Late-Round Perspectives: Dr. Adam Hutchison

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Adam Hutchinson is a doctor of physical therapy who's done work for the undroppables, four for four, Fantasy Football, and now football guys. He's developed injury recovery scores for individual fantasy players. He's a Purdue boiler Maker, and most importantly, he's a dad of two. These are his Late Round perspectives. This episode is sponsored by DraftKings. There's no better way to get closer to the action. With DraftKings Daily Fantasy, the ultimate destination for football fans. New customers can play free for their share of millions and prizes with their first deposit of five dollars in more. Download the DraftKings Daily Fantasy app and enter promo code Late Round to play free for your share of millions. The Crown is yours gambling problem called one hunter Gambler in New York called eight seven to seven eight Pope n y in Connecticut called eight eight seventy nine seven seven seven eighteen plus. The most stage eligibility strips to apply ends December thirty first see terms at draftings dot com slash promotions. Now back to the show. I do one of these shows. It feels like every year like I had Edwin on a couple of years ago. I had Jeff on last year, and it's it's nice as like a good change of pace, you know, of just like the typical you know, perspectives episode where it's just all focused on, you know, the very specific analysis of how this performance is going to go as opposed to the injury side. It's just it's just a nice breath of fresh air for me. So I'm really excited to, like, I get to sort of be like the consumer and listener here right where I get to kind of pick your brain and see where things are at. So I'm excited.

00:01:46
Speaker 2: I know I speak for those guys when I say I really appreciate you having us on and it's it's nice to be on here. Is like, has this show become like the Rogan of Fantasy sitting down doing late late round perspective here? So yeah, no, it's good to be here.

00:02:03
Speaker 3: I'm excited.

00:02:04
Speaker 1: There was someone last year who said that I am I don't know if that was in reference to that, but there was someone on Twitter last year who said that I'm only doing this because I'm trying to beat the Joe Rogan of Fantasy Football. Is what they said.

00:02:17
Speaker 3: I did not see that I would being sincere.

00:02:18
Speaker 2: No, I tried to catch every one of these that I can, just because it's you know, it's a little bit more of.

00:02:24
Speaker 3: A relaxed forum.

00:02:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, obviously we're talking about fantasy football, but you know, it's a cool show.

00:02:29
Speaker 3: No, I really enjoy it just as a consumer.

00:02:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, I appreciate that. Man, it means a lot. Before I get into, like your journey in the fantasy space, I want to get something out of the way, and I've done this both times that the other you know, doctors of physical therapy have been on and I've chatted with them about injuries. But I want to get your perspective on this too. It feels like the way people react to people like yourself on social media is way too harsh, way too harsh. And I mean that from the standpoint of you know, you'll hear someone say, well, you know this Twitter doc said this thing, and someone you know, an analyst or someone we said, oh, they don't know what they're talking about. And to me, my my standpoint on it, and again I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, but my stance on it is, how is this really that much different? Than anyone else who's forecasting and prognosticating and thinking about what's going to happen in the future. I don't see how it's any different as me as a fantasy analyst sitting here projecting you know which rookie is going to be good, or you know which wide receiver is going to see a twenty five percent target chair. I'm projecting as well. It's no different, and you're just projecting a different kind of thing, right, I'm doing it with the production side, and you're doing it with the injury side. No one is claiming to be one hundred percent correct, and like, you're your help, you're you're you're you're guiding us in the right direction. Is that Is that sort of the way that you view this too? Yeah?

00:03:54
Speaker 2: I mean I literally, well, I'll say two parts to your question, Like I literally had this conversation. I don't know if conversation is the way to describe it on social media, but someone was saying, oh, I was giving projections in terms of return to play timelines, and someone's like, well, I'd rather there not be any guesswork involved in it. And I was like, are you new to fantasy football? That's all this is none of us are hitting in the team meetings with the Washington commanders and being like, oh, Jacory Kroskimer is going to get twenty two touches this week. It's all this work. That's all we're doing. We're just trying to as best as we can use our knowledge to give you the best idea. And I mean the second part, I've tried to be better at this. I mean, I think everyone could get better at it. I try to stay off of social media. I'm very much a post and like ghost kind of guy.

00:04:44
Speaker 3: Like I put it out there.

00:04:46
Speaker 2: I don't read the comments. It's just not worth my time and energy to get worked up or go back and forth with people. I get sucked in sometimes with most of the point. Most of the time, I'm pretty much a post and ghost guy.

00:04:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it definitely gets to that point. You know, I'm mostly a post and I'll jab back at trolls and just have fun with it kind of kind of person at this point because you can't take it too seriously. Then every once in a while you get into it and you go back and forth with someone, as you noted, But yeah, I mean, I don't know, man, it just seems so so weird to me that the Twitter docs are the ones that are the direct I mean, look, fantasy analysts get destroyed too, don't get me wrong, but like it seems like there's a disproportionate amount of hate that the Twitter docs get when you guys are out there using probability, you know, using information and data to help make more sound decisions the exact same way we would be doing that. So anyone going I wanted to start with that because anyone going into this show and listening to us have this back and forth, I think having that perspective is very important. That no one is coming on and saying I know exactly what's going on within these teams. You know, I'm talking to Chris Godwin directly talking about how his ankle's feeling or whatever's going on with him, and I know exactly. No, We're just using the information that we have to make the most sound decisions we can make. I do want to throw your way, though, as I do with every perspective's guest, tell me about your journey, Like, how the heck are you doing this in the fantasy football space, giving your background?

00:06:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think like most people we just have an unhealthy obsession with fantasy football, and for most of us, it was you know, consuming fantasy content and then realizing where maybe there was a gap or there was a void in the space, and you know, finding a way to contribute. So honestly, I've been I've been very fortunate that I've worked with great people along the way that have really helped me to kind of improves as a fantasy analyst and put my content out there. I actually started with the Undroppables like right before COVID happened, and I always mentioned them first because Chalk one on one Nick, who is kind of spearheads that company. I mean, I think he does a great job just giving people a platform to talk about what they want to talk about and help promote it. It helped me a lot just kind of I don't know if this is the best way, just find to my craft a little bit and get my feet in the space. And I was fortunate enough to kind of parlay that into a part time kind of position at four for four where I did some staff work for them, and then you know, just through networking, I knew Dave Kology behind the scenes and we had talked a lot, and when an opportunity opened up at Football Guys for some fantasy football content and the injury space because they just had Gene Bramble wanting to take a step back a little bit. I was fortunate enough that he was really pushing my name to Joe and I was able to have a meeting with Joe and it went well. And you know, that's just kind of where I got here. But you know, it's been it's been some some hard work. I would be admit, you know if I didn't say that, like, it's a lot of luck too, It's a lot of networking, it's a lot of kind of who you know.

00:07:42
Speaker 3: So I feel very fortunate to.

00:07:44
Speaker 2: Be where I'm at now with football guys, and I just feel like that's important to acknowledge too.

00:07:49
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. I mean, did did you when you went out to do what you do and you know, you get like you obviously have to get extra education and you're in school for a long time, and did you have fans football is like a top of mind I'm going to do this on the side thing or did it just kind of like just you're just like I'm a degenerate for this stuff. So why not just kind of go in that direction.

00:08:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, more of the latter.

00:08:11
Speaker 2: I was in grad school, you know, thought I wanted to do something in sports physical therapy. My graduating class actually had twelve guys exactly, so we started a fantasy football league with just the guys in our grad school class. We would literally like the draft day was the best. That was the best league I ever had for draft day because we'd go to class all day and then on a Wednesday we would stay after late, we'd throw up a draft board, we would draft, and then we'd stay there after and watch the Thursday night kickoff.

00:08:36
Speaker 3: So it was a fun league.

00:08:38
Speaker 2: We actually stopped that league when we graduated, and we just did the ten year reunion of it, so we were actually playing again this year. So it's been a lot of fun to kind of reconnect with those guys. But no, I mean, I think, you know, Stefan ya Vell obviously is a big voice in the space with ESPN and seeing a lot of her work. I got on Twitter when it was definitely the interesting pre COVID days where it was a lot less combative, you could put a lot of more information out there without some of the negative comments. And just was you know, producing stuff on the side first for fun and then you know, like I said, chalk Nick saw it and you know, invited me to do some stuff for their droppables and it just kind of kept snowballing and snowballing into this thing that it is today.

00:09:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's awesome. One question I want to ask every doc that comes on is about injury prone noess because you know, we seem to see certain players get hurt every year. But at the same time, me and my my numbers driven brain, I'm like, okay, but like that's like two injuries in three years or our three injuries in three years, and that's not necessarily like a massive sample size. So my question he is like, are you a believer that injury prone noess is a real thing? And then sort of as a follow of that up of that, is there any examples of it being real or not being real? And you think that like there are instances where people look at it backwards and they think that a player is injury prone and he's not all that kind of stuff.

00:09:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a loaded question. I think it kind of depends on who. Yeah, it depends on who. You ask, I mean everybody, especially working in the space. You work with different people, variety of different backgrounds, and people heal differently. There are some people that that heal faster than others. I think a lot of the guys, specifically in pro sports, not just the NFL, are probably in that position because their tissue quality is that of like superheroes, like they're not They're not built like you and I, and that's pretty obvious to most people. But that affects with recovery times and just tissue quality. So I think yes and no, I hate answering it that way and sid in on offense like that. I mean, something I've tried specifically to look at kind of spinning off of that, is just looking at recovery timelines person player player player two players specific and I found some interesting trends in terms of like what's expected by that position. So like, let's say, for wide receivers, if the expected recovery timeline is two to three weeks, what wide receivers undershoot that timeline overshoot their timeline? Obviously there's a lot of variety of stuff that goes into that, but it's given me some interesting players to look at so when we look at just like recovery timelines, some players that stick out at positions for wide receivers, like guys that struggle with it Michael Thomas, Paris Campbell, Chris Olave gets a knock for some of the concussion history or recurrent cushion concussion stuff. But those are some guys that at the wide receiver position stood out in terms of like undershooting injury timelines, dealing with maybe even difficult injuries, or not dealing not taking as long to recover from specific injuries. Guys that took out wide receiver position mon Ross, Saint Brown, Calvin Ridley actually which might surprise some people, but just looking at return to play timelines, and then at the running back position, you know, briefly here shouldn't shock anybody. Christian McCaffrey, somebody that takes a while to recover, AJ Dillon Good at the position, Bucky Irving, Josh Jacobs, Saquon Barkley. Just give guys a couple examples. But those are some things that I've just tried to look at, just you know, if I know an average return to play timeline, some some of the data that that I've collected over the years, who what players are better at.

00:12:04
Speaker 3: Undershooting that or overshooting that is something I find interesting.

00:12:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really interesting. And I know you shared some of that content with me, you know, earlier this week, and it was it's smart content. I think that is not being tapped into seemingly. I mean, from what I've seen, at least tapped into to look at the individual player like that in their recovery simply because like I know that me versus another friend of mine might have the exact same illness or something or or just something going on with our body, right, and like I could be recovering faster or slower than that person. So it would make sense that and we all have like that freakish friend who's able to you know, come back and bounce back from things super quickly, right, So it's going to be like, you know, body to body, So it makes sense that there are going to be certain players that seem to bounce back. And then I'm assuming you use that then, so you know, player X gets hurt, jamar Chase gets hurt, and he's someone who tends to recover quickly, you then are able to use that and say, hey, look is this usually a four week injury, but he might be back in three weeks because of what we see in the past.

00:13:03
Speaker 3: That's that's exactly it.

00:13:05
Speaker 2: It's just to you know, give some of our subscribers at football guys maybe a little bit of an edge. And you know, it's it's small sample size, but everything in fantasy football is a pretty small sample size. I mean, we'll look at what we're what we're doing with aj Brown versus you know, Jacori Krossky Marrit in our fantasy leagues right now based on a five game sample size. So it is small sample size. I don't use it for everything. It just helps me give a little bit of a guideline. I like to see what the average recovery timeline is and sometimes it works out. Sometimes it does that, I mean, and instance, Britt hasn't really worked out. George Kittle was somebody that was a big standout at the tie end position in terms of like undershooting those those recovery timelines. He's someone that historically has played banged up but come back sooner than expected. This hamstreing injury has certainly lingered. You know, context is everything is probably a more serious hamstring strain. The reason that he needed to be placed on IR and he's it doesn't sound like he's going to play here in weeks week six when he's first eligible, but it can be helpful just to kind of forecast, you know, and then spinning off of that, I mean, some of the things I've looked at too, is like, okay, let's talk about recovery timelines, but let's talk about fantasy production when these guys come back, Like who's good at returning into their normal baseline? Or you know, if on average, wide receiver ce using the hamstring example. Again, if on average, you know, wide receiver cee about a ten percent decrease in fantasy production the first game back. Okay, what wide receivers are really moving past that that threshold or maybe even below that threshold when they come back from injury. Is kind of helpful for start sick questions when players are coming back from injury.

00:14:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would assume too, Like I think the Kittle thing is interesting because obviously he's not at like the early parts of his career where you would assume, you know, like a younger player might be able to bounce back a little bit easier, you know, if they're like twenty four to twenty five years old, Like, is that a layer two that you're factoring in or looking to factor in later down down the line of like, all right, well if this dude, you know, if I'm pulling data, because obviously you know, you get a more robust data set, and like you're able to look at it over across like decades or something. I'm assuming you'd be able to like look at the age trend too, of like, all right, George Kittle when he was twenty seven look great, but now he's not, and maybe that is playing some factor as well.

00:15:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it doesn't it it's fun too. My dad goes back to twenty seventeen. So it's getting pretty hefty here in terms of the samples that we're able to build up for specific positions. But it is interesting to kind of drill down to I mean, I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but like looking for the Mike Evans situation, he was someone that was a little bit more skeptical about just because when you drill down to wide receivers that deal with soft tissue injuries above the age of twenty eight, where a two to three week timeline seems more earlier realistic players in that bucket tend to be at the three plus week mark, so I always thought like his timeline might be a little bit length and just factoring in the age to that as well.

00:15:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, super interesting. I mean you mentioned too that there's certain injuries that you know, you can look at the fantasy production of that injury and stay all right, when when wide receivers have a hamstring, this is what happens their fantasy production, and this is the recurrence rate of that injury, typically if it's if it's a low risk or a high risk recurrence. My question to you is when you kind of look at what in the way, when you kind of look at the way that consensus views injuries, are there any injuries out there that you think consensus views improperly in either direction? So one example would be, let's just say consensus like is scared out of their minds about high ankles, and meanwhile you're looking at the data and you're like, high ankles aren't that big of a deal. Or if consensus thinks that hamstrings aren't that big of a deal, but you look at the data and hamstrings are a huge deal. Are there any injuries that just seem like there's a pretty big dissonance between the two.

00:16:44
Speaker 3: It kind of depends.

00:16:45
Speaker 2: I mean, I try to break it down by a position by position too, so you know, anything lower body for quarterbacks in terms of time missed, I see those guys kind of undershooting time like what a typical recovery timeline might be, and that could be a lot due to just the positional demands.

00:17:02
Speaker 3: Obviously, they've got to be able to move.

00:17:03
Speaker 2: Around in the pocket and navigate the pocket. Some of those more mobile quarterbacks got to be able to extend plays. But in terms of like ankle sprains and things that I've seen in quarterbacks, I tend to undershoot like the typical recovery timeline that people put out there or that might be expected with those injuries.

00:17:18
Speaker 3: For whatever reason.

00:17:19
Speaker 2: And this might shift a little bit because it's been a big push in the NBA and we've seen a lot of like Achilles ten ruptures in the NBA, But in terms of times miss time missed and recurrence rates like CAF strains and running backs. For whatever reason, I'm trying to pull up the sample that I have here just to see because I do think it's a decent sample size. Looking at those guys, we've got about thirty six thirty six running backs since twenty seventeen, That time miss doesn't seem to be that missed. And then, just to touch on another point that you were talking about with like high ankle sprains definitely eliminating running backs in terms of lingering production. I tend to look at a three game sample size post injury compared to pre injury. Definitely limiting for running backs, but for wide receivers for whatever reason, doesn't seem to be that limiting in terms of decreased fantasy production or lingering effects on fantasy production when those guys return.

00:18:09
Speaker 1: That's pretty interesting. Yeah, I mean I think that there's just like like, like, I mean this year you mentioned the cat this is what I was gonna say. You mentioned the calf strain stuff. Has that been happening more frequently this year? Like that? Is that like you like, do you think there's any like logic or reason behind it? It seems like dudes are just like that. That's been a comment. I mean you have tube of dealing with that right now. Yeah. And then you had CMC at the beginning of the year where people were worried obviously because of what happened last year, But is that happening more frequently, and is there like a reason for that to be happening more frequently.

00:18:40
Speaker 2: I'm not seeing it a lot in football, at least in terms of some of the injuries that I'm tracking. I mean, obviously, this is a fantasy football show, so I don't want to get too off topic.

00:18:48
Speaker 3: I think a lot of it in the NBA is due to workload.

00:18:51
Speaker 2: I mean, some of those guys are The NBA season has been lengthened. I don't even know how many games, it's got to be eighty plus, But like those guys are are are getting a lot of pressure to play in the Olympics and represent Team USA. It just doesn't really seem like those guys have an off season. Where again I'm not a huge NBA guy, but yeah, I would be interested digging into some of that in terms of like what the workload has been to you, not even compared to the nineties, just players in the early two thousands, twenty tens, and what it is now. I'm wondering if that's what's causing a massive eptich. I'm sure people a lot smarter than me are probably looking into that as we speak, just because that is a obviously a big money making asset in the NBA when your stars go down with all these Achilles ten in tears.

00:19:32
Speaker 3: But'd be interesting to see.

00:19:34
Speaker 1: Has your data like and this is something that is just I'm just thinking about right now with you saying that your data set is going back to twenty seventeen, have you in that short period of time relatively short, I'm just saying, like compared to like, you know, the nineties or something. But even in that period of time, have you seen any sort of difference in the recovery of certain injuries? Like are you seeing medicine and just like science be able to allow these players to bounce back even when dating back to as soon as twenty seventeen.

00:20:02
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a that's a really good point. That's something I should definitely look at this this offseason. That would be that'd be interesting to dig into, just as as that sample, you know, continues to grow a little bit. It's not so specific to this, but it was just like looking at in terms of just injury rates by position. That's that's something I also looked at. I think that was why a big push for the zero RB movement was just because of you know, position positional volatility with running backs, like last year was definitely an outlier. And I don't know if that has to go into like managed workloads or guys, you know, the workhoast running back scene to be maybe a thing of the past, or you know, talking with some people, maybe linebackers being smaller has backed into that. Obviously, speed at the linebacker position has been really important, but typically the running back position has been a position of a volatility where you're less likely to play a full game sample. And when we just looked at last year sam compared to twenty seventeen to twenty twenty three, it was drastically different at the running back position specifically.

00:21:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I mean, look, I was someone who was on here, you know, on the podcast and on shows just being like this seems like this is not like the norm, right, Like, I mean, you can look back and just look at like the top twenty four, top thirty running backs by ADP last year, and we really didn't like the biggest injury was like Isaiah Pacheco for the most part, and most guys were able to play fourteen plus games. It was the healthiest from a game's played perspective that we had ever seen the running back position. And that really just elevated all of those guys, because you know, the RB twos in fantasy football had the best season that we've literally ever seen, at least in recent history. And I think it, you know, the injury stuff really had a reason to do a strong reason to do with that. And I mean, right now we're already seeing correct me if I'm wrong, we're already seeing running back injuries at a much higher clip this year than we did last year.

00:21:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I posted about that a little bit. I mean, just to give some numbers to what you're talking about. So if we use data from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty three, the percent chance obviously bigger sample, so I mean we're going to take that into consideration. But the percent chance of playing a full seventeen game season or a full season for the running back position was about twenty seven percent, and twenty twenty four, Loan, that number jumped up to forty percent. I mean, it almost nearly doubled. And I tweeted about that earlier in this season because it was like something I talked about this offseason a little bit, and I was like, well, if you've been following me, I clearly have no idea what I'm talking about, because we lost like ceed Lambs super early, and then we lost Mike Evans, and I said, either regression is coming or.

00:22:41
Speaker 3: I'm an idiot and I don't know what I'm talking about.

00:22:43
Speaker 2: And then you know, we've kind of seen on the onselet of running back injuries kind of pile up here recently.

00:22:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we definitely have. All right, let's get through some some players right now. I have a list of guys that I had sent your way, and I think people are going to be interested to hear sort of your take on how long they might be out, you know, how they might want to attack, you know, trading for them, adding them on their waiver wires, whatever. A lot of Buccaneers that we'll get to. We'll start with one right here. Bucky Irving sounds like he has like multiple injuries. Now, there was a shoulder that came out of nowhere. Is he going to be able to I mean, it sounds like he's not gonna be able to play this week, but is he going to be able to play next week?

00:23:17
Speaker 2: Potentially yeah, it's definitely looking unlikely for this week.

00:23:21
Speaker 1: The thing that's a little bit.

00:23:21
Speaker 2: Concerning to me is like, I don't really foot injuries for any skill position player, but definitely for running backs always make me a little bit worried in terms of time missed and like recurrence rates that we look at for those specific injuries. But then when they were talking about, like the shoulder injury might be worse than the foot injury, So now I'm getting a little bit worried about that because I'm like, geez, what is he dealing with. It was kind of an interesting point because when we talked about just like players that undershoot injury timelines, it kind of was a mini victory for me because I mentioned, like Bucky Everyone was one of those guys that typically placed their injury. So to hear that he was battling through a shoulder injury that he didn't even tell the Bucks about kind of fulfills that narrative at least a little bit as somebody that battles their injuries. But it might have caught up with him a little bit. Without knowing the specifics of the shoulder, it's a big unknown. I really don't think so that he'll be able to return in week seven. I mean, we do this a lot too with injuries. We start to map out when these guys bye weeks come up, So just factoring in like what you would think for like a foot injury or a mid foot sprain, and then you tack on another injury on top of that. I think it probably does make a lot of sense for Tampa Bay to hold him out until after the bye week in week nine. And some people might say, well, they're not going to do that because they didn't put him on IR, but sometimes it always doesn't work out like that. You know, it's hard to forecast how a guy's going to recover. And maybe they didn't put him on IR because they didn't know that he was dealing with the shoulder injury as well, which might have frustrated them. But yeah, I don't really love it. Obviously we talked about not this week, but I think week seven and week.

00:24:56
Speaker 1: Eight are pretty iffy, man. I mean that's for me to hear. I've I need some some Bucky love, but I get it. I mean it makes sense. Brock Bauers, this one's been bizarre. It seems like he just rushed it. Back too quick or they allowed him to rush it back like he feels like one of those dudes, one of those players who's just like, no, get me on the field, I don't care, just throw me on the field, and then the team's like, okay, sure we'll do it, and it was just seems seems like a terrible idea. So what's the timeline look for him? In turn? I mean like this could beat could make Michael Mayer at least somewhat relevant as brock Bauers is silent.

00:25:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it sounds like Michael Mayer is on track to play this week. He was dealing with a concussion. It's tough because there's not a huge and we got confirmation on brock Bauwers. There's a lot of speculation that he was dealing with a PCL sprain and then Adam Schefner actually tweeted out that that was the injury. So it was nice to get a little confirmation. And that obviously makes our sample a little bit smaller. You know, looking at knee injuries for that tight end position, most players missed from anywhere between zero to three weeks, which was a wider gap. I think it would makes sense to give brock Bauers some time to rest and some time to recover. I wrote this for a Football Guys subscribers earlier as next last week, where I said, you know, PCL springs are relatively rare amongst fantasy football players. We do have some recent examples of players. In twenty twenty four, both Puka Nakua and Del Kinkaid dealt with these injuries. Examining their three game samples post injury, Nikua's fantasy points dropped by thirty percent compared to his healthy baseline, while Kincaid experienced a seventeen point seventeen percent decline. Nikua managed top four top four top twelve wide receiver finishes between week ten to seventeen, but failed to crack the top fifteen every other week. Kinkaid never posted a top ten, top twelve finish at the tight end position after his injury. So I think this was going to be something that for Boers if he continued to play through, this was going to be really hard for him to manage, and it was putting fantasy managers in a buying because you're not going to Brent bench brock Bowers. There's no way that you would be in a position to really do that using the hydragt capital that you did. This is probably for the best to let him recover for a little bit. It wouldn't be surprising to see kind of a two to three week absence for him, to give him some time to heal.

00:27:08
Speaker 1: The big injury that happened this past week that was probably the most brutal for me, my brand, and my teams personally was Amri and Hampton. I mean, look, when it happened, the reaction didn't seem very harsh because it seemed like he was like trying to get back on the field and like test out what was going on, and then all of a sudden he's on IR. So is this IR stint gonna be a true four week IR stint? And then beyond that, is there gonna be some decline in production potential when he comes back?

00:27:41
Speaker 2: So this is one of those that we talked about a little bit earlier. We're definitely gonna have to use some forecast dam projection into this because they haven't really told us a lot more than just ankle injury. And if you followed John Harbaugh, that's probably all we're gonna get from him in terms of the specifics of this injury, so we've got to do a lot of guest work in some of the test detective work here. I think the fact that they put him on IR and you know, video is never diagnostic, but kind of looking at the video a little bit, it would make sense that it was probably a high ankle sprain, which is which is tough for running backs. So we if we do if we do assume that, I think four weeks is probably a likely timeline when he's first eligible to come off of IR, I think he will be eligible to play. Looking at players again, since twenty seventeen, only about twenty percent of those running backs missed more than five weeks, so it's small most of them kind of falling.

00:28:36
Speaker 3: That that four week mark.

00:28:37
Speaker 2: I don't know how to forecast his fantasy production coming back, just because he's obviously was looking great when he got hurt. But we talked about, you know, high ankle sprains can be a little bit limiting for running backs, and I think the Chargers, you know, they wanted Najie Harris to be involved, so maybe they don't there's an opportunity for someone else to emerge or at least prove that they can handle some workload and obviously not take the majority of the work from Hampton. But you know, this is the part of injuries where it's gonna seed some opportunity for someone else to step in there. So I don't know, to answer your question, Yes, I think he can come back after he's done with the IR but what his fantasy production looks like, It's hard to forecast that. But I have some questions about it.

00:29:22
Speaker 1: So with the running back high ankles when they come back, asking for of course my audience and not just myself having Amario and Hampton bags, but when they come back, is it like you see like a sweeping trend of all of them really playing below expectation or is there still players that come back like forty percent of them or something like that, or they come back and they're fine, Like you don't see any signs of them having suffered that injury.

00:29:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's definitely some examples of players coming back and doing well.

00:29:52
Speaker 3: But I tend to I mean, maybe I can.

00:29:56
Speaker 2: Get your input on some of this, so this is a good way to look at it. So I did a lot lot of like just you know, seeing pre injury production versus post injury production and having you know, percent decline pre injury versus post injury and kind of taking an average and looking at a range. But then this offseason I was getting just too many wide range of outcomes, so I started putting players in buckets in terms of like, hey, if you see a ten percent decrease in fantasy production, you go into this bucket. It's more than fifty percent, you go into this bucket. If it's more than seventy five percent, you go into this bucket. And more often than not, those players that coming off of high ankle sprains, specifically, looking at a three game sample sized post injury, we're going into that fifty percent seventy five percent bucket. So it is one of the more limiting injuries I only have in terms of fantasy production declined three games average after only calf strings go above high ankle sprains. And that's looking at fourteen injuries that are the most common amongst the running back position. So it's it's tough. There's obviously there's always outliers. There's always guys that shoot that the overwhelming majority tend to you know, struggle with this injury.

00:31:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're looking three games out, So it could be like like would you anticipate, just like physiologically, a player like coming back from the high ankle struggling during those three games or maybe not being as good during those three games, Like can they get back to full strength then you know, towards the end of the season in the Mario Hampton's case, like maybe like week I don't know, eleven or twelve or something like that or what have you thirteen playoff you fantasy playoff time time frame, Like could he get back at that point or is it like that's just what it is for the season.

00:31:37
Speaker 2: No, as the weeks go on, players are going to get healthier, that tissue is going to heal. It's an arbitrary cutoff, it definitely is. It's just again just trying to find because if you use pre injury production versus post injury production. Wel if a guy had an injury week four versus a guy yeah, injury week twelve, it's just going to skew that data. I had to Yeah, I had to choose like an arbitrary cut off on that and just kind of saying like, hey, what does a trend look like? And we kind of look at the season in fourths at this point, where you know, the first half the season or first quarter of the season is kind of already passed at this point for where we're at, So I just it's.

00:32:17
Speaker 3: An arbitrary cut up.

00:32:17
Speaker 2: But that's that's what I used to Yeah, well, players can come back, I mean, assuming he doesn't have any any setbacks. This is something that as the weeks go on, he could continue to get.

00:32:31
Speaker 1: All right, let's move on to there's news that Christian Watson is doing things and I don't know practice is the right word, but at least like but I always I'm always hesitant to like lean into an ACL when they're just saying like, oh, I'm running at twenty two miles an hour, because it's not really what we care about. I'm assuming with ACL we want more of that, like lateral movement and stuff. And so, is Christian Watson going to be able to come back this year? Do you think and be himself or is this like a full year thing? We got to just wait until twenty twenty six.

00:33:00
Speaker 2: I personally don't have a lot of faith for twenty twenty five. I don't even know if you can can really call it a model because it is small. But I've just kind of break broke off just looking at wide receivers coming off of ACL injuries, and I've used it to kind of give me just a predicted like fantasy point and point range, and I don't use those as like hard stops, but again, it just gives me kind of a view of like, hey, is this someone that can do well and produce or is this someone that struggles. And there's nothing really novel that goes into looking at It's things that you've used and a lot of other people used, you know, pre ACL target share, career, best yards per route run, pre fantasy points per game. But I factored in a couple of my things looking at age, taking into it and then time from recovery, so time when they had surgery to when they first return. It didn't really like Christian Watson for a variety of reasons that a lot of the like pre ACL target share things and some of those fantasy points per game.

00:33:59
Speaker 3: Obviously we're we're holding him back a little bit.

00:34:01
Speaker 2: So I just players like that that are more field stretchers, that have a lower target share volume and not that safe of a floor. We're going to see efficiency decreases, you know, from those players, so they don't have that that healthy target share to kind of give them some type of safe floor.

00:34:20
Speaker 3: I think.

00:34:20
Speaker 2: I think those are the guys that struggle a little bit more than compared to some other guys that might be target hogs.

00:34:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. All right, Let's move back to the Buccaneers. Chris Godwin is back on the injury report, and I believe it's his I think it's his fibular right, Is that what he's on the report for? And so is this just like an aggravation or reaggravation of what he's been dealing with, or is this something that is new or is this like basically, should should godwin managers be afraid that they might have rushed him back a little bit too fast?

00:34:52
Speaker 3: I don't know about that.

00:34:53
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's very likely tied to the injury that he was dealing with this offseason when he when he had the ankle dislocation. The fact that they, you know, held him off I r I think they were a little bit worried about some of their other injuries that they were dealing with with with Jalen McMillan and then obviously in season Mike Evans, I don't know if he was rushed back per se, and I don't even know that he'll necessarily miss this week. Like, I'm not overly concerned, just based on some of this stuff.

00:35:21
Speaker 3: I don't know.

00:35:21
Speaker 2: I think if you, if you roster Chris Godwin or Chris Godwin manager, your biggest fear shouldn't really even be the ankle. Should probably be a mecha BUCA because I don't know how you. I don't know how you put that that tooth baste back in the tube now that he's broken out this way. So I'm not overly worried about the injury. It's likely, you know, those veterans tend to get those veteran rest days where they give him some additional time just to kind of heal up throughout the week.

00:35:51
Speaker 1: And then and then what about Mike Evans. I know you touched on it like briefly, but how many more weeks do you think he'll be out?

00:35:57
Speaker 2: I projected him to return in week six. Doesn't seem like that is going to happen, but I think he would be close. So if you made me pick today, like week seven feels like a safe return to timeline just based on average time for wide receivers and then looking at guys that are a little bit older, and.

00:36:15
Speaker 1: Then in San Francisco. You know, we'll talk about George Kittle in a second. But Ricky Piersoll doesn't sound good for Pearsaw at this point just based on some o Kyaianahan's comments. Is that a next week thing for Peersaw? And then the other players, Juwan Jennings, who I had. I'm really interested if there's like any hesitation for you there because I had Jennings as like a low key by candidate this week, just because I think everyone's just kind of forgotten about him for whatever reason. I mean, he was good in his like single game this year where he was healthy and running a normal number of routes. But are his injuries anything that could could linger that we should be worried about and could he just be back in normal this weekend and be productive.

00:36:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Ricky Piersow does feel like a no at this point, and again we haven't really got confirmation, but his injury looks a little bit similar to brock Bowers, where I do think there's some concern about potentially a PCL spring. We talk about how that could be a multi week injury sometimes, you know, three to four weeks for those guys to come back to any capacity. Jenny's I don't think there's like a single injury that's really limiting him. It just seems like it's a culmination of a lot of things. He's definitely really he just got destroyed.

00:37:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he did.

00:37:21
Speaker 3: He did.

00:37:22
Speaker 2: He's dealing with like a shoulder injury. And then I think he was playing with brock Bowers. Brock Bowers just him out there one time for I think it was against he just got rocked in like the chest rib area. He seems a little bit more boom or bust, just not in terms of like fans, in terms of like, I think he's somebody that if we compared him to a healthy player, he just has a higher chance of like leaving a cam early because of all the injuries that he's dealing with. Uh as it pertains to like the shoulder and the chest rib area. So yeah, he definitely is sneaky. But you know that anyone conld get hurt in football. It's football. It's a contact sport. But similar to like kind of like Xavier Worthy, what I was telling people with Xavier Worthy, like with his with his shoulder injury, I thought, you know, if he comes back, I don't really see this being a big limitation in terms of like his production on the field. I think he's just somebody that could leave a game earlier than most if he has a reaggravation or reinjury.

00:38:18
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean Jennings also just from like a style of play perspective, is a really physical wide receiver and you know, not not like you know, obviously Pookinakua is like the go to example of just throwing your body around and you know, hopefully staying healthy while doing that. But Jennings plays a really physical style of ball, which I think plays into like seems like the kind of injuries that he's dealing with right now where it's just like he'll go out and like, of course he had the ribs injury because of the pseudo hospital ball, but also just like he's going to go out and get it because he's got that dog in him. So it makes sense. And then and then you said, you know, George Kittle coming back later than you expected, does it feel like a week seven thing for him? Like you think you could be back next week.

00:38:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this seems like with the forty are saying I haven't seen their practice reports today, I wouldn't be surprised if maybe towards the tail end of the week he's getting in some like limited sessions and then we start to really see him ramp up leading into Week seven. So that's where I have him slotted right now. Is a week seven return for George Kittle?

00:39:15
Speaker 1: And then should people have Brandon Ayuk on their radar at this point?

00:39:19
Speaker 2: This one's tough for me because I was I was big on Brandon Ayuk in this offseason, and then obviously we learned some stuff about like a secondary procedure, so he's he's uh, he's not making it easy for me at this point. And I mean, I get he's got he's got to get he's got to get healthy. A guy going to kind of what we were talking about with Christian Watson and looking at some things for a wide receivers pre injury post injury. I actually did like some of the stuff on Ayuke's thing, but I also get like a confidence interval for some of these guys, and just with the unknown of his certainty in terms of when he's going to come back, because that is a factor. It is just recovery timeline from surgery. He's got just a massive range of outcomes. So I do I do like him. I do think he's somebody that kind of similar to Stefan Diggs that we've been seeing here recently. Like I think, once he is active and playing, he could, you know, give you some of those high ceiling games. But I don't know what it's going to be, and I don't know if anyone really really knows. In deeper leagues, I've got him stash, but I you know, for you, I know a lot of your subscribers and people I play with, sometimes that's not just a realistic possibility. And some shallow leagues where our benches are very deep, where we don't have IR spots. So I don't blame anyone for not holding him. But he's somebody where if I can, I am trying to keep I'm keeping a light on for him.

00:40:36
Speaker 1: Now, you mentioned the calf stuff with running backs, and that's what Tuba's been dealing with, you know, over the last couple of weeks. Now I guess more than a couple of weeks, because he played through right the one week and then it kind of reaggravated and then they used Rico Dawdle last week. Right now, it sounds like he's trending to be out again this week and it would be the Rico Daudle show against his old team for revenge game. But is this something that could linger? And is this is this something that like you're intoicipating now, not just because of Rico's performance, but because from a health perspective, it just makes more sense to make this more like sixty forty instead of like the seventy thirty kind of spit that we were seeing before with Cuba versus Rico.

00:41:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we touched a little bit on this too in terms of like calf injuries not over limiting in terms of times miss in time in terms of time miss, but in terms of like fantasy production limitations. There are some some stark declines that these players suffer with when they come back, and there is evidence that it can can't linger. So I think that's interesting from the aspect that I mean cats out of the bag with Ricro Doddle. Now, I mean we saw what he did was over two hundred and thirty you know, all purpose yards this might be an avenue now where yeah, Rico Dondal has worked his way into like a fifty to fifty splitter or a time share here just because at Cuba. To answer your question, I don't think he's going to play this week in week six, but let's say he comes back in week seven, Like if you put Cuba in there and he's you know, moving al at seventy percent efficiency in terms of what he was doing pre injury. You've seen what Rico Donde can do. Why are you not going to give more touches to Rico donnal at this point? So it is interesting. It's kind of the nature of the game though, when you get hurt, it opens up an opportunity for someone else to show what they can do.

00:42:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think that, like from a game theory and from a fantasy football management standpoint and because like, look, I was openly not really that into Tuba this year, and this is not a victory lap whatsoever, because he was kind of doing okay, you know, up until the injury. But I do think that this is a situation where when they're when you see a capable backup and you know that the starter is not a can't miss player. This is the situation that you can find yourself in due to the injury, right, Whereas if this were happening to you know, Christ McCaffrey or some elite run you know, Bijon Robinson or something like that. Obviously, Tyler Aljee is a capable backup, but he's not Bijon Robinson. So when Robinson comes back, he's going to just naturally see more of that workload. So I think it's just like a a good case study and example of that in the fragility of these kinds of players. But who knows. I mean, maybe you know Tube is able to come back and see more work than expected. Let's talk about Lamar Jackson now, because I personally have like, it seems like I have no idea when he'll be back. So what do you got for him?

00:43:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, for quarterbacks, you know, hampstring injury tends to be a multip injury, especially for a guy that's as mobile as Lamar Jackson. Just kind of looking at some of his things specifically, he's been a little banged up in his career, but he has been somebody that did well with injury that I definitely did undershoot his recovery timeline. I told people I thought there was a chance he could even play in week five. Obviously that didn't come to fruition, and it's not really looking like he's got a good shot to play this week. This is another one of those circumstances where you look at Bie weeks and I think it could make sense to keep Lamar, but the Ravens are going to keep Lamar ale I should say the Ravens are going to be in a tough spot. I mean, if Cooper Rush plays this week, they're about to be one in five and I have Lamar in some leagues and it just makes me a little bit nervous. At what point do the Ravens are they just like, Yeah, this doesn't even make any sense to play Lamar at this point. If he gets another injury, he suffers a setback with this Hampshire and injury. Why have him battled through a pair of injuries. So I'm a little bit worried, but just circling back, I think week eight probably.

00:44:27
Speaker 3: Makes the most sense in terms of when he's able to return.

00:44:30
Speaker 1: And then another player who I've had a really hard time wrapping my head around his return, especially in like my rest of season rankings and stuff where I'm trying to project, you know, how long these guys might be out for is Terry McLaurin, Because it seemed like even a couple of weeks ago he might have been fine, and then all of a sudden, it's like, nope, nope, not practicing, not practicing, And then again this week, like I saw a report literally like an hour ago that said that he's probably not able to play this week. So do you think mclaurin's going to be back soon?

00:44:58
Speaker 2: Of all the ones that we've really discussed, this is the one. I really do not like this situation, just in the sense of I don't even think we're getting like a clear label to the injury. They're calling it quad, but he was seeing it like a couple of different specialists and they were looking at like growing and is this like a core injury? Like I think there's potential that this might be like a spot tournia. Again, I don't have any inside knowledge. I'm just reading between you know, some things, and sport tournia sounds a little bit more serious and is it's kind of like a core injury. But they're difficult to manage. They can be painful. And then if we just filter out wide receiver core injuries oblique injuries, those tend to be the most limiting in terms of time missed and fantasy production for that position. So I'm not really getting great vibes on Terry McLaurin. I'm certainly worried about this situation. He's, you know, base one. I started hearing some of those things about what he was doing in the specialists we've seen and kind of the labels they were putting on his injury. I stashed Luke McCaffrey and in a couple of spots just because I really have long term concerns about Terry mclaurin's availability.

00:46:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, Noah Brown could be back this week too, and that could be another another player who absolutely, you know, see a little bit of work. That's sad though with the McLaurin stuff, because it just what a bizarre sort of like time frame and reporting and all that with him, just because it seemed like it could have just been like a one week thing at first, and then it's just been lingering and lingering and lingering. Let's talk about CD Lamb. Could he be back next week.

00:46:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually to flip it here, this is something that could be a little bit more promising for people. It sounds like I don't really think he's going to play this week, but they he's been practicing out there, and I do feel like week seven is like a realistic shot for him that would kind of undershoot the timeline a little bit, but it's not like so far underneath. Typically this is kind of like a four week injury with high ankle sprains for a wide receivers. So we talked a little bit earlier too about how a lot of the data pointed to high inklesprains not being as limiting for wide receivers compared to running backs. So definitely optimistic about Ceedee Lamb. I don't think this week it happens, but the fact that he's practicing I think bodes well for next week.

00:47:11
Speaker 1: All Right, I want to end this going player by player by talking about a couple of vikings. You know, you have Aaron Jones, who you know, from my perspective as an analyst of the game, I think they've been missing that piece a little bit in that backfield, you know, that that receiving piece and that ability from Aaron Jones, not to say that Jordan Mason's been bad. I just you know, I think Aaron Jones is much more dynamic as a pass catcher. So I'm curious when you think he could be back. And then JJ McCarthy, you know, Carson Wentz has I guess, kind of gotten it done, like been fine enough, but there's been a lot of boneheaded mistakes as well. With him under center, we can we can argue all day we as in me and the audience or whomever. If JJ McCarthy is an obvious upgrade at this point given how he was performing, But as long as he's healthy, let's just assume that he would be starting. And so when do you think both these guys could be bad for Minnesota?

00:48:01
Speaker 2: So I think Aaron Jones will be eligible when he first comes off of i R, which would be week seven, because if I'm not mistaken, I think the Vikings have a buy in week six.

00:48:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, So.

00:48:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're on by this week, So I think he could be back next week then at a week seven when he's first eligible. He had been dealing with a couple of Hampshire injuries the last couple of years that are continuing to pop up and pop up, so whereas you know most skill position players might be able to get back from that type of injury in two weeks. I do think his injury history could have factored into why they just selected to play it a little bit safe with him at the beginning of the season, shut him down for four weeks and get him back, and then JJ McCarthy, I think looking at you know, high ankle sprains for quarterbacks, talked about how high ankle sprain can typically be about a four week injury in the NFL. With that Week six by, I think it just created kind of a natural four week thing where they didn't need to put him on IR from when he had his injury, and I do think he has a realistic expectation to return in Week seven as well against the Eagles.

00:49:03
Speaker 1: Awesome. It's good to hear. We need some we need a healthier Vikings offense that we can feel better about in general from a fantasy perspectives. That's good, absolutely right, So that's it for the injuries before I let you go. But doing this with every guest this season, I do it most seasons, but I think I'll just continue to do it give me a bold prediction for here in week six.

00:49:23
Speaker 2: I mean, I gotta go on brand, right, I got to talk about somebody that's been injured or was injured this offseason.

00:49:28
Speaker 3: I touched on him a little bit. But we're gonna We're gonna go to Stefan Diggs.

00:49:32
Speaker 2: We're gonna go to New England. Last two weeks ninety one, one hundred and two air yards respectively. Starting to see a little bit of red zone targets the last two weeks. All off season, people talked about, you know, Drake May being a guy, and if you were gonna invest in Drake May, you had to invest in one of those passion options. It was it was Booty for a little bit. Pop Douglas hasn't really given us much. We've seen Drake maybe a top ten quarterback. Three out of the last five weeks New England, they got a healthy pace of play. So well, I'm gonna go with Stefan Diggs top five wide receiver in week six.

00:50:04
Speaker 1: Is that bold? No, that's that's very bold. Do you want to know it's crazy? Is that this is the second week in a row that we've had a Stefan Diggs bold prediction because James co was on last week and he said Diggs is gonna be the well to be fair. To be fair, Coe was a little bit bolder. He said that Diggs was going to be the overall wide receiver one in fantasy, which, by the way, he was like the wide receiver four last week, So props to Co for making that call top five. Very bold. I love it, though, I mean I've got a lot of digs. Do you think that the start of his season was like, let's just kind of get him going a little bit to make sure that, you know, he doesn't have any stepbacks and stuff, like, to be fair, last week, he didn't have a crazy route share. He just had a crazy He's had a crazy targets perou run rate. But like I've seen his game look better than it did the first couple weeks of this season. Do you think that's like very clearly or like pretty obviously like the ACL recovery.

00:50:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was I was getting a little bit nervous because I have I have a lot of Steffan be digs bags and I think a lot of it was just like if you look at the snap share trend, like they just didn't have him out there a ton running a bunch of routes. They wanted to slow play that a little bit, which is probably why you saw Booty explode and have some of the opportunity that he did.

00:51:16
Speaker 3: But I I, you.

00:51:18
Speaker 2: Know, you wonder a little bit the Bills revenge game factor if that was like the overwhelming factor.

00:51:23
Speaker 3: But I thought he looked great.

00:51:24
Speaker 2: I mean it was it was an Island game, so I was able to watch a lot of it. I thought he looked really good, and it definitely made me excited and optimistic about, you know, his rest of season production.

00:51:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think that he could very realistically be a wide receiver too rest of season, like just just that kind of production. Not to say that that's much with the way wide receivers are performing this year, but you know, I do, I do think, and like you said that that New England New Orleans game is pretty interesting this weekend. You mentioned New England's pace. New Orleans plays at the fastest pace in the league, so you could you could see they have one of the best pace scores for me matchup wise this weekend. So love the call of Steph. I love this conversation, man. I think that it's really important for people to hear from folks like you from from the from the quote unquote Twitter docs, uh, and your perspective on this stuff, to know that like you, you know, you're you're coming at it from a from a very humble place, and you're not out there saying like I know what's going on exactly based on you know, watching this stuff on TV. You know, you're just reacting like we are to this stuff and just trying to use as much information and give us the best educated guests as you possibly can give. So I really appreciate the time. Let everyone know where they can find you and what you'll be working on.

00:52:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate you again. Thank you so much for having me. It's it's been a lot of fun. Can't thank you enough. People can find me on X occasionally at the Real Adam Underscore h if you want to interact. Maybe if I'm in a good mood, you might catch me on there. I've given a little banter, but they can find my content exclusively over at Football Guys Football guys dot com. Every Monday, I have an injury article that comes out recapst injuries for happen that past weekend. I have another article that comes out every Saturday day morning around noon. I'm just giving us a forecast of players that I expect to play or not expect to play based on the practice reports, and then maybe what that fantasy production looks like on some of the based on some of the data that accumulated.

00:53:12
Speaker 3: And then every.

00:53:13
Speaker 2: Sunday Morning Live, Joey Wright, Jeff Bell, and Colton and I sit down answered start sick questions. I go over a little bit injury content. So people are looking to find me, they can go to Football Guys and I'll be around.

00:53:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, great people over there. I love everyone at Football Guys. I love Joe, love Joey, love, Jeff love, Dave All. Just a great sig of course, just just love love the whole crew. So definitely check out everything going on over at football guys. Obviously check out my workover on lateround dot com. Make sure you subscribe to both the podcast and this show that you can find on YouTube, YouTube dot com slash at Laterounddeff. Thanks for tuning in.

00:54:00
Speaker 2: Four