The Ringer NFL Show - The Players You Have to Rank but Will Never Draft

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

We begin with some injury news from the weekend, including Dak Prescott’s shoulder, Amari Cooper’s foot, Justin Jefferson’s shoulder, and more. Then we talk about the running back dead zone, and why a specific crop of running backs should be avoided each season. News: QB Dak Prescott, Cowboys (4:16) WR Amari Cooper, Cowboys (7:35) WR Justin Jefferson, Vikings (9:23) RB Saquon Barkley, Giants (21:56) RB Najee Harris, Steelers (26:38) TE Hunter Henry, Patriots (28:38) WR Will Fuller, Dolphins (31:55) WR Curtis Samuel, Washington (34:17) The RB Dead Zone (41:51) Check out The Ringer's 2021 Fantasy Football Draft Guide here. Email us at [e-mail]. Hosts: Danny Heifetz, Danny Kelly, and Craig Horlbeck Producer: Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's good, everybody? I'm John G. Stremski, host to New York, New York with JJ. The first podcast on The Ringer and Spotify dedicated to you, the New York Sports Fan. We've got episode three nights a week, plus bonus episodes whenever news breaks. So make sure you follow the show on Spotify. Welcome to the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. My name is Danny Heiferton. I am joined by Danny Kelly and Craig Coralbeck. Your latest reminder, fantasyf football.th, thermore.com. We have hundreds, maybe thousands, just hundreds of player profiles there.

upsides, downsides, please check it out at fancy football.the ringer.com. We will have a big update coming soon. Today, we're going to explain the running back dead zone, which honestly I'm jealous that we didn't come up with that name. Great name. Really upset. Yeah. It's a great name. We're going to discuss

the running back dead zone, which is the fancy term for when should you not draft running backs. But first, a lot of news. People are hurt. Training camp reports everywhere. Yeah, it sucks. This is the time when we start to really adjust rankings, not because of skill, but because of health. Yeah, it's just like we go through six months of like, oh, this guy signed here. And it's like, ha, he has a practice in three weeks.

You know what I learned today? Amori Cooper hasn't ran a route since December. Yeah, I was going to say, this is such a stark reminder that injuries happen in football. It's like you go in thinking your teams are going to do so well based on how you build them. And then it's just hard. It's like at this time of year, you just start to remember, man, guys get hurt. Like they lose the entire season. They lose half the season.

It's so depressing. It sucks for them. it sucks for, you know, obviously the fans of the teams. Injuries are the worst. But they're a part of the game, and so obviously we've got to cover that stuff. So we're going to get into injury news for a second, but just to put this in context, DK, as you're sifting through all these reports, sometimes it's like hamstring injury guys being held out for a day or two. Travis Kelsey back spasm, which is out for a day or two.

And then sometimes things are really concerning. How do you try to sort just the abs, I mean, it's all fire hose of information you try to drink from? Right. How do you sort the news and injuries that, like, actually affect rankings for you versus the things they're like, yeah, that's probably fine? Well, I think it's, you know, again, it's try not to overreact to things that happen, like, on the actual day of the injury. Like, you know, the Justin Jefferson thing, which we'll get into for a minute there, it looked like it could have been like a season ending collarbone injury. It just turned out to be something that's, like, day to day or whatever. So that's good.

But, like, a steady drumbeat of information that's coming in that this guy's not, you know, responding well to treatment or well. whatever, that's where you start to worry. You know, we are still over a month away from the season, so that gives guys the ability to kind of rest up and get going. But even now in practices, like when you're missing practice and unable to play, unable to get those reps, that could potentially have, you know, an effect on their season. That could affect the chemistry they have with the quarterback, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, I don't, I try not to overact, basically, but as we start to get closer to the season,

we're going to have to actually start making moves and trying to like determine what really matters. What type of injury scares you guys the most? Obviously, I'm not talking about the serious stuff. Like what camp injuries are you like that one's like, like is it a groin? You're talking hamstring, foot. What is the thing? AC joint, MCL sprain.

What is the thing that you're like, that's going to linger? I think you said it. You said them groin, hamstring and foot. Hamstring and groin for speed. Like the Marquis Brown is a good example. Markies Brown's game is speed and now he's got a hamstring injury that the Raven said is worse than they initially thought. Yeah.

No timetable to return. I mean, terrible. What are we supposed to do with that? Groyne, I feel like groin. Anytime somebody's a groin injury, you're like,

this is going to last 10 weeks. Yeah. The other thing, I stole this from Greg Rosenthal, who's at NFL Network, he's a really good analyst, and he is a thing where it's like some, like, if a player comes back

from the season with the previous injury and they're missing time because they're rehabbing it, that's fine. When new injuries start popping up for guys that were hurt before, that's a huge red flag. Like, like compensation injuries? Yes.

Like a new thing is popping up. That's a problem. So we can just go into it. Dak Prescott. I'm concerned. So obviously, Dak had his ankle injury last year. He is still missing practice.

Like multiple days in a row, they're holding him out. He has a lat strain, which is, I mean, it's like the muscle from like your hip to your back. It's a baseball injury.

The Cowboys call the Texas Rangers for advice on what they do with their pitchers and what they should do with Dak Prescott. And apparently the Rangers told him just shut that down, stop him from throwing, just make sure the injury fully heals and it'll come back.

And look, the Cowboys are insisting it's nothing. I also think Jimmy Johnson was inducted to the Hall of Fame, so a lot of media attention actually wasn't on Dak missing practice because all the Cowboys reporters are doing other things. But Troy Aikman actually said this week about Dak's shoulder injury, I'm quoting Troy Akeman now, the Cowboys are downplaying it, but I think when your franchise quarterback is missing, the amount of time he's missing, I tend to think it's probably a little bit more significant than what they have let on, end quote.

That's Troy Akeman. D.K., does this concern you, and if so, are you moving down Dak Prescott in your rankings? Yeah, it's a little concerning, and I would say I'm, like, moving him down a lot, maybe, like, a spot or two just because of the uncertainty around it.

But, yeah, like, the fact that it's a baseball injury and they told him just shut him down, that's, like, a little bit alarm bells for me. Also, the Texas Rangers suck. They're the worst team at baseball. Yeah, so, yeah, like, it's interesting because Dak immediately was like, Oh, I'm not worried about it whatsoever.

I'm not going to miss time. I'm playing. Like, he was 100% confident. But, you know, that's... Players do that all the time. Players always say they're going to, like, be fine, and then, you know, they end up missing half the season or whatever. So, yeah, it's worrisome.

I'm not that worried yet. Okay. It's August 9th when we're recording. The season doesn't start for... I know they have the first game of the season, right? They play the box. But they're not playing for essentially, I think, a month still. Jay Glazer reported that the...

It's like the injury's almost in his armpit. It's like it's like inside your armpit. But like that, I don't know why, but I'm not scared just yet. There's a long time to go here for Dak. I mean, if he shuts down for two weeks, it's not like I'm worried he's not going to learn the scheme. You know, the offense is kind of one of those things where I feel like once it's all together, like it's going to hum. It's going to hit the ground running.

This isn't a rookie. Amari's not a rookie. Cidi Lambs. Like everything is kind of Zeke, the offensive staff, everything is kind of like already set. So if he misses a couple weeks because of the sore shoulder, I'm okay with it. So for our rankings, high fits, like, maybe move him down a few spots overall. But like, is this injury enough? Because right now we've got him.

He's not changing positionally. Yeah, I think there's a solid tier drop from him to like the Justin Herbert, Russell Wilson's of the world. And I don't think I'm ready to put him below either of those guys yet, you know, based on what we know. Maybe like I feel compelled to move him down a few spots in our overall rankings. But really, that's just sort of, that doesn't really matter. I think right now, just wait it out, see how it all goes. But his upside is still so tantalizing that, you know, I'm not quite ready to back off of it yet.

You think it's just a promo for Hard Knocks to get us to watch? Yeah. That starts tomorrow. So I think, yeah, to your point, DK, but not overreacting, it's just one of those, you've got to check back in a week. Yeah. It's at this time of you, you just need to see what's a day story versus kind of a week or two week story.

Well, on the Cowboys, just want to elaborate the Mori Cooper thing. He had two separate ankle injuries last year. This one's a little... More worrisome. And then, yeah, they found the other ankle injury. And he was like, yeah, he didn't even know that the other ankle injury was there until they fixed the other one. And he's also vitamin D deficient. I mean, a lot of people are.

But he's vitamin D deficient. So like everything's been healing slower. Just not what you want to hear from a guy. I mean, he's not practicing. Again, he has not ran a route since December. I was really into Omar Cooper coming into the year. I think I'm now officially willing to put C.D. Lamb ahead of Marry Cooper. and I probably buy a lot.

Yeah. And then if he doesn't play, at least early in the season, like this is huge for Gallup, like Gallup, who I think you probably can move up a little bit in the rankings. His upside just looks so much better now, too, if Cooper can't play or if he's limited. I'm just trying to remember off the top of my head,

like when Cooper's been, because he's been banged up kind of a lot in his career, I guess, like on the injury report a lot, and maybe that's contributed to him being someone who is a little less consistent week in and week out. Can you guys remember? remember off the top of your head, like how he plays when he's banged up? Like, is it like a huge, huge, you know, red flag if he's playing a little bit,

maybe not, like, 100%. I think he's one of those guys that has been banged up a lot more than people realize. Right. He planted phasitis last year. He, like, plays through it. He just plays through it. Yeah. And so I think that he's one of the more talented receivers that, like, doesn't have quite,

like, he only gets, like, what, a quarter of Dallas's targets, which for upper echelon receivers isn't relatively a lot. But I think part of that's, he just plays hurt all the time. And you honestly, look, it sucks when a player in your fantasy team just has that cue next to them every week and you don't know if they're going to play. It's just kind of stressful. Yeah. That's life.

That's life when you draft tomorrow, I think. That's kind of the thing. So I'm curious where you think, so if Cooper were to miss much time, I'm curious what you think about C.D. Lam versus Justin Jefferson, who again, as you mentioned, had kind of a scary fall. It ended up just being a sprained AC joint. So he's expected to miss some practice and then he'll be fine for week one. And we'll see. It's definitely another thing you want to check on when he returns to practice.

Having said that, are you concerned about Justin Jefferson? And do you still, I mean, we haven't really talked about him a lot. He's kind of been at Glansburg. Like, Deka, how do you feel about Justin Jefferson for this season? I'm still very bullish on him. I think the one thing that's a little tiny bit worrisome about that injury is there is some instances where they re-injured it. If he falls on his shoulder again, there's a chance it could pop back out of place.

I think it makes it a little more likely that you're going to re-injure it since you've already injured it. And he's the type of guy who, you know, so good in contest to catch situations, go up and get it type thing. That is just slightly worrisome. But overall, it doesn't really move. I wouldn't move him on the rankings. I think he's going to be fine.

It's just something to like have in the back of your mind that it could happen down the line. But you just really never know. It's hard to predict injuries. And that just, it's not really going to be a part of my, you know, draft process. I still really high on him. I think actually he's, you know, I guess you could call him already the number one. like last year, him and Thielen were like a dual threat thing

in the Vikings offense where Thielen was getting all the touchdowns and Jefferson was getting like way more yards and all that stuff. This year we could see him get more touchdowns and that could really put him like through the roof. So I'm just still really bullish on Jefferson. I think, you know, he's he can do all the things that Thelan can do in the red zone

and if they start using both of those guys more in that area, then I just it's wheels up for him. If Amari Cooper were to miss some time, even though, you know, he claims to be close to 100%, But again, like you said, Hife, it's like double ankle injuries is not great, and his history is not great. If Amari Cooper were to miss some time, would you guys, let's say he's going to miss the first three weeks of the season. For those three games, would you rank C.D. Lamb higher than Justin Jefferson?

Yeah, I think so. I think I'm getting to the point now where, you know how every year there's always a tier that you, there's like a tier three that you like more than tier two? There's always a tier below that you like better than the tier above. I think the tier three of my wide receivers, I'm starting to like more than tier two. The tier two is like AJ Brown, Justin Jefferson, D.K. Metcalf. And now, like, I think I'm getting more excited about like C.D. Lamb, Terry McCorrin, like the Amari Cooper, Alan Robinson range. Like, I'm almost at the point now where I'm like, I might just put C.D. Lamb right next to Justin Jefferson.

Yeah. And put him in his own tier. You know what I mean? Well, I think, you know, we talked about this on a show last week. We should just flip. I think at this next ranking thing, we're going to flip C.D. Lamb and Amari Cooper. And we have Justin Jefferson as our receiver 9 and Amari Cooper as our wide receiver. 10 and I think going into this put cd lamb at wide receiver 10 and just call it good and it's like jefferson and cd lamb right there and if you have cd lamb over jefferson in your mind i'm like that's fine because he's just been dominating so hard at camp he's in a high octane higher volume offense in theory

so that deck is ready to go and um he could just make this massive leap where jefferson you know he still could make a second year leap and just be freaking randy moss or something like that but like It almost feels more likely that, um, I guess it's going to be more difficult for him to match what he did as a rookie, I guess. And C.D. Lamb has this potential to just go out of the stratosphere. So yeah,

you know, because I don't want to say that we're getting C.D. lamb at a discount because Dak got hurt last year because we're not. He's essentially getting drafted as like the 12th, 14th, fourth, wide receiver off the board. Yeah.

But at the top, you have to nitpick. And I can't help. I think I said this before. Like, if Jack never got hurt, even if they didn't continue on that toward pace and they slow, down a bit and just had one of the top five best passing offenses in the league instead of the

first, where would C.D. Lamb be ranked right now? I can't help but think that he would be right next to Justin Jefferson. So my thinking is, is are we getting C.D. Lam on a slight discount this year? I think so. Yeah. I think there's people that still believe Marri Cooper is the number one in that offense, and there's still people, you know, that's definitely not the case of Justin Jefferson anymore. You know, Thielen is way down the list compared to Justin Jefferson. So I think that's holding Lamb back. And I guess maybe just his limited role in the offense, like he was only the slot guy last year for the most part. Now they're going to be moving him around, doing a whole bunch of different things. So I think people are still a little bit. It's more like just like show me first,

I think for a lot of people, rather than like buying into this hype that he's going to be this next big superstar receiver in the NFL, which I actually think he's going to be. So I'm buying it. I'm all in on CD Lamb. I'm like super excited to see what he does this year. I can't wait to get to the, when we do the Stephen Glansberg episode of the players nobody's talking about, Adam Thielen's gonna lead that damn list. For sure, dude. The guy had 14 touchdowns last year over 100 targets. No one cares. He's pretty much good every year. He's a starter.

No one gets his shit about him. I guarantee. He'll have 10 touchdowns. It's your guarantee. We actually get an email from someone asking about players who changed their diets because like Chris Paul and Tom Brady changed their diets and then like went to the finals and asking about guys over 30 who are vegan. I think Adam Theelan like leads the list.

Is he? Oh, wow. I believe so. I have a question going really quickly back to Jefferson. Is there, should we have Jefferson over Keenan Allen and C.D. Lam over Keenan Allen? Well, all right, let's just, I was actually thinking in the back of my head while you were talking. We should do a whole episode on this later, but like, let's just talk about this now. We haven't talked about Jefferson, A.J. Brown in that group right now. I think it's actually a pretty hard group to rank. Yeah.

Because the top five receivers for us, and basically everywhere in some order, is we have Devante Adams, Tyree Kille, Stefan Diggs, DeAndre Hopkins, Calvin Ridley. Yep. That's for the most part how everyone has their top five. After that, you've got A.J. Brown, D.K. Metcalfe, Keenan Allen, Justin Jefferson, in like some order. And you could convince me to move those guys. Like, who the six, you could give me a very wide range of who like the sixth best

receiver in fantasy is this year. And I think that A.J. Brown was everyone's, like, favorite guy to be like, maybe the number one overall guy in fantasy this year. Then they traded for Julio Jones. So no one knows what to do with that. DK Metcalf, it's also kind of like the Sears are just a weird situation this year. Keenan Allen,

it's like, well, what about the Chargers? Who else do they have? We just talked about Justin Jefferson. Of that group, who do you guys like the most of A. If A.J. Brown, D.K. Metcalf,

Keenan Allen and Justin Jefferson, if you had to pick one of them, and then the next time you're picking, they're going to be gone. Who do you want? See, this is where the, this is where rankings become like, you have to really test your,

you know, your conviction on guys and be like, put yourself in those situations and see if you're actually believe where you have the rankings. I kind of feel like I just want Jefferson, honestly, in that group. I think there's enough question marks around Keenan Allen. Like last year, he had, he averaged 9.9 yards per reception, which is a career low for him. And so that's like a little bit worrisome. I think I'm not worried about the volume for him. Like the volume is going to be there. But I guess just the upside, like this theoretical upside is kind of what you're looking for. and he's never been like a double-digit touchdown guy.

His career high last year was, and he matched his rookie year, which was eight touchdowns. He's never gone double digits. So does that mean he's not going to do it this year? Like, who knows? But it's floor versus ceiling. Justin Jefferson could catch, you know, he could have 1,400 yards and 12 touchdowns this year,

and it wouldn't surprise me. And he'd be like the overall wide receiver won or something. So I don't know. It's like, I guess it just depends on your mindset, that like whether you're chasing upside or you're going with sort of like what you know is going to be there the floor like that volume that that keenan allen's going to get you're going to get the jump from Justin Herbert if you believe in that I don't know it's very tough but like now what I'm just looking at that list I just kind of want Justin Jefferson I think I'm picking dk Maytkaff and then maybe

Justin Jefferson second hyfeits who's your pick because I want to talk about this after you give your pick I'm also leaning metcalf if you put a like a gun to my head you're like AJ Brown, Metcalf, Keenan Allen, Justin Jefferson. I'm leading Metcalf to be honest with you, in part because they're all in the same tier for me. And sometimes in a tiebreaker, you're like, this is probably not a very scientific way to do this. Who's more fun? D.K. Matcalf is way more cool.

Like, I'm just being honest. Yeah, yeah. At some point, they're so similar in the profiles in like the high end range, the low end. Like, at some point, it's like, DK. Metcalf is just a really fun player to have on your team. If you get them in the third round, holy crap. Like, that's just kind of more fun. I don't know if that's a cop out. answer, but it just feels correct. I think it's also, D.K. McGaff's quarterback is Russell Wilson.

H.A. Browns with Ryan Tannihill, whose reputation is still not catching up with, like, his actual skill. And then obviously, Jefferson's quarterback is freaking Kirk Cousins, who, you know, there's this whole thing there. So, I don't know. That is, I think, also a big part of it. It's like the offense. I think the Vikings threw a lot last year because it was the worst defense Mike Zimmer's ever had. He's been an NFL coach for like 30 or 40 years, basically the worst defense he's ever had. The Vikings, Vikings defense will be better this year. I just think they won't have to throw as often. The Titans are just this mystery to me because I just don't think any of us really know how this

offense is going to perform, how Tain Hill's going to perform once Arthur Smith left to be the Falcons head coach. And the other thing looming for the Titans is that they're basically the best red zone stretch ever. Like they converted 75% of the Red Jones trips became touchdowns the last two seasons, never been done before. When the coordinator leap, like play calling in the red zone matters. The coordinator leaving, you can't just sustain all-time red zone efficiency and A.G. Brown's whole career is based off red zone efficiency. So if someone's going to fall off from this group, even though I think everyone loves A.J. Brown as a talent, I think A.J. Brown would be the least surprising to me, even though that kind of blows, I don't know if that's

contrary. Also, I would say he's probably the, I would say likely he's going to get the least amount of targets. Yeah, listen, Matthew Barry's draft day manifesto like came out recently. One of his things was like he compared Tyler Lockett to D.K. Metcalf and was talking about how they essentially finished the same. One was the wide receiver eight. One was the wide receiver nine. He's like, but the difference was D.K. Metcalf was extremely consistent.

It was essentially getting you 15 to 18 points every single game. And Tyler Lockett was like 35 or 4. And he was like, you want the guy who's getting you 18 every game. And that's not A.J. Brown. And I think that's why I'm kind of, I think we all love him so much that the Julio trade happened. And analysts were still just like, no, we're just still going to kind of keep him there because we love him so much. but we're not actually understanding what could happen because of Arthur Smith being gone and Julio Jones in town.

You know, A.J. Brown had five games last year of his 14 under 50 yards. And now Julio Jones is on the team. Like, I think that if anyone is going to fall off, I mean, A.J. Brown needs to keep that insane touchdown upside that he's had his first two years to stick in this tier two. And he's the one I'm the most worried about. So I think it's Metcalf and Jefferson and Allen, I think. Speaking of Glansbergs, you said that the number one, Glansberg this season's Adam feeling. I think you're wrong.

The number one in Glansberg, the guy no one's talking about the season, is Keenan Allen. Yeah. Because. Well, I've been talking about Keenan, but yeah. I'm just saying we're projecting Herbert to be so good. I mean, so many people have Herbert as a top six, seven quarterback. Despite that, Keenan Allen, like, serious question. Other than Mike Williams, can you name the third charge receiver on the depth chart?

Josh Palmer. I think I've already asked this twice. I mean, it's probably going to be Josh Paul, over. But that is what your point is. We don't really know for sure who it's going to be. It's, it's, I mean, these are nobody's. These are dart throws, like NFL team dart throws at receiver. Jared Cook at tight end, who honestly we should probably move up.

But Keenan Allen to me has, again, has this label of being injury prone from early in his career. He's been as durable as anyone the last few years. Yep. Yeah. It's, I feel like it's a relatively boring team and that if Keenan Allen had better PR, like D.K. Mecca for A.J. Brown, like, I don't think that he'd be disrespected as outside the top eight because it's hard to poke any holes in him other than, I kind of

forgot about him. He's just 29 and he's on the Chargers, but he's like an amazing route runner, and he's, my bold prediction for this year, one of them is that he's going to lead the league in catches, and he could be Michael Thomas of 2019. You know,

they have the Saints, offensive coordinator now, and Joe Lombardi, he was the quarterback's coach for the Saints, but now he's the OC for the Chargers. And like you said, there's nobody else, Herbert Year 2 Leap. I mean, Alan's going to be the guy

that is probably leading the league in targets. It's maybe him, Stefan Diggs, and Devante Adams, are going to be vying for the leads of league in targets. Let's keep rolling on news here. Sequan was activated from the physically

unable to perform list. He's practicing with the team. Today is Monday. He's practicing with the team. Now, despite that, nothing's really changed with the timeline here. Like, the Giants are hoping

he can play in week one, but they don't know. And they're being both very and not transparent about that. And then this is from the New York Post. Quote, the Giants will not rush their star running back back in any way,

shape, or form, acclimating him into individual drills until he shows he can handle more of a workload. The goal is to make sure Barkley, 24 years old, does not experience any setbacks and that his progress unhurried remains steady. End quote. Good luck with whatever that means. D.K., would you draft Seekwon in the first round? I would, yes. So here's a good way I think of looking at the Seekwan thing is

whenever you're drafting a running back of his caliber, any of these top tier running backs, do you automatically assume that all these guys are going to play 16, 17 games? Or do you sort of bake into your mind like, oh, he'll probably, like, I'm guessing since it's so hard, like, he'll miss one game, two game here. Oh, I'm bacon. Yeah. I'm absolutely baking. I feel like if you're working in reality, you have to assume, like, some of these guys are going to miss a game or two in this, in the season. With Barclay, it's more of, it's, it feels like more of a given than like an assumption, I guess, if that, if there's a distinction there. But I mean, yeah, like, guys are going to miss a game or two here or there. I think you have to assume for any of these top running

backs and you have to be able to kind of like get through that and make it through your season anyway. I think the Barkley thing is like his upside and his talent and I think what his role is going to be in the offense is so good. It's so high. Like the ceiling is so high. It's still worth taking him in the first round even if he is going to miss a game or two at the beginning of the year. I think maybe in reality you drop him down below like Aaron Jones.

You know, depending on how you feel about like a guy like Austin Neckler, I wouldn't be like totally upset if you picked him after that, but I still think he's like a first round top 12 guy. He's not maybe the top five guy that we thought he was a month ago. But yes, I do think he's still a first round pick. I want to just run through the names here. So we've got Christian McCaffrey first, Alvin Cook,

there's Derek Henry, there's Zeke Elliott. Would you take, and then you just said Aaron Jones. Would you take Sequin or Alvin Camara? Camara, especially now with Michael Thomas missing time at the beginning of season. I would too. Would you take Sequin or Austin Echler? Sequin, I think.

...neigh next to each other. Yeah. Yeah, I think Sequin is literally right before Austin Echler in my new rankings. I would take Echler. I just health is really important to me. Like, I get what you're saying about expecting the miss a game or two. But if we have this information ahead of time, it's not that Seacuan won't be. I'm a Giants fan.

Like, I want Seekuan to be extremely healthy and incredible and rush for 3,000 yards and make me look really stupid. I'm just thinking you just, the only thing you don't want is to whiff on that first or second round pick. And if you've got, I just, I'm just straight up not convinced that Sequin will be so much better than the second round running backs that it's worth the risk of him potentially aggravating this injury, not having the workload we think. I would take Echler over him. I would take Naja Harris over Sequin. I have Sequin falling right around Antonio Gibson for me. I think that Gibson is right around when I start thinking about like the upside play. I think, yeah, you're doing like the,

like we did on the last show, the name brand off brand. Like this is sort of not quite the same as some of the stuff we were talking about last year or last week. But like, Mixon or Harris are really sort of like the off-brown version of Sequin, like not quite as, not quite as established, not quite as famous or highly respected or whatever. But you might be able to get the same type of production from them around later and just like feel good about it. I just think that Sequin like is so famous that it's like just messing up people's brains. Like he, so his rookie year when he was like the number two back, He led the league in yards per scrimmage.

He got 352 touches. Like at the end of the day, him being really fast and really athletic and having huge quads, and actually would get you fantasy points with running, like, maybe we should change the scoring. But the real idea is it's volume, it's touches. Unless you're Alvin Camara and you score a touchdown per game for the first four seasons of your career, what actually matters is how often you're playing and how often you're getting the ball.

And Sequin, he was basically more than eight out of ten times he was on the field. almost nine. I just feel like that's not going to happen this year. If you want someone 's going to be on the field nine out to ten times, draft Naja Harris.

Yeah, and what sucks is like I think the Giants are actually handling this properly. Yes. It sucks for fantasy. They're responsible. They're being responsible stewards of a man's career.

So, hi Fitz, you brought up Naji Harris, by the way. Hall of Fame game was on Thursday. What did you guys think of Harris in that game? How do you think you looked?

Craig, you are a Steelers fan, so I'll give you the first go at this. I was, unfortunately working. I didn't watch live. I saw a couple highlights of him running. I thought he looked like a professional running back. Yeah. I thought he looked pretty good. I thought he looked good. Yeah. I don't think, I mean, you know, whatever. He had like six carries. Like, I thought he looked good, you know, whatever. I will say, I mean, look, it's preseason, like, not even preseason week one. It's the Hall of Fame game. It's basically an exhibition that precedes the actual exhibition game.

So it was like, you know, he played, I think he played 12 snaps or something like that. He didn't come off the field, I believe, for every snap. The first 18 snaps he was on the field. He played more than I thought he was going to play, to be honest. Like I didn't. Look, every single thing that Mike Tomlin has said about Najee Harris has suggested, he just keeps like, like someone asked him if he's looking like a number one back to you, he just laughed and said, oh, he's a one. Yeah. Just every, every indication has just suggested that Najee Harris is going to be the three-down workhorse for this, like an old school three-down back.

Yeah. Which is so rare and it's exactly what you want. I thought the, I thought that the offense was a little bit, it looked like the office. offensive line looked a little better than I thought I would. I'm kind of intrigued by the Matt Canada offense. They were using a lot of motion, which I think personally is just only going to help the running back. You know, like in the past,

the Steelers haven't been very motion heavy. They've been like very vanilla in terms of what they're doing. Like, you know, Big Ben doesn't want to do play action, anything like that. So I think having more motion and having it be like a big part of their identity on offense is going to help that run game. And they need all the help they can get based on, you know, like the fact that they're changing out a lot of their offensive of line this year. You know, there's a lot of uncertainty there. That just creates some,

you know, just a moment of hesitation with the defender who's like worried about the sweep or worried about, you know, this guy moving that way or whatever. That's only going to be good for the running back. So all things to consider, I thought it was pretty positive for for Najee Harris in that game. All right. Other injury news, Hunter Henry, the titan for the Patriots, injured his shoulder, got an MRI. It seemed to be just a painful injury and he'll miss some preseason time, but probably going to be back for week one. So the Patriots, obviously, just dropped the bag and gave Johnny Smith and Hunter Henry a lot of money this free agency and we were like we have no idea what to do with these guys how are they going to use them

right now that Hunter Henry is hurt is this enough for you D-Kid to like bump up John Smith and be interested in him or do you just feel like this is still just a total crapshoot with the Patriots um I mean I already have Johnny Smith a little bit higher than Henry just based on I guess like his athletic profile the fact that he might be running a few more routes I don't know like it's so hard to predict what they're going to do with these guys because I think Which is the point, to be clear. They like... It's just tough because both of them are good blockers.

Both of them are athletic. Hunter Henry has a really strong history of being really effective in the red zone. So, like, there's this idea he could have, like, far more touchdowns or something like that. It's just very difficult to figure out, like, who to put higher on this. I know Craig in a past episode said, like, one of these guys is going to be a tight end one. But, like, picking which one is the big, like, this is the hard part. Yeah, high-fid shit on me for that. He's like, that's not a take.

Danny Kelly was like, oh, he's like, oh, cool, he picked one of the two tight ends. I kind of think it is a take because neither of them are getting drafted, like it's going to, like they're going to be a tight end one. I guess obviously the problem is you don't know who to pick, but I don't know. I just think I have Smith hire because, number one, they signed him first. They gave him, I think, slightly more money or a longer contract. I think actually if you look at what they're getting paid in cash this year, it's identical. I'm pretty sure. So I was looking up their contracts

on SpotTrack the other day and I could have misread it but I'm pretty sure they're literally getting the exact same dollar amount in like cash this year. So you're going to tiebreaker who got tweeted out by Schaefter first? Who got picked it for the kickball team first?

But in reality, bottom line, we don't know. I just think Johnny Smith is more dynamic so let's go with that. And Belichick loves Johnny Smith. He's touted him before. Yeah. Pelichick's touted everyone before. not Hunter Henry haven't heard that publicly also

breakout tight ends usually come from young guys who have a really high athletic profile and that leans more genre than it does Hunter Henry no we're banning the word athletic for tight ends no it's a real thing though breakout tight ends no I just tell me when a tight end is not athletic Anthony FERC sir no he's pretty athletic I think

watch him he's all athletic he was like he was split out in the slot I think more than any of other titan not named Logan Thomas. Like he was a slot receiver essentially for the Titans. The whole thing of like, oh, big, athletic, big frame. Like, that's the basic job description.

That is literally the only people they look for, big men who are athletic. That's it. There are shades, though, man. Like, there's a difference between Jack Doyle and Johnny Smith. You know what I mean? Yes, but when we use the same word for everyone, it loses all meaning. And Johnny Smith is athletic by Titan standards, but we're going to have to start coloring in the shades of guys who are less athletic.

because I'm just tired of it. Explosive. Okay. Actually, Furxter's really not that athletic. It's fine. He's all right. All right. Speaking of explosive, Will Fuller,

who we were just talking about, got hurt on the first day of training camp and has not practiced since foot injury. He is being drafted. He's like the 38th receiver in fantasy that being drafted, like 95th overall. We were just saying he's a really good value. I mean, are you guys worried here?

He's a new team and he hasn't practiced in almost two weeks. Yeah, I'm starting to get worried. I'm worried about Will Fuller. literally no matter of the team for the situation. Like no context. You don't need any context. I'm worried. We should start a Twitter account and the Twitter account is just, are you worried about Will Fuller and every day we just do yes.

Should we just do the, did the Sixers win, but it's just did Will Fuller practice today? Oh, man. I am getting worried, yes. Also, there are other reasons I'm getting worried. First of all, he misses week one because of suspension. He's on a one-year deal, so the dolphins aren't glued to him. long term, glued to him, tied to him long term. A prove it deal, as they say.

Yep. So far he's not really proving much. Also, everything we're seeing from Dolphins camp is like Jalen Waddle and Albert Wilson are just bawling out. I know that they're not the same style of receiver as Will Fuller. But if you got Devante Parker coming back,

you have Preston Williams potentially getting back on the field at some point. This is actually a relatively deep receiver core. And there's a chance Will Fuller just kind of gets lost in the shuffle. I don't think that's going to be case. I think once he's healthy, he'll be running outside. He'll be the deep threat for them.

And he'll be doing the willfuler thing, which is like making big plays. But in terms of being reliable or something that you can really depend on, I think he's like a good guy to take where he's being drafted as like a fourth receiver and hope that you get like more out of it. But I'm less thinking he's the sleeper now and more just think he's sort of like appropriately priced based on where he's going. Hold on. I'm registering the Twitter account for did Will Fuller practice today.

If we post this, someone else is going to do it. Are you worried about Will Fuller is more? I didn't hear anything you said, by the way. Can you repeat all of that? Great. Thank you. Listen, this is one of those instances where when you draft really matters, because if you're drafting right now, Will Fuller is probably going to go pretty late and could end up having a great year and screw you over. But if you draft in early September, maybe Will Fuller will be fully practiced by then

and he'll be going, you know, two, three rounds higher. All right. Other news, Curtis Samuel, speaking of not practicing in a long time, the washer receiver. He's been, so firstly, he was on the COVID list, but even when he comes off, he's been dealing with a groin injury since June? Yikes, that's what I misread it first. Not good. Ron Rivera downplayed a business saying, like, he knows the playbook because they were together in Carolina and Scott Turner, the office coordinator was there in Carolina, and that's like why they signed him, so like he doesn't need as many reps, which I think is partially true.

but again, speed guy, groin injury, been out of a month. Like, that's just, it's just so, like, at a certain point, when you have so, so much or so little information about these guys going to season, you just kind of want to filter out

the guys who were already hurt. Like, at a certain point, health is what, like, sometimes, like, fantasy football is, like real football that, if you just look at the teams that make it at the end, they just didn't have that many bad injuries.

It's like so many times, your fantasy teams that won, if you look back at your championship teams, your big guys just didn't get hurt. And that's true for the Super Bowls, too. And I just don't love guys that are hurt, no matter how much we loved him before training camp started. Also, the weird thing about Curtis Samuel this year is that, so he essentially everyone was saying he's been misused his entire time on the Panthers. And then Matt Rule and Joe Brady came and used him properly.

And he had a great season. And everyone's like, wow, Curtis Samuel is really good. And then he gets traded to the coaching staff that misused him. He signed a free agency. He didn't even get traded. He signed in free agency. He chose to go there. So no, I think the argument's simple.

It's that 2019 Curtis Samuel was really good. And for Scott Turner, when Scott Turner was the Panthers offensive coordinator in 2019, Curtis Samuel was really good in getting open. But Kyle Allen was the quarterback. Just couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. He couldn't do it. And that Curtis Samuel play, if you,

independently of the situation, Curtis Samuel was really good. He just needed a competent quarterback. But the way they used him was different. I mean, wasn't he more of like a deep threat guy? under the Ron Rivera era and then when Matt Rul and Brady came in they kind of turned him into a lower

depth of target sweep guy Yeah he was almost like a You know like more of what he did in college Was like sort of a hybrid running back Receiver guy I think I mentioned this before He like either led or was like in the top five And in running backs who took Who ran the ball you know

So he's sort of like that Debo Samuel profile guy But yeah in 2019 or Under Scott Turrard He was, I remember like everybody who's all over Curtis Samuel every week because he was like leading the NFL and unrealized air yards. He kept getting targeted downfield, but never was making the catch. It was like all these just, I think people called them Prairieards basically. It's just like throw it up there and hope he gets it. But he is a good deep threat. Like I have it said, he gets open. However, I am definitely worried about this groin injury. I don't know if this is just like personal bias, but like I had a good buddy of mine who played football in college. and he had a groin injury that literally stuck with him his entire college career. He tore his growing twice. And it's like one of those injuries that just doesn't go away. You have to like really manage it 100% of time always.

And like if you're running around on grass, like that is not good, man. Because like your foot plants and slides in the grass or like slips in the turf. It's just like your season can be over. It's just so scary. Yeah. You hit the nail on the head for me. It's important to remember with these trading camp things that like just, because the injury designation goes away

does not mean that the injury is over. Right. Right. Like a groin injury, it's like it's going to be there the whole season. It's just, can they manage it until the end? So it's, you know, there's certain guys that just won't be 100% for the entire season. All right, other news, while we're speaking of

jinxing people, you jinxed. Craig did it again. Craig also ditch. Jinks DJ Chark. It's okay. Craig just, you know, casually just goes on Bill's pod, talks up DJ Chark, comes to this pod, talks up DJ Chark. And guess what? Surgery for a quote minor break on his hand, according to Ron Rivera, Jim, Mierreches, Urban Meyer. Chark probably back for week one, probably missing the rest of training camp. Craig, what do you have to say for yourself? I'm the opposite of King Midas, and I shouldn't talk about

anybody ever again. You took Cam Acres away from us. It's going to be tough. It's going to be tough. Craig is a co-host of a fantasy pod, just not talking about players anymore. I'm just going to go real vague. I'm like player A, player B stuff, no real names. just never compliment me. Just never say, you know, that Danny Hyfitz is doing really great. Like, please never, never, never. You don't have to worry about that.

You don't have to worry about that. For context for people who are just coming in, Craig, one of Craig's favorite players this year coming in, like throughout the summer has been Camakers. And then people definitely blame. Literally, we did a bold predictions episode more. 24 hours later. It was 12, actually.

I was like, next year, Camakers will be the overall running back one. And then we put it out. And then a lot of people were listening to the pod while the news came out. Like people got the notification on their phone. many people while listening to Craig talk about him that he was out for the season. It's not great. No, it's not opposite of great.

So DJ Chirk for the Jaguars. What do you think this means? This makes me just more confident in Marvin Jones. Like, I know I'm crazy, but I think Marvin Jones... You're not that crazy. Don't make this your thing that, like, you were the first guy to think of Marvin Jones. All the whole the analysts are talking about Marvin Jones, all right? He's going 136.

I know. I think he leads the team in receiving this year. I like it. I like it for Chanel. I'll take that bet. I'm excited about Chanel. I'll take the bet. You want to do it?

Yeah. My vote is that I take the field. He doesn't lead the league and lead the team in receiving. All right, cool. Great. What do we, what stakes are we putting on this? You have to get a minor break in your hand if you're wrong. By the way, I have broken a bone in my hand before.

And it's like the, I don't know what you even call it, metatarsal, whatever. And now I have no knuckle on that hand. What? What? People on the podcast. Oh my God, you're like chubs. You don't have a knuckle. Pretty sick.

I was like, got the bastard's eyeball, though. Yeah. I've never noticed that. Show me your hand again. No knuckle. Are you serious? So it's like, when I broke my hand, I'm not saying this is going to be what's happening with him.

What did you break it on? How did you break it? Basketball, like, it was weird. It was like a basketball hit my hand at a weird angle and like the finger. The basketball? Yeah. A finger like bent the wrong way and it broke the bone in my hand, not the finger. It was very bizarre.

Damn, basketball. took my damn knuckle off. It was also very weird because, and again, I don't think this is what happened with Chark because he'd be missing more time if it was like an actual full break, but they had to like reset the bone and they were worried like my finger

was going to be rotated slightly wrong. Like it was like something you had to be like really careful about because, and like for a long time like my, my, it's my right ring finger would like bang into my other fingers like when I wasn't like paying attention. It was like very weird. You had to like do like finger rehab.

Well, like it was drunk. It was just like bumping into them. It doesn't know how to work anymore. Now I have no knuckle. I'm all messed up. So anyways, hopefully that's not what happens with Chark. Is it bad that I heard the whole story and still don't get why you don't have a knuckle? Like, I don't know, man.

They just put it back in and the knuckle is gone. Who knows? Anyway, so DJ Chark is screwed. You should have went to Michael Thomas route, waited for a second opinion then. Seriously. It's like Calvin Johnson. Like, I mean, he's got induct to the Hall fame. Like, you ever see Calvin Johnson's fingers?

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Who is it? Tori Holt, I think. Have you seen Tori Holt's hands? Oh, it's insane. They're all, yeah, it's football. Brutal sport.

Yes. Okay. So that's all the injury news. It's Monday afternoon, so I'm sure someone Craig likes will probably be hurt by the time we record again. Yeah, seriously. Okay. Let's get to the running back dead zone. So I think this is kind of pop. I think this year was kind of popularized by Jack Miller at established the run. But it's been around for a while. And it's kind of simple. It's like if you zoom out and you look at the last five or 10 years of drafts and you're just looking at value. So just, you know, how did that player perform based on where you drafted them? Did they end up being worth the investment? Running backs are worth. running backs are like the most valuable investment you can make in the first two rounds. And then after that, receivers are a way more valuable investment in rounds like three through six, which kind of tracks. Like this isn't like some groundbreaking idea. It's like starting running back, running back is a good idea and then hit on receiver.

It's not groundbreaking. But it's really important this year. So I kind of want to just talk about this as an idea for a little bit and then get to some specifics. Yeah. D.K., you want to explain the dead zone a little bit? The way that I think about it is like the very, very simple 30,000 foot. thing is it's all about opportunity cost. The running backs that people start talking

themselves into, and I'm talking about like, high fits, no offense, Mike Davis. The guys in this range who people talk themselves into the volume, but there's enough question marks and there's enough reasons to believe things could not go quite as well as you think they're going to go with guys like Mike Davis or, you know, potentially

you know, Chris Carson or Josh Jacobs or Miles Sanders, any of these guys where like Miles Sanders, for instance, is having this major problems with drops in camp apparently, and he's fumbled a couple of times. So people are worried now that he's going to only get the early down looks, and they'll have, you know, they have all these receiving backs. They're going to, like, cut into his workload. However, other people are going to be like, I think he's talented. He's going to have a three-down roll. I'm going to draft him in this range. The big thing about that is the opportunity cost,

because you have really high-end, high-upside receivers in that range that you're skipping over, you know, in order to take this running back who might end up busting. You miss out on guys like, you know, Robert Woods, Tyler Lockett, Adam Thielen, Cooper Cup, all these guys could potentially be wide receiver ones, give you really good value at that spot. And so basically, yeah, that's the bottom line is it's about opportunity cost. And, you know, there's a history. And Craig, I think you're going to get into it.

There's a history there where, like, the win rates based on, like, best ball and all that indicate that these guys are just not as valuable to your team, these running backs in this range, historically, of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that's going to be the case this year. But just historically, looking at the trends, that's kind of like what the history has told us. So that's how I think about it. Yeah, there's a wrinkle there, too. So essentially, you know, the way they talk about this dead-send thing is like they call it league-winning hit rate, which is just, if you finish at the top 10 in your position, you're a league winner.

So you're basically the whole point of fantasy is to draft a guy late who's going to end up being a league winner. You're going to draft a guy outside of the top 10 who will finish inside the top 10. And basically, you know, in rounds three to six, wide receivers and running backs kind of have the same hit rate, which means if you take a guy in rounds three to six, both the running back or the receiver you draft has the same chance of finishing as a top ten guy. But the reason why the running back is a dead zone is because the four rounds after that, after rounds three to six, round seven to ten, running back's still pretty solid. Wide receivers, on the other hand, jump off a cliff. So the whole point here is the wrinkle is almost not that these running backs won't pan out. It's that you can just get those running backs later and the wide receivers you cannot. So when you take somebody like Leonard Fournett last year who was going in like the fourth round,

you can get a guy in round 10 who will return the exact same value as Leonard Fournette. But at wide receiver, if you want to take somebody like Cooper Cup in the fourth round, there are very little wide receivers you can get in round nine or ten that will do the same thing. I went back last year and looked at ADP. Guys, listen to their running backs going in the third and fourth round last year. Chris Carson, I guess kind of panned out. David Johnson, Todd Gurley, Jonathan Taylor, Levi-on-Bel, Leonard Fournett, Melvin Gordon, Mark Ingram, Devin Singletary, and Rahim Mostert. So it's like Jonathan Taylor. So Jonathan Taylor hit, but even in the first half season, he was a disaster. And I guess Carson was pretty solid. So four of those guys lost their jobs,

Mark Ingram, Todd Gurley, Levi-on-Belt, Levi-O-Bel. I mean, that's, I, I mean, that's That's amazing. It's astounding. So what we should go through is look at the guys this year and say, man, it's not saying to don't, you know, there are guys like Jonathan Taylor. If you really like a guy and you think he's going to be good, you should take them. Like Darrell Henderson. It's just that it's not never draft these guys.

It's not don't take a running back no matter what from round three to six. It's just generally speaking, unless you get a big discount on them, it's not probably not, it's not worth it. It's probabilities. You're playing probabilities. Yes, like just because they are next in line on your draft. Q doesn't mean they're going to return the value of where you drafted them. 100%.

Again, what I like about this is it's advanced math that just backs up common sense, which is that running backs from nowhere to be good all the time. It's very rare for receivers to come from nowhere and then be good suddenly. And that's basically, that's all that this is really saying here. So with that said, let's go through the running back dead zone guys and just kind of how we're feeling about it and take some temperature. Yeah. Well, and listen, just to bring it on home here,

here's some of the running backs who went in rounds seven and on last year. J.K. Dobbins, James White, Marlon Mack, Antonio Gibson, Zach Moss, Philip Lindsay, Tarike Cohen, Latavius Murray, Alexander Madison, Chase Edmonds, Damien Harris. I mean, those guys are better than the guys we named in rounds three to five. And to be clear, I think the difference between last year is like the other group had a lot of old guys last year. This year, they've been replaced all, so that's a caveat. But so the list is Miles Sanders, DeAndre Jeff, DeAndj Swift, Josh Jacobs, Chris Carson, David Montgomery, J.K. Dobbins, Daryl Henderson.

I want to start with those guys. Miles Sanders first for the Eagles. D.K., you just mentioned it. Yeah. It seems like all the reports I'm seeing out of Eagles camp is that Boston Scott, who was like the little Darren Sprouls that could, and he was comp to Darren Sprouls before he, in college, before he went to the Eagles. That he's going to have more of a committee role than people thought here that it's really more like him and Miles Sanders are. splitting carries, rather than Miles Sanders is the lead guy. And now Miles Sanders

has had issues, one with health, but also with ball security. Where are you taking Miles Sanders this year? Where is the point that he could fall that you're like, I'm in? I don't know.

Also, toss in that Jalen Hertz is a heavily running quarterback. Also, Kenneth Gainwell, who's been getting a little bit of buzz in camp too. And, you know, Jason Huntley. There's all these guys in this backfield.

Carry on Johnson. Yeah. I really don't know. Like, I've basically just been avoiding Miles Sanders for the most part. Like, I think if he falls,

it really just depends on, like, how your draft goes. Like, if you go, you know, ride receiver really heavy at the beginning, or, like, say, you're in a Super Flex league and you take two quarterbacks in the first two rounds,

and then some, you know, like, some of the running backs are getting scooped up. You need to take a guy. Like, I'm taking him sort of just for the floor, but that's probably not, like, a good strategy, honestly, like, based on everything we just talked about.

So I'm, for the most part, like, avoiding him. The ironic thing of talking about all the, the running back dead zone is I actually like quite a few of these guys this year. So, like, maybe I'm not even, like, listening to this narrative. Because I like, I like Swift. I like Dobbins. I think Montgomery is pretty good.

And I like Darrell Henderson. I really like Travis E.T.N. Like, I'm... You liked them in theory, but an opportunity cost... What was, like, the first thing we talked about in this episode? C.D. Lamb. Right now, I'm just looking at average draft position in best ball, which is more accurate this time of the year than regular.

CD Lamb's going 33rd. Miles Sanders going 35th. So you can literally pick between... I mean, that's a fucking no-brainer. That's the point here. That's a no-brainer, yeah. Even if that would move up now, because it's probably like a two-week rolling average.

Even then, it's like Alan Robinson's in that range. Mike Evans and Chris Godwin versus Miles Sanders and Josh Jacobs. Like, would you rather have Mike Evans and or Chris Godwin or Miles Sanders? Evans or Godwin. Yeah. That's kind of the point here. Can we start a ranking or can we like come up with the list of doing an episode titled The Players We're forced to Rank but we're never drafting?

Yeah. Basically what we're talking about, these dead zone. It's like, so I, look, we do a lot of mock drafts. I actually don't think I have ended up with Miles Sanders or Josh Jacobs, maybe even Dobbins in a single draft. It's just, it's just, I never like, oh, yeah, nice. I think I've ended up with Sanders. I've ended up with Sanders in one draft, and that was like a few weeks ago before all

these, like, issues started crapping up. I have zero Jacobs, I'm pretty sure. And who is the other one? I don't think I've got any Dobbins either, although I'm kind of starting to get more. excited about Dobbins, to be honest. So let's discuss here who's going to be the 2020 Jonathan Taylor out of this group. Who do we think has the most likely chance to catapult into a top 10 situation? I think it's ETN.

I'm not 100% sure he counts as the dead zone because he's a little bit further down. Hyvitz, where's he going in ADP on Underdog? So Travis ETN for the Jaguarsier games, the other first rounder Jacksonville had after Trevor Lawrence and their teammates in college. Travis ETN is going 46, which makes sense because it was kind of like he was 70th and 60th. now it's kind of rounding out that he's joined the upper echelon. He's going. His 80s has gone up a lot lately.

It's, yeah, like 30 spots in a month, which is why best. I haven't heard a single thing about James Robinson. Oh, he got some hype this weekend. He got some hype this weekend for sure. Yeah. I think James Robinson, look, it's a nice story. The NFL is a cold place. He's an undrafted free agent that was signed by a different regime.

Urban Meyer is coming in here. He's, if James Robinson earn it, I'm just saying like, it's an uphill battle for him to be relevant. He already did it once so it can be done, but it's a nice feel good story, and the NFL's not really a nice feel good place, to be honest. Here's why I like ETN.

Super explosive. They're already talking about him catching passes, so you automatically have that pass catching upside. Touchdown, I don't know if anyone believes in like knows for a touchdown. He scored a shitload of touchdowns in college, like 78 touchdown. Yeah, he was like scoring a touchdown every fucking game,

at least one. and he was a first round pick. Like, there's just only things to like about this. I think the hype hasn't caught up with him, or it's starting to, based on his ADP hyphids you just mentioned, people are starting to buy in on this. But, like, the Urban Meyer factor really has depressed his value in my mind. And so, you know, you're getting a similar profile,

you know, like that pass, like the D'Andre Swift-style guy where he's going to catch a lot of passes. He's explosive. He's talented. breaks tackles. I don't know. There's just a lot to like about him, and I just can see his talent sort of like,

you know, shining through and him doing really well this year. D.K., other than the fact that he hasn't done it yet because he's a rookie, why would you take Dandre Swift over Travis E.T.N. I think I would take Swift, number one, well, you're saying apart the fact that he has already done it? I guess that's part of it.

But also, I think the offensive line and the philosophy that we're seeing from the lines is going to be like, they have to lean heavily on their running backs in both the run game and the passing game. I think that's going to be a given. That's why I'm sort of excited about Swift. I think ETS, and like this may be like a dynasty thing,

he could end up being ranked higher than Swift long run because I think that the Jags are going to be really good with Trevor Lawrence. Like Trevor Lawrence is like, think about the difference between Trevor Lawrence and Jared Goff. Like that's going to be massive for his value and fantasy. And I think just, I think the Jags' offense is going to be better sooner than people think. or good sooner than people think.

And so I think I would take him just based on that, like in Dynasty. Well, I don't know. I wouldn't take him in Dynasty right now, but I think he could end up being higher ranked overall eventually. So the Craig's original question of like who's the Josh, sorry, who's the John Taylor of this group? Again, Jonathan Taylor is terrible the first half of the season,

but I think we're talking about the second half of the season when he was like a top three running back. To me it's Chris Carson, which is weird because of all these dead zone running backs, he just completely stands out. Like all these other, all of these other guys, except really Mike Davis and Chris Carson, are young, they're under 25, they're on rookie contracts,

and they all were relatively high draft picks. Like, they're all like third round or second or first. Chris Carson's a seventh round guy who is like 26, and he's just way older than all them. He's older than Todd Gurley. But like, he just got a contract extension. Rashad Penny's the guy behind him. Rashad's always hurt.

Chris Carson, to me, is the guy that maybe is playing two-thirds of snaps, but is the guy who actually has the trust of Pete Carroll to, you know, as long as Chris Carson is a grip on the ball, he's a grip on the job. And the Seahawks, I think Chris Carson is undersold last year because Russell Wilson, when he had like all those touchdown passes and he was on break to like shatter Peyton Manning's touchdown pass record, the Seahawks had like, I don't know,

14 passing touchdowns at one point to like literally one rushing touchdown. Like a 14 to one ratio of passing to rushing touchdowns. That's just not how it works. like Russell Wilson had, I don't remember the number off the top of my head, but like 20 passing touchdowns inside the 10. Those are things that just the way football works, sometimes Chris Carson gets tackled at the inch line and they throw out the next play. Chris Carson to me is the guy that could just, if the Seahawks actually throw the ball more, that doesn't mean that Chris Carson can have more rushing touchdowns. He only had five touchdowns last year. Chris Carson to me is like a sneaky guy to lead the league in rushing touchdowns. I like him more than all these other guys.

He's also just to me a better runner. than a lot of these guys. He's a really good player. He's still, he's this type of guy that's remained underrated because he was a seventh round pick. He had that fumble spate

where everybody I think just kind of like gave up on him. But yeah, he was the, he's got a little George Kittle to his game where he's just kind of a violent player. You know, he seeks out contact.

Oh, he runs so physical. If all of these guys played 16 games, like I told, or 17, I'm never going to get used to that. We don't ever have to change. If all these guys played 17 games, yeah,

I'm pretty confident in saying I would rather have Chris Carson and than just about everyone on this list. I agree. Dika, you're the Seahawks fan. Sorry, Mike. My kids just screaming in the background. Well, tell him that we're recording a podcast.

Just tell him, Daddy's making that coin, Calvin. I'm trying not to be the homer here, but I agree. I think he's got a really good upside. If he can stay healthy, if the Seahawks offense remains, like, you know, pretty efficient and explosive, which I think it will. And also just like the whole, you know, new, Shane Waldra, new offensive coordinator, new scheme. They're talking about up-tempo.

They're talking about running more motion. Basically, bringing the Rams' offense, the Rams run game to Seattle is very intriguing to me. Obviously, you know, in the past four or five years, McVeigh's been able to engineer these, like, incredibly good, explosive run games. And, you know, we've seen the McVeigh system working in other places now. And so, I don't know, I'm just,

I'm very intrigued with Chris Carson. I think I'm just trying that to be too much of a homer here and like buying into it completely. You guys are doing it for me so I appreciate that. To put a button on all this, most of my drafts,

I'm going in the first round and then auctions obviously you can allocate like, you know, strategy, like your dollars to do this essentially. But I want a running back in the first round. I want a running back in the second round

and I'm basically going four straight receivers unless I get a really good value in a quarterback or a tight end. But it's just running back, running back for receivers unless one of the really good receiver like a Diggs or a Devante Adams or Tyreek

or someone falls in the second round I, that's what I'm doing. I like the anchor RB strategy where you take one running back in the first round and then like just hammer elite receivers for a few rounds and then you're just like every week you're just going to score so many points.

There's a clear line for me which is if the best receiver left is like AJ Brown or Justin Jefferson I'm not taking a receiver early. The only receiver is that make me think about it really? Or Devante, Tyreek, and Diggs? Even Ridley and Hopkins. Yeah.

I think that I still lean running back. Like, I still would rather have Nage, or maybe even Gibson over Hopkins and them. I'll think about it. But I just kind of want two running backs off the jump. Yeah, I think my strategy would be two of your first three picks should be running backs. Robust running back. I think that's what they call it.

All right. Want to do some emails? Sure. That's from Seth. Seth. Seth. Picture this. You're on a nice run, making good time.

Your legs are feeling good. You're in a kind of a Zen state. You're listening to your favorite podcast and boom! Ben Simmons talk comes out of nowhere. I nearly ran into oncoming traffic. We are a sensitive people as Philadelphians. I cannot risk this kind of trauma any longer. So until a Ben Simmons trade happens,

I request a trigger warning announcement for Ben Simmons-related. conversations coming up in the future. When were we talking about Ben Simmons? I can't remember that. Well, we talked about how, we talked about, what were we comparing to free throws?

Oh, why why receivers have dropping problems, why they don't just view the jugs and we're like, it's kind of like how Ben Simmons misses free throws. Now I remember why, I couldn't remember that

because I zoned out during that entire conversation you guys were having. You were in a Zen state when we were talking about that. Yeah, that's right. So, all right, we're trigger warning for the six.

Seth, duly noted, we will play a little alarm sound before the Ben Simmons talk comes in the future. Should we put a trigger warning in the episode notes for Ben Simmons talk for this episode? Should I just say, hey, Seth, in the description. Hey, Seth, minute 60. FYI.

We talk about Ben, Sam. That's fair. All right. Ben, geez, Seth also sent us a fun fact. Trigger warning also, I call him the wrong name. Seth also sent us a fun fact, which is, P.S., we don't obey the original intent of basketball. In James Nate Smith's original version,

when a foul occurred, the team that got fouled got to choose whomever it wanted to go to the free throw line. In Sixers terms, when John Collins is playing Haca Ben Simmons, the Sixers would have gotten to send Seth Curry to the free throw line. And I looked this up. It's actually, that is true. It was like 29 years, the first 29 years of basketball, the team got to pick which person was shooting free throws. I think that makes sense. I'm not against it. I don't care.

Isn't this what they do? Are we talking about on, is this on non-shooting foul only? No, it's on shooting fouls. Well, because Haka, those aren't shooting fouls. That's the whole point of Haka, whatever. All, all everything. I think that's pretty stupid. If you foul a guy who's shooting,

I think they should have to shoot the free throw. That's fair. But I guess you're right. The Haka is like a team foul. What's the rule? So I'm going to sound like a total idiot here. Isn't the rule in soccer like anybody can take the free kick, the penalty kick, or is it have to be the guy who got fouled?

Man, it's just how little I know about soccer. Yeah. We're just going to get destroyed by this. Soccer. If you get soccer fans, tell us what's up. I think if you get fouled in the little hot zone, whatever the fuck it's called before. I think you have to kick. We're such idiots.

Okay. Let us know. If people are going to email us at ringer fantasy football at gmail.com, also, why did Messi leave? So weird. That was a bizarre. That's like the most bizarre sport story of like the last 10 years, right? I wasn't gross. I actually, maybe I should have been, you know, researching more about Amari Cooper's ankles,

but I just found myself on Sunday afternoon reading everything from the athletic on one of that. hell that happened. That was really strange. Well, then you should know. What do you mean? You asked us why he left. You said you read all about it. It's really interesting. Basically, everyone was a combination of lying to themselves and others. Also, Brian Phillips wrote about it at the ringer.com. Shout up Brian Phillips. Go to the ringer.com. Great website.

Wait, so do we like free throws? Is Seth being really sensitive or should free throw, like should Benson actually have to shoot free throws if he gets foul, like off the ball? Listen, I don't love the hack of whatever thing. However, a counter argument in my own head is, how about everybody just learns how to shoot free throws? So here's my, here's my thing on basketball and why the ELM ending is, I think, ultimately going to solve the sport.

And DK, have you heard about the ELMending, DK, basically it's the idea that in the fourth quarter, they end the clock, and they just set a target score based on how big your lead is. And it's just, first team to get to 100 points wins. And the number is based on how close the game is. But the point being is this. The part of basketball that's so normal to basketball fans that I think is insane is that fouling should not help you.

The game should not be designed where committing a foul is so advantageous. It is the only way you can win. The entire sport is built on this idea. It's crazy. It should hurt you. You should play to win. Play defense. 100%.

It's a loophole in the system that they found. It's a loophole that has become the basis for every basketball game ends this way. Just play to a score. I like that. I love the Ilamending. Okay. If anyone comes up with an eel ending for fantasy football,

let me know. All right. I think that's all we got. Thank you. Craig. Thank you, D.K., thank you, Seth. I hope you enjoy your trigger warning

in the episode notes. Thank you over for listening. Emos at ringer fantasy football at gmail.com. If you have a fun fact or I don't know, other trigger warnings, I don't know.

We'll see you guys on Wednesday. Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Forgot somebody, hi Fitz. It's like it's like you're not mentioning somebody who is integral in this podcast. Thank you, Lorne. Lord.

Thank you. Jane's addiction. Oh, okay. You had that ready. Yeah, you prepped that. That did not feel improvised. I did not like that, D.K. I mean, no, a show or does it improvise?

They know who the band is. They introduce them like four times. Well, that's not what the show is. Okay. You're in my world now, Grandma. Check out their name tag. Shout out, Limp Biscuit. Ring your music box.

HBO Max. Check it out. All right. Bye, everyone.