The Ringer NFL Show - Re-Ranking Lamar, Zeke, Herbert, and the Top 12 at Each Position

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

Is Lamar Jackson a top-five QB going forward? Should you take Herbert over Rodgers? Is Ezekiel Elliott a top-12 RB? How should we feel about Michael Thomas? We answer these questions and more as we enter the second half of the fantasy season. We also introduce our new best ball Ringer league and re-rank the top 12 players at each position. QBs (7:00) RBs (19:00) WRs (32:00) TEs (42:30) Hosts: Danny Heifetz, Danny Kelly, and Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's episode, we discussed what we learned re-ranking players for the rest of the season, including fire sale to Dallas Cowboys. Stop disrespecting James Robinson. Stop doing it. And also, apparently, D.K. has a fear of doing math in public. Stick around. Welcome to the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. My name is Danny Hyfitz, and I'm joined by Danny Kelly and Craig Quirlebeck.

Dika, how are you doing? I'm doing well, man. How are you doing? I'm great because we unearthed the video, the commercial that Craig was in. And we put it out there. And now the whole world didn't do it. Someone who was listening did it. Yes,

thank you to the listener. Thank you. Wait, wait, wait, what? I didn't, did somebody tweet it? Yeah. Yeah, we added you. Go to, we're on Twitter. Danny underscore high fits.

I mean, good luck spelling it. Just look at the spelling in the description. Or at Danny B. Kelly, which is probably easier. And we tweeted it out. It's amazing. It's honestly, it's great. And I actually have a proposal. Oh my God.

I see it. Someone says to you. Yeah, you're just, you're just seeing this. You look so young. Well, we already went through the story, but I just want to say that from now on, I want, whenever something goes wrong, I want the sound drop of the maybe football's not your sport.

We need that as a sound drop on this show. It's all I'm going to say there. See, if I wasn't the producer, somebody would definitely do that to me, and I couldn't control it. You're not telling you in yourself. I mean, we'll just get the people to demand it enough until you have to. Yeah, we'll see.

You've got to do one of those things that says, like if I get 50 retweets, then Craig has to do it. Maybe I'll do it. get three retweets. If you Venmoed me, $500, I'll do it. All right. We have a fun show today. I'm excited about this.

So we have a cool thing we did with Fandul. It's a special show. Fandle contacted us because they have a new thing that they're unveiling. It's Best Ball drafts, which if you don't know, best ball is basically, it's like a fantasy season where you don't have to manage the team. It's like you draft, you do a draft,

and then your lineup sets each week after the games end, and you automatically get your highest scoring lineup. Yeah, you are rewarded for the guys you draft, not the guys you start. Yeah, so you don't have to do ads or drops. You drafts a deep bench. You don't have to start sit, and you don't have to do trades. You get to compete with people and root for players, but you don't have to actually go through the things of setting your line up and stuff. Yeah, just set it and forget it.

Usually you do that before the season, right? And then the season starts and your team sucks or is good or not, and you go on with your life. But, and also there's basketball and hockey start midway through the year. Not this year. They're actually doing something for the second half of the season. You can draft a whole best ball league for the same. second half of the season. So it's week nine through week 16. That's November 5th is the last day to do it. But it's pretty fun because you can get your friends together. All you need to do is like an hour.

You can get 10 friends together. You do another draft. And that way, I mean, if you had Christian McCaffrey or Sequin or Michael Thomas or you had Derek Henry for like the 17 million days, the Titans weren't playing football, whatever happened to your season, you can do it. And if you're dominating and you want a new way to dominate your friends, it's fun because you can just get a whole group of people together without being like, oh, I have to check this team or whatever. You do at once in your gun. So that's really fun. And so we did one of these drafts. Yeah, us and some ringer staffers. Shout out to everyone who was with that. Thank you to, I mean, we did it. So Kevin Clark, Roger, Nora, Katie Bakes, Jomey, Kyle, Pat. Kyle drafted like through running back,

so it was hilarious. And Tom Brady, very on brand. It was really fun. So we liked this for a couple reasons. One, the Bears Rams game is super boring. So it was nice to actually be able to do something with my eyes. It was actually a good distraction. Yeah, we drafted during. this boring ass third quarter. The point is we did this draft and it was pretty fun. So we're just gonna, I mean,

we can just go through quickly how it went. I know people probably don't really care that much about our draft. But the more important point is that we're going to go through, it was basically an excuse to re-rank everything for us.

It was really fun because we don't. Yeah, re-ranking the second half rest of season of every position. And I mean, look, even if you're not going to end up

doing a best ball draft, which we recommend, it's just so interesting to be like, all right, how are the next nine weeks of fantasy football going to go. And honestly, it's not always easy to find the time to be like, oh, what do we think

about Josh Jacobs for the rest of the year? And when you do that for everyone, so we had some interesting insights into that. But first, just from the draft last night, I'm just curious, is there a player you guys were really happy to get? And then I'm also, is there a player you were really pissed when someone else took them? I'll tell you who I was pissed when Craig took is Chase Edmonds. Yeah, I was too. That was mine. I was about to pick him. I don't even remember what round it was. It was relatively late. Like, he felt. further than I thought he would. And I was like,

ooh, this is going to be such a steal because we both, we all three believe that he's getting a big second half of the season. And then freaking Craig over here snipes him.

Swooped in. By the way, being in draft with you two guys is annoying as hell. Because we know all of each other's tastes. I know. I was mad because Dallas Goddard. There's no such thing as like

sneaking a guy onto your roster. No. You took Dallas Goddard, which was annoying because I wanted him as my third tight end. And I was so mad. And I also, so anyway, that was, I was annuit at that one. Another annoying thing is I feel like you, the three of us are also attuned to the idea of drafting a quarterback late.

But some of the other people in the draft were not. So I was kind of just like, I'm not drafting a quarterback until like the ninth pick. And I'm sure I could still get somebody good. I could still get like Matt Ryan or whoever. And like all the quarterbacks went in like round three. And then I kind of had no one. And I ended up with Matt Stafford and Baker Mayfield. Ooh, that's tough.

I was doing that dance. I ended up with Matt Ryan, which I was very happy about. but I looked at the board and I realized if I wasn't getting Matt Ryan, I was going to get like Kirk Kostens. Matt Stafford or Bakerfield? Yeah, exactly. Okay. With that in mind,

do you want to get into our re-ranks of the quarterbacks? Yeah, let's get into the re-ranks. But again, the best ball thing, it's really fun, highly recommend it. The deadline's November 5th.

So be sure to play, it's called partial season best ball contest on Fandul. Bestball, it's the simplest way to play season-long fantasy football. The deadline's November 5th. So it's before week 9. So that's when you want to do your draft. It only took,

It's less than an hour. It's pretty easy. 30 seconds per pick, 20, what is it, 20 spots. And you can play for as little as a dollar. So it's, you know, you don't have to break the bank. And if you're a new to Fandle, you can get a deposit bonus up to $500. And then if you sign up today and use the promo code, ringer fantasy, so they know that we sent you. We're going to give updates on that throughout the season.

We'll see how it's going. All right. So now, you know, so we basically had a little spreadsheet. We got all the running back receivers, quarterback's tight ends. And we all voted. So we each did our own personal ranking. and then kind of combine them to make the kind of the collective rankings

of the top 12 of each position. Let's start it off with quarterback, which is a pretty interesting... This is so fun, and it's something I never do is kind of rehashing how we feel if you had to redraft in the middle of the season. So it's interesting to see where some of these guys ended up. I was shot...

So there's one that stands out to me. We can just run through the list first, and we averaged our rankings here. So we went with Russ is number one, Mahomes is two, Kyler Murray's three, Josh Allen is four, Lamar Jackson's five, Deshawn Watson, six, Aaron Rogers is seven, Tom Brady's eight.

Sorry, did I already miss count? Aaron Rogers is eight, Tom Brady nine. Drady's nine, Justin Herbert is 10, Tan Hill's 11, and Matt Ryan's 12. All right, glad I can't count. That's like a theme so far. So which one stands out to you here, Hyphitz? I remember being flabbergasted that I could not figure out of Lamarj, like as I was making my rankings, that Lamar Jackson's top five quarterback, which is unthinkable when we were

entering the season. We knew regression was coming for him, but I actually am still not convinced. I put him there at five, and I remember thinking, if you had a strong argument for Deshaun, really Justin Herbert, even Tana Hill, I remember feeling like I was a win sock, you could just blow me aside. And I'll be like, yeah, sure, he's six. Like, is he a top five quarterback to you guys right now? I hemmed and hot on this one, too. Right now, he is the QB11 in points per game. So he's scored 21.3 points per game. That's the 11th best. We put him at fifth for the rest of the season. I think the reason I did that is because I do think they're going to get their passing game going a little bit more than they have in the first half of the season.

And I think that he's going to run a little bit more. But I went back in kind of like compared his season last year when he was the runaway QB1 and this year. And there's a few things that are kind of going going on with him. Number one, last year in his MVP season, he averaged 208 yards per. game passing. He had 9% touchdown rate and that translated to 36 touchdowns on the season total, which was the NFL high. This year,

it's not like a huge difference, 189 yards per game. So it's not like enough to... 16? I don't know. I can't do math. A huge, huge difference. And 17, yeah. But the big difference, and this is exactly what we talked about all offseason. It's 19, but

you know, we'll do math. We'll do flashcards later. I mean, in my opinion, it's 16. Sure. Sure. We're all in title to our own truth. That's true. Craig, I have like this public fear of trying to do math in public. This is my nightmare. Are you serious? Like, no, I'm not kidding. Like, people trying to tell me like, you know, quickly do like a really easy, like, like, like you said, like a multiplication table. So you weren't on the, um, so you weren't on the math leats in high school. No, I hate that shit. Wait, to clarify, in, so like, let's say

hypothetically, you were asked to subtract like 220 by 37 on a podcast that was being recorded. afraid of that. Way simpler. Just like what we, exactly what we did. What's 208 minus 189? I'd be like, oh, God. I freeze up. I freeze up, Craig. So anyways. I didn't know that, but it explains like the last three years.

I hate doing math. I hate doing math. I was like, yeah, we don't have to get too much into it, but it's not my favorite. But we already did. Anyway, Lamar Jackson. Regardless, the big change, and this is like by far the biggest is his touchdown rate has dropped substantially. 9% last year, it's now 6.2% this season. He's on pace for 26 touchdowns. And then the other thing is his rushing is down too, which I think we all kind of assumed would happen. They're going to protect their quarterback. He's also been banged up a little bit.

Here's my question. So I think there's a lot of reasons the Ravens are not as good. And I mean, look, Marshall Yonder retired from the offensive line. But really, the thing it comes down to is the Ravens last year ran for more yards than any team in NFL history. So the total number was higher. But the yards per attempt was also the highest than NFL history. I mean, depends when you start history, which is the whole thing. But at least since the merge, really since 1960, highest yards per attempt ever and most yards. So they, I mean, it's crazy to be leading the league in efficiency and volume. So we're just basically saying they were going to get worse because they can't be the best ever twice in a row. It was by how much. And they're

still really good at these things. They're just not doing it the same way. The flip side to what I'm saying right now, though, is the Ravens use their buys really well. They're a great by week team under John Harbaught. They basically bench Joe Flacco and went from the run, the least run heavy team in the NFL to the most run heavy team in the NFL in 2018 when they

went from Flacco to Lamar. They did that over their by week. They changed, to completely change their offense conceptually in two weeks. So you're saying they bench Lamar after the bottom. Robert Griffin, or there's trade for Flacco from the Jets? Yeah. I mean, he's probably available. Yeah. We have to go back.

No, I'm wondering if you think that they can get their passing game in, like, Lamar, Marquise Brown, are guys you'd want to be targeting in trades? Or just, sorry that you drafted Lamar in the third round. It's not going well. To circle around and like finish up this thought and finish up this discussion is I think all of us are higher on Lamar in the second half a year than what we saw in the first half of the year. We're all bullish on him based on these rankings. Yeah, we're banking on what you just said, Hyve. It's like, I mean, we're banking on the fact that the Ravens are so well coached that they will turn this around. That's why we have Lamar at fifth, even though he's 11th. But I think out of all things, this is a win for what all the fantasy analysts talk about in the preseason, which is regression.

Like, this is just the ultimate win for regression. And I'm sure people will pound what happened to Lamar Jackson next season when they talk about Russell Wilson or whoever it may be. This is exactly what they've been talking about. And it actually paid off in the most perfect of ways. The other quarterback I wanted to mention here was Tom Brady, who I don't know what. to do with him because Tom Brady, we've got him ninth for the rest of the season. Honestly, I'm probably too high on him. Probably messed that up. But I don't know. He's 10th right now. He's 10th halfway through the year in points per game. The more I think about this, honestly, the more I think

I ranked him too high because Brady, in my opinion, I mean, this is really a discussion of the whole Buccaneers offense. I would trade away Tom Brady if you could right now because I feel like Tom Brady's value is never going to be higher because he just came off four touchdowns, 369 yards. Nice. And he also ran for a touchdown. So he had five touchdown game. And then you throw in this Antonio Brown stuff. It just seems like everyone thinks the Buccaneers are going to be a super team. I was blown away in Peter King's column this week. He said that he thought the Bucks had looked like the 2007 Patriots, which is, I mean, just an amazing thing to say. But I mean, I don't agree. But I do think that a lot of people are just insanely hype on the Patriots right on the Buccaneers right now,

especially with the Patriots losing. Everyone's like, oh, Brady never lost a step. But if you think about it, I still think this is a quarterback who doesn't run. Yeah, it gets rushing yards, rushing touchdowns sometimes, but it doesn't run. And I just don't think they're going to have to pass that much because I thought this game is kind of an anomaly with the Raiders where their defense is great. And I just feel like the bucks are going to be running in the second half more often than not. How do you feel about the idea that his arm is going to like go down or whatever the word is like get worse as the year goes on? And it gets colder and all that stuff. I don't know. It's balmy down there in Florida though. That's true. That's true.

That might help him, you know? He checks into a nice retirement facility. He's driving around those little golf carts everywhere, saving his legs. You think Brady's got a golf cart? Absolutely. He's probably got it decked out, like fresh custom tires on it. Probably says 12 on the top. Did you watch him blow that match with Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning?

I did. I don't think he's mentally tough. So first off, Danny, you're saying to trade Brady high. I think if you can, yeah, if there's someone your legal wants Brady, I would do it. He's basically playing as good as anybody predicted he would, and we're just like, once again, if regression comes back up, like we didn't think he was going to do this and he's been on quite a tear in the last five weeks

so we're just betting that it's going to go away a little bit. Okay, so one other quarterback that I do want to talk about who has been gaining a ton of steam and a ton of hype over the last few weeks is Justin Herbert of the Chargers, who based on, you know, per game stats is like the third best quarterback in the NFL right now per game. You know, he's been way out playing expectations.

And to boost, he's also running the ball. Like he's adding that, that, you know, rushing equity that's so, so important in this fantasy game right now. So where do you put Herbert? And are we too low on him?

Because right now we have him ranked as the ninth QB for the rest of the season. And I'm looking at that right now and I'm like, that feels low. Like, I'm really bullish on him right now. And for the record, we said ninth for Brady. We meant eighth.

So we have Herbert right after Brady. Yeah, I ranked Brady head of Herbert. I don't know what the hell I was doing. Herbert's better. Because like, yeah, let's play the name game real quick. If it's like you'd rather have, you'd rather have Herbert than Brady, right? Yeah. And then what about Rogers versus Herbert the rest of the season?

This is like a trap. I think I'd lean Rogers just a tad. It was so wary because here's the thing. I think that Aaron Rogers had his best and work, not statistical, but eyeball, like best and worst games back to back last two weeks because the box game was probably the worst game will have all year. and then the Texans game was like a classic what's their great cornerback Bradley Robey

he got hurt what felt like five minutes into that game I think he had like yeah like one snap or something and the Texans just don't have great cornerback depth and Rogers is his absolute best when there's thin cornerbacks on that not literally thin when they're thin at the position and I the second Roby went off the field I was like Rogers gonna go off so I would take Herbert again over Rogers

because I don't think last week is indicative of what that's going to be. And if you look at the Packers and the Chargers schedules, dude, Herbert's schedule is not that bad. Yeah, I was looking at that earlier. It's actually pretty easy. Herbert has weaponized how the Chargers, every game is close, no matter what.

It's like Philip Rivers, which is kind of sad, and Herbert's genuinely exciting. Like, he's just always chucking it. And so he just, I don't know, he's rack up so many pass attempts in the final 10 minutes of each of these games. It's kind of amazing.

So he's got on the schedule right now at Denver versus Las Vegas, at Miami. versus the Jets, at Buffalo, whose defense, I still look at Buffalo and I'm like, oh, that's a good defense, but their defense has been bad this year. But the only thing it'll be,

it's at Buffalo, it's like November 29th, maybe it'll be like freezing. Yeah. Then they got the Patriots, Falcons, Raiders again, and then Denver. So Denver's like the best defense on that list,

it feels like, maybe New England. I'm going to do it, New England's defense, speaking of booking at the thing and thinking they're good. New England's defense is terrible. Yeah.

we're just baking in that Herbert's a rookie, I think, is what we're doing. It's just hard because he's a rookie. He's played seven games. What is it? Six because Tyrod Taylor was playing. I'm a little bit dubious that he's not going to throw four touchdowns a game. I mean, it's too good to be true, I guess. The rushing gives the floor. The fact that he's run so much and so easily, I think, gives him a floor that most rookie quarterbacks don't. Or actually, at this point, honestly, although the sneaky part of it, the NFL is, like, 10 years ago, there were, like, six quarterbacks who could run pretty well.

And now, like, the large majority of quarterbacks can pick up, like, a, third and 10 if they really need to. I still think we're kind of underrated. Like, I still think he's not a big enough story this year. I think it's because of this massive passing boom and that Russ is going to break every record and that nobody wants him to be better than Joe Burrow, but like he probably is. I mean, if somebody would have said by week seven,

Justin Herbert is the third best fantasy quarterback in the league, I mean, we'd be like, I don't even think he was going to start. Is it because he's on the West Coast? You remember when my preseason bold take was that Burrow was going to be a top six quarterback? Yeah. absolutely should have just gone with Herbert instead. Not only would you have gotten into the Salty Spatoon,

you would have like owned it. Yeah. I know. That would have been. Damn it. I will say, Craig's, the most right Craig has been on this show is that if Borough we're doing what Herbert

we're doing, we'd be losing our minds. We'd be freaking the hell out. We'd be like, he's the next Andrew Luck. He's going to be one of the greats. All right. Well, speaking of freaking out, though,

running backs. Well, specifically, I'm just thinking about Ezekiel Elliott. And I want to talk about him. But first, let's just go through the running backs that we re-ranked. This one's bizarre, by the way. So we went Alvin Camara, Dalvin Cook, Derek, this is an order. Camara Cook, Derek Henry, Aaron Jones, Christian McCaffrey, Kareem Hunt, Josh Jacobs, James Robinson, James Connor, Clyde Edwards Alleyer, Jonathan Taylor, Joe Mixin, Chris Carson, Ezekiel Elliott.

We went 14 deep there, yeah. Well, I wanted to get to Elliott. And I, because when I did a triple take, and look, the dirty secret about rankings is, as you see what the number is, and you're like, does that look right? And then you change it. And I looked at, just, just, peek behind the curtain there, people. And Ezekiel Ali at 14, I was like, am I doing something wrong here? Like, like, I must be incorrect. Because has he ever been 14th than anything?

The more I went through this. And one, important caveat to this discussion is, I kind of went through it as like, you're drafting the handcuffed to these guys too. So McCaffrey, I don't know for sure the next time he's going to play. But if you're drafting him going forward, like, you kind of want Mike Davis

because it's hard to, you know. But, and if hopefully you have Mike Davis, if you don't have McCaffrey, but for Zeke, ranking him 14th, I was thinking of it this way. Feels too low. Right now, right now, at this moment in time, he is the seventh best running back by points per game.

Yeah. In fantasy. What is the argument that he will improve upon that? Because I don't know what it is. Because it's volume. It's not like he didn't score touchdowns. He scored five touchdowns in his first six games. That got hurt.

Now they have the worst quarterback in the NFL of Ben Danucci starts. They have the worst offensive line in the NFL. And they have the worst defense. in the NFL, so they're going to be passing. The problem is even when they were passing the ball and Zeke was getting more receiving work, he still wasn't doing a ton with it. Other than just saying Ben Danucci will,

you know, pee his pants and just check down his Zik every time, I don't know what the argument is for Zique to improve. It's not volume, I don't think, right? He's gotten 12 carries each of the last two games because they're getting fucking killed. And like, is that going to change? Here's my problem.

Here's my problem. The first six weeks of the season, the Cowboys were third and point, sorry, five, because I'm counting when Dak got to hurt. The first five weeks of the season, the Cowboys were third in points and first in yards. And Zeke was like the eighth best running back in that time period. So if the argument's volume,

they're not going to be third in points anymore. They're not going to be first in yards. They're going to be bottom five, if anything, in those things. How is his volume going to go up? I'm just looking at his stats, or basically his ranking from the last three weeks. So week five, six and seven. I include week five,

even though Dak got hurt during that. that game. He is the running back 14 in that stretch and half VBR. Is he really? Yeah. Oh, wow. Look at that. That's the number we have. No way. 14th. Damn, we're good. So we're right. All right. Great. All right. Moving on. So I don't know if that's going to, I don't know if that's going to stay, though, but I do think that's like around his range. So shit, maybe that maybe it does make sense. That's what's nuts. And I think that it's one of those things. If you can take advantage of the name value in your league, let's do name game here. If I offered you, I don't want to play with

the hurt guys because that's like, you know, who knows? But, I mean, would you take Jonathan, if you have Ezekiel Elliott and I offered you Jonathan Taylor, would you take it? Yeah. Man. I don't even think this is close. D.K.'s pausing, though, and D.K. loves Jonathan Taylor. I do.

Yeah, I would. I do love him. Would you do James Robinson for Zeke Elliott? Yes. Yeah. Would you do James Connor? Yes. Clyde Edwards-Layer. Well, we don't know how the Leveon thing's going to go, but with that, with the I think I would still.

I think I would too, although that's, I'm dubious about Clyde. I don't want to do anything with the injured guys because I think that's no fun. What about Carrey? The hottest take one right now, would you do Chase Edmonds for Zique? Yes. I think I would too. But with the caveat that. God.

I mean, you could make that trade in any league right now. You could. And here's the flip side. Is I say that, like, if you put, and here's the crazy thing, if you put a gun in my head and you're like, who's going to have the better rest of the season. I'd say Chase Edmonds, which sounds nuts, but he's going to start. And I think when Kenyon Drake come back, he will get more snaps. And also, he's outproduced Zeke anyway.

I mean, I think Chase Edmonds had more points on Monday night or Sunday night football than Zee, his season high. But what about the rest of the offense, though? Amari Cooper and C.D. Lamb, Gallop, Dalton Schultz went from the strength of this team. And it's not like they're bad now, but they're useless because you have the worst quarterback and the worst offensive line. Would you also trade away like Cooper and Michael Gallup? And now, well, Gallup, you cut, but Cediam.

When you say trade away, it's like, I mean, yeah, I guess. Like if I get something I deem better, then absolutely. But I think the way you have to talk about it, and we can do this as we get into wide receivers, which I believe none of those guys are in our top, even 15. I think they're both personally, I think C.D. Lamb and Amari Cooper are, should be the third wide receiver starting on your team for the rest of the season. I think that's it, the third best receiver. And they won't go any higher than that.

I think you're right. I made the mistake. I actually hate that what I just did where it's like you say in a vacuum, should you trade this person? The answer is always, always, always, what can you get in return? I guess what I'm asking is,

or not when I'm asking, what I'm saying is, if you can get anywhere near the value, like, Amory Cooper right now, through seven weeks, I think is the seventh best receiver in fantasy football. If you could get anyone

who thinks he's a top 15 receiver, I would pull that in a second. Because I think this Cowboys season is a disaster. And I think that sometimes you have to be wary of panic trades. Sometimes you have to be wary of like, you know, selling your portfolio on Black Monday. And it's like, nope, just ride this out. And sometimes it's like sell this before people don't realize how bad this is. And I think that's where the Cowboys are about to be at, which maybe I'm

wrong and Dalton comes back and it's fine, but it doesn't look that way. A good way to tell how you value a player is like, so what you just said, right, Amari is seventh and 15th is Justin Jefferson. I think if you offered Amari Cooper right now to somebody who had Justin Jefferson, I think they'd say no. If you went down to the guy who was 20, Mike Evans. Oh, yeah, they might so, no. Do you think you would trade Amari Cooper for Mike Evans?

I wouldn't. Would you trade Amari Cooper for Chase Claypool? He's 19. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think I might. But the point is, if you have to even think about it, would you really? That's amazing. I mean, it just depends.

It depends on your team, but yeah. We disagree in Claypool. But the larger point we're making here, though, isn't like trade Mari Cooper for this receiver. If you can get that receiver and another person, you probably want to do that. Yeah. It's one of those things where early in the season, you wanted every single piece of the Dallas offense that you could get. And now you just need to like, just get out. Get out, man. Liquidate, liquidate your stocks. Take the loss. Wait, I want to get back to the rest of the running backs here. I basically just want you guys, I want to go down this list again of our top 12.

and I basically just want to stop at the first place where it feels weird. So like first is... The first one is like, Camarra, we're good with that. Dalvin Cook. Easily.

Good. Derek Henry 3rd. Like, even if they're by one spot, like I don't mean stop when they're like a spot off. But like Aaron Jones, fourth, probably right. McCaffrey 5 makes sense.

McCaffrey, stop. You think? Yeah, because it's, he has a high ankle sprain. Matt Rule says he's going to keep playing Mike Davis. But basically it just, I don't,

when was the last time a guy returned from a high ankle sprain and looked awful? Was it like Adrian Peterson like eight years ago? And like that's just something to keep in mind for Michael Thomas and McCaffrey and who else suffered in high club? Jeff Wilson, not that he's the same category. Well, Hyphen, you ranked him fourth. So what's up?

So I ranked him forth because I remember thinking the Panthers running back spot is four. Or really it's maybe that's too low. But basically I was building in the uncertainty of the Panthers run, if you could just have Panthers running back and all the points, it's probably number one, if not Camara. but the uncertainty of like you might play McCaffrey yeah it's like you don't know the breakdown you know how healthy is and you might get hurt midgame and so I was thinking I'm trying to hedge between where McCaffrey's at and where Mike

how good Mike Davis has been but the reality is there's friction there like anytime you have to rank an injured player you're trying to hedge between fully healthy and fully hurt and so the number you're at is actually never the number right so that's the problem there but I don't know what to do with McAfrey they should absolutely sit him for this Thursday game

against the Falcons and wait 10 more days I think they will. I would be shocked, actually, if he played. They're playing the Chiefs the week after. Like, don't you really want to make sure he's good to go for that? I think I would be surprised if he, I think he'll be back for the Chiefs. But let's not, I mean, when McAfree played two games, this year he scored 27 and 22 and he had four touchdown.

Yeah. Okay, so let's keep going. Cream Hunt at six. I don't think we have any problems with that. I think it gets weird with Josh Jacobs at seven, Robinson at eight, and Connor at nine and Clyde at 10. I think that, I mean, I think there's kind of a tear drop there after Kareem. I think those are four.

And then the next guy's Jonathan Taylor. And I think that three of those key people are very similar to me. Jacobs, Robinson, and Taylor are guys who are getting a lot of, a lot of snaps and a lot of touches on occasionally mediocre offenses that can show signs of life. Jacobs, it's more like a cool passing offense that can't really run the ball. But you're banking on the volume. Connor's like a finicky, injured running back on an offense that's moving the ball. ball pretty well. And Edward Salair is like an elite guy that we just don't know what his volume will be at all. I almost think I would rather have Clyde because if people are afraid of Leveon.

Yeah, I'm afraid of all those guys. The biggest thing that stood out to me and your guys's rankings is how low you both had Joe Mixon? That's just the foot thing. That's just, I don't know. It's just an injury bet. Yeah, it's just who knows what's going on. I don't know. He's a running back. I don't know what's going on with his foot. Feet are important. Also, he hasn't been that, he hasn't been very impressive, to be honest, Mixon. I mean, he's the RB, 14 in points per game. He had the three touchdown game kind of, like Josh Jacobs, the three touchdown game kind of papers over the rest of the season.

Mixing his day to day, by the way. He's not like super duper hurt. I don't know. I guess I'm betting on him because he gets such a load of carries and he's catching a lot more passes this year. And if the Bengals continue to improve and Nixon has his classic second half resurgence. Classic second half resurgence. That's a Derek Henry. Yeah, he has his Derek Henry. But he does do that. But like, you guys really like, would have Josh Jacobs over mixing going forward. I want the guy who's not hurt. I think top three most,

and maybe this should be an episode in our preseason next year, top three most frustrating parts of fantasy is having a running back on your team who doesn't do shit when the team's getting killed. And Josh Jacobs is on the Raiders who aren't the best team, especially historically.

And these games where it's like 30 to 10 and he's just nowhere to be found and you just are trying to bank on some past interference call that takes them to the one and then he punches it in. But other than that, like, you're just screwed. You're like, oh, great.

The Raiders are playing the Chiefs this week. The Raiders' cornerbacks are not very good. The ones who've been playing well or are hurt. I like mixing because he can, at least, he's a little bit game script immune. That's fair. I think that's probably the best argument you can make in this. And it's very convincing because Jacobs has been really game script-dependent

and streaky, right? Like, he had three touchdowns in the first game, and then he basically hasn't done anything. And then he had two touchdowns, I think, two weeks ago. what's the argument that James Robinson why isn't James Robinson higher because he is an undrafted because we're terrified of being wrong

because we're all anchoring to the idea that he's not good anchoring precisely I think that undrafted free agent is just a phrase that like you're never actually able to like get over he has the third most fantasy points among running backs

yeah it's just like honestly maybe it's just like I'm like am I going to put him ahead of Christian McCaffrey like no I don't want to get fired I don't know maybe that's what was going on in the mis subconscious Can you imagine Bill calls you and he's like, listen, man. This take.

Are you fucking kidding me? You put James Robinson. We're going to have to let you go. Robinson should probably be ahead of Jacobs. I think you could argue he could be ahead of Hunt because at some point, Chub is coming back. If we're rethinking, as we talk through these rankings and we're thinking deeper on them and rethinking our original takes, I feel like Robinson needs to be higher on this.

Okay. So he's the guy that we're just completely wrong about. and don't want to admit it even in the moment. All right, receiver. We went, so we ranked these. These are in order. Devante Adams, DeAndre Hopkins, Calvin, and this for the rest of the season.

Devante Adams, DeAndre Hopkins, Calvin Ridley, Tyree Kill, Julio Jones, Adam Thielen, A.J. Brown. Tyler Lockett, D.K. Metcalfe. Michael Thomas, Stefan Diggs, Keenan Allen. And then we have more after that. But I'll stop there. The interesting one, I think,

Robert Woods, our guy, Bobby Trees himself. Mr. Rob Forrest. We have 18th. And I think he's at a weird season for all of us. I think each of us have him on some of our teams. And I think a lot of people listening probably to too. And he's been fine.

He hasn't been like a disaster by any of mean. He's the wide receiver 18 right now. We got emails about bad beats. I lost last night because of Robert Woods on a bad beat. I actually was up and he fumbled and I went down and I lost. But more importantly, basically, we loved him for basic. two simple reasons. He only scored two touchdowns last year, which was almost certain to go up. And Brandon Cooks was gone. So he was almost certain to get more targets and more receiving work.

It just seemed like really obvious. The touchdown regression is happening. He already has three touchdowns. So already has more than he had all of last year. But he doesn't have a multi-touchdown game or anything. But he has less receiving yards, like a lot less, like 25 yards per game fewer. So, D.K., what the fuck's going on with Robert, with Bobby Trees? Let me just say one thing quickly here. Yeah, where's your Cinderella? He's laid to the ball. Before the Bears game, he was the wide receiver 14. I mean, he had

a tough game against a really good defense, and he was a borderline wide receiver one. I just wanted to throw it out there. It was also a blowout where they like ran the ball like hell in the second half. I'm just mad because he lost me my thing, man. I know, but if we did this pod last week, I don't know if we'd be able to having this conversation about Robert Woods. Yeah, I think that's a great point.

And recency bias is definitely playing a part in us even talking about this, but I don't know. To me, he has been a little bit disappointing. The bigger picture, the bigger discussion, I think, is just an interesting one in that the Rams offense hasn't been exactly what I think

we all expected it to be. Cooper Cup has not been great. Higby has completely fallen back into like, you know, obscured. Irrelevance. Yeah, relevance, essentially. And honestly, they haven't, they've figured out their offense. They're a good offense. They're a better

offense than they were last year, but they're running the ball a lot. And that really hurts, obviously, the, you know, the guys involved in the passing game. I haven't looked at it in the last couple of weeks, but I believe they're one of the most run heavy teams on early downs. They just want to establish the run and that's who they want to be. And it hurts. It hurts your fantasy. You know, obviously it's good for Daryl Henderson, but I don't know the early down stuff off the top of my head, but I saw this from Cameron to Silva. In the first six games of last season, Goff had 246 passes. So he average, golf was averaging 41 passes per game. And then the first six games of this season,

he's averaging 31 per game. Yeah, that's huge. So one thing I want to point out with the Woods is that in the second half of the season, they play the Seahawks twice, they play Arizona twice, they play the Jets, they play the Niners, Miami.

So don't give up hope on Bobby Tree. So trade for Bobby Woods if you made the mistake of not getting him the first go-round. Right, yeah. And then so now looking at the other wide receivers here, you know, the top six here, Adam's Hopkins, Ridley Hill,

Jones Thielen. I guess that Ridley and Thielen are like standouts because they've like done really well. But they were hyped preseason. We were into them. They've panned out. That's good. I think the weirdest thing here is it's just the conundrum of Michael Thomas at 10, the 10 spot for us. And what the hell do you do with him going forward? This is crazy. We're almost, it has nothing to do with his skill. I mean, what are we doing? We're ranking this because of like, is he going to play? Like, does he want to get traded? Like, right. So I have two alarm bells going off here. One is the high ankle sprain, which I can't really stress enough. And now a hamstring.

I mean, maybe the worst two things a receiver could have. Lingering, painful. And it affects. And again, like, when you're talking about top performance from athletes, like, the margins matter. Like, when Mike Evans says he's at 80%, like the 20% is how you become really freaking good. And it matters if 20% off the top comes off of Michael Thomas that you don't really process when you just read the name Michael Thomas.

You don't think of, oh, it's, well, 80% of Michael Thomas. number two is that there is discord on this team that is beneath the surface that people aren't really getting at. But my alarm bells went off again, Peter King's column this week. Michael, he mentioned that when they suspended him for punching the teammate, he didn't take it well. And he's like, well, I don't think they'd trade him. But Peter King writes a couple sentences about maybe trading him, which sounds ridiculous until Peter King was the person who wrote that they might trade D'Andre Hopkins. And I felt the same way, which messed me up. Because when I read Peter King saying they would trade D'Anda Hopkins, I remember thinking,

we are in the low part of the news year. And four hours later, they traded DeAndre Hopkins. And so when I read that, I was like, what the hell is going on here? He's hurt with two different injuries and there's discord with the team.

Not to mention, the offense isn't as good as it was last year when he played so well. So it's not, I mean, look, it's not like it's a bad move, like you're betting on a really good player.

I just think that there's just a, I don't know. I just think it's classic, like the name value has exceeded what you're about to get. And it's there's so much uncertainty that I don't know if I like. I mean,

if you're in a good spot, and you're five and one and you want to take a shot, go for it. But I wouldn't count on him. So one other guy I want to point out, and if we want to do the football, clearly, not your sport, it's us all being way out, us being way out on Stefan Diggs. Stefan Diggs is like, I don't know, one of the seven best receivers playing football right now. And we were so out on him with Josh Allen and on the bills in general. And he's been killing it and he's been great.

And we just just a bit outside. On, we barely even discussed how out we were. Right. He was like a Glansberg, but we treated him. Like, it wasn't because he wasn't getting enough attention. We thought he didn't deserve it. And he's just been straight up good. So that was just, it's just interesting that he's in our top 12 and he should have been.

Josh Allen has been a little bit not as good over the last couple of weeks. Are we still feeling really strong that we are totally wrong on this guy? I mean, obviously we're wrong, but do you think he's going to keep doing what he's done this first half of the season or the first, whatever, seven weeks, this season. I think it's going to be close. Yeah. I think Josh Allen's hurt, personally. He's just hiding it. I think since that shoulder injury when he got tackled weird by that, oh, I don't remember what game. I think it was the Raiders. He's been wearing like a weird, like, mini robot shoulder thing. And I don't know. I think he looks a little different, but interesting. Diggs gets tons of targets. I think he's going to be pretty similar for the rest of the year.

I love it. Yeah. He's probably my biggest miss. Is there anything else you guys want to do with this list? I had an idea. We got to Keenan Allen and that was our 12th guy. So of the guys that we did below that, we didn't list them off, I want you guys to pick one player from our list after 12. That could be the surprise player to end up as a top five receiver in the second half of the year. So right now, I'll just read off until we get to 21. We have Kenny Gallaudet, McLaurin, Will Fuller, Alan Robinson, Robbie Anderson, Robert Woods, Chris Godwin, Amari Cooper, and Deontay Johnson rounds out our top 21. Of those guys, who could be the surprise guy to be a top five receiver in the second half of the year?

I'll give you mine what you guys think. I thought hard about this. I'm going with Deonti Johnson as like the dark horse guy in this list because, and I saw the staff from Scott Barrett today from fantasy points. Deonti Johnson, if you exclude the weeks that he missed because of injury, in expect, Fpected fantasy points per game. He's first. PPR points per game. He's third. Targets per game. First. Red zone targets per game. Second. End zone targets per game first. His underlying usage in that passing game when he's healthy is elite. Obviously, it's a huge question mark whether you can say healthy. But I think he's kind of the sneaky guy in the second half of the year that could be like a league winner for people. That's a great one. And that's what I was looking at as well. Hi Fitz. Well, who's yours? I'm drawn to three names. Well, I'm drawn to two names, which is Terry McLaurin,

which I think I would pick, if not just like, I just can't Kyle Allen having a top five receiver, blows my mind. But I really want to pick Terry McLauran. And I'm such a sucker, man. I just want to say Will Fuller,

which is so dumb. I know. But it's, no, but I'm not going to say Will Fuller. I'll pick someone else. The other guy here that I think is intriguing is Keenan Allen, man.

Well, he's in the top 12. Oh, he does. Oh, yeah, then it doesn't count. I'm going to say McLaurin. Screw it. I don't care about Carl Lohn. I think McLoran's going to have a huge second half. I just think it's all lining up.

I think he's just, there's so much opportunity there. They need him to be good. He has the breakaway speed. They're leaning on him. He's good enough to get open. There's so much there that I like. And I just think he's undervalued.

Like he hasn't, there isn't a guy that I'm targeting as, I find myself targeting as much in trades right now as Terry McLaren. I just over and over. I keep doing it. Hayden Winks from Road to, World does a column. He does several columns every week that like basically break down the applicable stats that you can use, you know, in deciding who to start and all that. Terry McLaurin in his

fantasy usage model. So his, it's basically expected fantasy points is another way you could put it. Terry McLaurin is fourth in the NFL. Oh my God. Over the last four weeks. He's, he's got elite usage. The question, like you said, Danny, is Kyle. Can Kyle Allen support a top five receiver? Why not? Why could be? I'm dubious. I'm dubious. Because McClureen is the wide receiver 24 in PPR in the last four weeks. So obviously there's a huge discrepancy there. But, I mean, you know, things could change.

And, you know, maybe they're, that's opponent-based and other variables. And we could see him really break out. So I like that one a lot. My guy is Kenny Gallaudet. Oh. Ooh. I like that. I think he might be the best receiver in the remaining group.

and he's played four games back with Matt Stafford, and I think this happens a lot in fantasy where you look at the season totals in the rankings, and he's not there because he missed a couple weeks. But in the four games he's played, he's had either a touchdown or over 100 yards. I mean, we all had this guy's a top seven receiver going in. And Jones sucks.

Like if we said Marvin Jones would suck, he'd say Kevin, Katie Gallaudet must be doing great. I don't think there's anything wrong with Stafford. I would pick Colliday. All right. Let's go to tight end. Our ranking for the rest of the season is Travis Kelsey, George Kittle, Mark Andrews, Darren Waller, T.J. Hawkinson,

Jono Smith, Rob Gruncowski, Hunter Henry, Noah Fant, Dallas Goddard and Jared Cook. Dallas Goddard's an IR, which I think says how much we feel about him when he comes back. See, this whole list is like top four, not worth talking about. Still consistent as hell. And then it's jumbled. And then it gets kind of odd, you know, I guess Hunter Henry and Jared Cook and Noah Fant being in there is all not super crazy. But Hawkinson being fifth and Gronk being on the list and Jono Smith being six, I think, are the big ones. It's just dark thrown, man.

I want to point out that High Fitz, you picked Gromk to be the sixth tight end drafted going forward for the rest of the season. Higher than Danny Kelly. He's joining me on the hill. I did that because two things. I realized that... I got backup.

You told me Noah Phant was definitely going to play the rest of the season. I would definitely put Fant ahead of Gromk. And maybe I'm an idiot for, like, not... No, Noah Fant was like, I'm hardly walking on the field yesterday. That's the thing. Like, I love him, but he's not healthy. And I started thinking about it.

And two crazy thoughts occurred to me. One, Gronk is like one of the healthier guys on this list, which blew my freaking mind. I was like, what year is this? Well, it's 2020. I'm sorry to remind everyone.

But the other one was that, I have to say I was wrong. Like, watching the Ronk last couple weeks, I've been like, he just looks good. Like, he just looks. Maybe it's because the Raiders are awful, but Deke is doing a shit eating green right now.

Like, he's still trundles around the field. The trundles, but like, he's trundled and they won a Super Bowl. Like, trundling Grunk is merely great instead of the best tight end of all time. Like, the best item of all time can trundle and be good.

I thought he'd be a shell of himself. He's not a shell. He's not himself, but he's somewhere in between a shell and himself. And that is enough to me to be sixth. Grunk is one of those guys that's like, he doesn't look like he's moving, but he covers ground because he's so huge.

The man falls forward for 60 minutes. They sign Antonio Brown because the receivers are all hurt. Like, to be clear, Evans is hurt. Godwin is out with a finger injury. Like he just keeps adding injuries. Scotty Miller's hurt. None of these guys are 100%. The Antonio Brown thing, I got news to you guys.

He might not play. Like, not exactly the most reliable man. Cronk is just going to be like a top two option, like a decent amount of weeks to this team, which kept floating me up. Never mind. Got it. I love how the tables have turned and we're high on Gronk again.

I went through this whole process in my mind before and I knew you would just shit. Remember when the Buccaneers came out and were basically like, dude, we didn't sign Gronk to catch passes. He's basically a tackle. Like, we need to just stop listening to what the name says. He's a habitual liar. We just need to start doing the opposite of what he says.

Yeah. Okay. Anyway. So one other tight end I really want to talk about is Jono Smith. John who Smith, we have ranked at what spot here? Sixth. I wanted to point out something crazy about Johnny Smith. So Johnny Smith in the last two weeks has put up 1.8 points and 1.4 points.

Oh, no. Remember when I said that I would rather have. have Ertz, I mean, before Ertz got hurt, Ertz, then Jonas Smith, the rest of the way you guys laughed at me. And Ertz got hurt, so it's moot. But Johnny Smith is... For the record, High Fitz, go back. I believe this happened. We had that discussion on Monday, and then on Monday night,

Johnny Smith caught two touchdowns. He got hurt to the next game. He got hurt like two plays into the next game. I had one target. And then he didn't have a good game last week. Okay. This is my whole point. This is my whole point.

So in the last two weeks, he's had two receptions. Also, the Titans have had a buy. Jonu Smith is the overall tight end four in points. It's remarkable. It's bleak in the tight end world right now, you guys. Well, no, it's not, it's bleak in a different way because it used to be like there were no good ones.

Now it's like they're all kind of good, but the difference between hurt and who's getting, like, there's so much more scoring now. I feel like tight end scoring is also up. And it's just, it's just, it is as darty and streamy as I can ever remember it. I feel like it's the most. TD dependent tight ends have ever been.

I don't see a lot of like 87-yard performances from these guys. It's just like, oh, Hawkinson got two bullshit, two-yard dump-offs. No, but Hawkinson, at least to me is clearly the second option after Kenny Galladay. No, he is. But I mean, I think Jono Smith is the second option after

AJ Brown. You were right, I forgot he got her. That was me, that was the karma for me yelling about the sheets and then I immediately just, like, got tripped over myself. I do think it is funny, though, that we're talking about one Johnny Smith who has like Craig said, two receptions in the last like three weeks. And then Dallas Goddard, who might not even be on the fucking field for the next month.

I stand by it though, because I was like, if he's back by week nine or 10, I think he's straight up could be the number. Like, there's a chance. He leads the Eagles in receptions for the final half of the season. And I was like,

I mean, I can't rank him lower, which sounds nuts for a guy that's hurt. But I was like, and again, high ankle sprained, so maybe I'm being hypocrite. But I was like,

I mean, there's not other guys in this list where I'm like, yeah, he might just be the number one option on his team for the rest of the season. So, yeah. So the only thing I worry about is I did hear, I believe it was Craig, or it was Greg Kosell talking on one of the Fantasy Points podcast,

and he mentioned that, you know, and CoSelle is in, he knows the Eagles. And Adam Kaplan from Fantasy Points is like an insider with the Eagles. And I think what they had heard is it was like an eight-week injury. So right now, we are on week five or six. So he's got like a few more weeks probably.

Okay. So maybe not, well, 11. Look at week 11. He could still end up being a huge player for you in the playoffs. Depends how he comes. Yeah, he's a playoff stash more than anything. Especially if you have an IR spot. Like, I hope you have him in your league.

I mean, if you don't already, I would hire a stash. I mean, look, he's absolutely an ad. And we don't know the situation with his, with his injury. He could come back sooner than that. It's all speculation at this point. But just don't expect him back this week and yell at us if he doesn't come back. Okay. Bad beat time?

Let's do it. It's from Tommy. Hey, the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Longtime listener and man, do I have a bad beat for you from last night's Seahawks Cardinals game? Context. It's a 14-team league and both our teams have been pretty bad. Usually a lot of low-scoring games. We both needed a win.

And going into the Seahawks Cardinals game, both our teams were going off. By the end of the regular, by the end of four, quarter, I was up 161 to 158. I had Christian Kirk left to play and he had Arizona kicker, San Gonzalez. Our fantasy matchup basically had the same vibe as the actual game, absolutely fucking nuts. Here is the sequence in overtime. I was up three points going into overtime. The Cardinals start with the ball, drive down the field and kick that field goal to go up three,

made it. My buddy goes up half a point. I lose. But Arizona called timeout to avoid. a delay of game. So they need to redo the kick. And I'm back up three. They'll probably still make the field goal, though.

Zane Gonzalez misses the field goal, and I won. Now I just need the Seahawks to score anything to end it. But the Seahawks get the ball back. D.K. Metcalfe scores in the screen. I won. Message my buddy laughing and he wants to jump off the building. And then David Moore gets called for holding on the play. It comes back.

Oh, my God. Russell throws an interception in the next play. Arizona gets the ball back all into his kick of field goal. and me. They're in field range. Murray goes deep to Kirk in the end zone. I think I won. Hits him in the hands. Ball bounces off his hands. Arizona kicks the field goal. I lose.

So I scored 161 points and I'm now two in five. Poor Tommy. Yeah. Okay. Is that all we got? Anything else? That's it. We're good. All right. Best ball. Fan duel. Check it out. Deadlines November 5th. It's a fun thing to do with your friends. Do it. Thank you, D.K. Thank you, Craig.

Thank you, Van Duel. Thank you. Wilson, I'm forgetting here. Who else can we think? Zane Gonzalez, Christian Kirk, Russell Wilson for throwing a pick. I feel like S&L is like, yeah, thanks to Coldplay.

Thank you, Lauren Michaels. Thank you, Lord Michael for S&L. Let's start at the end of every show. You should go, thank you, D.K., thank you, Craig. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you, Lauren.

Seriously, then we'll see on Friday.