The Ringer NFL Show - Power Ranking the 2022 Fantasy Lessons to Tattoo on Our Bodies

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

We inevitably forget the lessons we vowed to always remember by the time the next draft season comes around, so today we power rank the lessons from the 2022 season to tattoo on our bodies, like Guy Pearce in the movie ‘Memento.’ Check out our Weekly Fantasy Football Rankings for positional rankings and more! Email us! [e-mail]. Hosts: Danny Heifetz, Danny Kelly, and Craig Horlbeck Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Kai Grady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Matt Bellany, founding partner of Puck News, and I'm covering the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. With my new show, The Town, I'm going to take you inside Hollywood with exclusive insight on what people in show business are actually talking about. Multiple times a week, I'll talk to some of the smartest people I know, journalists, insiders, all of whom can break down the hottest topics in entertainment to tell you what's really going on. Listen now. Goodbye, everyone. Last power hour of the year. I think that went pretty well. Yeah. I think that we went out with a bang. Thank you, Joel Patterson.

Thank you, Lorne. Lauren. Thank you, Kai for production. Help. Thank you, Craig. Thank you, D.K. Thank you to everybody who listened to this weird memento episode. We did everything in a backward order. So, like, thank you. I think it worked, right?

I think that kind of works. Thank you, Christopher Nolan, for the idea. Definitely not confusing whatsoever. People are not confused right now, right? No. Okay. They love it. I think everyone totally got the movie, and I think everyone got what we did with this episode

and I think it worked. I mean, Christopher Nolan got to direct the Dark Night after he did Memento, so I don't know what's next for us after this episode. We talk about Memento a lot on this show, and we're going to do the Memento tattoo show right now. I don't really remember Memento. Is that meta?

Like, I don't actually remember how it goes. That is meta. That is extremely meta. You should get back into that. I should have gotten the script tattooed to my body, maybe. That's right. You know, his memories are out of order. It's the whole deal.

Pods out on order. People get it. All right. Let's get to some emails. All right. This is from Braden. Braden. Braden.

He wrote in about the Chief Superfan. Did you guys see this? Yes. This is classic. This is literally like the plot to point break except for with, instead of paying for surfing trips, he's paying for going to the Chiefs games.

He's robbing banks to fund his lifestyle of going to Chiefs games. I don't know about this. So tell me. So, yeah, so Braden wrote in summarizing, but basically this weekend, so the Chiefs like Twitter world hadn't heard from this one Chiefs superfan. And so all these random Chiefs fans started digging in. They realized this guy was arrested for robbing banks. He's like a famous superfan at the games.

And he was traveling to all the road games and apparently funding or people think that he might have been robbing banks on the way. In part, Craig, he was robbing the banks and the mask he wore to all the Chiefs games. What kind of mask was it? Is it a mask that you can easily buy that's not specific? Or was it like a very distinct mask? It looked like a wolf. It was a wolf. I heard that there was some disagreement whether he was actually robbing the banks in the wolf masks or not,

because there was a bank robber who had a wolf mask, but then there was someone like debunked it that it wasn't actually this guy. Oh, so this is like the future. Regardless, regardless, this very famous super fan that shows up to Chiefs fans in a wolf costume every game was not at the game last week. And so people were like, where the fuck does this guy go? And like the Twitter, you know, detectives or whatever, the people on Reddit figured out that this guy had gotten arrested for Roving Banks and that he had been like funding his road trips through bank robberies, which is literally the like plot to point break. Except for they were funding, you know, surfing trips. This is unbelievable. I want to say if Nick Nolte, did Nick Nolte and freaking, what's his face?

God damn it. What's his name? Keanu Reeves. did they arrest him. This was a sting operation by Keanu. And honestly, Paul Rudd's a chiefs fan, so, like, we can get this movie. Also, it's Patrick Swayze.

Who did you say? I said, Nick Nolte. He was the other, unless I'm completely misremembering. He was the other cop or whatever. Was he?

I don't remember that. Hold on. Let me double check. Sorry, it's actually Gary Busey, not Nick Nulte. Oh, right. It's Bucy. That's right.

Gary Busey? I feel like I get those two conflated sometimes. They've both. aged kind of poorly kind of poor Busey much more than Nulte anyone was ever said about Gary Bucci

Gary Bucci's a great villain in a lethal weapon All right another email here It feels so weird yeah if you have kids around earmuffs We were talking last week

About people whose names are like you know euphemisms for penis And I got an email from Alex Alex He says I would like to begin That my family's last name is Frankfort

You know like Frankfurter meaning hot dog and let me show you that my elementary school classmates did not let this go and noticed. However, when I say my name's Alex, it's because my full name is Richard

Alexander Frankfurt. So my name is Dick Weiner. It's pretty bad. But it pales in comparison to my father, who is the undisputed penis name champion. My father's full name is Richard Peter Frankfurt.

Wow. Oh my God. Richard Peter Frank. Triple Dick. T.D. Top dog. Other notable family members in my family include Frank Frankfurt. That's my favorite.

My cousin is Peter Frankfort. Of course. My aunt, whose name is Marion Burn of Frankfurt, which is a sentence. Marion. Burn a Frankfurt for me. Whose name is a sentence. That's next. I want people's names or sentences.

That's incredible. Whose name is a sentence is great. email us at ringer fantasy football at gmail.com if you know what he would his name is a sentence uh and then wait alex keeps going the cherry on top is when we were expecting the arrival of her firstborn son my wife was convinced despite my objections that she wanted to name our son holden holden frankfort and is this his middle name start with an a holding the frankfort no worse my son's name is now a jerk off joke but of course it doesn't stop there his middle name is James. So his name is

initials are H.J. Frankfurt. There's an epidemic out there of parents not knowing how to name their children and just walking right into traps. First of all, like these are ridiculous. Like Holden Frankfurt. Tell me this.

Why do people name their kids like Chris Christopherson? Explain that to me. Adam Adams, Robin Roberts. What are people doing naming their children this? I don't understand how it works. Well, Robin Roberts is an icon. Some people just don't have a lot of

creativity. I don't know. But it's like, it's so deliberate. Like there are so many options in the world and naming your kids. I wouldn't name him Horrell, Horlebeck. It'd be like if I name my kid Beck Horlebeck. You know how many other options there are? Infinite. Just don't name your kid Chris. Chris.

Could have put anything on the frigate license. Why'd you put McLuhan? Yeah. Why was it between Adam Adams and John Johnson? Oh my God. I don't get it. Oh, my God. All right.

Let's get to Power Hour. If you don't know how this works, we're going through our top Memento tattoos, the things that we're so important that we need to remember for next year. We're literally going to tattoo them on our body. Literally. Yeah, sure.

We got a great tweet from someone last year. We should pull up the name of the person, who did that. But they sent us a Photoshop of Guy Pearce from Memento with his shirt off and all of his tattoos, except they're replaced with like all the players that we complained about last year and vowed to

never forget. So, JD, shout out JD. JD. So yeah, this is what we're going to do this year. We're actually, I'm going to tattoo all of these on my body. My favorite one probably on my forehead in reverse so I can read it in the mirror. All right. So if

you haven't done power out with this before, Godspeed if this is your first time. But every two minutes, you're going to hear this sound? It's a great song. It's such a good song. All right, shout up Kai for being on our audio there. All right. So again, things were tattooing on our body, so we don't forget for next season.

Power ranked number one. Dude, right on my chest. Draft Travis Kelsey. Giant letters. Yeah. All caps. You can draft him first. overall for all we care.

I literally you could have this year and it would be fine. I think that if you had like the fifth pick this year, you probably should, if you had third, you could have taken them. So every year, we're like, should we take Travis Kelsey the first round and smart people do? Dumb people like us, we don't. We just don't take them sixth like we should. And we're like, eh.

Travis Kelsey is scoring 60% more points than the next best tight end in football. 60%. He's averaging almost 17 points a game. next is Mark Andrews with 10, who has been a disaster for the second half of the season. So that's it. Those are your top two. Literally, Travis Kelsey is the third most fantasy points ever for a tight end through 14 games. And to your point, Craig, the gap between Kelsey and Mark Andrews this year.

So Mark Andrews is still number two. But the gap between one and two at tight end is bigger than the gap between two and 39. Love it. And so it is Travis Kelsey, he's not going to have the most fan. 90s for tight end ever. He's just merely top three. But it's literally the most valuable tight end season ever, ever period,

because of how much better he's been than everyone else. The Kelsey conundrum reminds me of a piece of advice my dad gave me one time, which was basically like, I don't know what exactly the number is. 90% of the problems in your life never end up actually happening. In other words, don't worry about the bullshit that you can't control. We've been so worried Kelsey's going to fall. off this age cliff for like fucking, I don't know, it feels like five years now. Since he hit 30, we started this.

DK has dropped that line to me in real life, but I can't believe you've never said that on the pod before. We should have a whole episode about that next year. Just like, I mean, honestly, like, don't worry about the things you can't control. Just ride this out until Kelsey actually does fall off the cliff. Like, stop worrying about what potentially, when he could potentially fall off the cliff and just pick him. Like, here's a rule.

If there's actually, if there's zero signs that he's falling off a cliff, don't look at his age. There you go. There's actually people that were worried based on his preseason like snap numbers and stuff like that. Oh my God. Do you remember this? So, we talk ourselves out

of really stupid stuff, you know. Speaking of that, here's my next one. Number two here that I'm tattooing on myself. Be boring. Do not fear the unsexy pick or the bullshit media narratives. Boring players work out.

Older players work out. Let's look at running back this year. Derek Henry, oh, he hurt his foot last year. Oh, he's 28 years old. A.J. Brown left, and that's a huge deal for some reason. Well, R.B4 on the season hasn't missed the game, second and rushing yards. Christian McCaffrey, oh, he gets hurt a lot. I don't know.

Well, he's been the RB3 this year and he hasn't missed a game. He's on pace for almost 2,000 yards. Well, he's, there was a Christian McCaffrey fatigue early in the first round because of who he's been. But there was no merit to that affecting who he's going to be in the future. So that's my point with that. Moving forward, Dalvin Cook. Everyone's bored of Dalvin Cook. He's like 27, 28 years old.

He gets dinged up a little bit every year. Well, guess what? He's been awesome. He hasn't missed the game this year, RBA8. Nick Chubb. Nick Chubb doesn't catch passes. We try and create the narrative every year that Nick Chubbs not going to do it again. Craig, he doesn't catch him.

He doesn't catch him. Well, guess what? RB6 this year doing just fine. Joe Mixon, out sexied by Joe Burrow, Jamar Chase, and T. Higgins. Guess what? Top 10 running back this year. You didn't even mention the ultimate example this year was Austin Echler. Right.

Oh, yeah. 20 touchdowns last year. No way he could do that again. Why not? He still has Justin Herbert. He's on the same offense and there's no competition. Just do it. So you said BS media narratives.

Are you calling us? Are you saying that we're full of bullshit? Yes. How dare you? What a BS narratives. It's like, well, I heard his foot last year. I think that like, you're right in that. I think this goes to what D.K. said.

It's really about like, don't give into like, fear of just like, oh my God. Don't be a coward. Yeah, don't be a coward. There's just so many sexy options. It's like DeAndre Swift. What if he's at top five running back? It's like, you know who already is Derek Henry? This is the boat.

This is the boat joke, Hif. This is your family guy, Peter Griffin, mystery box boat. Like, it could be a boat. By the way, can I nominate one for next year? The boring pick of next year. I think this will be boring. Or at least it'll be unsexy. I think Cooper Cup is going to be, he's going to be the Derek Henry of next year.

Yeah, he's going to be like. all into the second round and that guy's, the guy that picks him is going to win that league. The Rams were a disaster. Cooper Cup got hurt. He's 30 years old now

and Cooper Cup's going to lead the league in receiving next year. 100%. We really need to put this in a time capsule and just unearth this and discover this in July 30th. Just like pay someone to like come up to you next August and punch you in the face

and be like, draft Cooper Cup. Every time I mentioned that Cooper Cup is 30, somebody needs to slap me across the face. Can we have like chat GPT? Can we just tell up to email all of this stuff? So like August 15th, like right before my draft.

We got to talk about that at some point. All right. All right. What's next? Next award. Next one here. Next tattoo. Take good quarterbacks.

I think J.J. Zacharisa needs to change his podcast title. He needs to be called early round QBs. In his defense, he acknowledges like the landscape has changed. And, you know, he obviously got into the industry with that. But yeah.

Having Josh Allen and Jalen Hertz rules so much. It rules. All of your money. Just outbid anybody who wants Jalen Hertz or Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes. Get the guys who can run and pass. The hybrids are better.

They're better for the environment. They're better for your fantasy football team. The gap between these elite quarterbacks now and like your middle of the road guys, like the really good pocket passers, your Justin Herbert, your Tua's, your Dax. It's like 10 points. Jaylon Hertz is putting up 27 a game

and Justin Herbert is putting up 17. And Herbert Tua, Dak, Kurt Cousins, these guys are all on good teams, on good offenses that score a lot of points. And yet, Josh Allen and Jalen Hertz are just in a class of their own. So just, it's so worth it to spend as much money as you just get one of them. It's going to matter. It's just a head start in every fantasy matchup. Yeah, this is, yeah.

I can't tell you how demoralizing it is to go to, and people know this. If you went to the playoffs this year and you had to face Hertz or Josh Allen this weekend, it's like, it's like wrecking ball. Well, dude, Hertz is out and that's like ruining people. fucking seasons. Like he was like the ace in the hole for so many people this whole season. And now it's like, oh God, what do we do? I'm just like looking at last year's rankings for the quarterbacks.

And you go down the list and like Aaron Rogers was the QB7. Fucking Matt Stafford was the QB 11. I'm not sniffing a quarterback who doesn't run for 500 yards a year in my time. The one thing I'll say is the top six quarterbacks like Hertz was in that group. And it was like 50-50. Josh Allen Mahomes and Hertz were great. Herbert Lamar and Kyler was like. very disappointing.

The ones that, Burrow was good, and the group after that, Burrow was good, the pocket passes. Brady Rogers, Russ, Dax, Stafford, was disaster. Trey Lance was obviously

got hurt immediately. People forgot how to throw. But you have the fail safe of running. The problem is, is if Russell Wilson sucks at passing or if Tom Brady sucks at passing, you're screwed. Jalen Hurts had two picks

and zero touchdowns through the air last week. He had the best fantasy game of the season for him. Yeah. Also, by the way, if anyone, if you ever run into anyone who's using like the running QBs are going to get hurt argument like that's such a that's such bullshit because so many like pocket passing quarterbacks

that gotten hurt too this year just like getting sacked or like Yeah because how about this? The mobile quarterbacks you know what they're good at avoiding getting drilled. Yeah they slide. Like most of the time they're able to slide. It's just demoralizing. Meanwhile Brady's in the pocket looking like an 80 year old man trying to cross the street across the freeway.

Also all the times Lamar misses games anyway is because he is the immune system of like a three year old. Like it's never because it gets hit Just constantly has to shit Check his gut health Next Memento tattoo DK

Hold hold hold on to those rookie receivers I know that you're going to be tempted to drop them At some point during the middle of the season It's like the golden ticket It's like you know And Charlie in the Chalka Factory You get in this is like your ticket to the playoffs Every year

We see these rookie receivers come in And have like these massive spikes In the second half of the season season. I saw this from Scott Barrett. From 2010 to 2020, rookie receivers C.E, basically a 50% plus increase in targets, receptions, yards, touchdowns, PPR points every season. So Christian Watson was the big one this year, Garrett Wilson, another one. He was the wide receiver 15 after week 9. 2021 is Ammon Ross St. Brown, Jamar Chase, Jalen Waddle, Elijah Moore, DeMonté Smith. Those all were top 24 receivers in the second half of the season. 2020, Justin Jefferson, Chase Claypool,

C.D. Lamb, 2019, A. J. Brown, Debo. It just, it just, happens every year and you're just missing out on so much incredible value if you don't like hold on to one of those guys or two of those guys on your bench it's just like such a potential opportunity for you i do want to say the people who have george pickens and drake london are like screaming right now but that's the thing they're all like that that's just like awful quarterback situations even like the teams that have like mid quarterback situations like the jets like the point is the talent wins out you can't even look at the quarterback necessarily it's like i'm Ra had Jared Goff last year, you know, and he just went absolutely nuclear.

Well, and this is a product of like college route receivers are just getting better and better. They're entering the league much more pro-ready than they used to, and there's just a greater amount of them entering the league. And the league is more college-esque than it was before. It's like they're meeting in the middle, you know? Like, they don't have to be such high-level receivers at this level, like at this part in the career. They just teams figure out ways to get mused. It's really crazy that guys like Alavi and Garrett-Wilson have have performed. I'm so well this year, despite the fact that they're on really bad offenses with really shaky quarterbacks.

Yeah, Garrett Wilson is already like, he's QB-proof, man. Like, he's been playing well with obviously, you know, early in the season, early in the season. He was much better with Mike White, but like, you know, even Zach Wilson came in this week and Garrett Wilson was still balling out. So, yeah, he's awesome. Garrett Wilson, like if Cadarius Tony was healthy. Exactly.

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Visit W-W-DGalach-Mor. Maryland, 18778, Hope and Wye, or text Hope and Y to 467-369 in New York, 1,800, 522, 4,700, Wyoming, or visit www. www.1-800 gambler.net in West Virginia. All right. Next Memento tattoo here. The Dead Zone is a lie. I like the idea of this one as a tattoo, like Guy Pearce wakes up and he's on his, like,

Peck, it's like, the Dead Zone is alive? That's like so vague. If you're going to tattoo something on your body, at least, like, give some specific direction. We should make a short, we should make our Memento movie. I'm sorry. disrespecting Tong Tom, but of like a guy who wakes up the day before his fantasy draft

and he has 24 hours to read his tattoos and figure out what his draft strategy is before heading to the draft. Anyway, should we do that next year? Oh my God. So anyway, wait,

if you have the running back dead zone, if this all sounds like gibberish to you is basically the idea that there are reasons for this, but more or less, the running backs who win you your leagues are usually in the top 40 players or like, give or outside the top 70 players, but like 40-ish to like 70-ish,

like basically the way that the average draft position shakes out, those players in that middle between 40 and 70 just are never really the guys to win. And so we were like, you want to hammer receiver there, maybe get one of the good quarterbacks. Whoops. Well, I was, what's the word? A crusade against Josh Jacobs this year

to make sure no one listening to this drafted him. And then literally best possible pick you could have made this year, my bad. So like the idea of Hyphitz just like in just full crusaders, garb, like, talking anti-Josh Jacobs, just going out. Rosalotizing people. Yeah. And, like, the Crusades didn't age well.

Jesus. Too soon. It's, yeah. But, uh, no, I think that. Too soon is a joke about the Crusades. I think it's soon enough. I'm sure everyone listening to this who, like, didn't take Josh Jacobs because, uh, they listen to me is like happy that we're making mistakes.

They're like, don't fucking laugh, man. I hate you. Exactly. Yeah. No, but I think that. Don't fucking smile. How dare you? I think it's a big picture though, and then we come back to Josh Jacobs.

But I think what's interesting is so many that does some running backs. This sure kind of worked. Like Josh Jacobs, David Montgomery was really good. Sorry, Tom, Tom. David Montgomery was really good. Miles Sanders did well. Brise Hall was incredible before he got hurt. Javanta, he doesn't really count.

He was in it. But young runnerback. And then even outside the edge of it, but like just running backs in the fringe top 100, Ramandre, Stevenson, Tony Pollard, Miles Sanders, Ken Walker. Those guys don't really count. are more like late running back targets. But like so many of them crushed it. But specifically Jacobs, David Montgomery, Miles Sanders,

these guys on contract years were so good. And basically, we can talk about what exactly the Josh Jacobs mistake was because there's a lot. One, he just got better as a player. There is offensive lines a thousand times better than I thought it would be. The first thing they did, like Josh McJaners took over this team and declined Josh Jacobs' fifth year option and then signed like three other running, brought three other running backs in.

I was like, oh, well, what's it going to do? give him more touches. And then, yeah, I feel like the guy in the, you know, that news meme where it's like, quote from man stabbed, what are you going to do?

Stab me? Right. I mean, I don't know. Like, looking back, it's like, he had been sort of

the empty calorie carry guy for the Raiders, and that's like what we were thinking he was going to be. We didn't think he was going to get every fucking carry and every target.

Every year, he had 1,200 yards and eight touchdowns. He had never not done that. Yeah, but he had never been, you know, like,

what I was wrong about was I was, I was like, well, that's his ceiling because that's what happens when he's a first round pick for a coach who's also the GM and made that his thing. And it's like, like, how is he going to do better than that? Especially when they're kind of like messing around. And again, the offensive line doesn't really get credit. I think the offensive line for the Raiders is like the Zach Taylor where everyone's like, Zach Taylor, where everyone's like, Zach Taylor is a bad. Then the Bengals go to the Super Bowl and no one knows what to say.

So he just doesn't exist. It's like, wow, it's Joe Burr running this team. And the Raiders O line, like, including me, everyone was like, well, they're going to be bad. So like, no one wants to talk about like they've been really good at run block. I just didn't see that happening. So I think it's like four things in a row I got wrong on the Raiders, like every aspect of it. Also, he's just really good.

Like, he's straight up as a top three, top four running back in the entire league. So Craig's like been very diplomatic about this because he kind of smelled my bullshit on it in August. And he's actually, if anything, like,

kind of been restrained and not calling me out on the Josh Jacobs stuff. I mean, yeah, I certainly didn't predict that Josh Jacobs would be top five. I just thought he would be solid. So I can't take all the credit. Yeah, I think Craig's quote was,

so we're fine. Yeah, I was like, he'll be totally fine. had what Craig said was like the extremeness I was like against some of these running backs in this range was like he's like a he was like a romney running back guy and I went like full maga like all the way my maga Josh Jacobs guy yeah I was a moderate Josh Jacobs criticizer fiscally conservative right um the other thing I wanted to mention you guys mentioned you guys

like brought it up a little bit but like the lesson also is contract year running backs maybe that's a thing we need to pay more attention to. I love contract year. We were in on it like two years ago. Contract year was a big thing for us. We forgot. It's another thing that we kind of were talking about in July and then August came and we were like, well...

Look, we talk about a lot of things, you guys. Yeah. So, that's something we'll come back to. Yeah. All right. Well, sorry, Tom, Tom, my God. Next tattoo here. Yeah, next tattoo.

Do not take wide receivers with shitty quarterbacks. Do not take wide receivers where every time they catch a pass, it feels like a fucking miracle. I love this. Looking back, I looked at the ADP from the start of this year, and there's this cluster of players, the wide receiver 10 to the wide receiver 20. So after like the real elite guys, like the Justin Jefferson Cooper Cup types. And it's baffling to think that I included some of these guys with other guys.

Like the number 10 projected quarter receiver was Michael Pittman. And we have AJ Brown, Keenan Allen, T. Higgins, DJ Moore, then Michael. Williams, Terry McLaren, Cortland Sutton, Deontay Johnson, and then Jalen Waddle. Never again will I quibble between somebody like DJ Moore with who the fuck knows throwing him

the football, Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold, or I don't know, A.J. Brown, Mike Williams, Jalen Waddle? What are we doing here? There are so many wide receivers. Darnel Mooney is a perfect example. I don't know what, I just don't know what we were doing.

Well, volume, Craig, volume, volume can be a trap is the big thing. Like, we're like,

oh, somebody's got to catch passes in this offense. I think that's a trap in that that's a trap. That's a trap.

Alan Lazard, which we all knew was a trap and I kind of still wanted to fall for it anyway. But I think with this, Craig,

what's tough is that the flip side is also sometimes, like, when Darnel's been playing, DG Moore's actually been good and sometimes bad quarterbacks

do force the ball to the number one, but like, but my point is is that it's unpredictable. Sure, he can have three good games with Darnold, but he was horrific with Baker. If you go through the top 24 receivers right now in the league,

points-wise and fantasy, there's only three of them with mediocre quarterbacks, in my opinion. What's weird though is if... Amonara St. Brown and Terry McLaren. The only three in the top 24 with mediocre quarterbacks. But we didn't know that because you're looking, Jaylon Hertz as a passer, like wasn't considered like, you know,

excellent coming into the season. Tua. Highly regarded. Huge question mark. And honestly, if you have been like, oh, give me the good quarterbacks on the list, you would have taken. You know, T. Higgins, obviously, and then Keenan Allen who got hurt.

The other one, you were like, oh, Cortland Sutton with Russ. Ross is the worst quarterback on this list now. So it's... Yeah, but Deontay Johnson at 18, DJ Moore at 14. Like, there are red flags within this that Michael Pittman at 10, which is a huge mistake by me, because I should have realized that Matt Ryan is washed the fuck up. But there were red flags that we just tried to kind of talk ourselves into. Oh, DJ Moore, like, because I think we get tantalized by the talent and we don't often see

the fact that the situation is terrible. It's so hard to like, yeah, because I think this happens in like real life too a lot. Like you kind of ignore the things that are nagging at you in the back of your mind. Even though you know this is a red flag, you know this is probably not going to work how you think it's going to work. But you get like kind of sucked into other variables. This, I think this is 100% true. Like, look at it like, I was excited about Elijah Moore. Like I should have probably known way better about this than.

And it's not that these guys can't like have great seasons with bad quarterbacks. Like it happens a lot. Like Brandon Cook's has repeated. repeatedly put together a thousand yard years with bad quarterbacks. My point is like, you want to pick players that give you the best likelihood of succeeding in picking a player, like if you're deciding between a DJ Moore or a Mike Williams, while they both might be equally talented, the odds of Mike Williams having a horrific season are so much less than DJ Moore because of Justin Herbert. The floor is just higher. Like the ball is going to be on target

more. DJ Moore has a way likelier chance of just cratering. And that's why you should go with the guys with good quarterbacks. So hold on. I want to just completely an utterly disrespect, Tom, Tom, and I want to go a little big picture here. And Craig, you are correctly pointing out

that the receivers, more or less, the top 25, top 30 picks did really well this year. Receivers from around 30 to like 45 like were immensely disappointing. Michael Pittman, DJ Moore, you know, Michael Williams got hurt,

Terry McLaurin for the first half Deontae. All like really awful. Here's the thing. All the receivers after them were bad too. Like if you look at the receipts, receivers that, again, in the dead zone to combine these conversations, Alan Robinson, Brandon Cooks, Gabe Davis, Jerry, Judy, Darnell Moody, Michael Thomas, Adam Thielen, Rashad Bateman.

I mean, Juju, Juju is one of the better guys on that list. Like, there were four who were great, Jalen Waddle, Metcalf, Amon Rahmari Cooper. There were 12 guys. This was a minefield. And I almost wonder if this is kind of related to big picture. I think it's interesting that we're basically what we're saying here is that receivers that crushed were all the top receivers in the first two and a half rounds, the first 25 picks where we're like, those are the best players.

And we actually really, really did good at identifying the best receivers will be good. Everyone after them is a cluster. And I will say at the absolute biggest picture, it is something that we had discussed entering the season and if anything undervalued, which is offenses are getting their best players the ball again. like the idea of quarterbacks reading out entire fields one two three four five progression is like going away and like it's now much more like the Miami Dolphins

it's like you know who's good Tyree Kill and Jell and Jell and Waddle let's get like 90% of our throws to those two dudes and like the entire league kind of and also running's back so I think it's interesting that we're like all the running backs two thirds of them were good that we liked but every pick after 25 we're like uh I don't know it was like throwing a dart yeah that's an interesting point too about how, I mean, this is maybe

partly just big picture NFL, like Craig complaining every week that no quarterbacks are throwing for 200 yards. Like the passing is just down a lot. Scoring is down a lot. Yeah, this is related. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. It's just so hard to like sift through all the variables and trying to figure out really what like

the actual lessons are. You know what I mean? Like this is the, this is a perfect example because high fits, when you mention all the different receivers that kind of like underwhelmed even after that. That's a good point. I just think that, like, if you're deciding between two players and one is on an offense that scores a lot of points with a great quarterback, I think that one every single time. Really good tiebreaker.

Yeah. With all this said, because we're doing Memento tattoos, and then we can get back to a couple more tattoos. But, like, is there any reason that your first three picks next year shouldn't be like wide receiver, Travis Kelsey, wide receiver? Or Kelsey receivers here? Like, get two starting, get like Diggs and Devanta, get like two receivers, whoever it's got to be. and Kelsey, and then draft like seven straight running, get a quarterback at seven straight running backs.

You know what I mean? Like, is there some world where like, it's so clear that predicting the receivers, I mean, if you just look at the guys who were drafted, Cooper Cup was a yes to yes still got hurt. Jefferson's a yes.

Chase is a yes. Devonte's the yes. DeFonte's is yes. Cidilam was kind of derailed by the injury, but like later on, like I guess amid, Debo's a miss, Tyree kills an ultimate yes.

Evans was bad. A.G. Brown was good. Like we basically eight of the top 10 were on the point. and then it was a disaster. It's like, just do that again. I mean, if you had like the eighth pick in a 10-team or 12-team draft, you could get, you know, name your wide receiver,

you can get your Justin Jefferson, your Tyree Kill, your Stefan Diggs, probably grab Travis Kelsey on the way back and then grab all this. And then grab the first quarterback, Josh Allen or Jalen Hertz. You could have literally the top, the best player at each position,

you could have in your first three picks if you just avoid running back. So I'm sure we'll talk about that a lot. I do like I do like the just like the visual and the feel of avoid Receivers where it feels like a miracle every time they fucking catch the ball That's what I'm taking away from this There's just no worse feeling when you're just like you're like all right I have I don't want to rely on miracle Terry McLaurin when Carson Wentz was the guy

Dude or like Jerry Judy you're like God I just if this guy get to four catches today this is this is a gift from God Yeah DJ Moore Yeah, I just, I don't ever want to do that again. You should have to ask, but you shouldn't have to pray. To be honest, like a good rule of thumb. I'm not, if Zach Wilson's a quarterback for the Jets next year, I'm going to, that's going to

knock down Garrett Wilson for me. I don't care how good he is. It just is. Yeah, that's true. All right. Next one, DK, next thing you're tattooing on your body. This is like, I think, already on our bodies from last year, but don't trust Kyle Shanahan.

More specifically, don't take Kyle Shanahan running backs. I'm going to look at the preseason 80p. from the last couple seasons of the running back situations in San Francisco. This year, obviously, CMC was not on the roster to start the year, so that doesn't matter. Elijah Mitchell was the RB21 and ADP, 46 overall. So he was a top 50 pick. He has scored 24 total fantasy points this season. Ty Davis Price was the next guy on the ADP list.

He has scored a total of three fantasy points this season. Jeff Wilson, RB 65. He actually did pretty well, 9.2 points per game when he played. And then Jordan Mason was not really on that list. So again, nothing, not, none of this really worked out for people that were drafting Shanahan, unless you absolutely drafted Jeff Wilson like in the last round or picked him up off the waivers. 2021, same kind of deal. Rahit Moser was the 20, the RB 26, so he was the 61st overall pick, top 60 pick,

played four snaps all season. He heard himself on the first drive of, uh, of the season. And we put him in the burn book. Yeah, it was kind of harsh of us, but whatever. Kevin Coleman was the RB 49. So he was like the guy people were taking next. He averaged four points per game in PPR. And then Elijah Mitchell was essentially undrafted, the 262nd overall player.

He averaged 14 points per game at FPPR. And he was awesome. 2020, Rahim Mostard actually was a decent pick. He was the RB 23 and he finished us the RB 27. So that's solid. But Tevin Coleman was the next guy on that list, RB-4th, 11th overall. all. He averaged 1.3 points per game.

And then Jeff Wilson came out of nowhere to average 11 points per game. Like, it's just impossible to predict this fucking backfield. We've known this for a while. Well, you filibustered for the entire, we're about to disrespect Tom Tom, but like, are you actually going to do that with Christian McCaffrey? Like, maybe being the number one running back next year, are you going to be like, I'm not taking McCaffrey because of Shanahan? I think because of Shanahan, I'm not going to be taking McCaffrey.

Really? What? Stop. No, that's not the rule. Because he'll immediately just like get hurt. hurt or something. Shadahan is just a curse. I subscribe to that. He's a curse upon a song. Stop. Every year this happens.

We're going to get sucked in by the siren song, Christian McCaffrey. It's because he had six-browners and undrafted and third rounder rookies that he didn't trust and he got under short fuse and was like mad that like these guys like we're not doing exactly. He traded a second. How much draft capital did he trade for him? they've like who babysat for who like they didn't Kyle Shannon used to babysit for Christian McCaffer they know it's like 30 years the families go back 40 years or whatever like

please yeah I'm not saying Chris McCaffery is going to be bad I'm saying he's going to get hurt immediately because he's part of this like fucking curse of the Shanahan running back I'm just staying away from it in fact I'm I'm going to take this even further I'm just not taking any 49ers players ever again I love it I refuse I love that I don't want a fucking I don't want any part of this offense I don't want Debo I don't want I you I don't want kiddle. I don't want any of these fucking running backs. I'm done.

I'm fucking finished with all the 49ers. They're all really good. I acknowledge that. This is an awesome offense in theory. I don't want to fucking deal with it at all in fantasy. I'm fucking done with it. Snip, snap, snip, snap, snip, snap. Can't do it.

Snip snap. Do you know the emotional toll it takes on me? That is it right there. The 49ers of the Snips snap box. This is the Michael Scott getting what is it? Fesectomy, reverse. That's how it feels.

This is exactly how it feels. Try to fucking figure out who to start in this 49ers offense. There's no better feeling than a Sunday night game with the Niners and you just have no players in the Niners. You're like, oh, I can just watch this game. Or like, you're in your consolation

bracket and you're playing for like sixth place and George Kittle finally gets you like 30 points. Snap! Dude, I remember I was actually literally like in a dynasty draft last year and I took this Danny Gray guy in the third round and my buddy turned to me and was like really Shanahan like you have any hope this will turn out

and I'm like fuck you're right it's like this like epiphany I was like God damn it you're right I should literally never take any Shanahan players ever again you literally can't even trust the quarterbacks in the Niners like yeah all right

God knows who's fucking starting on that team speaking of trust final one here I wrote this down six weeks ago and I have it last year because I need to decide if we're going to get tattooed. I wrote it down, you know, probably wasn't in the right state of mind.

Don't trust Kyle Pitts. Maybe just don't trust any Kyle's. Is this a Kyle Pitts tattoo or is this an Arthur Smith tattoo? Disguised as a Kyle Pitts tattoo. This is what I need to figure out. I walked in here with $200 and no one to stop me and I got to figure out what tattoo I'm getting

in the next two minutes. If Kyle Pitts gets traded to any other team, you're drafting him, right? I think that's the thing. It's like, he's not getting traded. I'm just saying, like, in a vacuum. Sure. Okay.

I think we could do the segment on, like, Kyle Pitts as a post-type sleeper in July 30th of next year. We could do it right now. Like, oh, my God, like, he's so talented. He had all these air yards. Like, Marcus Marioo was the quarterback. He left in the middle of the season. Like, he has a nerve injury. He's throwing on the coach just wants to run 50.

times a game and it's like as soon as they get like real quarterback X, now he's going to be great. And then you'll take him. But then the high, it's like, you get a discount. You'll have to take him like 55th. And then what? Who is the worst quarterback that the Falcons could have next year? That would change your mind about this. Jimmy Garoppolo?

Yeah. So like if they had Jimmy Garoppelow. No. No. Would you get that lasered off? Would you laser it? The Niners have devised their entire offense around making. sure that Garapolo doesn't have to make difficult

throws and they still struggle. Yeah, but he's really good over the middle of field, Craig. I'm talking to myself into it already. Fuck. I think it's Derek Carr. Derek Carr is my pick. Well, what if Ryan Tannhill, because the real talk, Tanyl can just get cut by the Titans, save them a lot of money? He just go to Arthur, because Arthur Smith was the guy who, like, reinvented Tanyl's career.

What if Tannhill went back to Atlanta? And we had like six months of hearing how good Tannhill was in. Oh, I'm 100% back in on. I will not be able to quit Pits. I'm off this one. I'm not getting this tattoo. You guys with having. I'm getting this tattoo with you,

Hyphitz. I mean, I acknowledge it's probably going to lead to my demise, but I can't do it. You know what's cheaper

is you're right? We should just do the, don't trust Kyle, and it's up to your interpretation of Pitts or Shannhan. I like the vague, I like the vague tattoos

where you have to like, what the fuck does that mean? I need to figure this out now? Come on. It's like the seventh round between, yeah, you're between Brandon and I,

you're like, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, if you if you guys had to guess now that we finished our eight tattoos here if you had to guess which of these eight rules

you are going to disobey next year which is it going to be oh i will not take elsie i'm going to talk myself out of dude i was going to say the same actually no what am i saying mine is going to be like the derrick henry dalvin cooks i'm going to 100% talk myself out of them yeah i well We might do receiver receiver.

I think the big picture here is like, dude, we might have five receivers in the top 10 and I think we're going to have quarterbacks in the top, like 30. But yeah, dude, let me tell you, if I'm doing an auction draft and Derek Henry's going for like 28, 30, 33 bucks, I know it's a great deal and I'm not going to do it. I don't know why, but I'm not going to pull the trigger and I'm going to regret it immediately. A lot of these, the problem with that like, well, that one in particular, don't be boring. or sorry, the rule is be boring, that goes against a lot of human nature.

Like, you know what I mean? Like, there's a reason that we don't do this. Like, there's a reason we avoid this. Exactly. I think I'm kind of like centering around this philosophy where if a pick, if a draft pick makes all your friends at the draft go, ooh, nice pick, it's a bad pick.

I think that, no, no, no, no, no. That's the rule in the beginning. and that's the rule. And by the end, you should just be those picks by the end. Sure. I see what you're saying. The midpoint,

Ramontre Stevenson, Ken Walker, all these rookies, love it. Like, the cool picks are cool, like as you get older. We're not older.

That's a weird way to put it. There's some maturation thing. Well, you do get older as the drafts was on. You get deeper. Yes. But like, everyone's going to ooh and awe

next season when you take Giovante Williams or something, oh, wow. Or like this year, people taking Debo Samuel. It's like, no, you know what I'm taking? Fucking Derek Henry. James Connor.

Joe Mixon, baby. Just boring running backs who get the ball, who get the rock on good teams. David Montgomery. What are we going to do with Najee Harris, Craig? Where does he land in all this? He's the new David Montgomery. I know. He doesn't land.

But he's like half sexy because he's like a young ascending rookie theory, or at least not, not rookie. There's nothing sexy. running back? No. He's a first round pick. No. There's nothing sexy about the Steelers. He's going into year three now.

He's essentially middle-aged. And he's old for his draft position. That's true. No. So you're not taking him? No, I'm not. Or is he boring? So you're saying he's boring, so that means you have to take him.

No, no, no. There's a difference between boring and bad. I'm not taking Najee Harris because the Steelers are bad. And Najee Harris is not a good running back to have behind that offensive line. There are other players who are just bad as well. Like, I'm not taking, I don't know, Clyde Edwards-Hillair, because he's bad. I feel like, uh, the one rule I'm definitely going to break is I'm going to be taking receivers with bad quarterbacks. D.K., don't do it. I'm going to fall for that shit again. You're going to be like,

look at all the Garrett Wilson highlights. And I'm going to be like, you know why? Great value. I'm going to be like, you know why Garrett Wilson had to make all those one-handed catches because the throws were inaccurate. Yeah, I'm definitely taking Garrett Wilson before you. There's a reason why there's not that many Stefan Diggs highlights, because the ball is right on the fucking money every time. Have to battle in fantasy

is to know thyself, Craig. So I know who I am. I know what I do in terms of like my stupid habits. So this is what I'm going to have to really focus on next year. Not getting hyper focused on these stupid teams.

You know what we should do one year? I want to do a Fantasy League where the three of us would set our rankings like straight up at the end of week 18 like literally January 13th or whatever we set like a top 200 and then we have another three teams that are like us in like August I don't know who the other four teams are but I want to I want to play and we do it live we draft the team live in August but the other teams in league are like auto drafted with our rankings from like seven months ago. and I want to play.

It's like, like, in January, we had Travis Kelsey, like, third overall. And I want to just see how the teams will shake out. That's really funny. That's interesting. Like the overthink it teams. Like, we're the overthinking teams. And then, like, the other people are just like, or the other auto-drafted teams are just essentially like, here's what to do when you're rational.

Like, can you think of a more boring but more effective way to start your draft next year than Devante Adams and Nick. Chubb back to back. That is so boring. Devonce is not boring anymore. Devante's boring, dude. He's like 30 years old. He's been around forever. He's boring. Hopkins is boring with Kyler

off an ACL. Hopkins is a little scary. Another good one. Another boring guy. Hopkins and, honestly, dude, you should have Kelsey Cooper Cup in the second round. Like Hopkins. Like, I'm just saying, everyone's going to have Jamar Chase ranked over Devonte Adams next year. I guarantee it. Don't know why. Yeah, but he's

he's good. Devante Adams is the number one wide receiver in fantasy. Yeah, but Chase got hurt. They're like equal. They're like the exact same. I don't think they are. The different,

no, I think points per game, they're like literally almost the same. Yeah, if not actually, Chesbade of them. Devonte, a little bit more,

yeah. But like by, by like we're talking like, like single digit yards per game. Yeah, but still, I just still think everyone's going to devalue guys like Adams and Cup

just because they're older, a little more boring. Yeah, you're probably right, but it's too bad we're going to forget all of this because, again, we get amnesia at the end of the season, and by the time we get to August, we don't remember anything from last year that we want to remember. That's why we're doing all of this. That's why I'm inked up. Memento, man. Good movie. Shuts out Chris Nolan, Oppenheimer coming out next year. I'm excited about that. Did he really get to blow up a nuclear bomb, Craig? I don't know that. I don't know. I haven't read a lot about it yet. I don't think you did. I want to believe he did. Dude, James Cameron went to the bottom of the Mariana's Trench. She was the first man to do a solo mission to the bottom of the Mariana's trench. So I would not be surprised that they let Chris Nolan blow up a nuclear bomb. You can blow up a fucking nuclear bomb. A rich guy doing like an adventure is not the same as can I detonate a nuclear device?

Like that's not like the same thing. I don't know. It's kind of the same thing. No, to think about it. It's just a big firework to him. He said rich people to space for fucking money. Dude, there's a Tesla flying around space right now. That's a good point.

Do you think they did that? That's like the new moon landing. The moon landing should not be like, you know, doubted. Do we think Musk actually set a car into space? Because he could have made that up. Who's to say? Maybe Kubrick is still alive. I don't know.

All right. Well, all right. Hope everyone enjoyed our memento power rankings. Yeah. Things we hope we don't forget. Welcome to the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. My name is Danny Heifitz. I am joined by Danny Kelly Craig Horlebeck.

It is our power hour this Wednesday. We're doing power ranking all the things we don't want to forget for next season because it's like the movie Memento. We just get to August and we have like amnesia. So yeah, with that said, let's just dive right in.