Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - A fantasy football draft with PFF fantasy expert Ian Hartitz

Episode Date: July 15, 2021

It's fantasy football draft season, so Matthew Coller takes a day off hardcore Vikings grinding to simulate a fantasy football draft with PFF's Ian Hartitz. Matthew and Ian go through draft picks and talk about a bunch of different players' outlooks, from Zeke Elliott to Alvin Kamara to DK Metcalf to Russell Wilson. Ian is even forced to pick a kicker and then guess the top 4 fantasy quarterbacks from 2009. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and joining me, Pro Football Focus's fantasy expert, Ian Harditz, who I know we talked with recently. But this is a big week for fantasy football for, I mean, of course, the universe, but at Pro Football Focus as well. The fantasy football guide is coming out. Ian, how are you? Doing great, man. Good to be back on the show. And you said it, I feel like we got fantasy football back in the air.

I mean, look, you and me, we're 365 days a year grinding this stuff. But it's good to see, you know, the general public seemingly getting back into it. I don't have time for basketball, soccer, and all this stuff. So I'm happy everyone's starting to get on the same page. Fantasy football kind of reminds me of like NASCAR with the Daytona 500, where it's the first thing sort of that begins the football season when people get really excited is when they do their first fantasy football draft. So I am going to do a fantasy football draft live with you,

a simulation, and we're going to go through your strategy for making your picks. But first, I wanted to ask you in leagues where you have to pick a defense, how does one go about picking a defense? And specifically, I mean, the Vikings defense is so overhauled. It's not like you can look at last year's stats really with defenses, right? It seems like it's kind of a tricky beast. Oh yeah. And that's the thing, but you said it first in leagues where you have to pick a defense because people, if you're doing a draft in July or whatever, and you don't have to don't take backup running backs and hope that, you know, something like a Le'Veon Bell holdout happens, or you get these random opportunities to just have more upside in your roster. So, you know, defenses and kickers, it's just so easy to

play the waiver wire during the season. If you can help it. I will say the one thing I really like to look at for a defensive stat is it's called havoc. I've actually seen it more in the college football streets, but basically it's a tackles for a loss no gain, plus forced fumbles, plus interceptions, plus batter passes and deflections, plus pressures. Havoc, just like it sounds, all divided by play. So the top defenses last year in Havoc rate were the Steelers and Buccaneers, only two teams over 50%, and the Saints, Bills, Rams, Ravens, Washington Eagles, Seahawks, and Dolphins. So that's kind of the main thing. I mean, at this point in today's NFL,

with how many points every single offense is putting up, we just got to try to play for, you know, negative plays, try to create some action. Because, you know, you get one, like, forced fumble defensive touchdown, and pretty much everything is good. Like, I remember that 54-51 Chiefs-Rams game from a few years ago. Like, the Rams gave up 51 points, but they still were a quality defense that week.

So I think they scored twice. So, you know, more than anything, I'm paying attention to that pass rush, like how often teams are blitzing and trying to get after them. The Ravens were in there, like they're consistently doing that. So I would just say, you know, Vikings, probably not going to be a team. I'd be targeting too heavily, but in the right matchup, you know, if we think they have an advantage at the line of scrimmage, that'd be the route I'd be trying to go.

Well, and with the Vikings, I mean, I still don't see their sack total being super high. They've got Daniil Hunter back and they signed Sheldon Richardson, but Sheldon Richardson is not a double digit sack guy. They have two nose tackles. The other defensive end position right now is very much up in the air between DJ Wanham and Steven Weatherly, which neither one of those guys you're writing in for 10 sacks. So if you have to rely on that

and Zimmer's defenses have not always been huge turnover defenses. Like a lot of times they're not big risk taking. It's a lot of play, very solid, get teams into third down and long. Then you send your blitz, then you look for your big play. But I've always found it interesting that when you go through, you would think, oh, they've got all this talent. They must get tons of interceptions and tons of sacks. And even, I mean, at their best, they were getting a lot of sacks, but even then it wasn't like 60 sacks in a season. Yeah. I just pulled it up last year. They were 23rd and a blitz percentage. One of only looks like nine or 10 teams that were under 26%. So, yeah, I mean, it's a, again,

fantasy defense is so much different than a real life defense. We need to treat it as such. So, you know, obviously Mike Zimmer knows what he's doing out there. I'm not telling him to change anything like that. Just when we're focusing on these teams. Yeah. I think those that are blitzing, just trying to, again, create the most havoc up front.

Those are the ones you should be focusing on. Well, I always like that. You have a stat for absolutely everything and got to and then we can discern like what it says about real football what it says about fantasy football uh okay let's just let's just do a fantasy draft simulation here i'm not gonna make you pick a bench we're just gonna go through a couple of starters and we will pick a kicker because we have to pick a kicker so i know right yeah we have to pick a kicker absolutely what are you talking about i'm never picking it i am making you pick a kicker so i literally didn't do in the whole scott fishbowl they said you can put kickers in the super flex i said i am protesting never kick never kickers vikings fans

would agree that kickers just aren't necessary in this world. So here's what I did. I made it a 12-team league, and I gave us the fifth overall pick because I didn't want to be first. Here's how it played out. Tell me if this is kind of how you see things playing out. Christian McCaffrey, Saquon Barkley, Delvin Cook, Derrick Henry. That makes a lot of sense to me. Yes, Saquon's been the only one that sometimes falls out of that group. I don't know why.

I'm happy to scoop him up whenever he does. But to me, that's been the consensus big four, really all off season long. After that, I am, I would be going with Ezekiel Elliott as the RB five, you know, people are coming down on the guy hard and I get it. He did not look good at the end of last year, but as bad as that was, he still finished the season as the RB eight or RB nine, even points per game. He was a borderline RB one. And that was worst case that was without Dak, without the offensive line with Dak, he was the RB three, even without the offensive line. So it's funny how a couple of years ago, we were actually having like legit conversations about who was more important to the Cowboys offense. But either way, I mean, Zeke, you know, I'm not buying the whole best

shape of his life reports or anything like that. I'm buying that the Cowboys still have 90 million reasons to give this dude as many touches as he can handle. So he's been nothing except, you know, a top five really running back with Dak under center over the years. So I think Zeke is the easy pick for RB5. When were you in the best shape of your life? Oh, man, I would have to say like 19 right before I quit college football before my sophomore year, I was, I was always an undersized linebacker, man. I finally got to 215, maybe had like two practices and it was like another concussion. So peace. Yeah. For, for me, it was after my, I think freshman year of college, I worked road construction for an entire summer. Yeah. I was,

I mean, pretty jacked after working road construction. Those forearms are probably popping out of your shirt. That's right. It was not like, I wasn't doing super complicated work or anything like incredibly manly, but it was just like eight hours of physical labor every day after being mostly lazy the rest of the time. Tough job, man. Yeah. Definitely not best shape of my life at this moment. Anyway. So here's what we got on the board. So those we got on the board.

So those guys are off the board. Those are the top selections. I've got Alvin Kamara. I've got Jonathan Taylor, Nick Chubb, Ezekiel Elliott, who you just talked about. So would you go Ezekiel Elliott over Jonathan Taylor, over Alvin Kamara? Because it seems like Taylor is getting a lot of buzz as a guy who could emerge as one of the elite running backs in the NFL. Absolutely, because look at these guys.

They're just most likely scenarios, even best case scenarios. Alvin Kamara will always be splitting that backfield with Latavius Murray. It's why Kamara has never had over 200 carries in a season. I have enough concerns about Taysom or Jameis being under center that he might not catch. I mean, I think he went 81, 81, 81, 83 reception. So I don't know if he's going to hit 80 again. Sean Payton's a smart guy. He's going to keep him involved.

But it wasn't just the Taysom starts. In the Taysom starts, we saw his receptions go down. In the Teddy Bridgewater starts last year, we saw the touchdowns go down because the offense wasn't as good. So I think that's the second factor people don't necessarily think about as much because without Brees, man, like it might not be a top 12 scoring offense like we're used to. So Kamara will get his. I just think he's more of a mid to low end RB1 than we're used to. And then with Jonathan Taylor, it's like Naeem Hines is their pass down back.

And now going from Rivers to Wentz, we're going to lose overall target share of the running backs. That's a fact. And we could also probably lose some points per game uh you know juice i mean once maybe he gets back to the guy even like 2018 2019 we take that but the 2020 version man was horrific i know it's a better offensive situation in the but we just need a lot of stuff to go right for a guy that again is no matter what sharing the backfield with naeem hines and i brought up you know marlon mack Mack and Jordan Wilkins and people are like, Oh, you're fading Taylor because of Mack. No, but the guy is going to have a 15 to 20% snap rate probably. And with these top 12 running backs, like give me the guy like Zeke,

who is the running back in his backfield. Pollard plays a little bit. Usually most backfields these days are to RB, but Zeke McCaffrey, you know, Dalvin Saquon, those are like the true kind of unicorns. And I would say maybe even Joe Nixon this year, maybe cam acres too. Those are the potential unicorns. I could just take over the whole damn backfield. And for me, that possibility is worth chasing the upside.

The fact that, you know, you have to focus on what are the rotations like with some of these guys, it adds like an extra layer. And that's why it would make sense here to pick Ezekiel Elliott. So that's going to be our pick, Ezekiel Elliott, because even with Tony Pollard, as Vikings fans saw him run by Chris Jones for touchdown,

that was not a nice attempt at a tackle by Chris Jones, the one-time Vikings cornerback. But in terms of usage, that makes a lot of sense. Nick Chubb doesn't catch the passes. So that's the reason we're staying away from Nick Chubb. Nick Chubb. And this is why I don't like full point per reception fantasy football. Like it just doesn't accurately show the game because Nick Chubb,

we all know is a top five real life running back. He's never finished better than the PPR RB8. So doesn't catch the passes. And not that he really can't. I mean, I think it's kind of like Jonathan Taylor. Like, okay, they're not McCaffrey or Eckler, but they're also not going to drop every pass thrown their way. Unfortunately, Kareem Hunt's going to be there doing his thing.

So, you know, Taylor, Chubb, they both are good enough. You know, same with like Derek Henry. They're good enough to maybe be an exception to the rule, but generally we want those pass catchers. And as good as the offensive lines are, man, volume just typically trumps the offensive lines when it comes down to it in fantasy land. You know what I like about every time we get to connect and talk is that PFF in general doesn't discuss running backs a whole lot.

Right. I mean, the whole anytime you see something doesn't matter, there's probably a lot more to it. It's a lot more nuanced. But just in general, it's not a huge discussion. But you you get excited about running backs and we're close enough in to the same age. You're a little younger than me, but when running backs, one MVP all the time, like I still, I still have that in my soul that, uh, that you can love a Sean Alexander or in, in my youth, a Barry Sanders. So anyway, we'll take Ezekiel Elliott here with our first pick and it will go

zoink, zoink, zoink, zoink here. And we'll get to our second one. Always a running back in the first round, by the way, never anything else. I would say if one of those big five that just went in the first five picks are available, I'm taking one of them. I like, I think they're calling it, the kids are calling it the anchor RB these days, you get your stud running back in round one and then you move on. But it just depends if I'm at the turn and, you know, Tyreek and Devante are still available or Kelsey, I might go a wide receiver early. I would say though, I try to get at least one of about the top 15 running backs or so after kind

of Clyde and Gibson and Najee, after those kinds of guys go, then we get into what they're calling the RB dead zone where it's like, okay, when I don't hate the guys, you know, like Dave Montgomery, Miles Sanders, like ETN, there's certainly a path for these guys to ball out. But all of a sudden, like people are panicking about the running backs and it's like, okay, do I want, you know,

David Montgomery or a legit top 15 wide receiver I still have on the board. Usually at that point I'm going receiver. Right. RB dead zone is my metal album actually uh so here we are a second round i'll tell you who the top guys on the board are we've got george kittle dk metcalf aj brown darren waller are the suggested top potential picks here justin jefferson is off the board so So both Vikings projected top fantasy players. I wasn't able to get my hands on. So just before I picked, I missed out on DeAndre Hopkins and Kelvin Ridley. And I think Kelvin Ridley would be a guy that if you get a chance to pick him, just pick him, because I wouldn't be surprised at all if he ends up with now without Julio there leading the entire NFL in receiving.

But the top guys, George Kittle, DK Metcalf, A.J. Brown, Darren Waller. I'll give you what – I mean, I feel like George Kittle is just going to get a bleep ton of passes, whether it's from Garoppolo or if it's from Trey Lance. But especially if it's Trey Lance, then we're talking about, like, here's your security blanket that you can throw to all the time. But that's what Darren Waller is too for the Raiders.

Yeah, I have Waller slightly ahead of Kittle. You know, obviously they're two and three, either way you want to put it. So not the biggest, you know, stretch or anything like that. But to me, it's okay. If Trey Lance is under center, you know, or Jimmy G, I just feel like waller has the better qb situation in terms of what we've seen it's not that lance can't be better but you know

derrick carr was really good last year and i'm you know i saw some quotes uh you know unnamed execs calling him a top 10 qb chill out but he was very good last year waller's gonna have more volume he is the legit undisputed number one in ve. Kittle could be. Ayuk and Debo, they're also there. I mean, Waller is just, you know, he could push for 150 targets and not many other tight ends other than Kelsey can even say that. And then I just think also we want players like the Vikings last year that are attached to terrible defenses. Raiders certainly have that a little bit more than the 49ers.

So I'm team Waller over Kittle. It's certainly close. We were talking pre-show about, you know, I'm building an article about, you know, football team earth would put out if aliens invaded in like a space jam situation. I have Kittle out there. Cause I think he is the best like real life tight end, but just in terms of projected targets and stuff,

I would give that nod to Darren Waller. I'm with you on Ridley. He's my wide receiver five bumped him up there after the trade. So we would have snagged him. Otherwise our, um, like Eckler Mixon already gone. Uh, Eckler is gone. Let me see about mixing. Uh, hold on. Scrolling up. Everyone just wait. I'm scrolling up. Uh, Eckler is definitely gone. And, uh, Mixon is not though. Mixon is still on the board. Would you take two running backs here? Yeah.

I'm going to go two running backs, and then I'm not going to take another one until like round seven or eight, probably maybe get like an A.J. Dillon type in that range. So Metcalf is my wide receiver eight. Mixon is my RB 10. So going a little heavy on the running back. But again, I love when I can get two of those top 15 guys. And Mixon, man, people act like he's just been burning everyone.

He got hurt last year, just like Metccafee did just like saquon did like quit holding the injury against mixing and nobody else he averaged 0.25 fewer ppr points per game than jonathan taylor and people are like just appalled when you're like well i mean you know his only competition for pass down worked you yvonne bernard's gone nightmines isn't mean, again, just in terms of pure projected volume, Mixon is a top six back. I think people are letting, you know, yesterday's sorrows influence tomorrow's fantasy draft. Okay.

So I would pick him, but I set it up. So there's only one running back. So we wouldn't be drafting for the rest of time. I'll go DK Metcalf then. Go DK Metcalf. All right, good. AJ Brown probably just won't get the targets, right? Yeah, bro. He was my wide receiver too before Julio came to town. That's the problem. I mean,

he'll be efficient as hell again, but okay. He'll be, you know, a top 10, top 12 wide receiver. He's still kind of going closer to six or seven, which, you know, you're not going to be mad about having AJ Brown and your fancy team. I just think, you know, when it comes down to projected target volume, I give Metcalf a slight nod ahead of him. I got Metcalf eight, Jefferson nine, and AJB 10. Okay. So going off the board, just in front of us, Julio Jones, Allen Robinson, who's going to get a lot of footballs, Josh Allen also. And I think it's just Mahomes and Allen who have gone so far. When do we pick a quarterback? Not yet, right?

Oh, Mahomes and Allen already gone round two. If I see those guys available round four round five i might take uh one earlier but before that now i'm just letting someone else do it it's just it's so deep man i think uh trey lance is the guy everyone should be looking to get at some point in their drafts because i was talking about this where we need to separate like these rankings competitions and like fantasy projections from who you actually want on your fantasy team because I know Trey Lance might not start for like the first five six weeks so if you're just trying to say who's going to score more fancy points in 2021 between

Trey Lance and Sam Darnold you should probably say Darnold he's going to start 17 games in all likelihood who do you want on your team obviously Trey Lance so I think you know being able to separate that and know that you know we're looking at more of a points per game perspective and really chasing that ceiling, you know, like Ricky Bobby said, first or last, that's our strategy and these things. I think, you know, someone like Trey Lance makes a lot of sense. If you end up not being able to get one of the big five or six or so QBs. Hey guys, I know we have all had this conversation at home.

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there. I really liked what I saw from C.D. Lamb with an actual quarterback and not Andy Dalton or Ben DiNucci, then I think that C.D. Lamb would be ready to break out, but also he's going to have other guys taking away his targets. Terry McLaurin has a little more competition with Curtis Samuel being signed to football team, but I really like Terry McLaurin as a guy that is getting deep bombs from Ryan Fitzpatrick. You know Fitzpatrick is

going to air it out or uh i'm assuming waller's gone uh yeah waller's god damn uh i have them all right next to each other i'm mclaren uh 11 cooper 12 cd 13 so you know if someone disagrees with me out there i don't necessarily blame me here i would go terry mclaren though now i mean fitzpatrick best qb of his career i mean ter, Terry was low key starting to have this like Allen Robinson, Andre Johnson trajectory with the guys he was catching balls from, you know, Kyle Allen, Dwayne Haskins, Case Keenan was there for a couple of games. Sorry, Vikings fans. I know Case had a good year with you guys, but otherwise it's been a little bit more hit or miss.

So Fitz is going to objectively be the best quarterback of McLaurin's career. And it's not just that it's what Fitz has done for his number one receivers, man. Stevie Johnson, Brandon Marshall, Devontae Parker. They're not his second contracts he's gotten, these guys. It's absolutely absurd. And in eight seasons where Fitz has had double-digit starts, his number one wide receivers had target totals of 128, 128, 137, 134, 141, 146, 148, and 173. So McLclaurin you know curtis will get his logan thomas is there you know the running backs will be out there but i have no reason to believe terry's not going to

be the undisputed number one in this offense and that's going to be a lot of targets for a pretty damn good receiver yeah um stevie johnson is it's funny because i know somebody who was a number two wide receiver for the bills, Donald Jones. And I remember talking to him about Stevie Johnson and he was like, Fitzpatrick would just look at him the whole time. It was like, can I, can I get the ball? Can I, you know, I'm open over here and he's really locked in on Stevie Johnson,

which may be the reason for some of his high interception totals locking into number one. He was the only guy that, yeah. I mean, Fitz wasn't afraid of Revis. He's like, I got you, Stevie. Your targets are still coming. That's good. That is good memory right there because Stevie Johnson is the only human being who ever owned Darrell Revis. He's got a sun. He's got a sunny spot. You know, he's got his launch.

He's got his beach chair out in Revis Island. Just chilling. He's the only wide receiver there. I asked Terrence Newman about playing against Stevie Johnson once. And he said he does stuff that like, doesn't make any sense or that you've just never seen before. He just like freelances and figures things out, which is generally not advisable when playing any position in the NFL. But that just seemed to work for him. I think you see the influence with Keenan Allen, too, because Stevie had that one year on the Chargers where I think Keenan was a rookie. And like that's to me, the closest thing we have today, just in terms of some of the route running

chops is Keenan. And I know Keenan achieved probably a little more overall in the counting stuff, but just both awesome wide receivers. Loved watching Stevie. Yeah. Stevie was a lot of fun. Only those teams had been a lot of fun. All right. It may be time for us to pick our quarterback here. So I picked Terry McLaurin to me, the most underrated wide receiver in the NFL. If, if there's any such thing as being underrated in the NFL, since, you know, everybody knows everything about football, but anyway, here's what I got. Russ, Justin Herbert, Aaron Rogers. These are my top suggestions. Herbert is really interesting to me because there's a little bit of concern about how he was more effective when he was pressured than when he wasn't pressured.

And there were some big moment stuff where you kind of went like, is everything firing up in the old noggin there, Herbert? But I mean, if you're talking about rising star quarterbacks, you know, I mean, Herbert is like the guy that we're talking about. The ESPN piece where they interviewed the executives and so forth already have him as a top 10 quarterback. I think that's a little aggressive because we've seen other guys with big arms like Carson Wentz fall off at times, or we even saw Baker Mayfield have a great first year. And then the sophomore slump, how are you feeling about, um, Justin Herbert? So the good news is that they've charged, you know, the chargers, one of news is that they've charged you know the chargers one

of the teams are really lauded throughout the draft to what they were able to do with the offensive line like they have taken major steps to fix that problem because yeah the fact he was better under pressure makes no sense and you know we have certain stable statistics and pressure is not one of them it's you know first and second down passing when you're not being pressured like those are types of things we see year to year stabilize more. So it's not that Herbert, you know, when he regresses inevitably against pressure, it's not that he's bad against pressure. He's awesome.

Like the things he did against, you know, free rushers, he had to throw against the saints, like literally two dudes is off the edge out random, the sideline through a dart for a touchdown. So he always has that off script ability, which is huge. You know, we might see him take a small step back, but for me, he's still my QB seven because the ceiling he's seen with what we've seen from similar rookie QBs. I mean,

it keeps up more times than not when you're as good as he was since 2010, we've only had seven rookie QBs or excuse me. Yeah. Seven, I think finished as top 12 fantasy producers, Cam Newton, Andrew Luck, RG three, Russell Wilson, Dak Prescott, Kyler Murray, and Justin Herbert. So, man, that's good company for him to already be in. You know, Keenan, Mike Williams, we added Josh Palmer to the equation. We got some, you know, Jalen Guyton, Tyron Johnson, no lack of places to go with the ball.

For me and with Herbert, I mean, the second half of the year, I thought one of the issues was Austin Eckler came back in and we saw his average target depth plummet at first. You know, Eckler is one of the best players, but it was similar to the Christian McCaffrey thing. Like you don't want your running back always being the first read. It's great. You know, if you can get the ball down to him when the situation calls for it, absolutely. But, you know, try to throw downfield if it's open. And I did see him kind of break out of that. You know, he had the bad New England loss, you know, tough game against Vic Vic Fangio and the Broncos but they were still signs of progress even in the second half of the year even though it wasn't quite as blistering as his original start was so out of that group

of quarterbacks and I think we you just want me to fill up the roster a little bit here normally I wait far longer on quarterbacks at this point but I would still go with Russell Wilson I mean man before he had that second half collapse, we were seeing one of the best fantasy seasons ever. This dude was putting up like 30 per game. And, you know, they talk about wanting to run the ball a little bit more in Seattle this year. I don't think they had the defense to be able to do that, man.

I mean, you look at their quote-unquote rebound at the end of last year when the defense turned up and they started running the ball more. Here were the quarterbacks they faced. Dwayne Hne Haskins Wentz a hurt version of Jared Goff CJ Bethard Sam Darnold and Colt McCoy before that they were 28th in points per game allowed so they can talk about wanting to establish it all they want when you're down a couple touchdowns by halftime I think Russ is gonna have to get back to throwing he's always been nothing other than a fancy QB one man I don't expect that to stop here in 2021 and let me ask you about rogers though because we have to get everyone's opinion on rogers uh i think he's coming back i'm gonna just die on that hill but uh i could all i

could see like in a fantasy draft situation everybody gets together and they're doing their fantasy draft and there's that one guy who's like i believe in rogers i'm picking him right here like i i think that would be me i would just i would just because he can win mvp again like they're running back the same team and i think he could outperform these other two guys uh it would just take a lot of belief that he's coming back yeah i would say you know wait until you're in a situation where you can get them like outside the top 10. Then I think he's a value work chasing. And, you know, if you're doing a best ball tournaments over at underdog fantasy, we're like, you're trying to come in first out of like hundreds of thousands of people then. Okay. Yeah. Like I'm, I've been loving to build Packers stacks at their discount right now with the uncertainty in the air. I am

just a little bit concerned because once again, this offense didn't really add anyone to the picture with all due respect to Amari Rogers. I just don't expect them to have this huge year one role. You know, every year, the free agent, why does Steve has come through? We just pray. One of them goes to green Bay. None of them ever do. And I know, you know, they've made the most of it. MBS is, I think, you know, as you were saying, can anyone be underrated in today's NFL, but MBS gets a lot of shit for the drops,

but I think generally he does his job as a field stretcher quite well. Devontae, we don't need to talk about how he's one of the best to do it in the game right now. But I would just say with Rodgers, remember before last year, we were seeing him look awfully mortal. And he said it himself. He's like, my average years are still career years for a lot of guys, which is true.

But everything we talk about with some of these quarterbacks, like regressing from their year. He's like my average years are still career years for a lot of guys, which is true. But you know, everything that we were, everything we talk about with some of these quarterbacks, you know, like regressing from new year. And I've already said that twice. So I don't want to just hang my hat on regression. I hate that, but it's so hard to be as good as Rogers was last year. I mean, that touchdown rate was only equal by like what he did in 2011. So for me,

there's enough uncertainty with the situation and just the potential for Rogers to, you know, resume being more of a mid to low end QB one, as opposed to a weekly world beater, uh, enough uncertainty there where I wouldn't be getting too crazy with it. And, you know, just your regular redraft leagues. You know, I'm going to use that when somebody gives me a hard time on Twitter. It's like, look, my average podcast would be the best one of your life. So that's all right. So we'll draft Russell Wilson here. And, uh, look, my average podcast would be the best one of your life. So that's it. All right. So we'll draft Russell Wilson here. And is this the point where it might be the point because I made the team very small. So it might be the point where we get defenses and oh, we need

a tight end still. So I've got Dallas Goddard, Robert Tanyan, Logan Thomas, Mike Gusecki, kind of like Mike Gusecki here kind of like Mike Gusecki here. So I think Gusecki is going to be one of the biggest busts of this entire year. I understand that he did really good things. Yeah. I'm sorry, man. I mean, there's just shit. Space jam dunked on me right there. Here's my thing with Gusecki. He has been a wide receiver for the dolphins and he has played last year,

set over 70% of his snaps and the slaughter out wide wide their three wide receiver sets are going to be will fuller davante parker and jaylen wattle where is your sick he gonna play he's probably fair point yeah he's probably gonna split in line snaps with durham smith i think the guy's name is and maybe even rotate more i you know i've seen the spark score i get it you know it's borderline erotic but i don't think the guy can really do enough blocking in the offense to be out there full-time and when he was finally you know putting up some numbers at the end of last year yeah he was the one guy him and two were having some chemistry with but you know we had Len Bowden Josh Perkins Mac Hollins like the most random assortment ever of guys so I think you know Jalen Waddle is their slot receiver now so just

someone I'm certainly uh lower on the most. I go with Dallas Goddard out of that group. I mean, we get like a new Zach Ertz trade report seemingly every three days this off season. And I'm under the belief that he's not going to return back to Philly eventually. I mean, I hope, you know, same thing with Rogers, except the opposite. I just think Ertz has gone at some point. That's everything we've been hearing throughout this whole off season and Goddard, I think he's right there with the Vikings' own Irv Smith

as just these quote-unquote backup tight ends that very well could be more productive than the starter if really given that opportunity. So I've heard some good things from Eagles beat writers saying this is not going to be the sort of bottom five pass attempt offense that a lot of people think. And while Devontae Smith, I think is going to get his, Dial Scott has that rare opportunity to be his team's number two pass game option, even as a tight end. Okay. We won't debate the kicker of the defense,

but Washington football team defense seems like a good pick. So I'm going to go with that. Whole defensive line is full of first round picks, man. And they added William Jackson. That was a nice little under the cover sounding, I thought. Right. They could win the division. I mean just defense and ryan fitzpatrick variants and they could also go 5 and 12 because ryan fitzpatrick is ryan fitzpatrick all right this is the this is very serious will lutz jason sanders matt prater or rodrigo blankenship

oh man give me uh i almost just want to refuse give me uh give me jason sanders i think he just got paid so he must be doing something right okay uh vikings fans hate matt prater because he is a alien i mean he's he's a kicker for the aliens that you're trying to play against. He kicked one from, I think it was 58 to tie the Vikings in 2016. Oh my God. That was good for, I mean, you know, that's like the cliche. It was good for him, but it really was. It was like the hardest I've ever seen someone kick the ball. So we'll go with 58.

Hitting halfway up the net from 58. Yes. It was truly incredible. All right. So now it gives us a great, if anybody wants to play with this, I'm using draft wizard.com. So it gave us a C. Yeah. I'm not surprised. It doesn't love you.

Draft the QB in round four and reached on him at that. You should hit it. We drafted a freaking kicker. Like, come on. That should be a C right there. Everyone has to draft a kicker in this league that I invented for this fantasy purposes only. So you would complain about drafting a kicker. That was that I invented for this fantasy purposes only so you would complain about drafting a kicker. That was my purpose. Goal achieved, Matt. All right. So here's what I got two more things for you. First, I want you to guess who the top fantasy quarterbacks were top three fantasy quarterbacks in 2009. Cause we did that bit before. And so I'll give

you a second to think about that top three in 2009 in fantasy points i won't make you do 10 here's what i want though since the fantasy football guide is coming out i want you to just give your best broad fantasy football advice like when someone comes up to you and says hey aren't you that pff fantasy guy ian harditz It's helping my fantasy team, bro. What are you telling? The one big thing I would say is try to draft players at their floor as opposed to their ceiling. I mean, you look at someone like Clyde Edwards, a layer who I'm sure burned a lot of people last year. I drafted him as the RB four or RB five. Like, yeah, he needed to have a best case scenario ceiling to reach that. Now he's going as the RB 15. He's still

Andy reads lead RB one going into his second year. The guy had the fourth most touches in the league before Le'Veon Bell came in the equation. Now he's out of the picture. So Clyde's right there. You know, I'll have articles go out. Like I was like, which, you know, $40 running back should be focusing on. Everyone's going, none of them. Like, it's just a disgusting committee. It's like, yeah, but they're all being priced as RB3s. They're going outside the top 30. Like those are situations where you can get a grip on. And, you know, there's some also just quickly, when you see a disparity between two guys

that we know they're going to have equal targets, you know, really consider just going the cheaper option. Debo Samuel, Brendan Ayuk. Ayuk's going several rounds higher. Debo might very well have the better role of Trey Lance's there because all he's doing is getting these kind of RB-esque routes as it is. DJ Moore, Robbie Anderson's another example, just too wide compared to what we would expect. Tyler Boyd's going 15 picks behind,

you know, Chase and Higgins for whatever reason. So, you know, just really take a look once you, cause you know, first four or five rounds of your fantasy draft, it's just kind of like, don't mess it up, stick more to ADP. You know, you're taking just one baller compared to another baller. So I don't think it's, you know, that different stuff. Like, you know, we can talk about Cam Akers, Rashawn Taylor. You're pretty happy with either one on your team at the end of the day. So I would just say, as you get in those later rounds, like really focused on guys that might have the opportunity to, you know, take a leap up in the top tier, as opposed to, you know, maybe someone where you're like, well, we the top tier as opposed to you know maybe someone where

you're like well we need a lot of things to go right just for them to meet their draft position as always uh seems to come down to how well you kind of read the situation for the particular team all right 2009 before we wrap up top three fantasy quarterbacks from that year. Actually, you know what? I need to make it top four because fourth is because fourth is so good. It's just, it's like very random. It seems so top four. The first three are who you would think. And then fourth is pretty good. All right. Breeze has got to be in there. That's correct. Peyton. Peyton is fifth. So very close.

Rivers. Rivers is not on the list. He's a little, he's a little lower. He's like ninth. I think eight, nine. Romo. Romo's a great guest. He's sixth. You're right. You're right in that ballpark. Is Rogers under center yet? Rogers is number one. Yep. So it's got Breeze Rogers. Rogers Rogers under center yet? Rogers is number one. Yep. Okay. So it's Rogers Breezer one, two, number three. It's the 2009 season on this podcast.

This is why I asked it. Just think about that. Oh man. 2009. The season. I have a brain fart on a Vikings podcast. I know. I know.

I'm trying to remember. Oh, is that the far of here? Yes, it's the, that's correct. There you go. Let's go. Okay. And you said we got one more though. The fourth one is the reason I asked top four. So you've nailed all the other great quarterbacks of the time, Manning, Romo rivers, Roethlisberger. You got Donovan McNabb is still hanging around Eli Manning.

Those are the guys after this guy and let me just say that um play action offenses didn't just start the other day okay and let's just say that this wide receiver that this guy played with would have been considered one of the most underrated for the time oh gosh i'm choking here um there is a there's a vikings connection to their offensive system with this quarterback oh matt shaw that's right got it mad job play action makes sense all right you helped me out on two of them but i feel like i i feel like i showed better than the uh 2004 fantasy rankings thing we did last time that's right well great job and always great to have you it's just super fun.

And I hope that this helped because I know within the next couple of weeks, everybody's going to start dialing up their, their fantasy stuff. And, uh, you are the best of the best. So people should follow you at I heart it's H a R T I T Z. And, uh, you know, there was, we had cox on the show and his twitter was cox sports and then your i heart it's it's just what are we doing here with these when i got uh when i got suspended i used to uh try to rip off like the videos real quick and i'd tweet like live highlights i was trying to be like you know the wove of the uh nfl and nfl was quicker like yeah i cut that out and

they suspended me from twitter but i remember uh my, Adam Levitan trying to help me out. And he like asked Twitter, like, what can my friend at I heart it's due to get unsuspended. And someone was just like, I don't know, maybe have a, you know, Twitter name that sounds less like a porn star. Touche. Okay. Fair. But not, not, not we're back in. It's all good. But yeah, man, always good to talk ball. All right. And the PFF Fantasy Football Guide, sign up at pff.com. You'll get that. I have all

the tools. I get the college and the draft thing and the fantasy thing. So I've got everything. So pff.com and the PFF Fantasy Football Podcast for more insights like this. Thanks, man. We'll do it again soon. Absolutely.