talking to Jamie about that he's like he loves Kenneth Walker right love him and he said damn my FFT team

I decided I just want to be different and diversify a little bit and he took Barclay over Kenneth Walker and he's oh he's about to be able to be able to be. He's just stuck with his rank. Yeah. That's the thing.

Everybody likes to diversify. I've learned through the years you don't diversify. I think you should diversify. You absolutely should diversify. Based on the injuries, you should. Yes, exactly. I mean, look, you might have more bad teams,

but you probably have more good teams if you diversify too. You probably have more outcomes. If you don't diversify, you have a better chance to win a league. If you lean into like the Ken Walker thing, part of the reason I ranked him lower was his injury history. And we started doing our analysis,

Jacob and I had him above Hampton and I had him as my RB5. He was going to be my flag plant. And then he had that foot injury that meant nothing. That ended up meaning nothing. And I'm just reminded in my head of like, can this guy do this and stay healthy? Which we don't know yet. It's only been four weeks.

I know. I know. Yeah. Yeah, both Walker and Alave are that way where it's like either one of them. Right. They have a pretty long injury history and we're only four weeks in. But right now they look like some of the best picks you could have made. Elave to me feels kind of like JSN last year where I was very high on him for all

these reasons. had him ranked as like a borderline round two guy but didn't end up drafting any alofte this year. I drafted neighbors ahead of him. I drafted Pickens ahead of him. I drafted Zayflowers ahead of him right now. It feels like the only one from that group, barring an injury or something,

is flowers that could outproduce him maybe. I also occasionally drafted Colson Loveland ahead of him in round three, which is absolutely brutal. And then T. Mack is the other one. I drafted Ladd McConkey ahead of McMillan. I drafted Jalen Waddle. I drafted Luther Burden ahead of McMillan. So those have been brutal.

And then the last one is George Kittle, but I don't think I was ever going to get there, honestly, just drafting somebody that old off of an Achilles. It just wasn't, didn't make sense to me. There were lots of lay-round tight-ins to like, and some of them have been big hits, but not to the extent of Kittle.

Kittles been a, he looks like a complete league winner. And especially if Mike Evans can't make it through the season, which it seems like there's like a 2% chance of him making it through the season, Kittle's going to go nuts. Like, it's like all focused on him. They don't even throw to the receivers

when Mike Evans isn't out there. Right. I wanted to disagree with you just on C.D. Lamb, and this is so obvious, this should have been obvious. And I don't agree because if you just look at when Lamb came back from the injury, he missed a couple of weeks last year. When he came back from injury, he had like half a target more per game than George Pickens or something like that. It was the last 10 games excluding week eight. And Pickens was on pace for 146 targets and Lamb was on pace for 156 targets. and Pickens was better than him.

And if you look at C.D. Lam's target per out run rate last season, it was 25.8%, which is way below what it was the previous two or three years. I mean, the two years before that it was 29%. And I think you could see an obvious, obvious issue, not that he was bad or anything, but that he wasn't the player that we thought that used to be with George Pickens on the team because the targets just were not there. Like this was the first time he was playing with a legit guy

opposite him. And even going into last week, he was on pace for 141 targets. And then he gets a career high in targets and catches in week four and now things look different. But I don't think it was obvious at all. I didn't draft C.D. Lamb.

I didn't draft Pickens. I just traded for him in one league. So of all my leagues, I have one Cowboys receiver. We'll talk about Pickens in a little bit. But I am a little surprised. And I think the numbers are a lot more lopsided now than they were a week ago.

Or two days ago. But I'm a little surprised of what we're seeing from some, right now he has a 32.2% target per out run rate, which is by far a career high. So I don't think it was so obvious with C.D. Lamb. But, all right. Let's go to our next one. Let's talk about Ali Gordon. Brandon from on Twitter wants to know about Ali Gordon. And I think a lot of people do.

He's still rostered in only 78% of leagues. So he might be available in some leagues. Nine carries 100 yards and a touchdown at the Vikings, two catches for no yards. And not just that, Dan, he played a ton. He ran the most routes. I mean, he was like basically their true lead running back, even though he only had nine carries. So how much are you buying into the Ali G show? I think what's most interesting is that the plan was not for him to be their true lead running back.

As I went back and watched the tape of this game, the second, the first play of the game was a run for him. The second play of the game was a signed screen that didn't work for him. And then Jalen Wright just came into the game during the first possession after their first first down. Jalen Wright eventually came back into the game. And through the first five possessions, I believe it was nearly split between him and Wright. And then in the second half, we saw Ali G take over more. And I'll use that as well because I think it's fun to use the LIG show. And big up yourself, says Ben Seth.

Yeah, I forget all of the stuff, but like that was one of them. Boom yakasha, boom yakasha, I think is another one that I see in there. I don't ever pronounce that right. But and then the plan kind of changed. I did feel like out of the 100 yards, 53, I believe, or 51 came on the one run. It was a good run. Do I feel like the dolphins kind of caught the Vikings in a really weird pre-snap formation that sometimes you can catch Brian Flores in?

And then they ran like an outside run to the left where there was just one linebacker that needed to be pinned down. And then it opened up like a massive spot, a massive hole for Gordon to run through. Yes, it's not going to happen every week. I don't know. But his touchdown run was phenomenal. That was the second big run he had where he, it was, again, a pretty well-blocked play. But he did have to hurdle over a defender who was flat on his feet and then keep his balance after hurtling and lost no momentum, shook off one more ankle tackle with pretty much ease again and went to the end zone.

He's a big back. This is how it worked for him at Oklahoma State. When he was in the Heisman running, his second to last season at Oklahoma State, it was because he used his size to basically bully players. and he's got a lot more lateral agility than you would expect for someone his size. I comped him coming out because the Giants are really interested in. They brought him in for a pre-draft, so I watched his tape. I comped him to, like, DeMarco Murray. He still reminds me of a DeMarco Murray-type player.

Not as good in my mind, but has that ability, like strong, high-cut runner. I feel like he makes more sense for what the dolphins are under Bobby Slovak than Jalen Wright does. And I think what they saw on film, they'll probably be like, all right, the plan that we went in with, which was basically a split with these two, is probably going to have to lean more toward Ali moving forward. I still don't get too excited, though, Adam, because, again, those two runs were what defined his game, and they were, in my mind,

just kind of taking advantage of Flores' aggressive's nature. I don't have excitement about this offense. I don't have excitement about her getting a lot of scoring opportunities. So I'm not very excited about him moving forward personally. Okay. Good to know. And what do you think about the team name, Oil of Ali? No, no.

You don't ever run back the oil of in your life again. Please. Nobody's laughing at that, but your soundtrack. You can't just soundtrack your way to a laugh. All right. That's not how this works. Okay. Anything to add, Jacob, or shall we move on?

That's crazy. Okay, we'll move on. Carlos Theran wants to know about George Pickens, David Montgomery, and all of the Bucks wide receivers. Jacob, of any of these people, who do you have hope for? Pickens, Montgomery, Buckswide receivers. Pickens. Yeah, so I do think that the lamb stuff was something we could have predicted.

I think just playing through high angle sprain is a very real reason to believe that his numbers came down last year and it wasn't just that Pickens was like alphaing him or whatever. I think both these guys are insanely good. Like truly two of the best like, I don't know, eight receivers in the whole league or something like that on the same team. Lamb is the more consistent, reliable winner and has the rapport with Dak, like him and Dak have been together forever. He's the guy in the red zone.

That's the way it was last year, even when he was playing with the high ankle sprain. So he was my preferred pick for fantasy, but we're going to see big games for Pickens. He has so many yards called back on, or not called back, but like negated by pass interference already. He's had drops too,

which are, I think, kind of random. I just feel fine with Pickens. The other guys here, like I'm a little bit worried about, the Texans Office of Lying continues to really, really struggle in the Bucks. I mean, I watched their whole game. And it was, it's just, it's not happening for Ibuka. I don't think it's happening anytime soon, maybe in the second half or something. How many catchable areas do you think Abuca had this week?

Oh, man. 30. Nope. No, he hasn't had more than 43 in a game all year. And I'm pretty sure he had four this week. Wow. Did you see him get wide open and Daniels did? Didn't see him.

It could have been a touchdown. Yeah. Didn't see him. And he had the drop in the end zone as well. I said on the box score this past week, he's not a top 36 receiver and he should be dropped in the rankings. I stand by that. And I don't really view him as a startable player at all at this point outside of just his name being what it was and what he was the beginning of last season. No, I didn't think Daniels played that poorly, though, did you?

I thought he played better than I expected. He played better in the second half, for sure. Yeah. It looked really bad at first. I thought. And then he kind of settled in and played better. So that's maybe some sign that it could get better. But as far as what a Bucca's role within this offense is, with the quarterback, he has no rapport with, and the timing is way off. You just see so many moments. And Jacob, you put a couple on Twitter where Bucca's open, but it's not going to get to him because in order for it to get there, the anticipation and the timing has to be good. And that's just not happening with Jalen Daniels. He made plays in that second half, but most of them I thought were off schedule, to me at least, outside of like. a few here and there. So it's just tough for me to get excited about anyone in this passing game right now at all. 39% pressure rate for the bucks with 2.24 seconds as the average time to pressure.

That's very, very fast. So Gannon Packers' defensive coach here was constantly crowding the line and showing different looks and the bucks really struggled against it. And it's like if the offensive line is a problem, if the pass protection plan is a problem, then you have nothing. Like that's supposed to be the strength of this team. I just think that's the move too. Like all the good OCs do that. Sorry, DCs do that. The bad ones are stupid.

I'll play my scheme. No, when you play a rookie quarterback who has no experience in the NFL, this should be the game plan every single time. And I think until further notice, DCs are going to watch this tape and know this is how you play this box team. They don't really have a deep threat anyway to worry about it. And can we even get the ball there? So to me, I think this offense is going to look pretty bad until Baker's back.

personally. Two screens to Ibuka in the game. Two screens that Chris Godwin, one to gain well, one to odd. And they're throwing a ton of screens, but it just hasn't been effective at all among offenses that are averaging three or more screens per game. Only the Chargers, Dolphins, Patriots, Bengals, and Vikings are averaging fewer yards per screen target. They have zero explosives on 15 screen targets this year.

So that's just generating nothing. And that's been a huge theoretical strength of what this team should be, right? That's what it was when Liam Cole was there. and Zach Robinson is supposed to implement a lot of that stuff. He's kind of tried. It just hasn't worked. I think that this stuff that like should be working is not working. They're also running a weird amount of the offense through Kate on, and he's killing them.

He's playing terrible. And he has like the highest first three target rate again in this game. He has only one fewer first three target rates, first three targets than a mecha, Buka on the year. I don't know. Wow. Yeah, I don't know what that is. I know like my cow pitts got used this way kind of for Zach Robinson so I don't know if that's going to continue or not but it's not working. Yeah.

The only thing that really worked and it didn't work that well is just running with Bucky Irving or Sean Tucker occasionally. But just like they went to a lot. They simplified things in the round game. Just like man gap zone, less outside zone, just man gap up the middle. Yeah. And those worked all right. But again, just no explosive plays. That's just like as long as this doesn't get blown up in the backfield, then we can get four or five.

six yards. But that run game isn't good enough for them to not eventually run into these like third long situations and it just feels hopeless on those. You only had two explosives all day. Yeah. I'm not sure there's a single startable player. I think the only one that's in question is Bucky. And if Sean Tucker's the goal lineback, you know, I freaked out about this yesterday and I'm

still really upset about it. It's just, it's so annoying. You could still play. I think Bucky at least has potential to become startable because it's clear like from what Jacob said. And I think the obvious solution. here, to me at least, is run this and operate this offense through Bucky Irving until Baker Mayfield is back.

Does that mean I think they can successfully do that? It's going to require things like what Jacob said to get better, the timing in the screen game and things of that nature, using him as an outlet. They're not, at least in this game, they didn't really use him that way, though. Yeah. But you need to use him as an extension of your run game as well in the passing game or if you want to just generate any yards. But Daniels is going to be more likely to take off and run with it.

He had eight carries for 55 yards. For sure. I'm talking about design stuff more. but yeah, less than like the checkdown. Just like designing space to get him the ball in space. But again, this is just hopeful thinking at this point. It's wishful thinking. And it's certainly more wishful for me on his front than it is for Godwin or Iqbuka.

Igbuka, to me, is somebody I'd be devastated to have on any team right now. I would kind of buy it with Bucky that maybe that would happen if it was like after week one or week two where the usage felt like it was centered around him. And it wasn't that way this way. But you're right. It's not. Yeah. They compartmentalize the backfield a lot more this week.

It kind of felt like they went away. from him. And it's just like, I don't know. He's their best player. Yeah, sure. But he's also made some mistakes this year, pass protection, fumbles, drops, stuff like that. I just don't know.

It doesn't, yeah, it feels like a bad team that has no identity. I would not want to play in these guys. Can I tell you crazy crazy? Play the Cowboys, by the way, this week. And, you know, Pickens is in this discussion. Pickens is facing a team that has been awesome against wide receivers. It's really weird. You know, only Jordan Addison has done well.

Look at Jamar Chase and T. Higgins. They struggled against Tampa Bay. Actually, Denzel Boston did well, but he had that flukey long touchdown. Addison did well. Matthew Golden, 21 yards on seven targets. Christian Watson, three targets, 47 yards. So that's what Pickens is going up against. Fourth best against wide receivers so far.

Pickens with a good target share in each of his first three games are good enough. And then 7% last week yesterday. But I think I would worry about with Pickens is, man, the go routes, 30% a little bit more than that. He looked like he's running clearouts for lamb essentially. Exactly. But worse yesterday than in previous games. Than before.

Yeah. But yeah, he looks like the sacrificial X, which is crazy because he isn't. But it's kind of, it's been a little scary. All right, what were you going to say, Danny? You could finish the show with your brilliant thought. Oh, there was nothing brilliant about it. It's Vern Burns in the chat has multiple times told us, Adam, that you and I are mispronouncing the school that Sean Tucker played at.

I think he's actually wrong, and he's giving some kind of weird finger lakes living, you know, growing up in the fingerlakes type of accent. It's not Syracuse. No one has ever called it Saracuse. Okay, it's Syracuse. Everyone who has ever pronounced it has pronounced it Syracuse. You know what? I asked my cousin who went there because I've had this debate before and I had her pronounce

it for me and she said Syracuse. And I will never bend on this. John Syracuse, who the town was named after, if that's where it was, if that exists, could tell me that it's pronounced Syracuse and I'll say, you are wrong, guy. It is clearly Syracuse. I will never say Syracuse. It's insane to even consider that. Don't ever put that in our chat against.

We'll never move off this, Adam and I. Bad guy said, is Dan the laziest person on the pod? Wow, you put that on me. I'm not the laziest person on this pod. When it comes to things like my background, maybe, I'm not great when it comes to decorating. Or his hair or hoodies. I'm not the hair and the hoodies. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

You've just crossed a line. You just said before the show that you won't get a haircut because you want to golf. True. That's pretty lazy. I'm not going to waste a Saturday getting an haircut when I can be on the course. Get a haircut on a weekday. You should never get a haircut on a Saturday. It's a great call.

You have more important things to do. Get a haircut on a weekday. All right. We'll talk to you all tomorrow with the Waver Wire on Fantasy Football Today. Make sure you check out Beyond the Box Score. It's got its own feed on YouTube channel. Thanks to Dan and Jacob. Talk tomorrow, everybody. See ya.

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