Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - PFF's Ian Hartitz projects Dalvin Cook, Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

Matthew Coller gets together with PFF fantasy guru Ian Hartitz to simulate a fantasy draft and analyze the outlooks of the Vikings' star players. Will Cook actually catch more passes? How much could a role change effect Justin Jefferson? Does Adam Thielen still have big numbers in him? Plus would you take Justin Herbert over Patrick Mahomes?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here joining me on the show. Ian Harditz from Pro Football Focus Fantasy Podcast and, man. I am doing great. Officially got football this week. I know it's just the Hall of Fame game, but as someone that spent way too much time watching the USFL, I will take what I can get here. It's at least a little better than just one training camp report after another. Not that I don't appreciate you and everyone else in the industry doing a great job with it, but I just want lights. I want live game action.

Is that too much to ask, man? You don't factor a whole lot there right when you're doing your your fantasy rankings and everything else when you're like oh look at this highlight of this play and this guy did this no i mean look i i do think all of it can be useful to an extent but i mean we just gotta be careful man i saw the one report yesterday um i won't throw anyone under the bus because i i don't know what they heard i was not chargers camp but we have one reporter saying that isaiah spiller had gotten every single like first he was the only backup running back in first teen reps and he was

the clear number two behind austin eckler that would be something great to know but then as i'm scrolling through shout out at 32 uh beat writers the twitter account they compile everything amazing job by them i'm scrolling through that and I see another chargers beat reporter talking about how Larry round tree I've been running with the ones and having a good day. So one of those things where I think you need to, to your point, treat a lot of it with a grain of salt.

Ultimately, we're looking for anything that helps with the death chart. And that's why the starter series of preseason games are what ended up ultimately mattering the most, who is actually out there with the starters who's getting starter treatment maybe resting at the same time you know maybe remandre stevenson going first in a random ass drill doesn't mean he's actually the definitive rb1 now maybe miles sanders is happening to run with the twos one day doesn't mean he's the backup running back now just make sure to uh you know approach cautiously yeah and mistakes

get made sometimes because you can't go back and review the tape so sometimes you might think like oh that guy was out there for this many and it was only one and so you're saying in your report like oh it looked like he was taking first team reps because it was just one that you remembered and you were looking somewhere out like it's hard to look in 22 places at once when you're covering plays so you kind of go on who's standing out but i've always gone mostly on who's lining up where and how often and and then you try to pick up on like hey this guy was used during a situational drill like maybe there's something there but it's usually the accumulation over an entire camp so if it's you know 14 padded practices

or whatever and somebody's mixing in with the ones especially later on over and over you're like okay maybe there's something going on there but especially this early you're right like some somebody could have had to use the bathroom and somebody else has to take their their rep that does happen uh it's a little bit of a long walk off the field to the restroom and and so you know you will see that uh sometimes that reports get thrown out there but i think that it probably is the hardest to figure out like is the team doing something serious here because we've had full-on position battles where we've tracked it the whole year and then the or the whole camp and the one guy gets

cut it'll just be like wait he was battling for first team reps and then they cut him at the end because they wanted to see if he could handle the first team competition if he couldn't they were going to cut him so you really never know what the team is thinking you're only trying to kind of put together pieces and that's why it's important i think what you said before where if it is something they've been saying the entire offseason from march through august again and again and again now maybe i'm more willing to trust what they have to say cliff kingsbury will not stop saying good things about rondale more he hasn't done it all he hasn't stopped all offseason ever since christian kirk left he's been saying christian was that guy now rondale is going to be that guy in the slot sounds pretty good to me for

someone going outside the top 50 wide receivers right now man and just looking at the personnel moves and I know some people have you know come back at this point and just ask like well what did Cliff say about Rondale last year and right after the draft man he basically said we have DeAndre we have AJ and then Rondale kind of gets in the next group and a lot of us were like wait did he just crown AJ Green over Rondale more there and he did so I don't know why he just crown aj green over rondeo more there and he did so i don't know why he did but he did and he told us he was going to so i do feel like we can't actually trust a little bit what cliff is going to say again what he's been saying at all off season long but um also your point about where players line up it's interesting because

every year in this time we always get the backup running, seeing more work out of the slot, seeing more work as a wide receiver. With that said, man, Tony Pollard and Naeem Hines, they are two of the rare running backs that could actually pull that off. I think they're good enough receivers. They're electric enough in space to actually do that. And look, I think we've beaten the dead horse enough. The Cowboys are not going to bench Zeke for Tony Pollard as much as we would like them to do that.

Will the Cowboys play Tony Pollard behind guys like Noah Brown TJ Vasher Jalen Tolbert and stuff though because at this point like are they going to bring in a second tight end is Jake Ferguson going to be keeping Tony Pollard off the field because behind CeeDee Lamb man that wide receiver room is as unproven as pretty much anyone in the league at this point I think there's a similar sentiment in the Colts wide receiver room outside of Michael Pittman. So Naeem Hines, Tony Pollard, I am interested to see a little bit of preseason uses out of them because there aren't many running backs, again, that I think can really impact

the game as a true receiver. A lot of guys can catch swing passes, but to actually go out there and cause matchup problems, I think Pollard and Hines are two of the few, and I would love to see their respective offensive coordinators get creative with it. I mean, I feel like we're not that far away from football embracing more of a positionless style offense and those running backs that can do it all, man. We saw what Debo did last year. I'm not saying either Pollard, Hines, or Debo, but the more players you can have out there that can do multiple things at a high level, I can only imagine that's going to cause even more and more issues for the defense and i know you and i know what

you're alluding to also is cordero patterson i mean it that that here's one thing i would give the vikings even though they completely botched cordero patterson and his usage it is very unusual for somebody to be multi-positional in any way, because like what you're talking about, I mean, you're just, you're playing some of my favorite notes from this show where I talk about how like they're not sending Delvin cook on go routes. Like maybe they could use them over the middle a little more on quick passes, but there's just not running backs that are going down field.

This thing that we talk about, like, oh, one player did this. So now like McCaffrey, now everyone's going to start lining up in the slot. Like, no, those are two different jobs. And usually people can't do them. Like normally these guys. I'll tell you what though. Dalvin's brother can do those things. That was fun to watch him do that Georgia a little bit.

I'll be very interested to see if the bills, you know, it's one of those things where, shout out Dre McFarlane, my co-host in the PFF Fantasy Football Podcast, but he's brought up the point, Cam Newton never threw the running backs until he got Christian McCaffrey. So, I know the Buffalo Bills backfield, like, it's so brutal, man. They're literally

in terms of expected fantasy points. So, not what they did, which that's not that great either, but just their workload. 31st in the league over the past two years like you see the bills down there with the texans the giants just these atrocious offenses you're like wait why is buffalo down there but just because in some of these offenses with the mobile quarterbacks they scramble instead of checking the ball down and then they're basically just another piece of the committee uh once you get to the goal line so now yeah it's and

we've been getting those dalvin reports too i even even saw he tweeted out a picture of himself, or not a picture, a video of him catching a downfield pass. So we can always dream about it, but it is funny how that one storyline always tends to creep its way into August. I also love the disparity in opinion on the weight stuff. Like Rashad Penny gained like 10 pounds to 236. And it's a great thing. Leonard Fournette gets up to 260.

It's a terrible thing. When Derek Henry was 260, it was a great thing. Ramondre Stevenson loses seven pounds. Like, man, like Matthew, I'm not sure if you played football back in day, but you remember some of those two. If not, then those two of they practices, man, you could regularly lose seven pounds like in the course of one day. So I was just like, did this dude just go out the first day of practice cut some water weight and now it's literally an off-season a storyline about it so again though as a quirky as some of

the stuff is and as much as i don't think it has anything to ultimately do with what's going to happen to fantasy football this year i just love being able to now talk about how football in the news all day not like it really stopped throughout the rest of the year but man it is now here more back than ever well in the locker room they have uh you know they have the scale there and just when you're meandering around waiting for interviews and stuff i'll see guys come and step on the scale and sometimes i'll, you know, peek over at the number or whatever. Let's just say it rarely matches up with what the number that is on their pro football reference page. Like,

and in some cases it's more, and in some cases it's way less, which is usually what it is by the end of the season. It's usually way less. I think a lot of these guys try to load up on muscle, you know, to start the season because as you go along it's not like you can build or even sustain the level that you have in the off season when you're

not going through the weekly grind of everything else so it is it is kind of an interesting thing when we talk about this guy weighs this amount this guy weighs that amount um and lenny's always been big anyway so i think i think lenny's going gonna be lenny but uh sorry last thing just the weight about guys lying about it because cavante turpin who won usfo mvp the cowboys just signed him uh to be kind of there it's gonna be like lucky whitehead 2.0 i think he's gonna be like a returner fifth wide receiver not gonna make a big impact but this dude listed at 155 i i was furious the entire USFL season. I was like, just write 170, bro.

Like you're not going to get an NFL opportunity at 155 pounds. Credit to the Cowboys for doing it anyway. And that was the whole thing with, you know, Devontae Smith last year. It was like, really? He's 168, 169. Like Darnell Mooney was 176. Like, are we really going to let five, six pounds in either direction, like completely swing our opinion on a player maybe 20 years ago?

I mean, you remember how those games, I always see you. I love you and Eric Eager always tweeting about the old games and stuff. I mean, you know, you throw a pass over the wide receiver's head. That's nowhere near him. The safety's taking his head off anyway, like just because he happens to be standing in the wrong place. So it really is more and more, think in the year 2022 a game taylor suited for uh some of the lighter players out there so as much as uh you know i still think there's something to be said for the big badass

wide receiver the drake london's of the world you know just because you're a great contested catch artist doesn't mean that you can't separate uh it's just it is funny how those whites end up getting listed i share a lot about it in high school so well back in my day they did have some small undersized wide receivers still uh the only difference is that you would never hear on a broadcast today this guy's not afraid to go over the middle but you would you would hear that on every broadcast it would be like andre Andre Reid's not afraid to go over the middle, or Chris Carter or somebody's going to take big hits there, where now it's like no one can hit anybody and everybody goes over the middle,

which is why passing is a lot easier. But that's fun for people like yourself who study the fantasy game. And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to do a fantasy simulation lineup. I'm not going to go super deep and have like seven flex positions or whatever you call it. We'll just do the basic like quarterback, a couple running backs, receiver, and a tight end, and maybe like three kickers.

That's how we'll do it. But we can talk about throughout the way like what it means for some of the Vikings guys, where they're kind of ranked or where you would put them and things like that. So I've started the we do draft Sims. So now there's a mock draft Sim for fantasy. So I've so I've kicked it off. And in this draft simulation, Delvin Cook went number two overall with only Jonathan Taylor going ahead of him.

Is that ridiculous that Delvin Cook number two overall, especially since it does seem like they're going to three wide receivers more kind of a pass first approach like i think he could still have a really good season as far as being effective at winning football games but i don't know if i would go number two overall here yeah i'm not too worried about the increased use of 11 if anything you know we were joking before about him getting more downfield opportunities but we know dalvin can catch the ball and historically just for running backs i mean one target is equivalent to about 2.7 carries that's just what we're dealing with in full ppr scoring i sent out this uh video and it was like devin singletary like rushing for 20 yards like just breaking four tackles and it was like all right that's two ppr points and then here's

giovanni bernard catching a check down and falling forward for 10 yards that's also two PPR points so you know style points really don't matter in fantasy so from that standpoint you can argue Dobbins workloads up there at anyone I think right now PFF we only project Derrick Henry to have more total touches on the season I still have it Christian McCaffrey in full PPR RB1 Jonathan Taylor RB2 I just think that McCaffrey he's PPR, RB1, Jonathan Taylor, RB2. I just think that McCaffrey, he's the only guy that can catch 100-plus passes. I know it's a different quarterback under center, but we've seen even in the Matt Rule era them just wanting to feed him the ball time after time after time.

I do wonder with Dalvin Cook, last year's really consensus, 102. I mean, that pick last year, no one would really blink about it. You know, shout out to you telling me back in March or April last time we talked that the Dalvin Cook legal issue just wasn't going to really be a problem, at least for this year, because of things getting pushed back. It's also trending towards being the case for Alvin Kamara into late September at this point. So I do think that kind of got Cook started off on the wrong foot, and he's just been working his way up the rankings.

I have him RB5 behind McCaffreyrey taylor henry and eckler again i think 102 just a little bit steep when i have talked to doctors about some of these running backs like mccaffrey and even derrick henry aren't the guys they're as concerned about like dalvin cook's shoulder is the one injury that a lot of these guys are just able to say you know it doesn't doesn't get better. And we have seen it be a lingering issue. And even if it is going to be just a couple of games, I think it might be enough of a tiebreaker to prioritize some of these other guys. So it's a tear, not egregious.

If you're a Vikings fan, you're in one draft, you want one draft Dalvin Cook at 102. Like, I don't think you're going to mess up the rest of your squad. I would have taken the coffee there. Well, he does have a shoulder injury that has affected him in multiple seasons i mean so in 2019 he had this uh i remember specifically when i saw this is how

this is how like your squirrel brain works when you cover every game so like derrick wolf retired and i was like oh yeah the time derrick wolf fell on uh delvin cook separated his shoulder or whatever whatever the injury was and and then last year him having that shoulder issue that he was able to play through but it's if it has the same problem again it's going to keep him out or it's going to slow him down uh whatever it might be it's just an accumulation for him and that's what i was going to ask you like i think you're smart to not buy in too much to the well this guy get bang gets banged up all the time, but the Delvin Cook body of work, and I think also the reason that they drafted Madison,

that they drafted Wong Wu, that they drafted Ty Chandler, is because they understand that it's probably not going to be 17 games, and in the second half of seasons, I do think they're going to try to be very much smarter about not allowing him to fall off in the second half of every season because that's what's happened before when they wrote him into the ground early on and then he got dinged up. Yeah, and that really has continued to be an issue.

And it's why workhorse running backs really don't exist anymore, man. In the year 2000, 19 different running backs had at least 300 touches last year there were four now there would have been a few more with guys not getting hurt but that's also just a reality of the league so i do wonder how much they're really going to do that though because kevin o'connell coming from los angeles i mean my god i just had a study go up on pff.com where i was looking at what teams like are actually willing to feature workhorse running backs and number one by far pittsburgh steelers like whoever it's been over the years like those guys barely leave the freaking field I think Najee Harris last year alone had 11 games

with over 90 percent of the snaps no one else was over I think even six but the guys that were next were Sonny Michelle and Daryl Henderson who were basically splitting time last year as the Rams RB1 we saw the Todd Gurley role over the years i do think that's probably what o'connell has in mind for dalvin cook but we'll see man that's what's so um we have a lot of these situations around the league now with sean mcveigh kyle shanahan and uh oh my gosh i'm forgetting one sean mcveigh kyle shanahan and matt lafleur up in green bay these brilliant offensive coaches who are now having their coaching tree go out. But when these guys leave, when we have Mike McDaniel in Miami now,

Luke Getzey, Colin Plays, and Chicago, Kevin O'Connell down here, and a couple more examples. How much of what they are going to run is what McVay or Shanahan or LaFleur is running? And how much are they now ready to go off on their own and run their own offense? So it's always a little bit of a concern with that but you know in the vikings offense i will say this like i'm just happy that we've now talked for 17 minutes and not brought up the cooper cup

role who gives a cooper cup role this is justin jefferson man arguably the best start to a wide receiver career ever let's just stick with the Justin Jefferson role. Let him do his thing. I'm more excited about Dalvin Cook never leaving the field. KJ Osborne hopefully being on the field a lot more because of just the three wide receiver set usage bump. Seeing the Vikings, one of the lowest teams, Rams, one of the highest, and we'll see how the injury is. Please be okay, Irv. But Irv Smith and the Tyler Higbee role, he shouldn't really be leaving the field either.

Folks, training camp is here and there's no better way to represent your purple fandom by going to SodaStick.com and checking out all their Minnesota sports inspired goods. The best football designs, in my opinion, are Randy Moss's disgusting act and the purple people eaters look but look there's lots more for you to check out at sodastick.com s-o-t-a-s-t-i-c-k.com t-shirts hoodies hats whatever you're looking for use the promo code purple insider at checkout for 15 off your purchase yeah um no i i think that with irv smith I mean, there were times where, you know, Kyle Rudolph would play like every single play. And I don't think that's going to be a lot different.

I think that these offenses always love to have that guy. I mean, he's pretty good, but if you have like a George Kittle or something like they've always traditionally, you know, love to have that guy who's let's see, Gary. Gary loves somebody. Oh, Owen Daniels back in the day. Oh, yeah. Absolutely love this man. He was in like three different places with Gary Kubiak.

So there's always been this thing about the tight end in these offenses. Now, since you brought up Justin Jefferson and the quote Cooper Cup role, which I'm glad that we're seeing some things on the same page here. Cause my, my thing for this year has been, let's not change too much about what you do with Justin Jefferson. I know that the whole idea is the previous regime did everything wrong because they got fired and you're going to do everything right. But when a guy has one of the best starts to a career in history, you don't want to completely change his role around. But in my fantasy draft simulation, what I have on the board here at ninth overall,

I decided to make it a little harder on myself. Ninth overall is the top rated guys are Nick Chubb, Cooper Cup, Justin Jefferson, and Travis Kelsey. So if you had to draft between Cooper Cup and Justin Jefferson, what would you do? I still link up just by a hair. He literally just had the best fantasy football season ever. And that's, you know, I'm mad about the Cooper Cup role

and I'm mad about this year's Cooper Cup. So because, and I know that we can add a little more context to it. This year's Cooper Cup can just be, you know, a good wide receiver with a quarterback upgrade who becomes great. i'm fine if that's your entire uh kind of argument with it but like no i don't think someone else is going to have the best fancy football season ever and okay take away the 17th game because people love to have a fit about this then all right 1994 jerry rice i believe actually has the best fancy season ever cooper cup second even if you take away that so i think we can all agree, pretty great season there.

It's just a matter of the targets. We saw last year Cupp get over 190, Justin Jefferson 167. So even if Jefferson is better than Cupp, which I think is a very fine argument you can make, I'll take the extra 20 targets. And it could even be more than that, man. Like you look at the Vikings offense, and yes, Jefferson is definitively the number one but man Adam Thielen we know the connection he has

with Kirk Cousins you know having Dalvin Irv and Osborne I think you can start to argue that there's just enough more target competition around Jefferson Minnesota than Cup in Los Angeles Stafford obviously having to get used to Allen Robinson, which I don't think is a bad thing necessarily. A-Rob obviously one of the best route runners in the game when he's right. But Van Jefferson now with the knee surgery, OBJ out of the picture still. I mean, if there is one guy in the league that could have a target total, starting with a two by the end of it, it's Cooper Cobb. So to me, I'm just taking that extra guaranteed target volume.

I have them right next to each other, though. To me, it's 1A, 1B. You could argue Jamar Chase, 1C, but neither Cup nor Jefferson have a T. Higgins sort of guy in the offense we deal with. So in terms of just being a monster and having that elite target volume, Cup and Jefferson really in a tier of their own. It is crazy because Jefferson finished way up there in targets last year and there were still times where he felt like you should have thrown it to him more but what what i think they're gonna change is when they throw it to him like start from the very beginning with our ideas to throw it to jefferson and he is also a better downfield wide receiver

than cooper cup because he can moss people and that's not really Cooper Cup's thing if you look at the average depth of target it's way different and if you took Justin Jefferson and said you're only going to run underneath I think that would be a big mistake Cooper Cup is also unbelievable at yards after catch like super super stupid good and you know I think Jefferson's good at it but like if someone can go 20 yards down the field and win half their contested catches which jefferson did last year why would you say no no you're gonna run like choice routes for five to seven yards and then right like i just don't think that that's a good idea and also i you know how much can we give

kirk cousins just a little bit of credit for one just great wide receiver putting up these numbers after another? I mean, there's only been 10 quarterbacks that have produced multiple top 12 PPR wide receivers in the same season over the last decade. Only three of them have done it more than once, and those three quarterbacks are Kirk Cousins, Aaron Rodgers, and Peyton Manning, God bless him, did it three different times. So, look, Diggs, Thielen, Jefferson, these guys are all great, but they're also having a lot of great seasons with Kirk throwing the football.

Again, 167 targets for Justin Jefferson last year. I believe that was second in the entire NFL. If not, it was easily top five. But week to week, you would think that Cousins is just, you know, really not helping Jefferson become the best version of himself at all. So it's one of these things where Vikings fansings fans you pay cousins so much money you guys haven't had the playoffs playoff success you've been hoping for with some of these overall teams so i get it i get the vikings fans frustrations just like i understand browns fans being upset with baker uh eagles and

colts fans being relatively upset with carson wentz but it is this weird phenomenon where when you have a quarterback who is not top 10 and but they're also not a bottom top 10 guy either we have a really tough time just being like yeah he's okay it's like they're either great or they're terrible and uh you know hopefully kurt cousins in this system weapons all over the place hopefully uh he silences some of the haters this year because it does seem like man you know he he has that walk-off touchdown like he never wins the big one then he does he throws the game winner to root off against the saints and then it's like he loses next week and then it's just yeah see he can never win the big one we just kind of forget about the good times so well he lost the next

week and threw for like 160 yards on 40 attempts i mean it wasn't you, it wasn't just that he lost. It was that it was the classic, like, where did he go? But to your point though, there was PFF data that I talked about early on the show this off season. Once the QB annual came out about how cousins on his first read is really terrific and anything else scrambling or like second, third read or whatever was not good at all. Uh, and I think that that's one of the reasons that if you're a top wide receiver, like if you're Kevin O'Connell, whom are you drawing up the plays for? I mean, you're drawing up those plays for those guys.

Um, and I, and yeah, I mean, it's, it's like a very complicated thing with cousins, but what it comes down to is if that's the only highlight that you have to speak of in four seasons with the most expensive quarterback in the league then the fan base isn't going to care that he delivers the ball to his top receiver you know for fantasy purposes right that's why i said i totally understand vikings fans specifically being annoyed uh with kirk cousins so before you guys uh hang me out to dry there, I feel your pain. And that's a good point with Cousins. Just when things are right, man, it can look pretty. When things go south, though, they really do start going south.

I actually looked at the largest drop-off in the RS per attempt. Went kept clean versus under pressure. Big three last year. Jameis Winston, who maybe we could argue that didn't even qualify because he didn't play that much. Then Kirk Cousins. And then Aaron Rodgers. So it's not just C just cousins that has these problems that you know we do see

aaron rogers and you know obviously jimmy garoppolo i think it's the most extreme example kind of of the stat uh from year to year but yeah hopefully i mean that was the big thing with me man looking at the coaching change like yeah the having a the extra 11 personnel maybe having a little bit more of a pass happy offense will be nice but man this-key, Mike Renner said this in our offensive line rankings, like this sneakily could be the best offensive line that Kirk Cousins has gotten a chance to play with. So, you know, give him an actual clean pocket. And not to say he can't speed up his decision-making from time to time and do himself a favor there,

but I do really think that this passing game has some legit upside, man. there's a reason why cousins is going right there alongside matthew stafford and derrick carr i mean you know the guy has 30 plus touchdown upside every single year and if he gets a chance to really air the ball out um 5 000 yards is a lot but i think he could finish up in the high fours all right so i have drafted cooper cup instead of justin jefferson because i'm buying cooper cup being pretty much the the decided option with nobody who's going to steal his uh targets outside of a little alan robinson but i'm going to go with him and i mean really i think too that's just that adam thielen has looked good in camp and my expectation is that kirk cousins when they get in the red zone is looking at Adam Thielen and that defenses are looking at Justin Jefferson.

Cause that's just been how it is. And I know that drives you guys crazy. Cause it's like, you want the top receiver in Jefferson, but then they get to the red zone and that's who everybody, you know, tries to stop, which I think was maybe, and I don't know this, you probably looked into this, but like the Julio Jones thing over years, it was like, oh, he never scores touchdowns. What's his problem. It's like, well, when you get in the red zone they're gonna put a couple of human beings on him and you just throw to somebody else the julio thing just he didn't

score 10 touchdowns in the season alabama man like i went back i did some digging one day he got over 10 in high school like that would have been incredible high school julio jones couldn't even score 10 touchdowns in a season but you know we can all rest easy knowing that he got that. I don't, I don't despise it, man. Justin Jefferson has plenty of, uh, you know, his, he can't get every single target out there. And Adam Thielen is the man he is tied for third and receiving touchdowns over the past two seasons. Like again, I think with Thielen, he's, he's going to be 32. I understand that he's probably played his best football at this point, but there's a lot of stuff being held against him that I don't think we're necessarily holding

against some of the other old receivers. Like Allen Robinson was terrible last year. He just was in an offense that Darnell Mooney was objectively much better in. He's going to be a number two with Matthew Stafford in the center. I think Stafford and Cousins are very similar in terms of how we can at least look at their offenses and them personally in fantasy land and you know adam thielen you could argue just a discount alan robinson with where they're going in drafts right now so i mean deandre hopkins amari cooper like these are cooper of course isn't that old as we always uh joke about but uh deandre hopkins you know he's

gonna be on the wrong side of 30 here. Going to already miss six games. Like, man, we're really taking that over Adam Thielen? Again, just with these injuries, with the injury stuff, and as we said before, I've seen the age trends and all that. And I think Mike Clay had a good tweet saying, there just hasn't been a wide receiver 33 or older to work and set a top 24 in recent memories so but when

we see adam thielen going as like wide receiver 33 34 if not later like i think that's what people miss sometimes like that's already all being baked into his adp that's why he's as cheap as he's ever been so no i'm not saying you should draft adam thielen as your wide receiver too like we were doing a couple years ago but you can have a lot worse wide receiver fours, wide receiver fives on the squad. Yeah. And I think that just when we, when we talk about those underneath routes, that that's kind of going to be who he is in the future or, you know, in this year and beyond that, even if you look at his average depth of target, like it's gone down, but I think it's kind of a Anquan Bolden or Larry Fitzgerald ish

where, you know, the guy couldn't really afford to lose a step. He's probably lost a step, but he's still a tremendous route runner and his hands are top notch. He rarely has any drops. He makes contested catch like all those things. So if he's still getting open and fits with some of these choice routes, a highly intelligent player, like there's a great fit here with him and kevin o'connell's offense that could still result in tons of passes his way it's just that maybe he's not putting up like 12 13 1400 yards do you think he's gonna be the primary

slot or they're just gonna move all three guys kind of around i think it's all three uh but you know when you look at the numbers though like if pull up, if you have it on your computer there, K.J. Osborne in the slot versus K.J. Osborne not in the slot. It's a pretty stark difference. He was actually spectacular in the slot, but not so much as an outside wide receiver when he had to fill in for Adam Thielen. And I wonder if as they go along, they're going to look at the tape and be like, yeah, that might actually be better to just keep using him. It's kind of like maybe the previous coaching staff wasn't just like super stupid. They knew that some of these skill sets of these players, Thielen and Jefferson can get open on the outside because they're top notch.

And Osborne is more of like, get the ball in his hands and he can make some plays. I did do a study on that earlier in the offseason. I remember Christian Kirk was uh biggest differentiator like in terms he was in the slot he was making all sorts of plays out wide not so much that kind of makes you wonder just uh how smart it was for jacksonville to give him that much money but credit to christian for getting all that dough jerry judy was another one that was interesting because the one the one great thing about you know the quote-unquote cooper cup role was the the job that sean mcveigh did and just getting cup matched up against linebackers and other coverage defenders so that was one of my

biggest pauses actually for jerry judy amongst a few other things at this offseason because judy actually had the largest difference in yards per outrun versus cornerbacks compared to any other primary coverage defender so that's another thing to look at, man. Like it, it, there are certain offenses where the jobs are made a lot easier. Hopefully the Vikings are now going to be one of those. It's not easy to go, you know, take those five-step drops and, you know, thread the needle 20 yards downfield every single time. It looks great. I love the PFF big time throw metric, but you know, shout out Kevin Cole on the PFF fantasy team said one time, the big time throws it's more of like a descriptive metric sometimes like,

you know, again, style points don't matter. If it's just a dump down to a wide open running back and he picks up 20 yards, that's the same thing as throwing it in between three defenders. And you could argue taking, you know, the lesser path of resistance is actually probably the better move in the long run. So there are guys like Justin Herbert who I do think it would make a lot of sense to see them up that average target depth. Like, come on, man.

We can't have Justin Herbert throwing the ball downfield the same way as Jimmy Garoppolo. That should be illegal here in continental America. But I do think that there is something to be said for getting guys like Dillon, hopefully K.J. Osborne as well. Give him the ball in space and just let him go do the thing. All right, so we've gotten away from our draft sim a little bit, which is fine because we're having good discussions. But here's who I got on the board as far as suggested players for me in our fantasy simulation.

Travis Kelsey, Mark Andrews, Stefan Diggs, C.D. Lamb. simulation travis kelsey mark andrews stefan diggs cd lamb i feel like there's very few good tight ends so if you can get one you should get one but also i think there's a chance that cd lamb leads the entire nfl in receiving man i'm what are we drafting on this is crazy cd lamb and stefan diggs and the third i mean usually cup and jefferson aren't making it outside the top four picks also in that round two. But, hey, we'll just build the best draft of all time, I guess. I would probably still take Stephon Diggs here.

I hear you on Mark Andrews. And I don't hate Mark Andrews at the end of round two because there is kind of this soft spot of players where it's like, okay, once we start getting to Mark Andrews, you start looking at the other guys going around him and you start asking like, okay, do I want Lamar Jackson's pretty much undisputed number one pass catcher? I mean, if you look at just the tight end projected targets, it's Travis Kelsey and Mark Andrews and that's everyone else. So that really is a tier at the top credit to Andrews for knocking Kelsey off the perch as the overall tight end one last

year but you know mark andrews versus guys like you know saquon barkley leonard fournette aaron jones i'm taking those running backs but uh for sure it gets more interesting when it's guys like joe mix and davante williams who might have to share a backfield tyreek hill debo samuel guys that are having to adjust to new quarterbacks that's more so the area with mark andrews that i'm willing to maybe attack him in this instance though let's go Stefan Diggs I mean everything we talked about earlier with Jefferson Cup and Chase I mean you could argue Diggs is right there in that tier as well having that continuity man like yeah it's fun to talk about the Devante Adams and Tyree Kill all offseason we've had to talk about him because of the trades

I really think the guy, you know, the CD lambs and Stefan digs of the world who didn't change teams, didn't change quarterbacks or systems. We just have the guy getting better and better every single day out there. Really at the end of the day, those are the ones we should be looking to target even more. So Stefan digs,

my wide receiver for my God, man, if he's there in round two, you should be hitting auto draft. So round three, got to do it. Okay. My first two picks Cooper cup and Stefan digs are probably winning me a championship.

I think I only picked like a 12 team league. How many teams are usually in a league? 12. That's cool. Okay. I just did well for myself. Okay. We've only done two picks, I guess, in the Dalvin discussion.

I thought we were also getting McCaffrey. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes more sense. So far we've only only done two picks but we're doing well for ourselves all right well we'll we'll we'll speed it up a little here with the next pick i've got on the board zeke elliott david montgomery josh allen and george kittle are the uh highest adp players that are that are on my board here uh are we thinking that Zeke Elliott is just bad and like

he probably will give up some carries at this point because I think I think they're just gonna Emmett Smith this man no matter how old he is or how inefficient it is they're just gonna keep going with I think so too man and it is wild that Zeke like he's gonna be I think he already is the third best running back in Cowboys history like Like Emmett, Tony Dorsett. And I think it's probably Emmett Smith. I know DeMarco had his time. There's some, I'm sure there's some 60, 70 guys that, you know, did their thing as well out there. Ron Perkins, I think one.

But man, look at the numbers he's been putting up year after year. And last year he tore his PCL in week four, man. He played through the pain. I just wonder, man, if Zeke had stopped playing after week four when he was averaging 5.3 yards per carry, ripping off 3.4 yards after contact, if he just stopped playing after week four, how would we view the guy? I mean, Derrick Henry stopped playing after week eight, and we didn't care that his yards per carry was down

like an entire yard from the year before. He was getting 30 carries a game, putting up fancy points, and then when he didn't play he was a zero like we weren't starting him and losing points so we didn't really care when deandre swift didn't play we didn't care when ezekiel elliott and shout out cordero patterson played through the pain not effectively all of a sudden we just kind of write it off and it is tough you know baker mayfield's another example like if they are healthy enough to get out there we got to kind of judge them like they're 100 so it's not easy but in zeke's case i mean once again don't hate the player hate the adp zeke right now we're talking about in round three he's available in a lot of even round fours at this point which has

never been the case man even as a rookie this guy was going round one or round two, almost 99% of the drafts you're going to find yourself in. So if Tony Pollard wasn't going to take over last year, when's it going to happen, man? And you look at last year, and no, it wasn't good for Zeke, but even like the terrible version of Zeke from Weeks 5 to Week 18, averaging 3.8 yards per carry and not doing his thing. Like he was still matching, if not surpassing where he's currently being ranked right now.

Same thing actually with a quarter old Patterson. So yeah, RB 19 and PPR points per game from week five, the wild card round. And he's going as the RB 17 right now. So no, you're not going to be thrilled of Zeke is the RB 19 this year, but Hey, we had now again, for the first time ever have a chance to draft Zeke

closer to his floor than a ceiling. I hope the answer is both because again, as we said before, Tony Pollard, get him in the slot, get him on the field. Instead of one of these, just random ass backup wide receivers.

He got out there. Tony Pollard last year did have over a thousand yards with Zeke playing 17 games. So that would be my one thing. Cause I've heard some people kind of equate Tony Pollard to an Alexander Madison type, but Madison's never coming close to a thousand yards. If Dalvin cook plays 17 games, I don't think Pollard is quite at the AJ Dillon level of maybe kind of having this backfield actually split, but you know, Kellen Moore, not a perfect offensive coordinator. I think we all saw the last call of last season,

but he still led the number one scoring offense last year, and I think he'd be awfully hard-pressed to keep Tony Pollard off the field for too long. So long story short, I think the answer can be both. Shouldn't be the same lineup. Just one of those things, stacking-wise, you don't want to do in redraft because if you're taking Pollard and Zeke on the same team i know it looks good having the cowboys backfield but you're basically

setting yourself up for your third or fourth round pick to crash and burn that's not exactly the correlation that you're looking to kind of draw out there so uh handcuffs like tony pollard i love kind of in that uh you know around hopefully seven or eight range uh just be careful about who you're actually tying them to so you're selling me on Ezekiel Elliott then. Is that what I'm taking away? Yeah. Who are the other options? It was David Montgomery, Josh Allen, George Kittle.

I would go Zeke here and hope that Kittle falls another round. But man, I've got Kittle around five over in some underdog drafts like that. You can get for my money's worth the best tight end alive in round five over in some underdog drafts like that's you can you can get for my money's worth the best tight end alive in round five i mean pff's reigning number one highest grade tight end overall receiving grade like he's he out targeted devo samuel in 2020 and 2019 it's not impossible for him to do uh that again especially if you just start thinking about the ways they could use trey lance you know more and more of those bootlegs where you're just dumping it down the kettle on the flat letting him go be the absolute monster that he is. I do wonder if this could be a sneaky season with a George Kittle where we're like, my God,

this dude was going around five and we weren't just scooping them up in every single draft. So we'll go Zeke now hope that kettle falls. Yeah. I think also, I mean, Trey Lance, if he's going to find a security blanket, like maybe it's your tight end. And David Montgomery, I do wonder, it feels like they wasted David Montgomery with a bunch of shotgun runs up the middle. And the fact that he survived that, maybe if they're running more outside zone and stuff, he's got a better chance. But that's kind of a risk you're going to take when you know that Dallas is absolutely going to love Zeke, even if he's, he started to fall off. So on the next pick we have, I think we got to get a quarterback here. Maybe we get two running backs, but we got to get a quarterback probably. So I've got Herbert and Mahomes.

There's one for you. Who do you think will have a better season, Herbert or Mahomes? I'll give the slight nod to Herbert at this point. I have him ranked one spot ahead of Mahomes. These are two of the top three. The top three quarterbacks all-time in fantasy points per game are Mahomes, Justin Herbert, and Deshaun Watson. Lamar Jackson would be up there, but he had those kind of like eight games as a rookie where he was playing like a backup role.

So just enough to qualify, but then it's kind of hurting his career numbers. But that's a story for another day. It's just, it comes down to the weapons, man. Maybe Juju, MVS, and, you know, number 24, Sky Moore, can go make their thing happen out there. But with Herbert, just Keenan, Mike Williams, they brought in Gerald Everett, Eckler.

I think Josh Palmer could have a nice second-year breakout. All in an offense that was willing to, again, you know, go for it on fourth down more than pretty much anyone, keep their foot on the gas in the passing game i mean dude i was looking at it it's some insane number i want to say herbert threw the ball in week 18 like 79 times last year but it was just an absolutely bonkers number so the only concern is that uh joe lombardi really had herbert kind of running the old man Drew Brees type of offense. Again, his average target depth was that low. Okay, it was 64 times.

79 is ridiculous, Ian. But 64, still pretty lofty up there. But with Herbert Mahomes, you're getting a little bit of a rushing floor, not a huge one. I guess I'm just more confident in Herbert having the volume advantage. But, man, this AFC West in general, like just going to be one shootout after another with those dudes, Russell Wilson and Derek Carr. And they're matched up against the NFC West

as their other division. So a lot of best ball conversation. If you play over underdog fantasy, their best ball mania tournament is basically you need to qualify. And then in week 17 17 first place of that week gets two million dollars second place gets one million so there is reason to kind of look ahead to week 17 matchups and try to plan ahead on that and that's been a lot of discussion that

has annoyed me a little bit uh throughout the offseason but i do think the correlation and stacking kind of games more so is by doing it in these divisions just exposing yourself to these shootouts that are going to have one you know over 150s after another so i lean uh justin herbert here but it really is a toss-up man i mean mahomes he's been cheaper than this before like coming in as a rookie and stuff but it's never been this easy to stack him with some of his wide receivers obviously you gotta use you know a first round pick maybe very beginning of the second round to get travis kelsey but juju going as you know like a still a wide receiver three mbs sky more amico pretty much left for dead way even further down the ranks so justin herbert for now uh it's again this is a big

tier at the top i think josh allen and kylo murray those are my top two and then it's herbert mahomes lamar in some order okay so uh we didn't get to kickers and defenses which is just a shame because i really wanted to go through all the kickers but i think we've got kind of the bones of our team there for the most part and a lot of interesting discussion it was really about the talks we had along the way it's that that's what it is that's what fantasy is it's about the talks we had along the way. Of course. That's what it is. That's what fantasy is. It's about the drafts and the friends you had along the way. Get kickers out of your fantasy league too, man. And people always come at me. They think I hate kickers because the scoring's random.

No, I'm cool with defense being in the league. Kickers shouldn't be in real life or fantasy football. That's where my beef comes. They make the games worse. These people take three steps and they kick a ball real life or fantasy football that's that's where my beef comes they make the games worse these people take three steps and they kick a ball and they want to be carried off the field for doing their job after the game like my freaking goodness like we think running backs take up too much glory from the offensive line how about freaking kickers man and just from the start of their career to the

end it's you know a soccer player that shows up to practice for 10 minutes a week, can't do anything else. I'd argue it's the most one-dimensional job in all of the major sports. So yeah, I'm done with them. I am very thankful that there are very few kickers still in my leagues. And my God, man, the leagues that have kickers that you can put them in the flex, how much do you have to hate yourself in order to have a league that lets you put a kicker in the flex? My God. I have nothing to add to that rant. Other than you are speaking to Vikings fans who have been tortured by these

kickers over many years. So lots of kicks. If not for kickers, they may have, I don't know, a Super Bowl. Hard to say. So you're making people happy with your impact. Oh, yeah. You're going really back there. I thought we were talking about the Blair Walsh project for a second.

Well, I mean, I guess there's a bigger one. They would have gone deeper in the playoffs, and then who knows. But, yeah, I was going Gary Anderson. Didn't you have a take on the Gary Anderson one? I thought I saw you had some hot take about how they were gonna maybe it's like they were just gonna win the super bowl if he made that kick oh yeah yeah sure no we discussed that yeah would would that like there's a bunch of times where they've come close and like which was the best chance and 98 is probably it maybe

87 because the team that was in the super bowl against them denver in 87 was not very good and and got destroyed by washington in that super bowl so you know the the broncos in 1998 were pretty unbelievable and they were kind of on a collision course the whole season it was disappointing that they were going to play a lesser falcons team but still looking at that team it's's yeah. I think that they do. Is that, is that a hot take like that? There was a 15 to one team. No, I don't think it's a hot take at all.

It's a man that would have been, that would have been a month. That would have been a funner Superbowl. I think then, uh, then we got, but you know, shout out, uh, Jamal Anderson, the dirty bird and, you know, some of the things that Falcon squad was able to do too, I guess. So you were having fun this whole time and then you just have to bring this up and then crush everybody's soul right sorry guys all right listen to his podcast where he makes fun of your um kicker misses um no a fantasy football podcast on pff and you're writing at pff.com always great to get together with you man and we'll see i'll give you

the health updates as they come i think it should be nothing serious but we'll find out as we go along and uh i appreciate you you've always got very creative angles and fun different ways to look at the nfl than like the beat reporter that i am so i appreciate you man follow him on twitter at ian hart it's right you haven't added like pff or underscore anything weird uh i think it was like mina kai was joking about that um she was like so when pff hires an employee that is like forced them to like a first thing have to go change your uh twitter handle no i uh i've not changed that even george uh boss man george uh was saying that he doesn't want that anymore he said it feels too much like a cult so um i i not going to go out of my way to change it.

But it's funny, man. I got, because, you know, my last name, Harditz, you can say it sounds like hard tits. I was called tits for the first 25 years of my life, basically. And when my account got suspended briefly on Twitter for, I was tweeting out like in-game highlights and I was beating the NFL channel to it and they didn't really appreciate that.

So they had to suspend me. And I remember I was trying to get some help from the industry to get my account unsuspended. And someone was just like, yeah, maybe don't have your handle. Sounds so much like a porno name. So maybe if I did have PFF in there, it'd be better for my career, man. But we'll just leave it at iHeart. It's for the time being. Okay.

Well, you're doing fine. You're doing fine. Other than those natural issues and uh i mean the fact that that nickname lasted for that long is kind of impressive that it got past high school but uh you know that was the wild part like columbus ohio high school i go to college in chicago and don't know a single person and it was seamless didn't even miss a day really but you know what it ended up being more embarrassing for the people yelling it across the quad like trying to get my attention than it actually was like for me to respond to it so it's all good i'm just gonna leave it there i'm just i thought you know after the kicker rant i thought

you couldn't top it but then you did so uh ian you're the best man thanks for all the time this was really fun and uh we'll do it again soon thank you man good talking to you as always