Fantasy Footballers - Fantasy Football Podcast - The Overreaction Episode! + Fantasy Freakouts - Fantasy Football Podcast for 5/7

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

Fantasy Football show for May 7, 2026. Which players and situations will fantasy managers overreact about after the NFL Draft? Find out who will be overvalued and undervalued in 2026 fantasy football drafts! Plus, waiver wire talk and why your league should switch to a FAAB waiver system. Manage your redraft, keeper, and dynasty fantasy football teams with the #1 fantasy football podcast. Get the lowest price on the 2026 UDK at UltimateDraftKit.com - Instant access to the Dynasty Pass with the UDK+ (00:00) Intro (02:09) Switching a league to FAAB (05:35) NFL News (15:55) Overreactions (16:30) Browns/Jets/Cardinals/Dolphins (22:30) Rookie TEs (27:44) TD Droughts (32:50) Brian Thomas Jr. (39:30) RB Health (43:50) Mobile QBs Connect with the show: Subscribe on YouTube Visit us on the Web Support the Show Follow on X Follow on Instagram Join our Discord Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

to the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Oh, welcome in. Thursday, May 7th. The fantasy footballer's back again. Mike Wright, Jason Moore, Andy Holloway. Overreactions episode for 2026. Some news to talk about, some golf talk if we want to. Yeah, some golf talk. You had a really poignant tweet today. Yes, I did.

About golf. And it was very true. I thought it was, why don't you read it just for those out there that share the hobby, you know, our new hobby of golf? I mean, it's something that I am working on. I am not good, but I have found in life when you work on things, you can get better. And so I tweeted out that my experience with golf is that the more work you put into getting better, the higher you can scroll. So it's great news, guys. And you've been accomplishing.

And I have been accomplished. I did get a higher score today than ever before. So that's awesome. High score wins, right? Your points four went up. Yeah. I'm a football guy. That's right.

That's right. Mike back in the building today. Chilo. We have a couple of quick announcements. The best ball rankings are now live in the UDK Plus. So that's pretty exciting. Those of you that play best ball out there on the various platforms, you can find our best ball rankings in the UDK Plus right now.

If you don't have the UDK, Ultimate DraftKit.com for that. Quick question of the day comes from Zach on Instagram. How can I convince my league to switch to Fab? Fab is a way to handle waivers. It stands for a free agent acquisition budget. And it means that each week teams blind, bid on free agents and win the free agents process

you'll find out who gets them based on who bid the most. Fab. A lot of leagues have like 100 fab budget, maybe 200 over the course of the year. Some teams have or some leagues have off-season fab budgets, but this is in opposition to kind of a default standard of like waiver priority rolling.

One of the things that's silly to me now is that I think most defaults are now a fab system. So it's like old leagues that you've been in for a while that have been running it as the old standard, which was just waiver priority. If you start like a new league on Sleeper, I have to imagine that that just defaults to fat because that's the way that fantasy has been played for the last decade now. So if you want to convince them just, I mean, I think that's one of the arguments is like this is really the new norm for the majority of leagues. two, the big argument is always about fun.

I mean, the reason to change any rule in any league is to maximize fun. And it may be some fairness. Sure. I mean, that's a secondary. But I think primary, like number one most important thing for every rule is, is this to make my league more fun. It's also more fair. It's also another level of competition and excitement.

And so you get to try to outsource. smart outplan your opponents. It's another day of drama for your league that you get to look forward to in the waivers process. Most leagues do still default to rolling waivers. This is a change. Really? This is a change.

Even on Sleeper. Kyle said he fired up a test Sleeper. Sleeper. It was rolling waivers. Hey, Sleeper, you're listening. No, no, no. Yeah, we've got this platform. Sleeper. We love you guys. You love us. Change. That's all it takes. Just literally

types of things on the keyboard and change your default to FAPB. You want to know why it's not? An exotic bird. I'll tell you why it's not is because it is more involved. It does take more effort to manage a FAB budget.

If you have reverse order of standings is very easy to understand how waivers are going to process. You don't have to do another action. So I think that's why. I think it's because of simplicity. Is it better? FAB is better. Yes. So you know, it gives every when you talk about fairness, it gives everybody a fair shot

every free agent every week. If you have FAB budget, you know what I mean? And there's a, we have FAB trading in our league now. So you can actually include FAB in your trade offers, which makes for another fun way to do it. And then you have to decide how much you can serve towards the end of the year. Do you need to spend it early because you got to make the playoffs? Do you want to save it?

So, yeah, that would be our compelling arguments to make to your league. and just say that Jason Moore said so. You can also just shame them. You know, sometimes you got to just shame people for being old busted. Okay. Yeah, shame is another way to do it that Jason Moore would do. News and notes from around the league. Well, always good when you're not found guilty of assault.

Stefan Diggs found not guilty on Tuesday. I mean, good? Yeah, I mean, I hope he was not guilty, right? Like that is the hope here. Good. Okay. Now stop finding yourself in situations where you keep getting accused of this stuff. The old liar, liar.

Stop breaking the law. Yeah. I mean, he didn't. He's not guilty. He is. But if you've been, like, can we make it a new crime? Like, it's a separate statute. Okay.

If you're accused of the same thing three times, even if you're found not guilty, you are now guilty of. a triple accusation. Oh, the crime is triple accusation. You put yourself in the position to be accused of, insert crime here, like I'm just, three times. We can take it up with the government.

He did, I mean, here's the thing, Diggs has not done. He had over a thousand yards, led the, you know, Patriots in receiving last year,

85 receptions. He's one of several old men out there waiting for teams, him, Tyreek, Debo, Keenan. I love Michael. He is. He's lowercase done. What we know about Diggs is New England who just made the Super Bowl.

Super Bowl. They're like, yeah. Romeo Dobbs. We're going to get you out of here. We're going to bring some other people in. Tyrod Taylor, signed with the Packers. He is the new backup to Jordan Love, which is often an important role, considering Malik Willis saw playing time. I feel like any of the same.

anywhere Tyrod Taylor goes, the starter does go down. But then he goes down. So now we have to care about who's the backup to the backup. That's always the case with Tyrod Taylor's team. The Packers General Manager came out and said that he expects Michael Parsons in tight-in, Tucker Kraft back, quote, early in the season. Tucker Kraft coming back from his ACL injury.

This is not as optimistic as this Patrick Mahomes news around his ACL. I mean, Mahomes is talking about being ready for OTAs. Well, I think it's different for a quarterback than for a tight end as far as what you have to be able to do. What's ironic is Tucker's injury was a much cleaner ACL injury than Mahomes. Mahomes had some extra ligament damage, I believe Tucker's was clean. But he should start the season. If Tucker Kraft is there week one, he should not be at full strength. And I don't know that he will be there week one.

it makes it a really hard pick because I know we were so freaking excited for the breakout that was happening last year. It looked like Tucker Kraft, who Andy, you loved last off season. And then it was paying off and it just was outstanding. And now I don't know how you can view. Like, how do you view him in this year's draft? Nervous. Yeah, you have to be nervous. What's tough is that we've sat here and made arguments for Christian Watson and arguments from Matthew Golden being involved in the offense. And those arguments all fit for Tucker Kraft. They let go of Dobbs. They let go of Dontavia and Wicks. You have opportunity

to catch the ball in this office. Kraft was already doing it. Like if you had to name those out of those three guys, he's the most reliable in a neutral injury situation. I'd be looking at Tucker Kraft and saying he's the one I have the most confidence in. You throw the injury in there, but then you throw in the fact that you don't have that many tight ends that have that kind of potential to really make a difference, I think he's going to be worth a pick if he slips at all in the draft just to, you know, if you start the season and you buy a couple weeks with some spot start tight ends and you can rotate into Tucker Kraft for the last three quarters of the year and get anything like last year, I feel like you'd be happy with where

he's going to go. I just worry that people won't have the patience or even the ability to have the patience. If it does take a month, six weeks, however long, before all of a sudden the second half of year. Maybe Kraft is awesome. But I think you're probably going to end up getting him off of waivers. Like even if he's drafted. He's drafted and then week five, week six, you grab him off of waivers. He could have a good week one. You know, you never know. Kenneth Walker. Oh, boy, we got this in here, huh? He expects to be used. More in the passing game with the chiefs. Mike is pleased. He says he's been working on getting connected in the passing game. Yeah, he has. And everything. So that's good,

said Walker to Kay Adams. I feel like guys. I'll be used more in the past game. Mike feels that way. Let's get you a nice clean 10% target share. Is that what you projected him for? That's where I have a man. Where did he end up in your rankings? Or do you have yours done?

We had a little bit of a ranking reveal for our individual rankings on the last episode, Mike. Let me, uh, we shared some. See if I can pull that up real quick. He is, uh, this is going to surprise you guys. I'm going to guess. He's higher than you would think. I'm going to guess he's eight. Okay.

12 for me. He's 13 for me. You guys are all too low. Eight is too low? RB7 right now. Are you still working on yours? My first pass is done. Okay. So. Oh, that's unsurprising.

Deal with it. Let it wash over you. That would be, that would be obviously his highest finish, but he's got every opportunity in front of him. You have them at a 10% target share? I do. I've got him at eight. Got to bump those. Those are rookie numbers. You got to bump those up. Now I've got to look and see. I'm pretty sure he had a 10%.

I have him at seven. A couple of years ago, he went weirdly into just a past catching roll. He was a 14% target show two years ago. If you want to see Mike somehow even happier than he was last year, Kenneth Walker having a top five season would get it done. Travis Hunter, general manager of the Jags, James Gladstone came out, said he's going to play both sides of the ball in 26. We know he's going to play both.

that doesn't help us. Now I will say... It's better than the report of he's not going to play offense. Well, I don't feel like that report was ever actually he's not going to play off. It kind of, it was... That's what it was alluding to. It was like, oh, he was full-time corner. That's all, that's what was said.

Yeah. And then to me, that's, okay, he's doing 100% of defensive snaps. So offensively, then he, now his snaps are throttled. That's the part we need to know. I pulled up an interview today. with Liam Cohen, where he flat out, and you can't get anyone better. This isn't a reporter. This is Liam Cohen.

Thank you, Liam. This is the head coach saying their plan for Travis Hunter is identical to when they drafted him, which is to get him on both sides of the ball as much as possible. That's what he said. Yeah, this is, yeah. Look, we've had, we're going to talk about this forever. I have been very pro Travis Hunter. playing offense.

He won the bulletinacal. He is a fabulous wide receiver, and he might be their best one. He might legitimately be their most skilled wide receiver. You can make an easy argument that his skill set is better than Jacobi Myers and Parker Washington.

You could argue, we've seen Brian Thomas Jr. go put up that kind of a monster year. I think his highest ceiling is the highest of the group, but that doesn't mean that's the kind of snaps he's going to get. That will be the risk with Hunter. I could see myself never drafting Travis Hunter because the reward might not be worth the risk.

It is really tough where these small little percentages make an enormous impact. When you say, okay, let's say he plays the majority of offense, but it's still not good enough. If he's playing 60% of snaps on offense, you look at the players who are slot only guys that can't get in on two wide receiver sets, they have such a hard path for fantasy plug-a-months. play relevance. I still am very skeptical. I agree with you, Andy, that Travis Hunter is a good

wide receiver and too good to be off the field. They've got to involve him. They have a great wide receiver in that. But I also think he's not going to get enough snaps to be reliable for fantasy. I think that's right. I'm more just speaking to Jacksonville. I'm more just... Okay, that's fine. Which, I mean, it sounds like Liam Cohn has the same mindset of basically you drafted him to be a special weapon on both sides of the ball. We're going to use him that way. Maybe his plan was not to get him more involved when he was breaking out in week eight or whatever it was. But I just think he's a really good player.

Now it's hard because if I told you a game was happening tomorrow, and I told you start Jacksonville wide receiver with your season on the line, you could argue for the other three guys already. You could say Jacobi's the best one to play today. Brian Thomas is the best one to play today. Parker Washington is the best one to play today. Britain Strange is the best one to play today. Strange is the best one to play today. And then you have to throw Hunter in there.

So maybe the best path is just, we'll watch from the sidelines. Yeah, Trevor Lawrence is way higher than I thought he'd be on my rankings. That was one of our reveals, Mike. Do you want to know where he is? Or did I already tell you? I saw, you threw out a number, but you were not complete yet. Four. Poop. Okay. Pooh.

Oh, there he is. There he is. Oh, horse boy. Or split. We are into our overreactions episode, players and situations that fantasy football managers will overreact to this year. It is always a fun episode. On this episode last year, one of the ones we brought up was not to overreact to Sequin's dominance. Yes. And believe that it's repeatable.

That was not met with a lot of respect, maybe. I don't know, with a lot of agreement. People are not happy to hear it. Usually think whatever just happened is what's going to happen. happen again. Like that is the normal stance. And it's sometimes true, but I mean, things

change every single year. Yeah. Let's get into it. I'm not going to do what you all think I'm going to do, which is going to just flip out. All right, overreactions. I think we both picked a couple of them to go through. I feel like I want to start just based on

what you just said, Jason. Which is that our default position is to say what happened last year is going to happen again. The first overreaction that I'm going to bring up is an overreaction to what our perceived stinkiness value is for a franchise. So we'll call this the poopy diaper club. This is the Browns, Jets, Cardinals, dolphins.

You could throw a couple other teams in there. We're talking about how bad are these teams, how bad is our perception of them, and how do we react in fantasy? our default opinion is, oh my gosh, I just had to watch 17 weeks of that garbage. So it's coming again and I don't want any player to touch that team. So my simple counterbalance, the pendulum swing in the other direction of this, look, I stand by everything we've ever said. You want players on winning teams.

Okay? So we're not taking that out of the equation. Here's part of it. Part of it is you don't know which teams are going to be winning teams. You think you do. And some you do. Some you will know. You can tell me Buffalo is going to win a lot of games.

I will accept that. But 20%, somewhere in that range, some years it's 15%, some years it's 25%. Some are in that range of teams that are below 500, become above 500 teams on a yearly basis, the turnover at the NFL level. So you've got a quarter of the league that is going from a team that we perceive as bad, that was bad, to a good team. So you're going to try to identify those situations. The other thing is that you will get fantasy value out of franchises

that are not necessarily the funnest to watch, right? Even in the worst year of the Jets, Breece Halls had success. Garrett Wilson top 10 wide receiver. The Cardinals were full of, from Jacoby Brissette to Tray McBride to Michael Wilson to the running back. I mean, James Connor the year before,

you do find value in those positions. And what I don't want somebody to do is completely remove guys from your draft board because of the emotional reaction that you had to their nasty performances on the field. The breakout season for Odell Beckham came on a 6 and 10 season for the New York Giants. James Robinson, that breakout running back season came on a 1 in 15 Jacksonville team. Brock Bowers rookie season, Las Vegas was 4 and 13. Devon A-chan last year. We didn't like watching the Dolphins.

We liked watching him. You talk about touchdown opportunities. Like part of why you have. have them ranked lower is you're afraid that they weren't a good offense last year, right? And so he still had a big performance. Harold Fanon last year, a big performance. To me, you'd need to make sure that you're finding the diamonds in, I guess, the big Jurassic Park poop pile.

Even if you don't like the team, there is the opportunity, a 20% chance that they turn it around and become a winning team that fits the category of draft players on winning teams. And then there's a chance that talent just wins out on those franchises. something I've been saying a lot with the draft this year with some of these wide receiver destinations, some of the places where players have gone where you're like, oh, that's gross, that's nasty. Look, you might be right for some of these teams.

But if you have a player you really like and you have a team situation that you can at least paint a picture of a chance that they turn it around, don't overreact to the stinkiness of these teams. Trey McBride had the greatest tight-in season ever on a four-win team. You can do it. And I think there is a difference between. middle of the pack bad and bottom of the barrel bad. I think those things are different too. Yeah, you do need to have a little bit of thought behind it. You know, there are examples in the

past where teams that you thought were going to be putrid were good. And it is shocking. I think of the Texans a couple years back when the Cardinals acquired their next year's first and we thought, oh, this is a top five pick for sure. And then they were really, really good. but also they got a new rookie quarterback who was surprisingly way better than we thought. And so I do think you can take a look at these teams, these bad teams, kind of get a good idea of like, okay, sometimes it's a player is alone. So he's going to soak up so much of the target share that they can still be bad. But other times when you're looking at the bad teams that are going to get better,

I just look at the quarterback and say, is there a chance? So for instance, should do her Sanders, right? is there a chance that he could surprise and be better? I think probably, I think that is more likely that he could have a... Better than what? Well, I'm saying as opposed to, like, if we're looking at these four teams

and saying, you know, Gino Smith at this stage of his career, is he going to really rescue and turn the Jets into a really good team? Probably not. Now, I think probably not with Chador as well. Browns were in 9-1 score games last year. There were a lot of games that their defense kept them in. It didn't mean that they had great offense.

I mean, you can talk about the Browns and Quinshawn Judkins. Judkins and Fannin had great seasons. Yeah, but that stat is such an indictment of the offense. Because of how. Like, they were in 9-1-score games? They went 4 and 5 in 1-score games. Yeah. Their defense was that good.

Every week your offense is that bad then. Exactly. Every week you would look at the the score and you'd be like, oh, the Browns are in it again? Yeah. You know, I know, Jason, you don't have high expectations for the dolphins. You know, a lot of their personnel is pretty similar to last year, but you bring in Malik Willis, the performances by, you know,

who they had on the offensive side last year was terrible. Two was gone. Just keep an open mind. Don't shut these teams out. Don't completely take them off your list for the draft board because I think there's opportunities to find value. And I think the overreaction is to say, oh, my gosh. Gosh, I don't want one.

You know what I like about that, Andy? I like your positivity. Thank you. I like how optimistic you are. You're looking forward and you're saying it can be better. It doesn't always have to be worse. But now is my turn. Not yet.

Oh, me. And now it's your turn. Dude, I have been waiting forever. I'm so back here, baby. I am back to my old ways. Oh, no. I know what this is. Yeah.

My overreaction is don't overreaction is don't over react to the onslaught of rookie titan success recently. Okay. And so now here's just another offseason. It's, yeah, I mean, it feels just like another offseason. I will, I want to qualify this because I have completely changed from saying that rookie tight ends, you know, they,

they take time to develop, they can't hit the ground running in year one. That's the old NFL. It's obviously changed. Obviously. This last year, you had Warren, Loveland, Fanon, you had Brock Bowers, you've had Laporteus. So I am not, I am not. not stuck in that. But what I am saying as an overreaction is because we have this slew of really good fantasy impact rookies, there are, there's at least Sadiq this draft. And if you

want to throw stowers in there, where people are going to be drafting these players higher than they should be based upon the overreaction of what's happened recently. And I want us to be smarter than that and look at the nuance of the players. First of all, Warren and Loveland were unbelievable talents. These guys, their production profiles, their landing spots. We could see this coming. Brock Bowers literally the best prospect that tied in that, you know, we've been doing the show for over a decade.

He was a perfect prospect. We knew about him years in advance. That's not what Kenyon Sadiq is. even Eli Stowers, especially where he ended up behind Dallas Goddard. You know, when we look at historical trends, that's great, but it's not predictive. It describes what happened. It doesn't automatically mean that Sadiq is going to be good. If you look at Sadiq as a prospect, he is way behind those other guys.

Yards per route run. Only Hayden Hurst was lower over the last decade. For a first rounder? For a first round tight end. you look at a dominator rating, which is the percentage of the team's yards and targets. Only Hearst and O.J. Howard were lower for first round tight ends. You look at yards per team pass attempt. And the reason I'm throwing these three stats out is because these are three of the most predictive stats that we have for pass catchers coming from college to the NFL. He's the lowest of any first round tight end over the last decade. Now he goes to a team where he's not going,

to be in a Brock Bauer situation and soaking up the targets. He's behind Garrett Wilson. At the very least, Garrett Wilson is soaking up the targets. So I believe he's going to be overdrafted based on the hype of this is a top in first round draft pick. Those have been dominating. I'm just going to take my shot.

I'm just going to, you know, swing for the fences in the early middle rounds, especially when it comes to late August. A drafts are happening. People are going to push them up a round or two too high. I don't think that we have a breakout rookie tight end this year, even though I love Stowers, and I just don't want to overreact from the run we've been on. I don't disagree with you at all. I know the prospect of Kenyon Sadiq, I am concerned of if you're that awesome,

why aren't you dominating in college ball? is like OJ Howard's is kind of and he's at Alabama he's in the S was sorry in the SEC like Josh Jacobs was similar you know like as a running back his production profile was lacking but you you could understand why

Sadiq you can't like why aren't you better I'm just chuckling the whole time because your your topic is don't overreact to rookie tight hands just call up what it is Jason I don't like Kenyon Sadiq thank you okay

just be intellectually honest with the people. Just say, don't overreact to Kenyon Sadiq. Okay. But the reason, my point is, the reason. You have to like briefly mention Stowers just so you're like, no, I'm talking all the tightest. No, you're not. All right.

Let's talk about one guy. Look, last year, Andy's was, you know, about Seek. And that was, this is about Sadiq. Don't overdrafts. Thank you. He's not going to be special. Get Stowers off the graphic. Yeah, honestly, I think Stowers could do it. Stowers is so good, man. Oh my God. I would take Stowers over

Sadeek, he still has to get by Goddard. I think, you know what I think is actually happened? I don't think that fantasy football players are capable of reacting in either direction to rookie tight ends. I think all we do is we take the young, unseen upside in the spot of the draft where it's ugly, old, and boring. Yeah. And we've gotten lucky three years in a row. Yes. And it's worked out spectacular.

So maybe we, maybe we, maybe we. That's why people are going to. a little bit. They're going to say, well, it's worked out three times around. I'm going to... And you know what? When I get to some late round pick and I have to choose Mark Andrews or Stowers, wish me luck. Don't overreact. Wish me luck. Grab Mark Andrews. Mike, go ahead. I just want to talk a little bit about some touchdown regression and, you know, we call it positive regression because we just want you to understand we're talking about going in the right direction. So we're talking about touchdowns specifically for the running back position of saying last year's touchdown droughts will not last forever.

You know, James Cook is kind of the, he's become the poster boy for this type of talk where his first two years in league, he scored a total of two rushing touchdowns in each of those consecutive years, breaks out in a huge way. And it's like, oh, yeah, he was hitting some bad luck. Maybe he's hitting a little bit too much on the good side, but he's a great player. It can't be just simply, oh, this player will never be able to score. So I wanted to highlight a couple guys to pay attention to, because it's not as easy as, you know, like last year, Matthew Stafford threw a touchdown on 7.7% of his passing attempts. That number's probably going to come down, just based off of a huge history of Stafford.

Running backs are more difficult. but one player I do really want to highlight Ashton Genty is a he is in this category of last year we had 266 rushing attempts for him and he only scored a rushing touchdown for every 53 carries like these are numbers we can look at

and say you're getting way too much volume your touchdown expectation should be far better than you perform to last year. We have, you know, like, so like some guys in talking about carries inside the five where the success wasn't there, but the opportunities keep flowing. David Montgomery, only five of his carries inside the five turned into a touchdown.

He should be seeing exactly the same amount of volume he was seen in the side of the five this year compared to last year, maybe even more. And I expect those numbers to go back up. But along with Ashton Genty, you know, going on the good side, Blake Corum is very interesting when you're talking about this because he stands out dramatically of a player who had 13 carries inside the five and he only had four touchdowns. And I think people will see that number and be too dismissive and say,

well, that means he's not good in it. It's all Kyron. Or look at the actual amount of carries that the team is giving him inside the five. It'd be like, maybe I need to be a little bit more hesitant about what's going on. He has some touchdown regression coming for himself. Maybe I need to be more worried about the timeshare. I guess last episode you guys were talking about

the report of Kyron and Blake Corum being more of a 50-50 split. We had a pretty big debate about it. How many carries inside the five for Coram? He had 13 last year. So Kyran had 18. There's a lot to go around for that team because they're scoring off, but the point is...

Well, Kyron is. Yeah. Okay, so that's where you stand on this side of the argument? That is where he stands on the argument. The touchdown, the numbers of the numbers, man, analytics, they bounce back to the mean. And I think that quorum really underproduced in that area. And younger players tend to get better and older players tend to get worse. And then, you know, it's to highlight like Bill, only three of his carries inside the five, three of 12 turned into touchdowns.

So make sure you're paying attention to these. We give you access to these types of numbers in the ultimate draft. If you just want to go look at a red zone report, see who's getting a bunch of carries inside the five. I mean, this is part of the process that I go with. So you can have build it into yours as well. Look for signs because guys don't like Chase Brown scoring on 31% of his carries inside the five. That's, it's just, it's low. It's low.

That look for opportunities for them to bounce back. If you were to simulate that season 100 times. Right. That's going to come up as one of the lower performing seasons. Right. relative to the mean. And the big boy is Sequin Barclay, who had one touchdown from inside the five.

Like, that doesn't make, you know. On how many attempts? On 13 attempts. You highlighted Andy like, be careful with his performance. I will say the same thing now of... In the other direction. Yeah, like, don't, don't Barry Barclay just yet.

Rank check. Yeah. So I really did not like where Sequin ended up for me. He's a player that I'm going to move up. because he finished where I had him statted out at running back 15. That feels too low. I got him at 10. I felt pretty good about that.

I felt like that's the right range. Yeah, I agree. And maybe a value for that team that's going to lose by all counts, A.J. Brown. Yeah. And yeah, we can like stowers and lemon, but that's not the presence of A.J. Brown on that offense. I would not be surprised if you saw a very similar run-heavy scheme with a little bit more bounce back to the mean. My second overreaction is the, it's ironic because we, I don't think we knew we were going to talk about Travis Hunter

in this Jacksonville offense, but my second one was just that Brian Thomas Jr. is not dead. Oh, man. When I was doing Jacksonville, brother. Hard time? It's so, it's so difficult to not react drastically to what happened last year. You're talking about the fact that he finishes the wide receiver 43. He missed three weeks due to injury, but only had,

48 catches, 700 yards, two touchdowns. His catch rate was, it totally bottomed out. It was not all too different than what you saw from Abukas second half of the year. He caught 65% of his targets in his rookie season. That plummeted to 53. And it's like, I can't. He can't be at 53. Look, it doesn't make sense.

It doesn't make sense. But maybe it does. A lot went sideways. The challenge here is that you had, you've only had like a handful of rookies that have finished his top five wide receivers in the history of the game. Beckham was one, Chase was one, Puckoo was one. Brian Thomas Jr. did that two years ago. That's why he was a top 10 pick in a lot of drafts. The falloff of expectation to performance, that difference is the most impactful thing that you could have in fantasy in terms of, like, he is the bust of the year probably.

When you're relative to draft position, he has to be. What's wild is that all the other sophomore wide receivers struggle. They all went down. Malik neighbors barely played, but his points per game was down from his rookie year. BTJs was the most extreme. Went from 14 to 8. But Ladd-McConkie went from 12 to 9. That's not that different than Brian Thomas Jr.

In terms of the actual output in points per game, 14 to 8, 12 to 9, Marvin Harrison went down a point per game. Xavier Worthy went down three points per game. These were all standout. I mean, Malik Neighbors wasn't even in the top 90 wide receivers. That's true. Thank you. Thank you, Jason.

I did mention he was injured. But this was a new offense. And when I look at that receiving room and I've been through it. Mike, you just said you had to go through it. I had to go through it. There's a lot of different mouths to feed. He did not end up, I think he ended up basically tied. as my target leader on the team with Jacoby Myers and total targets.

But the true purest upside potential, the biggest bang for your buck in this draft for somebody that's going to make a difference on your team is still placing a bet down on Brian Thomas Jr. to bounce back to the type of form or close to it that he had in his rookie season. Jacoby Myers, we know what that dude is. We do. We've seen him on multiple franchises, the Patriots, the Raiders, Jacksonville, let me give you a word for him. Solid. Yeah, that's the issue is, is he just a good wide receiver,

or is he good enough to be that for them? Brian Thomas? No, Jacoby. Jacobi is, we know who Jacobi is. But that's what I'm saying. He's not enough. But he's not. That's my question.

Is it enough? And let me say this. You'll have to answer that as a drafter. If you overreact to Brian Thomas Jr. struggling, and you end up right and he's horrible. I promise you, Travis Hunter is the thing. If Brian Thomas Jr. is nothing, I promise you it's not just going to be

Jacobi Myers and Parker Washington. It is going to be somebody else. I think BTJ can bounce back. We've had some big-time standout rookies that had a struggle as sophomores and bounced back. Mike Evans went from the wide receiver 12 as a rookie to 24 to 3. Calvin Ridley from 19 to 26 to 4. Cooper Cup 27 to 51 to 4.

Garrett Wilson, 1932, 4. I'm not saying it will happen. I'm saying that the draft value, it's one of the best picks you can make. It is absolutely one of the best picks you can make. One of the things that is a high predictor of future success is past success. We know that it's obvious, but this was in years past. Andy, you had a my guy prediction of Todd Gurley, and then he was the running back one. that you had a my guy prediction of Cooper Cup. And he was

the number one wide receiver afterwards because they had shown that they could do this in the past. Right now, depending on your source, I'm seeing an ADP of wide receiver 31. He's being drafted at wide receiver 31. Now I have his median outcome at wide receiver 22. So I think he's a huge value. But this is a guy who two years ago was the wide receiver four. It's seventh or eighth round pick potential. Yeah, I mean, it's a wonderful shot to take. There is more talk of Jacksonville moving to two tight-in sets. BTJ is not the guy coming off the field in those situations.

He's the ex-receiver. He's going to stay out there. He led Jacksonville and first read target percentage. Even in his crappy year last year, you talked about the catch percentage. With two or fewer wide receivers on the field, he's still the dude. You know, Liam Cohen has come out and talked a little bit more about the fact that, you know, he didn't realize what BTC

is capable of doing in the slot. They need to do some better stuff with him. I don't think the utilization was questionable. He had 25% of his routes as pure go route, last year. They're only a handful of guys, and they're not names you love.

You know, Marvin Mims, Darius Slayton, D.K. Metcalf. The nine route warriors. Yeah, your catch percentage is going to be low. You know, Kishon Booty kind of got it done with that. He had the highest percentage of go routes, but not to the degree where you were reliable in fantasy. Yeah, I mean, they also figured that out a little bit. To start the year last year,

Brian and Thomas Jr. was way worse than how he finished. Like, before their by week, he was catching 49% of his targets after the buy week is 58%. So I do think that they are going to figure that out. He's going behind Cortland Sutton. Who do you want to try to take a shot on? Of course. He's going behind D.K. MacKaff, Mike.

Let me throw that one to you. Never Metcalf is what Mike has lived his life on. There's players drafted after. And he's going behind Jacoby Myers, by the way, one pick. Wow. That won't happen. Exactly why, because everyone's like, huh? I don't know.

Yeah, I think there's going to be a big overreaction. Maybe it's even inappropriate emotional reaction, but don't let it affect how you draft 2026. All right. Is it your turn? It is my turn. Not yet. Mike, what do you got for us?

I don't think we can do that now with the screen. Oh, it must be Jason. All right, I'm up. Injuries have one of the biggest effects in fantasy football, and they are not predictable. However, there's a lot of data at different positions for how often players get injured or don't. And I want us to be aware of what happened last year at the running back position and not overreact and think it's going to happen again because it ain't. Running backs last year were so healthy.

Yeah. No one got injured. It was unbelievable. I feel like that part of it was you. You made the proclamation about Bejan Robinson. We knew it was the player. Like sheer will kept Christian McCaffrey on the field plus an electrical station, plus he siphon the powers of his other teammates.

I mean, it really was. You have guys who have massive injury history like Christian McCaffrey, Jonathan Taylor. A lot of guys just didn't get injured. In fact, if you look at the players last year, Christian McCaffrey, 17 games, Jonathan Taylor, 17, Bejohn, 17, James Cook, 17, A. 18, but he was just benched in week 18. All the guys that were 16 were benched in week. 18. That was, you know, Devon A. Chan and

Giovante Williams. There was basically... There was basically only one injury of note, which was Josh Jacobs. Well, Bucky. Oh, yes, sorry, too. Bucky and Josh Jacobs, those guys were injured. But to give you a little bit of numbers of how wild it was, in 2025, the top 12 by ADP averaged 16.1 games. And it's really higher than that because most of those were week 18 sit downs from their team. Sequin Barclay didn't play, wasn't injured.

Usually you look back at the previous decade, they're only averaging 13.6 games. And that is a big difference because when you have those injuries, like Josh Jacobs missed like two games, not really. He was injured. He was playing injured. He had games where he would play like 29% of the snaps, not touch the ball. it was a very bad end of the season for Josh Jacobs. So how does this apply to not overreact to it? Well, one, you're going to have the pendulum swing like it will. Running backs were great last year. Running backs will be highly drafted again this year,

which means you're going to have some value in the first two rounds at wide receiver. I also think that this is a very good year to focus on depth at running back because, you know, people are going to be like, oh, I've got my studs, I'm solid. but also what that kind of points me towards. I'm not the hugest fan of this, but the years where you want to try it are years after what we just saw, and that's zero RB.

Zero RB is the methodology of drafting where you are going to take the backup insurance running backs late in a draft, the fodder, and you're going to wait for the injuries at running back. The reason it's probably a good year to do it is because it didn't work well this last year. When you have a bunch of... I call it the no-dub strategy.

When you have a handful of people playing that strategy in the same league, they kind of cannibalize each other, and it doesn't work well for them to succeed. But when it's like not popular, it's like, oh, that didn't work. People aren't going to be in it. And especially in the running backs are being juiced up. You get access then to elite wide receivers and the elite tight ends. Exactly. So I don't want to look. back at last year and think, man, somehow

running backs just figured out how to exercise and stretch better and they're not going to have, you know, big, massive devastating injuries this year. It will sadly happen and take advantage of it. Way to not be positive like me. Draft depth. Just talk about injuries coming. Yeah, I mean.

You're kind of like the grim reaper. That's kind of your thing, man. What are you trying to do over here? I don't know. I don't know. I just trying to rebrand live on. the air here? You can't do that, man. We're not fooling nobody. We're like 12 years into this.

We'll leave him as double stuff. Mike, what do you got? So, like Jason's talking about with the running backs, we have a situation to monitor here with the elite top tier mobile quarterbacks. Because they did not

come through last year to read it verbatim. I want you to read your headline verbatim. Which the, the, do not... For the over for your section here. Do not let last year's quarterback disappointments brainwashed. shoot. Mortal, mobile quarterbacks still slap. That's it. All right. All right. That's a

wrap it up. That's a Kyle Borgononi Oh, is that what he did? Yeah, Kyle Kyle loves say things slap. Mortal Kombat still slaps. In which it does. There you go. There's a new movie coming out. Not hashtag non-sponsor. I hate being old enough to where and a street fighter. Everything has come out three or four times. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. Like I don't, that is not a great part of growing up is just seeing the same exact movie. Want to see some new stuff? Remade three or four times is wild. They're just still trying to get it right, you know, anytime now. Crazy. But so, you know, like Lamar, 80P of quarterback two finishes at 20. Jaden Daniels, lost season to injury.

Jaylon Hertz, not nearly as good as you hope. Bo Nix. Like, it was, Bo Nix was a weird season because sometimes it was fantastic. And then, of course, Kyla Murray, who loses his job to injury and the team just no longer wanting to play him. We need to know where he is for you right this minute. Oh, Kyle. We have. Yeah.

So this is part of our rankings. Hold on. Surprise yesterday. Me and Jason had a big differential on Kyler Murray. Right now, I have him better than 80P, but he is quarterback 15 for me. 23. Oh. Jason has him at 10.

He is. Just call me a baby bear. He's currently 12 now. But yes, I had him at 10 at the beginning. But to your point, Jason also has Jaden Daniels very high. Which that's what we want to bring up here is the forgotten man. The ADP is it has shifted. So last year, Lamar Jackson was going around the two, three turn.

Right now in basketball, he's going. in the late fifth. Jaden Daniels went from a third rounder to a sixth rounder. This is value is being placed upon you and these are still the guys. Like, Jayden Daniels last year, if you look at only his

six starts, his rushing numbers were exactly what you wanted. They were nearly identical to last year. He got hurt. The completion percentage wasn't as great, but we need these guys to run and we need to know that they're going to run all year long. And Jane Daniels is now giving you a discount

and like his scramble rate was even higher in those first six games compared to his rookie season. Then Jalen Hertz, it's the same thing. You know, you had a weird, lower rushing touchdown year for Jalen Hertz. Is that the new normal or is it a couple years prior where it's just it's automatic? You know, last year only eight rushing touchdowns on the season. It was the fewest carries inside the five since 2021 for Jalen Hertz. the chance for him to regress to his mean there I think is it's very strong. And I'm not saying like I'm for sure calling these things to happen.

It's just about finding value where the market is presenting it to you. And regression studies should be a huge part of what you do when you're getting ready for drafts because that's how you know when people were a little too excited for them or the mob is too scared of this player. Yesterday we got a question, Mike, on the mailbag portion about our process for statting players out in the UDK. Jason and I got to answer for ourselves. You weren't here. We talked a little bit about you looking at pace of play. Yes. Do you want to fill in some more? Yeah, the way I started as I start with the top down of just kind of the whole team, the team environment of their pace of play is very important to me. And that's based off of the history of the team coaching staff. You know, there's definitely some projection that goes into it when. you know like last year Kellanmore goes to the Saints

he plays way faster than Peyton and like the previous regime or not who Dennis Allen yes I couldn't think of it was and you're like so you got to just kind of anticipate that's going to go on but we have enough history of Kellanmore

and then I look at okay that coach the the quarterback like just who they have their pass to rush ratio is is really important to me of is that going to stay about the same? Is it going to rise? And then that essentially just feeds my quarterback statistics of knowing those things. And then, of course, knowing how the quarterback performs. And then I just kind of filter that down to the rest of the players.

Now, we kind of talked about different starting points for what you're looking at as we build those out. Obviously, the entire set of player by player, team projections for all three of us and our consensus rankings are all going to be in the 2026 Ultimate Draft Kit. We just released the best ball rankings and the UDK Plus available right now. All of that at Ultimate DraftKit.com. If you never want to think about it again, you can just become an Ultimate Foot Clan member. You'll get access to both the UDK in its highest form, the UDK Plus. And you'll also get in-season tools, including the lineup optimizer, everything we add all the time, everywhere, extra episodes every week.

It's a great way to support the show. just go to join thefoot.com for that. We are going to say goodbye to today's episode, and we'll be back with Dynasty Week next week, trade targets, rookie sleepers, an autographed jersey giveaway next week, and a whole lot more from the fantasy footballers. Until then, I wish you good luck on the golf course.

Oh, I need it, man. Swing straight, hit the ball, definitely hit it. Step one. Goodbye. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Fantasy Footballers podcast. Join our fantasy football community on join thefoot.com. And follow us on Twitter at the FFBallers.