Fantasy Football Today - What We Learned SO FAR from Offseason Mock Drafts (5/29 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Why do fintechs like Float choose Visa? As a more trusted, more secure payments network, Visa provides scale, expertise, and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at visa.ca slash fintech. We love a good mock draft here at Fantasy Football today. We've done a lot of them so far this off season. What have we learned? What did you learn? That's an office reference right now on FFT Express. Very good office reference, by the way,

Starting point is 00:00:31 Jamie's never seen the office. Nope, not not not in full. Okay, seeing episodes like parts, parts of it. You know, when you meet those people who have never seen Game of Thrones, and you say, wow, the minute that you decide to finally watch, you're just going to enjoy life in a way you didn't even know you could enjoy before. That's like what you have with the office at some point. Let's make a deal. You'll watch the Sopranos this summer and I'll watch the office. Yeah, that's fine with me. I mean, that seems like a win-win. Speaking of winning, how are we going to win our fantasy drafts?

Starting point is 00:01:05 What have you learned from our off-season mocks? I guess I'll start with the biggest thing that stands out to me is that how quickly the top tier wide receivers go and how the running back pool is still relatively deep once we get to the middle of the draft. And I find myself doing this a lot in our drafts and having to sort of remind myself that this may be the norm once we get to August and start doing some drafts for real or the mock drafts ramp up. And that you can get to the middle of rounds 7, 8, 9, 10 in that range and still get some really good flex options at running back.

Starting point is 00:01:45 And if you don't love, like, I like to come out of my first like seven rounds, seven, eight rounds with four receivers that I can start through receiver league in a flex and have no issues. And I find myself like, oh, I don't really love my fourth receiver at that point. Now you don't have to draft like that if you don't want to, but once we get to like those,

Starting point is 00:02:07 that range of receivers, it's like, do I really want Cedric Tillman here? Like I don't want to do that until like round 10 plus. And that's like the range of guys, at least in my rankings that I'm sort of reaching for. So I find that you can get better value at running back in the middle rounds and you can't have a it right now. I think it's going hand in hand with that is all we heard going into the NFL draft was this is the great running back class, a great running back class, not a great wide receiver class. And last year we heard basically the exact opposite, right? It was a great wide receiver class and a pretty bad running back class played out that way. I mean, you have

Starting point is 00:02:43 Bucky Irving, but it played out that way for the most part. And the wide receivers were really good. And those are guys that you wanted to draft in retrospect. This year, with it being the opposite, it just feels like those rookie running backs have made the position even deeper and even better to get potential starters in round five, maybe. And they didn't really hurt running backs that we were super excited about drafting, which it's just everything was a win-win and makes the running back position so much fun. Even those guys that you say didn't hurt the ones that we were excited about drafting,

Starting point is 00:03:17 I still think you can get good production and great value from Ramondre Stevenson in tandem with Trevion Henderson from Rashad White. This is not a rookie, but Rashad White, who's getting really pushed down and still going to have, I think enough of a role that can help you. Jalen Warren, who's, you know, I think still going to have a very prominent role in Pittsburgh. Like there's still a lot of great scenarios here for some of these guys that got quote unquote ruined by these rookies. Even Najee Harris potentially could still be a very prominent there's still a lot of great scenarios here for some of these guys that got quote unquote ruined by these rookies. Even Najee Harris potentially could still be a very prominent factor for the Chargers. So it's again allowed this range of running backs to still be good potential flex options or good reserves. Whereas, you know, how quickly, how soon do you want to take, for example,

Starting point is 00:04:01 Trey Harris or Jack Besh or some of these other rookie wide receivers that have potential, but you may have to reach for them a little bit sooner than you want to. All right, quick break. And we'll talk about another position that's very deep after this. Discover the magic of bet MGM casino where the excitement is always on deck, pull up a seat and check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer from roulette to blackjack watch as a dealer hosts your table game and live chat with them throughout your experience to feel like you are actually at the casino.

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Starting point is 00:05:13 You've got to talk about quarterback. I mean, as we do these mock drafts, just, you don't have to wait and wait for a quarterback, but it's certainly a viable option. It is every year, but this year feels even deeper than most years. There's a, I think, I don't want to limit it to a certain number, but there's like four or five guys that stand out to me that I'm going to draft a lot of and potentially two. And you know, I don't love to draft two quarterbacks, but I think it makes sense with this range. So Dak Prescott, Caleb Williams, Justin Fields, Drake May, and Trevor Lawrence. These are going to be five quarterbacks that I want to have a lot of shares of.

Starting point is 00:05:54 And I didn't bring this up. You kind of jumped ahead quickly, but we were talking about Baker Mayfield and his regression. And I was going to say one thing that I love about the Baker Mayfield conversation and how well he performed last year is how excited I am about Trevor Lawrence this year. And so that offense is now in Jacksonville where they added a really significant piece in Travis Hunter. They have one of the more dynamic receivers that we saw coming off of last year in Brian Thomas and we know Trevor Lawrence has struggled. one of the more dynamic receivers that we saw coming off of last year in Brian Thomas.

Starting point is 00:06:25 And we know Trevor Lawrence has struggled. Well, this may be the opportunity for Trevor Lawrence to take a step forward. And I also think there's going to be, excuse me, a trickle down effect to two players when we could transition tight end to this. But transition down to two players is Diami Brown and Brenton Strange because they're really thin group if you think about it. You know, those two guys at the top, I think are gonna be really good. But can Brown make some plays similar to what maybe we saw some flashes with Jalen McMillan last year in Tampa and K.Dotten. And I know a lot of it was injury related for those guys.

Starting point is 00:06:56 But if this is a more multifaceted sort of offense, and it's not just the two receivers at the top, which I think that's gonna be the case, but I just don't know. But I think you to get maybe later on flyers on some of these guys You know so if you are looking at a second tight end in a deeper league if you are looking at a really deep draft You know strange and Miami Brown could have some some big options, but just in terms of the quarterback like it's always deep We we know this yeah, you you're gonna get the guys at the top Hopefully perform the way that they should. But once you get past, in the group we talked about, Baker Mayfield, Bo Nix, Mahomes Mayfield, Nix, 6, 7, 8,

Starting point is 00:07:32 I think the guys that I mentioned, Caleb Williams and May and Lawrence and Dak and throwing Brock Purdy and still Jared Goff. There's so many potential ways you can build your team and still get great quarterback play. And Ryan, the way you talked about Ramandre Stevenson and Jalen Warren and Rashad White is how I feel about a guy like two is hung up. I Lola may not even get drafted. Like I'm looking at this draft we did recently and in May, uh, so I don't know when people are listening to this, but it's probably still may, but just a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, he didn't even get drafted in a six point per passing touchdown league. He's the guy that two years ago led the NFL in passing yards. So

Starting point is 00:08:09 there at Stafford, like if Stafford has, uh, it's Vonte Adams is good. Stafford's going to be worth using. Just J.J. McCarthy, you know, Smith, you know, they're going to, they're, they're in situations where you could see a lot of production. Look at Sam Donald, if he's still as good as he was, who knows? I mean, I don't buy it, but it's just so deep, the position. Michael Pennex, look, last time we saw his offense, did you know, I know a lot of it wasn't him, but did you know that in his three starts, they averaged the Falcons 32 points per game? Wow. Wow. That's awesome. It's got- Bryce Young. Close to playing. Bryce Young was the closest season. Wow. Wow. That's awesome. Bryce Young was the closest season. He just got a first round talent.

Starting point is 00:08:54 So last thing here is what have you learned about tight end so far? This is such an interesting position because you know the first two guys are going to go in probably the first 30 overall picks, let's just say. So by the time we get to the middle of round three, you're not going to see Brock Bowers and Shane McBride. When do you pull the trigger on George Kittle? I think that's, he's sort of in that mix of still great wide receivers and some really good running backs. So how early do you wanna go for him?

Starting point is 00:09:16 When do you wanna buy back into Sam Laporta? He's been, David and I did express last week, I believe, and you couldn't, you, you couldn't do it. So, or maybe two weeks ago and it was, uh, who are we drafting a lot of? And I tend to draft a lot of Sam Laporta in these early drafts just because of where he's been falling. Um, it's really after you get past like Laporta and the Joku, Kelsey, that,

Starting point is 00:09:38 that group of tight ends, like who, who do you trust and when do you want to, you know, take a chance on those guys? So, uh, Colston Loveland and Tyler Warren and Tucker Kraft and I still think Dalton Kincaid has some bounce back potential. John Smith, where does he come into play? So great or late, the phrase that we've sort of adopted here and I think made popular because they use it as fantasy pros now too. Really? They I mean, I, at least when we come on, they

Starting point is 00:10:09 mentioned it. And it, it just makes so much sense. Like if you can't get one of the top tier guys, there's such a deep pool of potential options here that they're not all going to hit clearly. But do you know that Kyle Pitts in the first six weeks this season was averaging 10 PPR points per game? Yeah, well, he had a four game stretch where he was awesome. Yeah, but I just doesn't really do it for me. I don't disagree with you at all.

Starting point is 00:10:31 But you know, contract year and maybe panics leans on him a little bit more. There are things that you could see with a lot of different players in this position. Like think about some of the younger tight ends, not just the two rookies like Gunnar Helm could be the guy in In Tennessee, Terrence Ferguson could be the guy in for the Rams Obviously Mason Taylor could be the guy for the Jets like there's a lot of different paths Evan Ingram still I think it'd be really good every every first team He every sorry every stop he's made the first year including his rookie season with the Giants has been good I've actually really like drafting Evan Ingram. It's one of my favorite later on picks. I'm

Starting point is 00:11:07 having a hard time deciding that my big question with tight end is what's a better value McBride or Bowers in round two or George Kittle in round what? I mean, if it's five, it's probably Kittle. If it's four, it's probably the other two. That's kind of where I'm at. If I'm going to go on a three round difference. Yeah, right. You do you want it. But I did. I do remember drafting Kittle around four and one draft and not hating it. He's got a he was number one per game last year. And you I don't know how you feel about this would not shock me at all. If he's won again, like just, you know, we're

Starting point is 00:11:41 putting a lot on Joanne Jennings and Ricky Pearsall and then Andrew Brandon and Iyuk when George Kittle has been so good. Trey Lockerbie I know he's not going to have as many targets as McBride and Bowers, but no one ever does on the 49ers, but they're always in terms of yards per target, they're always bonkers. They're so good. They're the most efficient team. So it is just like he's not old.

Starting point is 00:12:03 He feels like he's kind of old, but he's not, he's at an age where he can still produce at a high level. And he was the number one tight end fantasy last year on a per game basis. Can you, can you make a case? It's probably not the best case because of where he gets drafted, but is he the most underrated player in fantasy? Yeah. I didn't the conversation.

Starting point is 00:12:23 It's a great. Yeah. Oh, this feels like a show topic. It does. It really does. You know, it's just, I think people feel like he's old because- And injury-prone. I think a lot of people think he's injury-prone. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:12:38 Ayuk, like very possibly going to start the year on Pup. Dibo traded and we're not loving George Kittle. It's because he's older than McBride and Bowers, I think, you know? And yes, injury prone. Okay. All right, Jamie, thank you very much. And we'll talk to you next week. Have a great weekend, everybody. This is FFT Express. See you soon.

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Fantasy Football Today - What We Learned SO FAR from Offseason Mock Drafts (5/29 Fantasy Football Podcast)

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