Fantasy Football Today - WR Advanced Stats: Beyond the Box Score (06/02 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

Fantasy Football Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  We're bringing on two awesome guests Matt Freedman and Pat Fitzmaurice to talk about our favorite advanced stats for analyzing wide receivers. Route rate, yards per route runs, air yards, end zone targets and several more statistics will be discussed! Let's start with route rate (5:00) and the players who need to be highlighted, specifically the Chiefs WRs ... We get into yards per route run (10:25) and look at guys like Jaylen Waddle and Jahan Dotson who have potentially troubling numbers when you compare their production in 2-receiver sets to 3-receiver sets. Then we'll make the case for and against Jerry Jeudy (26:00) and others ... We discuss air yards (32:00) and players who saw a big increase or big decrease in aDOT in 2022 with DeVonta Smith (50:25) highlighted in this section. And we finish with some red zone/green zone/end zone data (55:30) and some sleepers and breakouts (1:11:30) from our guests ... Email us at [e-mail] 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

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Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. This is Fantasy Football Today from CBS Sports. What a play! Can you believe this? No, I can't. It's time to dominate your fantasy league. This is going to go the distance. Now, here's some combination of Adam, Dave, Jamie, and Heath.

We are going beyond the box score today. Welcome, everybody. Recording this on a Wednesday afternoon. You might be watching it on YouTube, youtube.com slash fantasyfootballtoday. If you're listening in our podcast feed, happy Friday to you. Adam Azer here with, of course, ripped Jacob Gibbs, showing the traps again. And Jacob, I feel like if you could play a fantasy league with only wide receivers, you would. I feel like wide receivers are definitely your favorite position. Is that true or false?

No, it's definitely true. A long time ago, when I was first getting into this, I made a dynasty league where it was all flex players, just so I could only use wide receivers. Really? That's weird. I was ahead of my time there. Well, we do have a couple of guests joining us today. We have Pat and Matt. We got Pat Fitzmaurice, managing editor for Fantasy Pros and Betting Pros. Pat, welcome back to the show. How are you?

Doing well, Adam. Thank you for having me. Always great to talk to you and Jacob and maybe the other guy too. That would be Matt Friedman. Pat, you can follow him at Fitz underscore FF. And Matt, you can follow at Matt F. Am I saying it right? The oral Oracle. There we go. I typed it in wrong. And I was like, wait, is it like a funny play on words or did I just make a typo? No, it's a typo at Matt F the Oracle. Um, and, uh, how you doing

Matt? Welcome to, uh, beyond the box score. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Uh, I would say Jacob, uh, I would imagine based on the physical appearance that he would actually want to be in an IDP only when he just drafts linebackers. Just a whole bunch of muscular linebackers with really thick necks and a whole bunch of tackles. This is out of control. I wore a tank top last time to the podcast and it threw Adam and Dan for a loop so hard that they just couldn't stop talking about it. So I think I'm just going to go every podcast the rest of the way. It's summer, baby. Never saw. I never saw this coming.

Even on Twitter, Chris Towers talking about it like it's all over the place. Matt, would you like to enlighten everyone on the professional announcement you just dropped on Twitter just before coming on the show? Yeah. For the next three hours or so, I am the director of content at Fantasy Pros and Betting Pros, but I am leaving the company. In related news, the company is hiring. They are looking to hire an analyst.

I've loved my time at Fantasy Pros. It's been a great place to, I, I prefer to be an analyst as opposed to a director of content. And so I've had the opportunity to go to another place and, you know, be more of an analyst role. So I'm, you know, taking that opportunity. But I am leaving fantasy pros with, I wouldn't say a fully heavy heart, but definitely with some sadness. I mean, you know, I talk about it in my Twitter post. It's been an absolutely fantastic place to work and, you know, great people in the industry, great culture. So, you know, I'm very friendly with Fantasy Pros, even though I will be leaving.

Now, Pat, what are they going to be missing? Tell us about like a favorite story or something like that. Notice how he said not a fully heavy market because he doesn't have to work with me anymore. But no, I mean, I'm going to miss working with Friedman tremendously. You know, we're certainly going to remain friends. And I'm really only going to be upset if he stops sending me photos of beer menus at Belgian microbreweries as, as he's fond of doing so I can, you know, be jealous of him as apparently like in, in new England and New Hampshire,

wherever he's living these days they've got like this stash of incredible microbreweries and, you know, here I am in Wisconsin, Chicago, up in the upper Midwest where all the drinkers live, and we don't have access to these kinds of microbreweries. Very jealous. You guys do have New Glarus, I will say. You have that within driving distance. If it's good enough for the Watt

family, I imagine it should be good enough for anyone else in the United States. Well, Matt, the good news is you get to be an analyst today, starting right now. Jacob, we're going to be an analyst today starting right now so jacob we're going to be talking about our favorite wide receiver stats what they mean for you guys how you use them to evaluate players going into a season and in season for that matter and jacob where are we starting when we look at favorite wide receiver stats uh yeah i just want to say

i'm so psyched to have analyst friedman back i didn't know what the new move is going to be into but like that's very exciting for me as somebody who loves all the stats and analysis he puts out on twitter uh super psyched to have both these guests on um to talk about wide receiver stats specifically like some of the more advanced stuff and i kind of want to use these guys because they're two of the smartest guys that i follow on twitter and i interact with um as we analyze this as a litmus test on some of these stats um and so pat mentioned these like i don't go quite as deep into the advanced stats as you which is like yeah you probably shouldn't um but i'm like excited to have uh perspectives on it. I think Pat like is excellent at what he does. Like he's been somebody that I consistently cannot catch in the rankings

contest. Pat, you won within the last couple of years, right? 2020, 2020. Yeah. On the end season contest.

Yeah. Just, I guess I ran pure that year, but yeah, normally I'm happy to be in the top 25 most years just want to just want to stay in the national rankings i don't think i've seen um yeah i don't think i've seen anyone was receiving votes jacob was others receiving votes yeah i'm always trying to catch him so like i want to know pat's like his magic formula here

because i haven't i haven't seen anyone as consistent as him in the rankings contest um so yeah we're going to talk about per route data that's something that we mentioned a lot um we're going to talk about uh red zone data end zone targets all that good stuff um i wanted to start with matt he brought up a good point um that when i sent him over the stats we're going to talk about he's like we didn't mention route rate and route rate is something that is so important to bring up, especially if we're talking about tight ends, but out wide receiver as well. Some of these guys that are only stuck playing in the slot don't get as many routes, as many opportunities as other guys.

And so their per route data looks really good. And this is something that we talk about a lot, all this per route data and get all excited about it. But they have to get on the field first. And so Matt, you had a a couple guys you wanted to bring up i think jsn and cadarious tony um was there anybody else you wanted to talk about on the just like playing time side of things before we get into the proud stuff yeah i mean i guess he uh is basically the flip side to the cadarious tony coin but also uh sky more you know but

basically guys who are who slot wide receivers and their offense is multiple enough to the degree where you do see a number of heavy sets. And you can also see this with the 49ers quite a bit. Not that they have a number three wide receiver really worth talking about, but they play a lot with a fullback. They play a lot with two tight ends. And so, you know, in the, in the old days of like, you know, eight to 10 years ago, you know, people were just kind of starting to think about stuff of like target share, you know, like market share of targets and thinking in kind of a more advanced analytics way when it comes to, to targets and opportunities. And I would say that route rate is kind of an extension of that, where you're thinking about volume, you're thinking about opportunities, you know, like,

it used to be like, oh, how many snaps does this guy play? But the snap data, it's important, it doesn't matter as much as the route data, like how many routes is this guy running? Or if you're thinking about the number of dropbacks a quarterback has during the game, how many of those total team dropbacks is this guy on the field and running a route? And it's much more important for tight ends, but it's still pretty important for wide receivers, especially those guys who play in the slot. Okay. So, right. So, you know, I think the best thing to do guys is if there's, if there's a specific player that we really want, let's not bury the lead, I guess.

Like, just tell us, so is there a specific player? I mean, you mentioned Sky, Moore, Kadarius, Tony, and did you say JSN, Jacob? Yeah, I mean, we've heard rumblings that they're going to maybe use more three-weeks of resets, but we don't know. We don't know until the season starts. And I think the reason we bring up Rod to start this off with

is just such an important, from a projection standpoint, when you're laying the groundwork like how many we can get excited about these players but how many plays will they actually be out there um it was an issue for jerry judy early in his career there's lots of examples um i i wonder if like elijah moore if they're going to actually go to more three receiver sets or not in cleveland like how much he's going to be on the field um yeah so just guys that get kind of stuck in slot type roles. Sky Moore is definitely somebody that I'm concerned about. He rarely was used on the outside during his rookie season. It was all like slant stuff right around the line of scrimmage stuff,

just like design touches because he actually wasn't very refined. And I would say on the flip side of that would be someone like Gabriel Davis. Not that I want to be like the Gabriel Davis stand this year, because, you know, in retrospect, we were way too high on him this year, but he's going to be a guy who's out there like running a hundred percent of the routes every game, you know, cause he's just on the perimeter Island. They don't play him in the slot, but he's got his role out wide and he's going to be in a high scoring, very functional offense. So like, he's a guy that you look at a route rate and you can

say like, Oh, this is someone who's going to have significant opportunities this year, whether he capitalizes on it or not, that's a different thing, but he's going to have the opportunities. Yeah. Uh, let me ask you, I guess, Matt, I'll start with you about Skymore and Cadareous Tony. What is it that you want us to know from a route standpoint about those guys? Uh, Matt, is he breaking up for you guys? Yes. Okay. Uh, yeah, I just think it's important to start with the route data stuff. Um, because like you brought up with Gabe Davis, like they're running so many routes. Uh, the Tampa Bay guys are ones that always stand out as not having good per route data. Um, but they run so many routes that they have in the past. And so as we dive into this discussion and focus on the per route data, it's just important

to have this baseline. So I think let's just go ahead and start with the per route data and start with yards per route run. I think in terms of publicly available efficiency metrics, yards per route run is at the top. Would you guys agree with that? It's pretty easy to find. Yeah, I would, I would agree with that. And there's granularity with it in terms of kind of how you look at it, timeframes, you know, position groups, stuff like that. But just as kind of like a one stop metric. Yeah, that's probably the best one out there. Yeah. And that's what we're here to do today is contextualize it. So the first thing I wanted to bring up, um, have, I've just seen really excellent research on, on this from Hayden Winks. It's been something that's been covered a little bit here and there. Um, but I think it's

really important to bring people's attention. Um, when talking about yards per run, as we dig into it more, as it becomes more normalized formation heavily affects yards per route run. Um, so this is going to be the yards per route run average by the number of wide receivers on the field. Just to illustrate this with one wide receiver on the field, the average is 2.01 with two or fewer wide receivers on the field is 1.9. And then with three or more that 1.9 drops all the way to 1.41. That's where we see the significant drop offs from two to three. And so there's teams, there's offenses that are using a ton of two receiver formations and not going to three receiver functions as often. And the wide receiver yards where I run that it really gets out of control with some of these

guys. You've probably seen on Twitter, if you're plugged into fantasy football at all, you've probably seen people talk about Rashid Shaheed and his ridiculous per route rates, but he's playing in an offense. And this, this applies to Chris Alave as well, where the per route efficiency really gets out of control. I think the best team, the best example of recently to illustrate this is Corey Davis two years ago. Do you remember his insane rates?

Yeah. His last year on the Titans, he was fourth in yards per route run. And so that was the first time I really started hearing people like really push back on your per route run data and be like, Corey Davis is clearly not a top five wide receiver in the league, not even close. And so I just wanted to bring up that point that like, there's a huge drop off from two to three. I was curious if you guys have heard that before. And then we've got a few specific player examples to talk about with it. I mean, I was aware of it, but I didn't

know quite exactly what the difference was. So, I mean, it's interesting to see things like the drop in Jalen Waddle's yards per outrun from two to three receivers. But at the same time, his number is really good with three receivers. So, you know, like it doesn't concern me that, oh, this guy only pops when he has two receiver sets I mean like Jahan Dotson splits are a little more concerning but at the same time I mean Dotson only played what 12 games last year so I'm hoping that can maybe be attributed to a relatively small sample size yeah Miami is the the place to start with your per run data we got absolutely insane stuff from Tyreek here last year and Jalen Waddle was third in the NFL. Only Justin Jefferson and Tyreek had a higher

yard per outrun rate than him last year. And so when you start to like place him on list of other young receivers to have done the things that he has done, he looks like one of the best dynasty assets out there. But the offense that he played in really boosted things at an insane degree. So Tyreek Hill averaged 3.8 yards per outrun um with two or fewer receivers on the field that dropped to 2.9 with three or more Jalen Waddles was at three dropped to 2.4 um and then you brought up the Washington guys John Dotson uh 0.98 yards per outrun with three or more wide receivers on the field it's just I think you are right to like it's not going going to be that low with a better offense and a larger sample

size, but we definitely did see some of these guys, Chris Alavi, particularly as somebody he gets put on these lists historically. But like his numbers, they drop a lot from two to three wide receiver sets. But on the flip side of that, we'll see more through receiver sets probably in New Orleans this year.

Yeah. I don't know. I just wanted to bring this up and kind of that, we'll see more through-the-reset probably in New Orleans this year. Yeah, I don't know. I just wanted to bring this up and kind of introduce this topic and see what you guys thought about it. Because I don't hear this brought up a whole lot with your upper right-right data. It's important to contextualize it. Yeah, I think it is important to contextualize it. But I think the contextualization isn't as important year to year as some people would maybe expect. So let's think back to Corey Davis and the example you mentioned of him being awesome in his final season with the Titans. And a lot of that, you know, they were in two tight end sets.

He's the dominant wide receiver on the field. And then him going to a different system where they use more three wide receivers, a totally new situation for him. In that situation, I think the context is really important. But in a situation where we might have a lot of continuity year to year, then I think it's not quite as important. So if you think, okay, same offensive coordinator, same quarterback, a lot of the same personnel, then the contextualization doesn't matter so much because the big overall number of yards per route run, that will probably be stable. And also something that I think is worth thinking about with the two wide receiver versus three wide receiver splits is that for some of these guys,

say like Jahan Dotson, he's a smaller guy, right? Rashid Shahid is also a smaller guy. But what you see is that when they're in two wide receiver sets, they are on the outside. And so one of the big concerns with someone like Jahan Dotson entering the NFL was, would he be a slot only player? And so I think even though he's being funneled the ball more into wide receiver sets, because he's just, you know, one of the two wide receivers out there, they're more prone to throw to a wide receiver versus a tight end. What's encouraging is that he is actually winning in a really strong way on the outside.

And so I think that that could carry over to three wide receiver sets a little more for the future. And I would say the same with Rashid Shaheed, the same with Chris Olave. When they are winning on the outside and two wide receiver sets, I think that speaks well to their overall future, their ability to be able to produce

when three wide receiver sets moving on. Yeah, I love all that. Adam, welcome back. Can you hear us? Hey, thanks. I love all that i i'm really glad that you brought up those distinctions because yeah the point here isn't to um suggest that um chris alave is overrated necessarily or anything like that or that this is a negative for him going forward it's more just to like put it in perspective like that his rates are inflated so when you're measuring them relative to other young wide receivers or whatever exercise you're doing using the art per run data from a dynasty

perspective, like it is worth knowing that they're inflated. I don't know if people would have thought that about Chris Alave just because of the offense that he plays in. Cause it's not as extreme of an offense as like the Tennessee that we're talking about with Corey Davis, you know? Um, let me ask you guys a question. How much do you care about rookie stats? You know, yards per route,

running all those things as rookies. I mean, especially if you talk about a guy like John Dotson, he's going to have a new quarterback this year. I like to have, I mean, my sort of, okay, as I've gotten further into advanced stats for any position, any stat, I like to get two years of data before I consider it a trend. Like Najee Harris being really bad, basically, is now two years.

And I'm kind of thinking, this guy's just not a very good running back. But for one year, how much weight do you put into that? Pat, I'll go to you first. Rookie advanced metrics, how much salt do we have to have? How many grains of salt do we need to take it with? Yeah, a few, I think, Adam. I am kind of with you. I like to maybe give it a couple of years for things to sort of normalize a little bit.

And we saw those stark two and three receiver set splits with Jahan Dotson. So it's kind of hard to get a read on him, especially with sort of a truncated season due to injuries. You know, he flashed, but I don't think we know the true level of his water just yet. So I'm kind of with you. I get a little cautious about like, I don't know. I guess I tend to believe my eyes more with the rookies than I do with the numbers. Matt? Yeah, I'm going to echo what Pat said. I think a sufficient timeframe is really needed. And maybe more than the timeframe,

just like the number of reps, like the number of snaps, the number of routes, the number of targets. And, you know, like I'm mentioning their volume stats versus efficiency stats, like especially in fantasy. But I would just say also, you know, just in general for these guys, volume is what really matters. And, you know, it makes me think back to like Devante Adams, who was not that good of a player, especially not an efficient player, his first two years in the league. But the one thing you could point to was that he was still consistently being targeted within the flow of that offense. And so I do think that more than the efficiency stats, the volume stats for the rookies, the second year wide receivers, those are the things that we can really point to. If a guy is getting targeted consistently, I think at some point the efficiency tends to catch up

unless he's just really bad. And then if that's the case, then the volume tends to crater pretty quickly because the people who are hands-on with him every day in practice on the field, they can get the sense of like, this is not a guy that we want to have incorporated into the offense. Yeah. So Jacob, before we go to any other statistics here, is there, are there any players, I'm sorry if I missed this while I was off in non-internet land, um, any players you want to highlight in terms of yards per route run, uh, any, but like other than the, you know, the two receiver versus three receiver step by stat, but anything else you want to highlight, Jacob, any players that need to be discussed here? And did we lose Jacob? Wow. CBS at its best. Sorry

guys. How about you guys, Matt, Pat, any players you want to highlight in terms of this particular statistic? And, uh, you know, you can piggyback on what you were just talking about, Matt, Pat, any players you want to highlight in terms of this particular statistic? And being a rookie entering his second year Christian Watson and I think you know there's reason for enthusiasm with what we saw I mean totally dynamic on the field at the same time you know new quarterback and it feels like there could be some Martavis Bryant flukiness a little bit to some of the production that we saw. So Fitz, do you have any thoughts on Christian Watson? Man, I do not want to hear the Martavis Bryant comp for that. As a Green Bay Packers fan myself. But yeah, I mean, like as when Jacob and I were discussing all this backstage, I mean, he sort of mentioned that it was impressive the target share that Watson was able to get when he was running deeper routes downfield and like sort

of the fact that he was able to put up a pretty good yards per route run number, despite running these deeper routes, you know, high efficiency at a high average depth of target is really impressive. So I'm definitely cautiously optimistic with him, although the quality of the targets being delivered to him by Jordan Love is probably going to tell the tale quite a bit in 2023. And I don't know, Adam, like one other guy, I feel like I'm just bowled over when I see the yards per run number over three is Tyreek Hill. And the fact that he was able to do it after changing teams and, you know, not that Tua Tunga was any slouch last year. He was pretty terrific, but to do it coming from working with Patrick

Mahomes to having no established chemistry with Tua and to be able to put up the numbers he did and just have that sort of freakish efficiency is just mind boggling. Yeah, I love that Hill has kind of reinvented himself a little bit. You know, his last season with the Chiefs, I think maybe his last two, he went from a high ADOT guy to a lower ADOT guy from a non-PPR standout to more of a PPR standout. It doesn't matter. As long as he's getting the ball, he's amazing. But I want to ask you this as Jacob's backer, I want to ask you this about Christian Watson, because I think we all would be really excited about Watson if Aaron Rodgers were back as his quarterback. But in the last eight games of the season, Watson was a top 10 wide receiver. He was top 10 per game. He was number five per game and

half PPR, number nine per game and full PPR. There were some rushing numbers in there, but he still, I think, was top 12 if you remove those. Aaron Rodgers in those eight games, he averaged 200 yards per game. He averaged only 28 pass attempts per game, but 200.5 passing yards per game. He was on pace for 3,408 yards, 26 touchdowns, 11 interceptions in 17 games. So it wasn't like he had amazing quarterback play. I know Rodgers last year, I would still expect, even though it wasn't a great year, still expect him to be better than Jordan Love. But I like the fact that Watson, Pat, was able to be a top 10 wide receiver

with a guy who was throwing for 200 yards per game and like one and a half touchdowns per game. Does that give you more hope about what he can do with Jordan Love? It does. Yeah. Put into perspective of the lower pass volume that the Packers were, you know, that was the shape of their offense last season. And, you know, that he was still able to pop given those constraints. It's encouraging for sure. All right, Jacob, let's take a break. And when we come back, you tell us where we're going next. You're driving the car today.

You tell us which advanced metric we're going to talk about next. We'll be right back on Fantasy Football today. Did you know that across Ontario, utility damage happens 19 times a day? That's over 4,222 incidents a year. Don't let your next dig be one that causes costly delays or safety risks. Before you break ground, make it a point to request a locate.

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I feel like Kadarius Tony over here, man. The production has been great when we're here, but we just can't stay on the field. I don't know if we can trust these per route rates or not. Did you guys talk about Jerry Judy at all? Not yet. Yeah, I feel like his yard per route run rate really surprised me.

And I do a measure where I like his yard per out run rate really surprised me. Um, and I do a measure where I like, uh, measure the yard per out run rates for wide receivers relative to the, uh, wide receiver teammates from every offense. And he stood out as having one of the best discrepancies there as well. It was a really bad offense. Um, and he was really productive. That's something we've seen throughout his career. Um, and you talk about Tyree Kilby and it'll play different roles. We've seen that from Judy as well, different quarterbacks, different types of roles, short

ADOT, long ADOT. He's been pretty dang efficient. And I just wonder like what the ceiling really is if Sean Payton's offense produces in the way that we've seen Sean Payton offenses produce. And he maintains the per route rates that we've seen throughout his career. I think he's one of the best examples of a per route rate use case because he's been injured and on and off the field. But when he's been there,

he's been targeted at a high rate always. Yeah. Who do you want, Matt? Why don't you discuss Jerry Judy, who was on a per game basis, number 22 last year, wide receiver 22,

but he missed, he left early in three games. He barely played and had 76 yards on eight targets in those three games. If you were to take those out, he averaged almost 16 PPR points per game, which would have put him in the top 15. Your thoughts, Matt, on Jerry Judy? Yeah, Judy is encouraging based on what we've seen out of him. He can play inside, he can play outside. So, you know, I think that means he's always on the field, no matter it's two wide receivers at three wide receivers at the thing that is a little bit discouraging about him is that like Russell

Wilson, as bad as he was last year, like he might actually be, I mean, I can't say he's going to be worse, but like, I don't think he's going to be significantly better. Now, that's just me sort of projecting Russell Wilson, so I don't see the offense as a whole being significantly better. And then with the addition of Marvin Mims, there could be better target competition that Jerry Judy is having to deal with. We could see Dulcich, the tight end progress in his second season. So I think just in terms of trying to have a projection, what Judy did in the past is really good. I honestly don't know how predictive it is of what we're going to see out of him for the future. Pat, would you rather have Jerry,

Judy, or DJ more for this year? think jerry judy jacob how about you yeah it's clearly judy for me more was somebody who wanted to bring up um because his yard per hour rate dropped last year it was at two and then 2.2 and the 1.9 in previous years last year's at 1.75 obviously it wasn't a good offense um but that's been the case for a while and he's going to an offense where yards have been really hard to come by um chicago's writer series average 1.2 yards per hour and last year

darnell mooney led the team with a 1.5 rate so that's like way way below what we've seen judy do um and even when i measured his discrepancy relative to his teammates, he really didn't stand out. Carolina ran a ton of two receiver sets last year. So the yard per run rates overall were stronger than you might expect. So yeah, I don't know. Like I really, really struggle when projecting him in Chicago with the volume that we're expecting. If the yardage efficiency drops off and the touchdowns probably aren't going to be there. I think he's one of the most overdrafted players right now. And I'm really excited for Judy. Yeah.

Volume, I think has to be a concern for more, but at the same time, as far as efficiency, like I'm optimistic that maybe fields can help because I know that in, in Baker Mayfield, six starts in Carolina last year, DJ Moore's yards per outrun was like one Oh two. It was absolutely in the tank so um like i i feel like fields has to be better for him uh than baker mayfield wasn't and hopefully at least as good as sam darnold was for uh you know for all the knocks on sam darnold he was a pretty effective delivery mechanism for dj moore when they played together in Carolina.

Yeah, he was. And, you know, with fields, the, the people, the comparison is going to be, well, Josh Allen got Stefan Diggs and he broke out. Jalen Hurts got AJ Brown and second year of Devante Smith and he broke out. Does anybody see that happening for Justin Fields as a passer or anything? Matt's shaking his head. It doesn't have to be like MVP level, but what do you think, Matt? What do you project from Justin Fields this year? I think it's going to be something close to the same in terms of what we saw last year. They still have the same head coach and sure they've given him more weapons. He should progress

a little bit more. The offensive line is better, but I still believe, and I will say I was super optimistic on Justin Fields entering the NFL. I was optimistic on him entering his second season. I actually had a 150 to one MVP ticket on Justin Fields to win MVP last year. That obviously didn't happen. So, but like I, I am optimistic on what he can do in the NFL in general, but I think he's going to be a little bit more in the Lamar Jackson mold where he's always going to be looking to run a little bit more and not going to be quite the pocket passer that I hoped he would be. And I think that's going to have a really big impact on all of the receiving weapons that he has. So for fantasy, if you're looking to invest in the Bears, I think it's only Justin Fields and then basically fading everybody

else. Totally agree. Yeah. I'm glad that you brought up the MVP ticket because it's like, yeah, we want these guys to succeed. We're really excited about Justin Fields. We all love DJ Moore. I just don't think the math adds up for him. I like Khalil Herbert. I know he's not a pass catcher, but we were talking about him. He's being drafted at like 120th overall or something like that. I think that's a little bit too late.

Jacob, can we talk about air yards? I know we're going to run out of time. I probably won't be able to get to everything on your, in your notes here. I know you spent a lot of time on these and I apologize for that, but air yards, ADOT route depth, those types of things. What do we need to know about that? Yeah, no worries about not getting everything. We didn't expect the, uh, two wifi crashes in one, one podcast stream.

I did, unfortunately. I think we're doing our best. Yeah. So air yards are important and average route depth and average depth of target are important. These are all things that we're just using to contextualize the bigger picture for what's happening with these guys. Where are these yards per hour run rates coming from? And so the first thing I would bring up is that fantasy points per target go up, notably as air yards go up. Even in full PPR, which, you know, more intuitively might favor shorter

targets and high catch rates. Um, we have 1.9 PPR points on targets that came five or fewer air yards. Um, five to 10 air yards is two 10 to 15 air yards is 2.2. And then more than 15 air yards is worth 2.6 PPR points per target. So they are important. I know a lot of people like to, um um get mad about air yards which i don't really understand um but that still happens all the time but i hate air yards no i do i do i'm surprised at what you said because i i don't like a very high a dot you know like i think kyle pitts his a dot was over 13 i think it was almost 13.8 yards i feel like it's a little bit too high especially from from PPR because, you know, it's harder to

catch passes. So I am surprised at the statistic you just gave. The correlation is strong too. The correlation between targets and PPR points is 0.92, which is really, really strong. For air yards, it's 0.808. So that's still really strong. It's not as high as targets, but it's close. Yeah, I think it's important to bring up that there are outliers.

There are people like pits where if it gets too high, it is a riskier week-to-week proposition. And you run the risk of not reaching anywhere near the top of their potential range of outcomes. But the fact is having these air yards raises that potential range of outcomes and gives someone like Alpitz access to just immense fantasy potential. All right. So who do you want to highlight in your air yards discussion? Let's just start with Pitts. Yeah. The risers, his average depth of target rose from 11 to 13.8 last year, which is like way, way higher than anyone at tight end. And with that, he accounted for 45% of the air yards went on the field, which is one of the highest rates of anyone in the league, not just tight end. And with that, he accounted for 45% of the air yards went on the field, which is one of the highest rates of anyone in the league, not just tight ends. And I just, I want to hear what people think about Pitts, these two particularly, because I think that they keep a very level

approach to how they do this. Whereas I like look at these numbers and bang my head against the wall. I'm like, he's got to do it. He's got to be better. So, like, I'm very curious to hear what Pat and Matt think. Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of with Adam on this stance where I think 13.8 is just a ridiculously high, too high A-dot for a tight end, especially when it's Marcus Mariota and Desmond Ritter trying to get you the ball, which was why we've seen so many highlights of just, you know, comical misses by Marcus Mariota overshooting Kyle Pitts by three yards on a deep ball down the seam. Or, yeah, so I want to see something closer to what we're seeing on the screen right now with Pat Fryermuth and his 8.3-yard average depth of target. unless those targets are coming from a pinpoint passer like Patrick Mahomes or maybe Aaron Rodgers, you know, I kind of want to see a more modest ADOT from my tight ends. I want to add some context to the conversation. So a couple of things. So one, like average depth of target is a, I wouldn't say there's like selection bias there, but there is a little bit where the quarterback

generally is not going to throw the ball as deep downfield if the receiver doesn't have maybe as much separation as the quarterback would feel comfortable with. So I can see why, even though it's counterintuitive, players who were targeted further down the field actually do have more PPR points on a per-target basis because the quarterback is making the choice to throw to them when they are open further down the field. So that's one component of this. The second is Kyle Pitts specific. I love Kyle Pitts. I don't know how I feel about him for this year, but as a talent, I think he is up there. And the 13.8 ADOT, you could say that's concerning for a tight end,

but the guy is basically a wide receiver in terms of his skillset. And over the past two years, when he's lined up on the perimeter, which is where you would expect to see him have the higher a dot versus when he's lined up in liner in this slot on the perimeter, he has still been one of the most efficient pass catchers in the NFL. So the high a dot doesn't concern me in general, because I think he has the skillset to carry it. The high ADOT does concern me within the context of his offense and the quarterback or quarterbacks throwing to him this year. And I also think even though there's no way that the Falcons will be as run heavy this year as they were last year, they're still going to be one of the most run heavy teams in the NFL. So I think like Kyle

Pitts dynasty, I would still be very desirous to, uh, to acquire him in that format this year. Although potentially he could be a buy low candidate. I'm still a little bit too skeptical of his offensive environment, but the ADOT absolutely doesn't concern me. Yeah. He straight up is a wider series fifth in yards per run from the perimeter since entering the league. So that's comparing him to other perimeter receivers like Justin Jefferson and stuff like that. I have a crazy cop. It's that when on the field last year, he accounted for 32% of Atlanta's targets and 42% of their air yard. So that was higher than any tight end. Travis Kelsey's at 29% of the targets.

Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to revise my statement. I do think he's a decent by low candidate this year because he doesn't, he's not anywhere close to where he was last year in terms of what you have to pay to acquire him. Yeah. Who's your tight end three? I know this is an advanced metrics. This is not an advanced metric question, but everyone's going to have the same one and two, I think. Who's tight end three for you guys? I've got Hawkinson right now.

Yeah, I've got Hawkinson too, but I think I might convince myself to move it up to Pitts. Just talk myself into it with all these stats. There's so much upside there compared to Hawkinson. He has a lot more upside than Hawkinson. If he hits anywhere near the top of his range of outcomes, it's like changing your season. Whereas Hawkinson is not giving you that unless there's an entry to Jefferson. Yeah. I have Hawkinson three and pits is a very close number four. And I might flip them because I do think that pits has the upside. Like, you know, Jacob mentioned the a dot gives him a really wide range of outcomes where he could just have, like, if he hits with that high a dot, he could

have league winning potential, especially now where you have to, uh, where, where you are able to get him versus the price that he had last year. So yeah, pits, I think it's, it's three, four for me. Yeah. I don't think I'm going to have much TJ Hawkinson if he stays as tight end three, cause I think there are about five guys that could be tight end three. I'd rather just wait. Um, uh, can we talk about the fallers or do you want to keep stay on that? The ADP, the ADOT, uh, fallers like Michael Pittman, those guys, Jacob. Yeah. I think Michael Pittman is worth bringing up his ADOT went way down. It was all the way at 6.5 yards when Matt Ryan was at QB compared to 9.7 yards during his breakout.

That's a massive drop off. And Anthony Richardson had the highest average depth of target of any of the rookie quarterbacks. Um, we don't know how accurate those details are going to be, but I do think we're going to see him use down the field a lot more. Um, and he's been more efficient when in that role. Um, the other guy i wanted to bring up was jamar chase jamar chase's average depth of target draft from 12.6 yards to nine yards um in year two and we saw as a direct result that he was targeted way way more often in year two and this is exciting this is like where we're seeing him step into the wide receiver one role um something i tweeted all the time after his rookie season was that t higgins was actually better, um, even at producing fantasy points when both players were on the field and he

was definitely better at drawing targets. Um, but we are seeing Jamar step into a clear wide receiver one role where he's, he's more emphasizing the offense to running screens to him. They're running all these slants and short, um, yardage targets. We didn't see in year one as a result, he was less efficient. Um, he didn't have as many of these long ones break as he did in year one. Um, so it he was less efficient. He didn't have as many of these long ones break as he did in year one. So he's significantly less efficient on his routes. But I'm just curious what you guys think if he has the potential as his target rate increases, just given what we've

seen from an efficiency standpoint, if he has potential to be wide as year one just easily this year. Yeah. I mean, I think it's encouraging that maybe we saw that little bit of a drop. So he wasn't just the lid lifter and was running a fuller complement of routes. I do wonder if maybe a little bit of that wasn't related to the troubles the offensive line was having. Like Cincinnati sort of rebuilt their offensive line in the offseason last year. They made personnel upgrades, but it took a little time to consolidate all the new talent on the offensive line. And like Joe Burrow's sack rate was sky high. I recall like in the early weeks of the season and maybe just the fact that he had to get rid of the ball a little more quickly than he would have liked. So I think that might account for some of the drop,

but maybe it is also just a conscious effort to get Chase the ball more often. Yeah, I think with Jamar Chase, part of it was also defenses playing them a little bit different from year one to year two. And so the Bengals making the sort of Chiefs-like adjustment in terms of how they run their offense. And so, uh, as you mentioned, uh, Jacob, you know, the loss in a dot was more than counterbalanced by the, uh, increased volume that he saw. So no worries with Jamar chase. It's just showing that like he can win down the field and he can win in more of the intermediate area with Michael Pittman. I am, I'm a little bit ambivalent or uncertain about how the a dot will change for him because with the addition of Alex Pierce like Pierce has that downfield skill set where Pittman no longer needs to function in that capacity and now that they have Josh Downs who can be kind of

that slot receiver who's a little closer to the line of scrimmage I have the feeling that maybe Pittman is just kind of locked in a little bit more the line of scrimmage, I have the feeling that maybe Pittman is just kind of locked in a little bit more to that intermediate area of the field. And given that he's playing with a rookie quarterback, a mobile quarterback, I just think we're going to see an offensive environment that's, it's not going to be as bad as it was last year, but it's not going to be as good as it would be if it were just another veteran, like, I don't know, like Kirk Cousins or something like another veteran coming in, who's a established pocket passer who can deliver the ball to the guys in a manner that we can

easily project. So I think there's a, a wide range of what we could see out of Michael Pittman this year. Yeah, I agree. I think intermediate is the right word. I just, all my point is it is not going to be anywhere near where it was last year. 6.5 with Matt Ryan, 6.9. That's way too low. Like we're talking about Curtis Samuel,

6.7, Amon or St. Brown, 6.5 Paris Campbell, whoever next, like it's just a running back around the line of scrimmage, 6.4 in the same office, like just barely below Pittman.

I think it's going to come up a lot and just that should help us efficiency. I want to give us that. I don't have an updated stat on this, but this is about Jamar Chase and I think we had two teams where we had wide receiver teammates finish in the top 16 last year. That would have been the Eagles and the Dolphins

and actually maybe the Bengals too. But over the last seven years, there have been something like 16 or 17 teammate pairs who have both finished top 16. And the only time I think that we had a number one overall wide receiver in those pairs was wide receiver two and full PPR. And my point is with Jamar chase is I think T Higgins is probably what prevents him from being wide receiver one. Usually. And I mean, he's wide receiver two or three at worst, right? But wide receiver one is typically a major target hog, like alpha guy without serious competition. It's hard for me to say that when chase was on pace for like 190 targets last year. Um, and per, he was number three. But that was with the lower ADOT. But you don't see a lot of guys finish as the number one wide receiver when they have someone as good as T. Higgins on their team. two things. First, Jordy Nelson was awesome. I'm so glad to bring him up in this context.

I'm a little worried about Tee Higgins. His per route rates really dropped last year, and I'm curious to gauge anyone else's feelings on that. Because typically, even though he's on and off the field and that bothers everyone, his per route stuff is really strong. And so that gives us continued optimism that when he's finally able to put together a full season, it'll be really good. But last year, year it did drop off and as we saw jamar chase elevate his game and his ability to draw targets t higgins kind of shrunk a little bit um and i'm curious what we expect going into this next year because i i think it's entirely possible he might fall out of the top 16 or top 20 number that you gave adam which would allow chase to be that wide receiver one i think the point of like bringing up kansas city's offense and how they adjusted to defenses relative to chase is really a smart one.

Like, I think it's very similar to what we've seen with Tyreek where Tyreek was insanely efficient, but never drew the targets. And then he moved into a shortened role and then he had that explosion here. And I think we could see something like that from chase. Well,

what are you seeing from Higgins? Because his yards per catch yards per target, his a dot, his catch rate, almost identical. His 17-game pace, well, I'm the guy who removes all the games where they leave with injury, and there were three of those for Higgins where it would really kill his per-game numbers. He had two catches in those three games. But those rates that are on pro football reference, those are all exactly the same.

But when you get into the advanced stuff, what do you see that concerns you about Higgins? The targets are the same, but the targets dropped. The targets per run, all those rates drop. And so he wasn't drawing his targets as often. And so his yardage per run stuff dropped as well.

And so like, I think if the touchdowns aren't there and if he continues to not be targeted at the same rate, he's just not, he doesn't project quite as well as some of the other guys who i think could step into a bigger role this year anyone else feeling that pat matt yeah i can't really explain the efficiency drop for higgins like i you know he just he wasn't targeted as much right yeah i mean i i think jacob

hit it there you know he just he wasn't targeted as much because you had an already awesome wide receiver, uh, you know, progressing even more in his second season and the offense changing a little bit to where it's just easier to target Jamar chase in the intermediate area of the field. So my guess, Jacob, is that he wasn't targeted as much on a per route basis, but on a per game basis per full game, like not the three that he wasn't targeted as much on a per-route basis, but on a per-game basis, per-full game, like not the three that he barely played. He was targeted as much because Burrow just threw the ball a lot

more this year. He went from 520 pass attempts to 606 in 16 games each of the last two seasons. And that was probably, like, I don't know if that was like they were just throwing the ball shorter a lot more, not getting as many big chunk plays. So

maybe the target per route run went down, but the overall target's the same. That's just my theory. And if they go back to throwing the ball downfield more, maybe they throw the ball less, but they have more splash plays and he's part of that. I'm not really worried about it. I think he's really good.

I think he's the easiest third round pick. I have more concerns about Devontae Smith than I do about T. Higgins. They go back to back, basically, in ADP. Yeah. He just didn't have the upside to get to a 30% target share. I actually do look at

the per game stuff and he only got that in one of 13 healthy games that he get a 30% target share. I actually do look at the like per game stuff. And like, he only got that in one of 13 healthy games that he get a 30% target share. Um, and that was something that he was getting before. And that's all that I'm saying. He got that 29% of his games the year before four out of 14 healthy games, just one out of 13 last year. Um, and I just think that that that's what we're seeing is Jamar is starting to take over as the centerpiece and there are games where Joe Burrow completely locks in on him. And then T Higgins isn't getting it as often and just i agree with you like he's still probably going to see enough overall volume to be good for fantasy i just haven't heard people talk about this very much and i think it's important to bring up i've seen dwayne mcfarland

talk about it here and there and saying that really he he profiles more as like a wide receiver three with upside than wide receiver two where he's going. And really this isn't even negative about T Higgins. Ultimately I was trying to be positive about Jamar Chase because I think he does have potential to take over as like a two target hog. Cause there were times where it looked that way, where they were just going to him over and over and over. Yeah. Fair enough.

I don't think as long as Jamar Chase is on the field, T Higgins does not have huge upside. Definitely. I mean, it's funny because we just talked about this on the show we did earlier today and the numbers bear it out. But it's like wide receiver 13

basically is kind of what he's been with Chase on the field the last two years and that's kind of how I would rank him and draft him. Alright, Jacob Gibbs, what else you got for us here? I'm sorry to hijack your show. Um, or yeah, where do you want to go to now? So Devante Smith, um, is kind of Jamar Chase light. His average depth of target came way down the end and it wasn't a change of average route depth. He

was running a similar route tree. They were just throwing him way more screens. He went from four screen targets as a rookie to 21 last year. They were using him in the slot and increased that motion more. And just overall, they were like really, really looking to get him the ball. From week 10 on, he actually out-targeted A.J. Brown. So I just, he's somebody I wrote about splits versus man coverage, splits versus press coverage. And he really improved those from year one to year two as well. Everything about Devontae, like, looks like like he's legit like legitimately a wide receiver one type

of player and he did all this with AJ Brown who talked about per route data prior to last year AJ Brown's per route data was like I'm Calvin Johnson it was like better than anybody any young receiver better than Justin Jefferson that kind of player like it was absolutely insane and, like he comes into the offense and Devontae still was able to improve all of his per route data while being used in a completely different role, which I just thought was like unbelievably exciting. We've seen him succeed down the field. We've seen him succeed as a short guy. So I just wanted to gush about Devontae a little bit and see what people think about him. Yeah. Just to follow up quickly on that. Yeah Devante he had a fantastic season and this is one of those instances where a declining a dot is actually a good sign because the guy is getting

targeted so much uh he's not being targeted just down the field it's a sign that he's actually being targeted all over the field as like a legit playmaking wide receiver who's fully incorporated into the flow of the offense. Yeah. Do you guys worry a little bit that things might change with, you know, Shane Steichen no longer there that maybe they, that offense doesn't run quite as efficiently. I mean, I love that they figured it out with Devonta last year, because two years ago, I mean, the Eagles were running like a Big Ten team at that kind of rate and just running far too often. And like they really figured out how to unlock Smith last year. And like that was part of why their offense was so much more potent. But I know I'm a little bit worried that maybe things change, you things change with a different play caller.

I feel like I've just thought like A.J. Brown in the second year of the offense could step into the type of like something resembling the per route rates we've seen from previously. And if he did that, it would just be almost impossible for Devante to see the volume he did last year. I haven't thought about the offense changing really. I mean, okay. We would have to think that in the ranges of outcomes for this offense, it is likelier than not that they regress if we're just thinking about how things tend to work. That said, Jalen Hurts has gotten better every single year of his career, like going back to college. And so there is still the possibility that Jalen Hurts could be an even better passer this year than he was last year. And that can still be the case even with the offense regressing some, just like Jalen Hurts in general, as a guy who navigates the pocket and moves

through his progressions, he could be better this year. So I don't know if I'm taking that into account and then taking into account the probability of regression, I would say that we probably see Devontae Smith not play quite as well. We probably see that entire offense take a step back but not that big of a step back i think it will be in the same vicinity of where it has been uh or at least what we saw last year yeah that's a perfect segue for what we're going to talk about next actually with red zone and zone targets um because wait we got to take a break first all right we're gonna take a quick commercial break when we come back into the red into, the green zone, the end zone, right after this on Fantasy Football Today.

All right, Jacob, take us to the red zone. So we could simply see Philadelphia throw way more touchdowns. Based off Matt's point, the offense as a whole could regress. The efficiency and the scoring as a whole could regress. But the ratio of passing to rushing touchdowns could change dramatically. They had, Philly had the third lowest pass rate win in the red zone last year, like tied with Atlanta and just above Chicago. The very, very bottom, like we're talking about how Chicago

and Atlanta's offenses really aren't replicable. Like teams never do this. They're bound to throw more. Philadelphia was there when it came to throwing in the red zone. They only threw 11 passing touchdowns in the red zone. And these things even out year over year, they're going to probably continue to be a run heavy team, of course. But like if Jalen keeps getting better and they keep trusting him more,

we could see what we saw with Lamar Jackson a few years ago, where all of a sudden these rushing touchdowns are into passing touchdowns and it could be huge for AJ Brown and Devante Smith. Yeah. I don't know if you guys, yes. And that's all right. I want to make a broader point about the Eagles offense. And that would be that they don't throw the ball a ton. Obviously I think they were like 20th and pass attempts last year.. I've said this before. I've said it with the guys I normally do the show with. So Pat and Matt, I'd like to get your thoughts on this. When you think about the teams

where we are drafting two wide receivers in the first 30 picks, talking about the Dolphins, the Bengals, and the Eagles, and then the other two teams, you're not drafting a tight end,

maybe at all. If you are, it's really late. The Eagles are drafting Goddard, I don't know, it's going to be like sixth round or so, something like that. Top five tight end in ADP. And they just don't throw the ball that much.

So I do wonder if they're going to have to throw more touchdowns, like Jacob was saying, to justify the ADP for all of those players, or if one of those guys is just going to be a huge bust or something. I find that to be an interesting projection, because you need extreme efficiency like you got from Jalen Hurts to make it work, I think, because they just don't throw the ball that much. And I pointed this out, the first nine games of the season before Dallas Goddard's injury,

Devontae Smith was number 35 per game. He was wide receiver 35. He didn't take off until after the injury. So I think there's a lot of interesting parts there. Matt, what do you think about the Eagles offense? And we'll carry in this red zone discussion. Maybe they will throw more touchdowns there. Yeah, so they could throw more touchdowns.

It would be hard for them to throw fewer touchdowns than they had last year. So I do think that that could be a source of hidden production for the wide receivers. But Adam, I'm 100% taking your point there, where you have two wide receivers who are going near the top of the draft. You've got a strong tight end. You've got a pass catching running back in DeAndre Swift, who people really seem to like and think like, oh, this is a guy who's going to produce in this offense. But we still have to admit it's a run heavy scheme. And like Jalen Hurts is one of the best quarterback sneaking

runners that we have out there, especially near the goal line. So I think if you're investing in it, like you can say, AJ Brown is great. Devante Smith is great. Goddard is great. And maybe there's room for one of them. It's hard to know which one is actually going to be the guy who pays off or maybe strongly outproduces his draft position. So like, if you're thinking about who to draft at value, it actually is pretty hard to know. I feel like Dallas Goddard is going to once again, be the take one for the team guy, as far as touchdown totals. Like he's never had more than five in a season.

What we like about him is that he's actually the rare big play tight end. Like his, his yards per catch looks more like a wide receiver than a tight end his yards per target has been over 10 in each of the last two years which is he's so crazy for a tight end but yeah he just doesn't score touchdowns for whatever reason yeah god it's the guy i end up never getting he's like insanely good at football but i i've had a hard time projecting it for him if the touchdowns aren't there. Jacob, what else from the red zone or green zone or end zone do you want us to know? Yeah. So I wanted to just bring up the chiefs.

Obviously we know how insane it is over there, but they're, they're the perfect combination of like insanely high volume and insanely high pass rate. So last year, the red zone pass rates, the top five, we've got Tampa Bay at 67. That's probably going to change a lot this year. Um, I'm actually kind of excited for Rashad white, but that's a topic for another day. Um, Minnesota Vikings, 63%, um, red zone pass rate Kansas city at 60, the Rams at 60 and the chargers at 59. Compare that to like we brought up Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, all the way down at 33%. And the result is Kansas City produced 107 red zone targets.

Travis Kelsey had 30 red zone targets. And the like Panthers and Bears and Giants, sorry, Adam, were all below 40. So like Kelsey almost had as many as them by himself um and i just i i think the point i wanted to make with kansas city specifically is i think the rishi rice is being underdrafted um and just this is just kind of a thing i feel i've got as a kansas city guy the more i've listened to brett veach and the team talk about his fit they they compare him to juju um and i think that that makes sense in his first two years in college he was a slot guy big slot guy and he moved to the perimeter last year but he actually wasn't that

great when facing um press coverage man coverage he didn't do the perimeter receiver things you'd expect um from a prospect that got drafted that high um at the collegiate level like normally they dominate man coverage um he was much better he was much more comfortable in the slot but he did play in two receiver sets and i think that that may be the way kent city uses him we've got all the scariest tony hype but like we have struggled to see him ever stay on the field and sky more has not been the guy in two receiver sets um so i don't know like is anyone buying him or do we just wait for deandre hopkins to get signed and it's irrelevant yeah that's that's like uh the thing that's lurking here that anything we say uh deandre hopkins could sign this afternoon and uh just blow up any any

takes on this but um man like i can see that case for rishied Rice, but man, I'm just kind of excited about Kadarius Tony, and it's just been his ability to draw targets. And I mean, like for his career, he has played 445 regular season snaps and has drawn 77 targets. So he has been targeted on 17.3% of all his snaps. And that includes running plays. Like when that guy is on the field he draws targets and like i don't want to be a pollyanna about his ability to stay healthy like the odds of of cadarious tony playing 17 games are maybe you know slightly better than the odds of me being

people magazine sexiest man alive for 2023 but um still though if he can give us something close to a full season of good health like i'm just excited to see how it's going to look there. And I know he's not going to be a 90 percent snap guy. Like it's probably not prudent as frail as he is. But, man, I'm excited about what that could look like if he did stay somewhat healthy. Past two seasons, the only receivers with a higher target point rate than Kadarius Tony are Cooper Cup, Devante Adams, and Tyreek Hill. So like, yeah, we absolutely need to bring him up on the advanced stat episode. Because yeah, like we just talked about with all these red zone targets available, like it could get out of control with Tony.

Wide range of outcome. Massively wide range of outcome massively as wide as it gets because yeah like the the advanced metrics look good but i always go back to like uh route run data on this you know like he played five snaps in the super bowl you know like that's the most important game of the year you know like you got cadarious tony for this reason uh and they didn't use him nearly as much as they probably could have. There were some circumstances as to why you could explain they're not using him as much as they could, and maybe you think they use him more this year.

Certainly, they use him more than five snaps per game this year, but they did draft a wide receiver in round two last year. They followed that up by drafting Rasheed Rice in round two last year. They followed that up by drafting Rasheed Rice in round two this year. They brought back Justin Watson. Not like Justin Watson's going to still snap, but it's to say that I don't think Kadarius Toney is locked in as the true number one wide receiver in that offense. It feels a little bit like a Percy Harvin situation where even if he's reaching his best case scenario, he is a rotational player that they bring in. At one point this offseason, I had Travis Kelsey as my number one overall pick.

I'm not there anymore. I'm somewhere between two and four, but especially that red zone stuff. I mean, I just feel like he had 30 red zone targets. You said, Jake, I mean, yeah, end zone, green zone, red zone. I can't imagine Kelsey is not going to be among the leaders. And, you know, Juju was, it didn't hurt Kelsey or anything like that, but he was, became the clear number one wide receiver on the team before his concussion. I know this whole argument to me is maybe just making me more excited about Travis Kelsey.

I can't take him over Justin Jefferson, but he's easily a top five pick for me, probably a top three pick for me. Yeah, it's easy to put him there. I think that makes sense. And I'm glad that we're finally doing it as an industry, giving Kelsey the respect that he deserves. Now that he's super old, we're going to get him as soon as he starts breaking down, right? Yeah. I wanted to end with these. Um, so this is something that I measure is the percentage of,

um, each player's team's red zone and end zone targets that they draw while they're on the field. Um, and mostly I wanted to bring this up because we get so excited about Christian Watson and he stands out really clearly in all these. The other guy we talked about with Philadelphia's offense improving is AJ Brown. So AJ Brown is fourth here with a 36% of Philly's targets went in the red zone. And if you look at the end zone targets,

he had the highest in the league, 55%. DK Metcalf was the next at 49%. So clearly there for him. And he really didn't score a ton of touchdowns last year so i think um it could be just a massive explosive year for him the other guy i wanted to highlight was dk meccaf so meccaf is somebody i'm a little bit concerned with his per route data has not been um very encouraging the last few years he's been targeted much much more um it seems like they've

wanted to make him this wide receiver one but the efficiency has not followed. Only 997 yards in 2021, of course. But he was somebody they locked onto in the red zone last year. And if this offense ends up being significantly better, which I think people are really bullish on this team, I think Jason could really help them a lot. He is somebody who also could really surprise people. I'm just curious what you guys think about DK, because he's really one of the most polarizing players for me early on in the evaluation process. Pat, you want to jump in? Yeah, I mean, man, the guy is just such a physical marvel. I've always wanted to be in on him,

but I am starting to get a little concerned about some of the efficiency numbers and just obviously the addition of JSN and what that could mean to DK's share of the pie. I think that's fair. I second what Fitz said on Metcalf. The guy who actually stands out to me looking on this list is Garrett Wilson. Because we see Christian Watson near the top of the board there. And, you know, you see Devante Adams as a guy who was on this list this past year and, you know, was near the top of the league, uh, in previous seasons with Aaron Rogers throwing to him. And now you have Garrett Wilson coming off a super studly first year entering his second year,

uh, you know, maybe a better offensive coordinator situation, definitely a better quarterback situation with Aaron Rodgers now there. And it feels like if there is a wide receiver who is going to get the Devontae Adams treatment from Aaron Rodgers, it's going to be Garrett Wilson. And maybe we see Garrett Wilson, even if he stays at 34% of red zone targets for his team, we would still see him progress in his second season. But if that number shoots up to something like 38%, 42%, I mean, man, we could be talking about a guy who has 13, 1400 yards and 12 touchdowns. These actually, Jacob, brings up two of my favorite statistics. I think people have heard me say them enough.

I'm sorry, but Pat and Matt probably have not. So I will say, first of all, DK Metcalf has been top four in end zone targets every year of his career. That's the first stat. And the second stat is about Aaron Rodgers and how he just falls in love with one player near the end zone every year. From 2012 to 2021, in those 10 seasons,

a Green Bay wide receiver ranked top 10 in green zone targets in seven of the 10 seasons, top six in green zone targets in four of the 10 seasons. So what happened last year, the first half of the year, Alan Lazard was fifth in green zone targets, or red zone targets, sorry. And in the second half of the year, Christianard was fifth in red zone targets. And in the second half of the year, Christian Watson was fifth in red zone targets and second in green zone targets. Lazard was sixth in green zone targets in the first half of the year.

So he did it again, Rodgers, in 2022. He just did it with a different number one receiver because Watson was kind of in and out of the lineup the first half of the year. Then Lazard got hurt and Watson took over. But that's just what he does. And it's basically 11 years, almost every single year where it's happening. So I thought that was, you know, really interesting and just plays well for, for Garrett Wilson, who already was doing that last year with the jets and now, um, could be an even better situation for him, believe it or not.

Yeah. I'm really glad to bring that up. The tendency that Rogers has to lock in on a guy in the red zone. And I think Wilson just fits that perfectly um so he became the first rookie um in 10 years that i have the data to hit both a 30 percent um share of his team's targets in the red zone when he was on the field and a 40 percent share of their area or of their end zone target sorry when he was on the field um so he was fifth in end zone target share and seventh in red zone target share. I think he fits really well with what Rodgers likes to do with the quick throws as well. He was targeted to one of the highest rates last year on throws that happened in under two seconds. And Joe Flacco is somebody who actually profiles almost exactly like Rodgers in terms of his

tendencies. he's either doing quick throws or long throws um and when joe flacco was on the field garrett wilson drew the types of target rates that matt alluded to you know if he has the potential to get up to this 42 rate or whatever you know we're just talking about hypotheticals but when we saw him with flacco he was at those rates um his rates were dragged way way down by his time with zach wilson but when he was with flacco, who plays just like Rogers, he was just feeding him on those quick targets. I think,

I think it's possible. He could just absolutely explode. Um, all the numbers back it up perfectly. Are you guys going to take Garrett Wilson or, or Devante Smith or T Higgins? Who's your favorite in that group? Wilson easily for me.

Same. Yeah. Okay. How about, how about AJ Brown or Garrett Wilson? That's really tough. I think I've got AJ one spot higher right now. Yeah, I think so too. That's really tough. I have Garrett Wilson one spot higher than AJ Brown. I think that one's pretty close to a coin flip. Okay. Before we and matt do you have sorry for putting you on the spot here

but i feel like you probably have this a 2023 wide receiver sleeper or breakout that you'd like to share fits you go first oh man so i like tony was probably going to be my guy but like another possibility and i hate to do it just because, you know, depth chart stuff, but like Traylon Burks and the fact that, you know, he had been sort of a schemed touches guy when he was in college at Arkansas, but his average step to target last year was like, what was it? 11.9 or something like that. So he was operating deeper downfield. And I'm just kind of optimistic that if he can stay healthy, he's going to be sort of a potential target hog for Tennessee, a team that's probably going to be digging itself a lot of holes and playing from behind quite a lot, a lot of pass

friendly game script. So, you know, Burks isn't really a sleeper, but i think he could be a value in the uh you know early to mid rounds i'm super excited for treyland burks i would bring up he wasn't targeted in the red zone at all last year he had one of the lowest rates i talked about the percentage of the targets they drew while on the field in the red zone his was only 18 and i heard hayden winks talk about treyland burks and just the fact that like he struggled to get into the offense early on he was injured and they were like things that he was messing up and just mike grable is somebody who is not going to make that player a future part of his offense not going to make a rookie who's struggling with the mental side of the game a future part of his offense um but i think it's

entirely possible that with more time the system now he's ready to be there and that's really exciting because like pat talked about the parat stuff we saw last year from was pretty good even though he basically was just thrown out there and being like told like just go produce just go get open there are times they're running just one receiver plays where it was just like go get open traylon against green bay and it was working yeah like he's got the talent and they really might scheme things to him a lot more in year two. All right. I have a couple of players, I guess three players that I would want to mention. So deep down, and we talked about him earlier, Rashid Shahid, you know, as an undrafted

rookie last year, he did really well in, I think, pretty negative circumstances in New Orleans this year, you know, more of a professional pocket passing quarterback and Derek Carr, um, you know, yes, Michael Thomas is returning. So there's a question about volume, but I think Shahid with his field stretching skillset, you know, he it's a cop out to say, like, he's the best ball player. Cause you know, like everyone's basically best ball, but like he actually is the true best ball player where if he scores a touchdown, you know, it's probably being accompanied by 70 yards. So he's someone that you get really late down the board. Who's intriguing to me in the best ball format, Quinton Johnston, you know, the rookie with the chargers out of TCU, he's going to have target competition. If Keenan Allen

and Mike Williams stay healthy, that said Keenan Williams, I mean if Keenan Allen and Mike Williams stay healthy. That said, Keenan Allen and Mike Williams, they're not the healthiest guys. I would say it's probably fair to say that they are injury prone at this point. And you do have Keenan Allen, who is past the age apex. So Quentin Johnston feels like someone that you can get, you know, like outside of the top 40 wide receivers who like has a path to significant upside through just, you know, kind of found targets paired with a quarterback who is really good and can throw the ball downfield. And maybe there's some extra synergy with them having a new offensive coordinator as well who can help unlock that offense. And then one more guy, I mentioned him earlier, Gabe Davis, like he feels like a, like a post hype value, uh, because it's still a great offense. Maybe Dalton Kincaid doesn't take over the world the way that people think he's going to as this slot hybrid tight end.

Um, and Stefan digs, obviously awesome, but there's enough production within that offense to go around where Diggs could still be a very strong number one wide receiver. And Gabe Davis, as a guy who's going outside the top 36, could still significantly outproduce his ADP. Oh yeah, love it. Very clearly, I think affected by the Josh Allen elbow injury last year. Um, if you look at the numbers, all right, thank you guys very much. It was great to have you on Matt. Best of luck to you in your future endeavors. Thank you, Pat. Thank you. Always great to have you on. Thanks guys. Appreciate it. And Friedman, you're such a TCU Homer. I knew you were going to work in a Quentin Johnston endorsement.

That's not fair. And Jacob, looks like you are kind of a sleeper to be People Magazine's sexiest man alive. Busted out the tank tops every show. I love it. This has been Beyond the Box Score. We'll have another episode for you at some point soon. Enjoy your weekend, everybody. Talk to you later on Fantasy Football Today.