The Ringer NFL Show - Predictions, Breakouts, and Fantasy Nuggets for the 2020 Season | The Ringer NFL Show

Episode Date: July 23, 2020

Kevin gives an update on what's going on in football and the issues that still remain in the COVID-19-adjusted season (0:39). Then, The Ringer’s Danny Kelly and Craig Horlbeck join the show to discuss the fantasy football facts that mean the most for real football (11:25) before Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders calls in to provide analysis, little-known facts, and predictions for the 2020 season (39:43). Host: Kevin Clark Guests: Danny Kelly, Craig Horlbeck, and Aaron Schatz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer podcast network. It's Liz Kelly. This week, we launched a new show on the network called The Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Coming from the guys who brought you the Dannasy Football Podcast, Danny Hyfitz, Danny Kelly, and Craig Borlbeck will guide you through the fantasy football season, providing analysis on big picture conversations like weekly matchups, trades, and daily fantasy. The show will run every Monday and Wednesday throughout the rest of the summer, and we'll be helping you through the regular season as well. So follow and listen to the first episode of the Ringer Fantasy Football Podcast,

out now for free on Spotify. It's the Ringer NFL show, part of the Ringer podcast Network. I am Kevin Clark. Good show today. Danny Kelly will be joining us to talk fantasy and what we can learn about the 2020 NFL season through that lens. Aaron Shats for the whole outsiders will teach us about the things we need to know with the 2020 season.

And Craig Horleback, our producer will also be, he'll be a player coach today. He'll hop on with Danny and we'll talk about fantasy football as well for that segment. That's all going to be really fun. I want to start out, first of all, catching you up on what's going on with football. And what's going on with football, in short, is everything. So Tom Brady tweets out there more questions and answers in a support of his union. Tweet that out on Wednesday.

There's a lot to hammer out. Chris Mortensen said that the NFL PA and the NFL continue the negotiations. The issues that remain are obviously the. revenue shortfall, how the cap will be addressed, and then players opting out, which apparently according to Mortensen, that is progressing. But again, rookies are reporting now and there seems to not be a lot of information. A coach told Mike Florio, quote, someone tell me what we're doing as far as what camp is going to look like. So that's where we're at right now. I will say this. So generally, the sport is going to change. It's going to change beyond ways we're thinking about right now.

And I'm going to get to that in a second. I will say this isn't easy for any league. I mean, baseball, they don't even know how many playoff teams they're going to be. And opening day is Thursday. That seems like poor planning. Baseball, now the Toronto Blue Jays have been denied access to playing by two governments. The Canadian government and now the Pittsburgh government, the local government, has said, you can't play here.

So the Blue Jays don't even have a home, okay? college football seems to be as rudderless as ever. Mark Emmert makes Gary Batman look like Winston Churchill. It's just, it's not an easy time for anybody. The NFL has been okay in some areas, but again, as Tom Brady said, more questions and answers as camp for veterans is around the corner. A couple of things to unpack here. Number one, so Mark Maskey, Washington Post does a great job.

He said in his story on Thursday, basically, that any notion that the season is in danger because of the economic talks is, quote, way too speculative. That was from a league source and that one NFLPA source called it clickbait. So I don't think that these economic negotiations are going to get in the way of football being played. I think there's far too much at stake for both sides. Mark Maski says there's no clear answer on whether or not July 28th when camp start or September 10th is the deadline for these economic issues to be resolved. but obviously they have to be resolved.

I think that the big issue here, the biggest issue, and I remember something someone told me really early on when I started covering this league, which is the NFL's biggest priority in every situation is does this affect our revenue? And that's not unique to the NFL. That's every single business on planet Earth. And if it's not affecting their revenue,

they don't really care. I mean, this is shown itself in labor negotiations before where NFL owners will give up practice. this time and coaches will go crazy. And the owners don't actually care because they're fine with giving that so that they get a little better financial situation. This happens all the time these labor negotiations happened last time. A couple of the gives on competitive issues that coaches hate or GMs hate or whatever.

The owners are fine giving that stuff up because, I mean, Tom Pellasero said this on the podcast last week. Cash rules everything in football and in society. So what do we have? We have a $50 to $70 million potentially cap shortfall per team next year. That will change the sport. And how that gets resolved will change the sport. Because it's going to change a sport regardless. The owners want to recoup their losses. Now, total, it's about $2 billion in the player's side from the COVID season because of the loss. revenue. Two billion dollars this year will be lost by the players. This is part of the revenue sharing agreement with the owners. And the owners want that money back immediately. The players want to smooth that out to prevent a financial ice age. Okay. So if you start to look at what that would look like next year, if there really is a $50 to $70 million capture at fall, it would be nothing short

of apocalyptic for NFL rosters. All the things that we think that we value and all the teams we think have stability would be completely wrecked by that. Jason Fitzgerald over the cap had an essay on his website today, Thursday, to talk about just what the sort of the fallout could be, especially from a shortened season, but one of the points he makes is that the players are not obligated to take a pay cut or to say, hey, owners, you can you can recoup your losses right away. But what happens if owners and GM start gutting the roster as preemptively? Players with guarantee, are safe, rookies are safe is the point he makes, but others won't be. Mid-tier veterans, which, by the way, most of the good teams, whether that's the Patriots,

the Ravens, Chiefs, they've built a cornerstone of their franchise on getting value veterans. Those guys might have to go because they're making $5, 6, 7, 8, 9 million dollars, and that it's basically going to be the literal, you know, fantasy football term, because it's the fantasy football episode a little bit later, it's literally stars and scrubs. It would literally be the quarterback, maybe one other star, and then rookies. It would be a disaster for players, but it would also change the sport if there was cap smoothing. And we didn't have the rising cap. And what I mean by that is that there were so many deals that have been done over the past three, four years that have been predicated on the cap rising, at least 10 million.

million dollars every year and then TV deals kicking in and the revenue going up and up and up. The cap has risen astronomically since 2013 and that was supposed to happen pretty much forever. And now we just don't know what that will look like. And so from a team building standpoint, from a coaching standpoint, from a player's standpoint, no one knows what the future is going to hold, except that the sport of football is going to change. And I'm, this. this is on the field this year. I mean, if there's only, if they don't get in pads until late August, which is apparently the plan right now, the season will look tangibly different. This is something that happened, you know, there was a huge offensive explosion in 2011.

And people chalked that up in some regards to the fact that they basically didn't practice that year because there were no OTAs. And then there were, once they did start to practice, they had the limited restrictions from the old CBA. And so it wasn't really a full practice season, right? When things like that happen, weird things happen on the field. That's going to happen this year no matter what. You're going to have players who opt out. You're going to have players who unfortunately get sick from the virus. That's just going to happen. I talked to NFL people the last couple of weeks, and they've said that, you know, they're expecting just how other leagues have gone. They're expecting the number of positives to be in the hundreds as the season starts

and as the testing protocols come out in the next couple of weeks, because, you know, if there's 90 guys, or 80 guys, depending on the roster size, again, that's something that's about to be hashed out, 80 or 90 guys on the training camp roster. But if you're just looking at a small percentage of league players, you're looking at positives in the hundreds in the next couple of weeks as we get veterans and rookies to report.

And so everything's going to look different the entire season. There will be no preseason. Testing protocols are put in place. There will be daily testing for the first two weeks, but then there's going to be a threshold after that as to whether or not there continues to be daily testing or it goes to every other day. But this is going to be the strangest season you've ever seen,

that I've ever seen, that anybody running an NFL team has ever seen. There's going to be nothing like it. And there's no way to avoid the fact that this will change the sport forever. Sports Illustrated is Albert Breer on July 19 and said something that I've been thinking about ever since. He said, there are teams, good, well-run teams that have advocated for delay in the start of the season. The league office hasn't been receptive.

But once the players balked an early camp report date, this issue was going to arise. So he's talking about just all the things that happened in the last few days trying to be resolved. There are good, as he said, good, well-run teams who have advocated for delay in the season, and the league office hasn't even considered it. I'm not smart enough to know who's right on this, but I know that there are people inside the league I've talked to them who are very concerned about how this season plays out and what it looks like.

I tweeted over the weekend. I said, the NFL was the only league when lockdown started. They had the luxury of time and they wasted it. That's what I said in the tweet. I got more reaction to that tweet than from people inside football than I have from really anything I've done in the last, since the season ended, since February. Okay.

And the thing that surprised me was how varied the reaction was. There were people who were mad at me because they thought that I was overstating it. There were people who thought I was understating it from teams or people connected to players or agents, whatever. And I think that there are people inside the sport who were concerned and there are people inside the sport who were not concerned. And I think that the lesson in there is that everybody looks at the situation differently because everyone's weighing certain things.

But again, the thing we have to remember is that these next couple of weeks will change the sport forever. Not just this year. Even when you think, quote, unquote, things return to normal, they will not on the field and off the field because of what happens in these next few weeks. This is a crucial few weeks. The sport will change forever. All right, let's now get to Danny and Craig. All right, Craig Horleback, Danny Kelly, Fantasy Bros. They have launched a new podcast.

They've got their own feed. How does it feel, boys? It's really, really exciting. Also, Danny Hyfitz is on that show as well. Yeah, it's really fun. I screwed up the name, though. It should have been called the Fantasy Bros, but we missed that. Well, I mean, it's not too late.

I guess that's true. We have two shows in the books. Who do we have to ask for that? I don't know. I'll send an email up the river to see what we get. Of the fruit chain? All right, so we've got some name change. news. So first of all, Washington is going to be the Washington football team. But Danny Kelly does not,

yeah, Danny Kelly doesn't care about that because the Seattle NHL team is called the Cracken. Danny, you have, I assume my working theory is you have one hat and that the hat just changes logos whenever you are feeling a certain Pacific Northwest sports team. How quickly are you going to get this Seattle Cracken logo on your hat? Oh, I looked immediately almost. And the, the pro shop was down because there's just this deluge of traffic. That seems like bad timing. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's, you know, people are excited about this.

People are really, really into it. I like the logos. I think it's interesting that they're named the Cracken. I actually said this on Twitter too, but it's, it's basically like if for the Mariners, this is like if the NHL team called themselves the Seahawk murderers or something like that. The Cracken and the Mariners, it's going to be some drama there. but no one, I don't know if anyone really cares.

Because Cracken kill Mariners? Yeah, the Cracken are, you know, like this mythical enemy of seafarers. I feel like that might happen a lot among sports teams. Like the, like, lightning would kill a buccaneer as would a devilry would get them. Yeah, but specifically people who. I mean, there was a team named the bullets. And I mean, that's, I don't really just take everyone. If we're getting, if we're getting into which mascot would win a fight within city.

there's a couple of deadlasses the jazz let's not continue analyzing my bad joke how about that well that's what we do here all right so it is fantasy football season would you say what are most what is the most popular day for a draft

is it like two weeks before the season it's a weekend before Labor Day yeah so we're we're gearing up everyone's getting excited I've seen a lot of good fantasy football content including on the runner dot com which launched our fantasy guide this week which I implore you to check out.

As a huge fantasy football fan myself, I just can't get enough of it. All right. So what we're going to do is you guys are going to teach me about the 2020 season through your fantasy research. I just, I think that these two things overlap, I think,

you know, when I talk to a lot of, especially the number cruncher guys that have moved the analytics movement forward so much in football the last couple of years. So much of that has come from fantasy and just the need to find an edge. And I think it's an interesting field.

So Danny Kelly. Teach me. I'm going to start with the Seahawks. I'm going to start with Russell Wilson, who has finished outside the top five in fantasy points per dropback just once in his eight seasons per pro football focus. Outside the top three just twice. Is this a less Russ,

let Russ Cook segment that you're introducing here? I'm getting to it. Yeah, so it's basically, so 2019, he was fifth in fantasy points per dropback, 2018, second, 2017, third, 2016, he was 16th, but he only, he played through knee and ankle injuries that season, so we're just going to ignore that one. 2015 second, 2014 second, 2013, third, 2012 third.

So he's absurdly, absurdly efficient in the fantasy realm and, obviously, in the real world realm in terms of passing and just overall efficiency, you know, throwing the ball down the field. So bottom line is I was going to get to this. My hypothesis looking at this data is maybe let Russ cook. I don't know. Wow. Actually, I was talking to Craig about this. He maybe disagrees with this thought.

Well, my rebuttal is just that maybe his points per dropback are so high is because they're like one of the most balanced teams in the league. So when he does pass, it's more rare and they're not prepared. Craig Horobeylbeck spends a summer producing Pete Carroll's podcast, and all of a sudden he just morphs into Pete Carroll. Running's important, man. You never know when you're going to need it. I guarantee you that Pete said that to Craig this summer.

He literally did. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Okay, all right. Well, that's amazing. Craig, give me a fact that owns Danny Kelly's. I don't know about that. But I just want to talk about the Ravens a little bit. Very popular team in real and fantasy football. So the Ravens just had a lot of extremes last year. They ran the most out of any team ever last year.

And Lamar was the best scoring QB by like a mile. But I just think we should expect a little bit more passing out of Baltimore and maybe less fantasy scoring out of Lamar, which sucks. But I think it's true. The Ravens led the NFL with 58 TDs in 2019. And of the seven teams to do that since 2011, no one beat it the next year. They actually went down by about 10 the year after that. And the Ravens threw at the least and ran it the most in the league. They ran 21% of their plays when trailing, which is crazy. It's like way dead last in the league.

Lamar threw 36 touchdowns. It had a 9% TD rate while throwing at the least while the Ravens threw at the least in the league. I mean, it's just not going to happen again. You'll never have the quarterback throw the most touchdowns on a team that threw the least. teams regress. It's natural. So John Harbaugh comes out this offseason and says he thinks the next step for Lamar Jackson is the deep passing game and that the pressure he puts on defenses and how confused defenses are

they get so thin that you can pass deep on them. And Lamar obviously has the capability. We saw some of his numbers from the pocket last year. They were extraordinary. He has the capability to be a very, very, very good passer this year on the deep ball. I think that there's the potential. when we talk about regression, I think that people see regression as this super negative word

and then everyone's saying, oh, they're not that good or whatever, but we just had this debate last year with Mahomes where a lot of the, a lot of the analytics guys were saying, Mahomes will not throw as many touchdown passes he did last year. He will regress. And everyone said, well, you know,

what are you saying? He throws perfect passes. Well, no, that's just how sort of numbers work. And Patrick Mahomes came back the next year. And he did throw less touchdown passes. part of that was through injury, but injuries are part of regression, by the way. And then he was as good or a better quarterback come January.

So numbers regression does not mean they're a worst quarterback. In fact, there's the cap, there is every possibility that Lamar Jackson is a better quarterback in 2020. In fact, I would actually bet on that. He's a better quarterback in 2020, but his fantasy numbers might not be as good. Am I wrong? Exactly. And quarterbacks in their second year, you usually take big jumps, and this is technically his second full year. So, you know, it's the regress to being a more balanced team is basically what we're saying. Lamar may score less points, but the team will be more balanced. It might be a better team overall, which is why I like guys like Marquis Brown and Mark Andrews a lot this year. The wide receivers thing is huge for me. Go ahead, Denny.

Yeah, I was actually just going to say the exact same thing. I mean, if you look at his receiving core last year, was very, very young. Marquise Brown, you know, he flashed for sure, but he was injured a big part of the year. He was in his rookie season. Craig, that stat about them playing with the lead, 80% of time, I think is really intriguing because that just allows them to, you know, that allows them to do whatever they want, really. They can run the ball all three downs and they'd be fine with that. I do think, yeah, this year, its odds are they're probably just going to have to pass the ball more. Lamar Jackson averaged 80 rushing yards in game last season. I mean, that's like a top, let's near like the top level for running backs these days. Well, no, I mean, as we had, we said this couple episodes ago, that was, I believe, better than Sequin Barclay. I don't have it in front of me, but yeah, I think that sounds right because he's pretty good, by the way.

He, yeah. So, yeah, I think it's going to be very interesting. And, you know, Lamar Jackson is the poster child now for the Konami code, which is the idea that the rushing up the quarterback rushing is sort of like this cheat code. in fantasy football because rushing yards are worth more. Sorry, rushing touchdowns and rushing yards are just worth more than passing yards. So if they are forced to pass more, even if he puts up better numbers as a passer, he could end up scoring fewer fantasy points.

So it's just very intriguing. I'm with you, Craig. I think he's probably, if you're going to, if you're a betting person, you probably want to bet that he'll regress slightly in the fantasy realm. And he still might be the QB1, but I just say he might not be the like game, the league winning type level quarterback that it was last year. You parlay him having a numbers dip with him winning the Super Bowl. Yeah.

That's my take. All right, Danny, teach me. I want to talk about Derek Henry, who finished second among running backs and fantasy points for snap behind only Austin Echler. However, he only ranked 18th in snaps, 14th in snap ready. Actually, only was on the field 63% of time, which surprised me when I looked at that. Now, I will say he did actually lead the NFL in rushing attempts, so they were clearly using him a lot.

But when him and Tannahill were on the field last year, I saw this stat on Twitter, they average, let's see here, they averaged 7.4 yards per attempt, sorry, yards per play, which over a full season would be an NFL record. I mean, they were just so, so efficient when they were on the field together. Like the Ravens, I think they're probably going to regress. from that in 2020.

But the way that Tannerhill opened up the field for him, you know, spread defenses out a little bit because he was more dangerous as a passer, all that stuff I think really, really benefits Derek Henry. So Derek Henry is one of those interesting fantasy players because he doesn't really get involved in the passing game. So he's not quite as valuable in PPR leagues. But he's just so good that he might not even need to be, you know, like super, super, involved in the passing game and still be a top five running back, if not top three.

Craig, the Titans and Derek Henry. The Titans were just so Uber efficient last year that I think Derek Henry already had his best year. And usually when you draft people, you want guys who have the potential to exceed their best. And I don't know if that is really the case with Derek Henry. And we'll have to see how they handle Derinton Evans, their rookie. And maybe the lack of training camp will make it so he's not on the field as much. I'm not sure. The one stat I want to bring up with this, I saw this stat yesterday,

over at NFL.com. Nick Shook wrote about it. And he put together a stat rushing yards over expectation, which is similar to their completion percentage over expectation stats. Basically, it looks at the blocking. He tries to separate the blocking from the running back. Derek Henry led the NFL with 1.5 rushing yards over expectation, which was easily the best, and one of only 10 running backs who averaged over 0.5 rushing yards over expectation. So he was like in this whole separate tier by himself. And the thing that I think is interesting about that is he also led that stat in 2018 as well. So it's not necessarily a fluke to me that he was just so much like head and shoulders.

Like imagine tackling this guy. Like just from like the most basic level. Just imagine tackling Derek Henry. It's not what you want. Can either of you make a case or just even just spell out your expectations for the Titans in the AFC South? Oh, man. I personally, I think they're the favorite in that division, but it is a very... You don't think the Colts are? No, I don't. I feel like I put the Titans a little bit above the Colts, but I think they're both good.

And then I think the Jaguars quietly could make some noise. The Texans are obviously up there every year. You know, when you have Deshaun Watson, the Texans are always going to be involved. I think it's a very competitive division. And that's what I wanted to get into, because I think that the Texans has currently constructed look pretty good, even with the strange attraction of Giannihra Hopkins. I think that that's the type of division where I think that in week 14, we're going to be looking at three potential playoff teams. And I don't know how that shakes out.

But it's a very competitive vision. Craig, who do you have in the AFC South? I'm with you. I think it's the Colts. Yeah. All right. Next. Craig Horrell back.

All right. So I want to talk about one thing in fantasy football that a lot of people who just kind of log on on August 15th and draft their team kind of struggle with his recency bias, which is you just kind of go back and look at the year before, and that's how you kind of dictate what you're going to do for your current season. So I wanted to stick in the AFC North and talk about the Steelers who were clearly one of the worst teams in football last year. Real football and fantasy football.

But I'm expecting a big bounceback in both ways. I mean, they were the worst scoring team last year. They scored 25 touchdowns. The Ravens at 58. They had 25. Them and the Jets. Obviously, I mean, it comes as no surprise that it was because of Mason, Rudolph, and Duck Hodges at quarterback all year.

But Pittsburgh's entire philosophy changed. as a team last year. They slowed the game way down. They tried to play like drag out football, win low-scoring games. It kind of reminds me of like what, when I played CYO basketball growing up, my dad would coach and it would be like,

if he knew that our team was less talented than the other team, you would just like absolutely run the shot clock out every single time, keep it low-scoring, drive to the paint, try and get fouled, free throws are easy shots.

Like, no threes if you can't shoot. Just like, really just hunker down for the winter and like hope for the, wait for spring. No wonder you love Pete Carroll, man. I love it. That's unbelievable. This is the origin story of why Craig Worldbeck earlier today defended the running game.

But yeah, I don't know. I just don't think everyone had a bad year last year. Juju, James Connor, and you just can't use last year's results for this year's prediction. Pittsburgh flew the ball the most in the league in 2018, and they were fourth in plays per game. And James Connor and Juju were incredible. Juju was a top eight receiver along with Antonio Brown. and he's not nearly ranked wide receiver 8 right now.

So I just think it's kind of a microcosm of what the Steelers could be this year. I mean, the last three years with Ben, they won nine games, 11 games and 13 games. I saw a video of Big Ben yesterday. He's looking pretty spelt. He's looking ready. Sure.

Was the video from 2009? I can't confirm that. Were you watching NFL films again? My favorite video ever of Ben is when they tossed those like pads at him he's thrown, he's just hitting him with his hands. Have you seen that video? No.

No, I haven't. I'm looking for this video right now. I'm just seeing a bunch of, I don't see anything. Was this a deep fake you saw? It might have been a deep fake, yeah. It was actually Joe Flacco with Big Ben's head on him. Yeah, I don't think there's any video of a healthy Joe Flacco right now. All right.

Isn't he, isn't he like not going to start the season? Health, isn't he going to play? Isn't he going to be able to be the backup in like October? Isn't that the Flacco side part? I think so, yeah. Crushing it. Jets crushing it. All right.

Danny Kelly, third and final thing you need to talk about to teach people the 2020 season through fantasy. Yeah, I wanted to talk about the Panthers for a little bit and specifically just, I think it's in the same vein, Craig,

as what you're talking about with the Steelers, is they were so, their offensive production was so just held back by Kyle Allen last year that I'm very intrigued to see what happens with Teddy Bridgewater, or under center and having that new staff in place, how they can kind of put that all together

and if they're able to explode offensively in the way that I think they might be able to because I think they have a lot of really good talent on that offense. Obviously, Christian McCaffrey's going to go off. DJ Moore is one of the top ascending receivers in the NFL, but I also keep coming back to this stat because I think it's very fascinating. Curtis Samuel finished ninth among all receivers

in total air yards last season, 1,608 and 52nd in receiving yards. there was seven the top 17 receivers in air yards last year all had over a thousand yards and samuel finished like 600 something so i just think you know obviously you have to go through all the targets to kind of see exactly what was going on there if if all of those passengers are just prayers down the down the field or whatever but um i think samuel is a lot better than what his stats showed last year um so he's a kind of to me that he in particular is interesting but i think that whole offense has a lot of potential to be a lot of

better than they were last year and be more fantasy relevant. I'm confused by everything that the Panthers have done this year. And I'm not totally, and I'm not saying it's all bad. I think the Matt Rule higher is very good. I think there's a reason they gave them a long-term contract. I thought at the beginning, obviously before the Bridgewater signing and all that, that there was a chance that they were going to try to take a step back and make it more of a long-term thing.

Right. Obviously, they signed Teddy Bridgewater. It seems like they've got a different plan that maybe I thought they were going to have. Is there any case to be made for the Panthers in general or is it just just more of a fantasy they might be better than we think kind of take? I would say it's the latter. I just, so I think there's a world in which Teddy Bridgewater is just perfect for, you know, the Joe Brady offense, like something similar to what we saw at LSU where they spread the field and, you know, get the ball out and attack deep and for whatever.

reason, Bridgewater just takes to that really, really well, there is a world where I could see them being really good offensively. I'm more conservative in my estimation. I think he'll help Curtis Samuel be a better fantasy player, but I don't know if they're going to necessarily light the world on fire, be good enough offense where, you know, it can kind of like make up for some of the issues that they have on defense. But, you know, I'm not totally eliminating it because if we saw the difference between, you know, what Joe Burrow was in 2018 versus 2019, that's what kind of intrigues me is, like, how much that offense can maybe unlock Bridgewater. I'm excited to see Joe Burrow at the NFL level.

Joe Burrow. I mean, I am excited to see Joe Burrow with NFL level. Joe Brady. Everybody connected with LSU last year. I'm excited to see them at the NFL level, I guess, what I'm trying to say. Totally. David Tepper launched an MLS team and called it Charlotte FC this week. So kind of to go on the name the name stuff.

Yeah, I am more intrigued in theory with the Panthers than I am intrigued with them as like some sort of NFC South contender, especially when you can say that there's three pretty good teams in that division. But I'm just intrigued to see how all the pieces fit, how Matt Ruh looks at the NFL level, Brady offense, Teddy Bridgewater is a full-time starter. I'm in on potentially seeing them as like a red zone team. Craig Panthers thoughts. Yeah, I think they'll be really fun. They almost are like a real-life fantasy team where they just have a lot of cool tools and you don't know how they're going to work,

but it'll be fun to watch. Yeah. All right, Craig, last one. Yeah, the last thing I want to talk about is just kind of the importance in the safety net of a running quarterback, but in both fantasy and real-life football, it's kind of on the rare side

to find a true dual-threat quarterback starting in the NFL, but it's not surprising that the ones who do fit the description tend to be among the fantasy's most productive options. So of the 12, quarterbacks with the most rushing yards last year. Nine of them were also in the top 12 in fantasy points, right? Not surprising. But of those nine, six of their teams made the playoffs.

Quarterbacks like Josh Allen can put up high in fantasy numbers without having to be even like a moderately efficient passer. But it just goes to show you that six of those nine teams are in the playoffs. And I just think there might be more of a correlation between fantasy production as a dual quarterback, dual threat quarterback, and real life production as a dual threat quarterback. Like D.K. said earlier, in fantasy, every 175 yards in a touchdown throwing is equal to 50 yards in a touchdown rushing. But in real football, I think the value might be similar just because the extra weapon the defense has to prepare for kind of makes a huge difference. Yeah. It changes the entire approach for the defensive side of the ball. I mean, it's especially like in the red zone too, where you have to worry about the quarterback as a runner. It changes everything you can do. It spreads the defense thin. It puts them in, it puts a lot of defense.

and the whole heart of the option game is it puts defenders in like an impossible situation where they have to make one decision and and if the quarterback plays it right, they're wrong every time. You know, so it's, I think it's absolutely, you know, a huge, huge advantage for the offense. And, you know, we've been talking about this now. It seems like for 10 years it's here to stay. Yeah, I mean, it's basically Josh Allen and the bills are going to win the Super Bowl. Yeah, that's the take. No, it's interesting because when I talk to defensive coordinators or GMs or head coaches or whomever, It's funny to me because even though we talk about the positionless defenses and the adaptability and all that stuff, the defenses still have not gotten to the point where they can, I mean, we saw this with Lamar last year, where they can reliably have any idea what they're doing against a true dual threat quarterback. Exactly what he said. And I think that if you can get a team out of their quote unquote base defense, even though it's increasingly becoming a substitution league, it's not that much of a substitution league. Like it is, if you can get a team still out of the base defense, as rare as it is for teams to actually play their base defense all the time, if you can get them out there for an entire game, you have the advantage. And defense is still don't know how to reckon with it. And, you know, I remember talking to the former Bengals offensive line coach who did a lot of study on Lamar Jackson. He basically said that they run so few plays, so few actual plays. And like the number of plays that the Ravens run is very few.

it's just that nobody can stop it. And also, defenses can't even reckon with the fact that they run so few plays because they can't even wrap their minds around it. And so I'm with you, a true dual threat quarterback is sight to behold. Is Josh Allen,

like, is the take you're making here, because I'm not ready to make this take. Are you saying that Josh Allen could contend, like realistically in the AFC? Hell yeah. No, so I love the bills organization and the defense

and the players and all that stuff. I just think that when you're a question mark, And I think Josh Allen is okay. I think he's okay. I don't think he's, you know, I don't think he's ever going to be in the top tier of quarterbacks, but I think he obviously can win these some games. My concern is that I'm not putting anybody in the contention tier

unless they don't have a question mark of quarterback. And I think Josh Allen has that. Yeah, well, I guess the whole point is that I think people kind of look at a Russian quarterback as like a gimmick a little bit. And they think it's only kind of a fantasy relevant skill. but it just goes to show that two-thirds of the guys who are strong Russian quarterbacks make the playoffs, including Josh

Allen last year. I mean, he's essentially Cam Newton with the size of Ben Rathesberger and he slings it like Brett Fav, and he's gotten better each year. They have a great old line, a great defense. I don't know. I think the bills are a strong chance to win 11, 12 games and even win the AFC East.

Danny Kelly, the Bills. I'm with you that Josh Allen is the wild card. If he can do that, I'm not 100% confident he can be that level. If he can do that, then the bills are contests. They're a Super Bowl contender, yeah. If Josh Allen takes a huge leap, the bills are Super Bowl contenders.

And I don't think there's a lot of debate about that when you see the rest of their team. And I think Sean McDormick's a very good coach. I think Brandon Bean's a very good general manager. I think they have a good infrastructure. If he takes the leap, but I can't tell if, you know, is this season going to be a bit chaotic

in the sense that nobody's practice nobody's in pads, nobody had OTAs. And someone like Josh Allen, who's a little more unorthodox, could maybe have better production than he would normally have because defense is a little flat-footed. Yeah, I'm willing to buy that theory I just made up. But I'm also not going to stake my claim in that this year. However, having said that, having said that,

if he does do that, the theory I just made up, I'll just keep recirculating. Yeah, I didn't mean for this to be a Josh Allen segment, but I'm happy we're here. Alan thrives in chaos. I could see it. Alan thrives in chaos. He's the little finger of football.

He's the Joker. He's the Joker. Yep. All right, guys. This has been very fun. Who's real quick, both of you. This was not, I didn't ask you to prep for this, but we'll do it right now. What is the player you guys disagree on the most in fantasy value? David Johnson.

Explain this. Craig is high on David Johnson. He thinks he's... So is high fits. Yeah. Craig and Danny are both high on David Johnson, and they believe that he's going to be returning, I guess, somewhat towards what he was, like with the Cardinals in his heyday. I'm very dubious and a little bit nervous about what he can do in that Texans often.

So I'm not going to have any David Johnson on my fantasy teams, and Craig and Danny are going down with the David Johnson ship. Bill O'Brien's job is on the line. Aaron Schatz just logged on to hear David Johnson praise. and I think that that's the natural conclusion to this segment. Yes. I'm not sure David Johnson is the best Johnson in his own backfield. Thank you.

Perfect. This is why we booked him. This is why I booked him, folks. All right, Danny Kelly, thank you so much. No problem. Before we move on, let's take a quick break. If you've been dealing with acne, redness, dark spots, or wrinkles, finding treatment that works can be complicated.

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Get 20% off and free shipping with the code Kfan20 at Manscape.com. That's 20% off with free shipping at Manscape.com and use code Kfan20. Thank you, Manscape, for keeping our hairs looking nice. All right, Aaron Schatz, football outsider's almanac 2020 is out. It is one of the best guides. And it's a crowded space now with the preseason guides, especially with analytics. But this is among the very best. Aaron, thanks for joining us.

Hey, thanks for having me on. Yes, this is our, I believe, 14th book. So we've been pumping these out. No, 16th book. We've been pumping these out for a long time. Yeah. So this is the weirdest season we've ever had. And so this will be the weirdest.

I guess you could say way to consume the book is we're a couple of days. out from when veterans was to report and we don't know what that looks like. I'm curious before we get the nitty gritty of what you found in your research and what we can glean from it for the 2020 season. When you think about this season and how things are different in every building, all 32 buildings and how the scouting process will differ, how everything will essentially change going forward. Will analytics play a bigger role, the same role, a lesser role, because maybe there are teams who weren't converts before, and they now have to look at it because,

look at these numbers because, you know, their scouts can't get to Oregon or whatever. How do you view analytics and their role in this season where everything is different? Well, the problem, I mean, one problem is the scouts can't get to Oregon, but if Oregon's not playing, the players aren't playing in Oregon. Right. Either there's film and stats to discuss about college players or there's not.

I don't think, I think what we've seen over the last few years, especially the last couple years, is definitely movement towards analytics being better accepted in the NFL, in the front offices, by coaching staff even. I don't think that what's going on with COVID-19 is either going to increase that movement or decrease that movement. I think coaches will continue to think like coaches, you know, If they buy the analytics about needing to run more play action, they'll continue to buy it and they'll run more play action.

And if they still believe in establishing the run, they're still going to believe in establishing the run. So I don't think COVID-19 is going to play a big role in that. I do think, I wouldn't be surprised if they go, you know, the people running the front offices go to the analytics people and ask them if there's no college football season or certain teams don't have college football like FCS teams. like, is there a way for analytics to overcome that? The problem is, I think analytics are stuck, like I said, in the same place that film study is stuck, which is if they're not playing, there's nothing to study. So whether analytics could, you know, look at Jude your year stats and FCS and figure out whether guys are translated to the NFL in 2021, I have my debts. Yeah.

All right. So let's get to your research over the past year. Is there anything in the book that shock? you when you started to look at the data. Yeah, I'll tell you one that came out of the New Orleans chapter that was kind of mind-blowing. In the last three New Orleans playoff losses, Michael Thomas had only three targets on third down, caught one of them for 19 yards. I think that is the best explanation for why Emmanuel Sanders is going to change things for New Orleans,

is the desperation to have another receiver they could throw to on third down. Like, apparently you can't guard Mike, but there are apparently times where if you really throw everybody you've got at Mike, you can guard Mike. That's amazing. I'm really intrigued by that. I've seen some debate on this, and maybe this is a broader discussion. But how valuable is Michael Thomas? In the regular season, just with the high catch rate and all that stuff,

the depth of target is not very high, but when you look at someone who has a historically good catch rate, how valuable is that versus someone who has a lesser catch rate, but maybe goes deeper? What is the value of Michael Thomas? I think it has a lot of value. I think when you ask which skill set is harder to find, the outside downfield, the Julio Jones skill set, is a harder skill set to fight. But Michael Thomas is so good at his skill at what he does well that I think it makes up some of the difference that the outside guys may have a more valuable skill set, but the difference between Michael Thomas and an average guy or a replacement guy, his position is larger. So, I mean, I do think there is a lot of value to Michael Thomas. And obviously,

the state's offense has been spectacular over the last couple of years with one go-to receiver. Right. So you put the Emmanuel Sanders acquisition as probably among the most important of this offseason? Yeah, I definitely think so because, I mean, listen, it's been great for them in the regular season, but that stat suggests that when it came to the, you know, the chips were down, teams found a way to take Thomas out of the game and now you've got another guy you can go to. Fascinating. All right. What team aren't we talking enough about as contenders based on your projections? Well, there's two that I think are higher in our projections than most people have them. One, people might be talking about some, and that's the Pittsburgh Steelers. I think people understand how good their defense was last year. I don't expect their defense to be as good this year.

They led the lead in takeaways per drive, which is definitely one of those stats that regresses pretty heavily. But their offense was so bad last year. All Rothfusberger has to be is average. Like, he doesn't even have to be the Rothfusberger of old. If he's just an average NFL starter, that's a big upgrade for their defense. And they have a pretty easy schedule by our numbers. The other team is the team that has the easiest schedule by our numbers, and that's Indianapolis, which is just an overall well-run, good, not great,

but good all-around team. Where as long as Rivers does what he did last year or bounces back a little bit and is a little better than that, with an easy schedule should be a prime contender for a playoffs. Is there anything, and I've seen some of the numbers on what the extra playoff spot will do. But when you think about the AFC, is there anything that's going to change you think this year because of the extra playoff spot? I mean, let's see. Is it just, is it the year to be a dominant team of the AFC? And it doesn't matter if you're, you know, how much the buy changes.

Because I think the AFC is going to be so competitive, obviously, between the chiefs and then and then the Ravens. And then obviously that second tier, which I think we would throw Indy and, and, and, Pittsburgh and those sort of teams. And is there anything the extra playoff spot does, you think, to the competitive balance of the conferences? I mean, here's the thing. If everything works out to the mean of our projections, like our average projection,

we have two AFC teams very separated from the rest of the conference. Right, exactly. And that's Kansas City and Baltimore. Only one of them gets a buy. That means who gets that buy is hugely important. Those two teams could be equal in every way. and one of them gets the buy because of some random win against common opponents or something

and it just makes a colossal difference. Yeah, no, it's going to be fascinating. I think because so many things are going to change competitively this season, I mean, between not having padded practices until late August, all this stuff, I think they probably haven't put enough focus on how big that buy is going to be. But hitting the ground running

is probably going to be even more important than it is normally. All right, is there a narrative around the league that is just totally wrong, that is just that we talk about, maybe we take it for granted, and whoops, it's actually just not true at all, Aaron? I don't know if it was something we talk about as football media,

but it comes out in responses to posts and responses to things I say on Twitter. And that is the idea that building an efficient team in the NFL is anti-labor. Oh, okay. Right. When we say running back shouldn't get paid. Right. Sometimes the responses are like, well, you don't, you know, these guys work hard and they take all these hits and why shouldn't they get paid and what do you have against the players? And the answer is we have nothing against the players. It's just every team is cap. There's a limited amount of money that you're allowed to spend on players. And looking at efficiency and how teams can run the best, most efficient team suggests that that money should be played on different players than running backs. That's a completely different argument than should the cap be higher? Should players,

get a larger proportion of the proceeds in the NFL, you know, what is it now? Like 50-50, you know, should players get 55, right? It's a totally different question than, okay, here are the rules for building teams. How do you build the most efficient team? I don't know anybody in the analytics world who believes that we're trying to screw certain players out of their money. It's just these are the rules and you want to build the most efficient team that wins the most. Yeah, you know, I think that's been the biggest debate, maybe in the past five years from me internally.

Just when you say someone doesn't deserve to get a second contract or whatever, what are you actually saying? And I think that unfortunately, the 2011 CBA pushed out a lot of veterans, a lot. And that's the reason, you know, I think you guys did some pioneering research on the age factor and how age kept going down and down and down, especially on offense across the NFL after that CBA, I think 2016 was the year I wrote about that using some of your research and is talking to coaches about what was happening. Essentially, unless you were a almost not elite, but unless you were really, really good,

you were not going to get a veteran contract in the NFL after 2015, which was the first year that those 2011 rookie contracts expired. And I think that there's just so much that goes on with that. but unfortunately right now, teams are incentivized to have rookies and build around those rookies and then have only the best of the best on the roster. And I think that we're probably unfortunately going to see more of that if the cap goes down 50 to 60 to 70 million dollars next year. But I think that instead of sort of debating whether or not it's pro-labor or anti-labor as far as, you know, saying how roster projections should go or how a team should manage their cap,

I think the NFL needs to find a way. The NFLPA needs to find a way to get people paid in an efficient way. And, you know, maybe that's more back-end incentives for rookies. Maybe that's a minimum where, you know, there is now a quote-unquote veterans minimum where that can exist sort of almost outside the salary cap. That's how Nelson Al Gore signed, actually. But I think that there's mechanisms in which running backs can get paid. And that's up to the NFL and the NFLPA.

But unfortunately, right now, it is really tough to be a running back. And there are so many cases that are, quite frankly, football tragedies where you see a guy who in his third year leads to the NFL in yards per carrier, looks like he's great. Then his fourth year, he, you know, breaks his foot. And then he's just out of the league next year because nobody wants to sign a running back. for a veteran's contract. I'll give you a good example of a guy who doesn't have a contract right now, Devante Freeman. I don't know how you do it because you've got to put running back money

in the first contract in a way that's different from other positions. But the union's job is not to represent running backs. The union's job is to represent players at all positions. And so they're not going to fight for a specific position to be paid differently than other positions, but that's the only way to get running backs money that is equal to what their value to teams is. Yeah. I'm still wondering, because it hasn't happened yet, and in fact, college running backs are still obviously amazing

because you look at all the great running backs who are young in this league right now, but it's just so strange to me that the pipeline hasn't dried up. And part of the reason, and I've talked to people in football about this, is that at youth, the youth level and the high school level and even the college level, the best athlete at running back can absolutely dominate. And so there's an incentive for a coach to put them there. If you have an elite division one level athlete who can play running back in high school, you stick him at running back and you win a state title, right?

I mean, I remember somebody saying this about, Stan Van Gundy actually told me this years ago. And we were talking about the basketball developmental system and how why at one point the American big men were not shooting threes. This was, you know, 10 years ago. We're not shooting three-pointers. And he said, well, it's because if you have a guy who's five inches taller than everybody else and you're in a high school coach, you're an AAU coach, you stick that guy under the basket and you let him dunk all the time. And so it's almost like that with running backs where it can all be explained by how the game is different at the lower levels. And so if you're a coach, you're not going to say, hey, the best long-term strategy for this kid is to play slot receiver or play cornerback even.

It's no, we're going to put them at running back, and that's how the pipeline is still there. But unfortunately, once that gets to the NFL level, it's just not financially savvy. And it is one of the football questions, quite frankly, of our time to figure out. All right, you spend a lot, and you've done this a lot over the past 14 years of this book, talking about the things we get wrong when we talk about football stats. And at the beginning of this book, you sort of outline some of that stuff. and it's always interesting to read. If you could make one change to how we talk about statistics in football,

what change would you make? Well, I mean, there's a difference, I think, between what change would I make towards how the general media talks about statistics and what change would I make to how statistical analysts talk about statistics? The change I would make to the way that the general media talks about statistics is the same one that I would have made when I started in 2003

from the very beginning that I would. I've been doing this, which is stop ranking teams based on total yardage, especially defense. It's just terrible. And they still do it on broadcasts. The fact is analytics has stretched a long way when it comes not only to front offices, but when it comes to beat reporters. But it has not stretched a long way when it comes to studio shows and when it comes to color commentating. So when you watch football on TV, you still get a lot of teams being ranked by total yardage.

at its terror. Yeah. I mean, that's, I think that there's been some movement. Chris Collinsworth, investing in pro football focus was important to get, to get that voice and that research onto Sunday night football, which is the highest rated show in television. But yeah, I mean, I still think that there's, it's going to take a while. It's going to take maybe another generation before that's accepted more in sort of the

mainstream network. vocabulary, I guess you could say. All right, last one. Any guy breakout for 2020. Who is it? I like, we have a list we do in our book called the top 25 prospects, which is we don't look at first and second rounds. We look at guys who are taken later in the draft or undrafted free agents who haven't really done a lot yet, but we think will in the future. And our number one guy is, and I hope I am pronouncing this somewhat close to right, pronouncing ifiadi

Odenigbo from Minnesota he is the replacement for Everson Griffin at the edge rusher position and had four sacks over the last five games of last season with a forced fumble and a fumble recovery

for a touchdown and he's a really promising pass rusher on a team that really needs a pass rusher. I mean Minnesota got hit by the salary cap demon big time this off season. I think they're a well-rud team and they've done a lot to overcome that, but it may take a year or two for them to fully see the fruits of all the young talent they have. But this is a guy who was drafted in 2017 and they

may see the fruit of his talent now. Yeah, it's interesting because I think the Vikings are really well-run team. I think that there are obviously some holes in that roster, but I actually like them more than most people who we had on over the past couple months in this podcast. What are your expectations for them in 2020, are? Our numbers for Minnesota, we have the NSC North incredibly tight. All four teams win the division 23% of the time, at least, in our simulations. So we have all four teams tightly clustered around 8 and 8. Subjectively, I think Minnesota will do a little bit better than our projection system thinks

because I do really think Zimmer is good at managing defense. Subjectively, I like Minnesota the best in that division. but objectively, we actually have them fourth out of the four teams, but like I said, really tight. The Bears. I cannot believe this. I cannot believe that they're... And multiple people and multiple simulations

have made the case for the Bears on this podcast over the past couple months. This is truly Robert... It made the case for the Bears to win. We have as far... We have it actually with Detroit as the top team in mean wins because they have an easier schedule than Green Bay. but we have all four teams tightly around 8.

I mean, we have on the site right now, I posted a thing with our top 15 Super Bowl possibility teams, and there are no NSC North teams in there. So we have the whole division being mediocre. I can't wait to tell Mays about this. This is, the mediocrity is, the sweetest words in the language is default, right? That was the Homer Simpson line.

Chicago Bears, contenders by default. Aaron, tell us what you're doing with United Way. I think it's cool that you guys are partnering with them. Absolutely. So every time you purchase Football Outsiders Albanaq or you buy a subscription to our new FO Plus premium product, we're going to donate proceeds to the United Way Worldwide's COVID-19 Community Response and Recovery Fund that get distributed across United Way networks based on need, emergency food and shelter, all kinds of important things. So you are not only helping us by buying this book, you are helping a lot of people who are helping yourself learn about the 2020 NFL season, but you're also helping people with COVID-19. Aaron, thanks so much, man. It's been the ring around a fellow show and then our podcast network.