897: Players to Avoid

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Lab podcast with your host JJ zacherthas jj Zachers. What's up everyone, It's jj zacharyesin in this episode eight hundred and ninety seven of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog Fantasy.

00:00:21
Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning in.

00:00:23
Speaker 1: I talked to Evan Silva last week about some players that were targeting in season long drafts this year. This week, it's all about players to avoid, and to help me discuss the topic, I brought on my good friend Rich Reebar of Sharp Football Analysis. We each came prepared with five players who were generally avoiding in drafts this year. And I say generally avoiding because this is entirely dependent on cost. If these guys slip past ADP, it doesn't mean we're still avoiding them. But like last week, we go back and forth through the ten players. But one thing I want to say is that we recorded this before this past weekend, and since then, something's happened. Marshaun Lloyd was injured. That makes one of the recommendations less interesting. And at this moment, this is Monday night, before this drops on Tuesday morning, Jamiir Gibbs' status is totally up in the air. He apparently has a leg injury that impacts another player that we chat about. But instead of cutting all that out, I think there's still enough to learn about the process here, so we're keeping it all in. I think you'll learn something from this discussion now before get into that discussion. Guys, if you're planning on buying the Late Round Draft Guide to help you out with your drafts this year, make sure you're taking advantage of my Underdog offer because it quite literally will save you money. Instead of buying the guide, new Underdog users can sign up on Underdog Fantasy dot com with promo code late Round and get that guide sent to them for absolutely free. Just go and sign up, use promo code late Round, make it a posit, and Underdog will email you the link to the guide.

00:01:58
Speaker 2: It's that easy.

00:02:00
Speaker 1: You, of course, can just go to lateround dot com and buy the guide yourself and you'll get everything you need to wrap your head around the fantasy football landscape this year. But I had to bring up that offer because you can get a discount on the guide. You get to play some best ball while also getting the Late Round Draft Guide. So check that all out on Underdog Fantasy dot com sign up, make a deposit, and use promo code Late Round.

00:02:24
Speaker 2: Now here's my conversation with Richreebar.

00:02:29
Speaker 1: All right, Rich, this has become a yearly tradition where we do sort of a home and home type deal with our podcasts. This year, we're doing Players to Avoid on this one. Did we do avoid or target on this one last year?

00:02:45
Speaker 3: We did target on this one last.

00:02:46
Speaker 1: Okay, good, good, So I'm flipping it properly and correctly then, so we're going Players to Avoid today. I will be doing some Players at Target on your show next week, but or maybe it'll it'll release around the same time is this one. But regardless, we're gonna go back and forth very similar or identically similar to what happened with Silva and I last week in our conversation with players at Target. You name a guy, we talk about it. I name a guy, we talked about it. We each have five players, So let's kick it to you, Rich with your first player to avoid this year.

00:03:21
Speaker 3: My first guy, I'm going to start at quarterback. I've got a guy at each position. I felt like we always pick a trying to pick a guy at each position for these for both but I'm going to start with Dak Prescott. You look at Dak and it's kind of the inverse of why he was a bye last year. I mean, he's just do a mountain of negative regression. You know, he had arguably the best season of his career in twenty twenty three, led the NFL and completions touchdown passes. He the highest completion rate of his career. And you don't get to lead the NFL in passing touchdowns unless you know some portion kind of swung your way in that department. He led all quarterbacks with nine point seven touchdown passes over expectations are ten touchdowns. If you want to be you can't throw seven of a touchdown. He last year led the He had career highs and pass attempts inside of the ten yard line with forty nine. He led with pass attempts inside of the five yard line with twenty one. He had sixty seven pass attempts into the end zone last year. The next closest player in the NFL had fifty three. His previous career high in end zone passes was forty five, so twenty two more than that. And you look at this, how Dak Prescott a will use that to his advantage last year and out kicking his expected touchdown coverage over the past decade. Fifty three point four percent of all passing touchdowns in the NFL of come on throws that actually went into the end zone. The league great last year was right on parts fifty four point three percent. Little dyslexia if you get those numbers into typing, but seventy five percent of Dak Prescott's touchdowns last year came on throws into the actual end zone. His previous high in the season was fifty six and a half percent. And this trickles I think down from the team level, where you start with the Dallas Cowboys. The Dolls Cowboys scored on fifty five percent of their drives last year. Not only did that lead the league last season, but only six teams in the two thousands had a higher rate. Every one of those other six teams had a decrease in scoring rate the following season. Not one of those six teams came back and scored more touchdowns the following season. Four of those six teams had a decrease of over double digit touchdowns the following season. They had forty eight percent of their drives reach the red zone or score a touchdown before the red zone. Since two thousand and only ten other teams have had a higher rate. All ten of those teams had a rate and drop the following season in that category. Seven of those ten teams had a double digit drop in touchdowns. And then I think from a team stance, this is arguably the weakest surrounding unit from Dak Prescott as he's had in Dallas. Obviously we have Ceedee Lamb, but this is the worst collection of offensive line talent he's had. The guards are good, two question marks at tackles. They did extend Terrence Steel, but he was really bad, and a lot of metrics. And then you know, if Ceede Lamb were to miss any time like this, this offense is a disaster waiting to happen. And then the last thing ties into something I know that you've talked about in the late round draft guy, you should definitely pick that up is Dak Prescott's ADP just falls into an area this year where back end quarterbacks that aren't mobile I have been like the largest pocket of trap quarterbacks for fantasy gamers who are trying to like kind of almost like roster filling at that point of the draft, like, I'll take the next best quarterback, but you're almost better off just waiting and getting a guy like To a few picks later, or getting a guy like Jared Goff or taking two of those guys that don't really run. So Dak Prescott for me, just doesn't really check any box.

00:06:36
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:06:36
Speaker 1: The other thing too, is that the more that I've you know, looked at like early season schedules and such like, Jordan Love actually opens up really really strong, and just in terms of matchups and whatnot, He's gonna go in the same range as Dak. So if you're gonna go for this arc type, I'd also just opt for Jordan Love over Dak because of the opening schedule. And obviously there's a lot of upside with with what we're seeing in the in the Packers offense, whereas this Cowboys offense looks like there will be some regression coming. Usually when you get an MVP candidate or you know, an MVP himself, you know, the next season is just hard to repeat those numbers, right like that, That's what this really comes down to. You know, Usually those guys ran pretty pure, and that that translates to fantasy football, and when you're a player like Dak who doesn't have the mobility and the rushing upside, it's really hard to maintain that year over year.

00:07:25
Speaker 2: So I like that call out a lot.

00:07:27
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pivot. I won't go to quarterback quite yet. I do have a quarterback that I'll get to later. But let's switch things up a little bit. I'm gonna talk about Zamir White, who I think is probably the most traditional dead zone running back that we have in fantasy football this year. He took over for Josh Jacobs at the end of last year. That's the reason why people are really into him this year because Jacobs is gone. You know, Zamir White head over one hundred yards rushing in two of his final four games. He had twelve point six PPR points in each of those final four games. So you're sitting there and you're like, oh, wow, you have a high floor, decently ceiling based on what he did down the stretch last year. Josh Jacobs is gone. What's not to like about Zamir White. I think the number one thing to not like about White is his pass catching. You go back to what he was doing at Georgia not a pass catcher throughout his tenure there. Now I understand, you know, he's playing alongside other pros that that can't catch the ball. But regardless, he didn't do much as a pass catcher. We haven't seen him do much as a pass catcher in the NFL, even during that stretch last year. That's that's forcing people to put him at like in like the mid range to low end RB two spot, in the spot he average targets share per game rate below ten percent, Like, he wasn't being used that heavily as a pass catcher out of the backfield, even during that stretch last year where he was really good. In Fantasy football, market trends don't favor Zamir White here either.

00:08:48
Speaker 2: He's an RB two.

00:08:50
Speaker 1: He didn't have an awesome prospect score, and that's something that we should always marry with like top twenty four running backs. He's not a year one or a year two guy and not in an ambiguous backfield. Now, I would you all should be targeting backfields that are more ambiguous in these middle rounds where you have that contingent upside, you have the potential for a backfield takeover. You know, ask yourself, is there another player in that backfield baked into this cost of Zamir White? Is there another running back in this backfield that would not do something or play below expectation that would then catapult Zamir White into RB one territory. Let's say someone might say, Oh, Dylan Lowby is that guy, you know, the pass catcher that they drafted. You know, we both like his profile, like is a very interesting prospect, but that's not really being baked into this ADP right now, Like like Zamir White at this moment, is being drafted as if this is his backfield for the most part.

00:09:46
Speaker 2: And there's there's.

00:09:48
Speaker 1: Reason why middle round running backs who are standalone, who don't have a teammate until later in the draft, there's a reason they don't hit it at as good of a rate as these these running backs and these use backfields is because situationally, it's not that great. It's not that kind. And you look at the Raiders as a team that offense potentially a bottom ten offense this year, I think most would project them to be a bottom ten offense. Now, I do think the defense is okay enough to sort of keep them in games and keep I mean, pretty boring, low scoring, probably run heavy games, and that.

00:10:22
Speaker 2: Might favor White a little bit.

00:10:23
Speaker 1: But this team's gonna run few plays and run pretty slow, and it's not gonna be an efficient offense. So you bring it all together. Not a pass catcher, not an ambiguous backfield. You know, you're not gonna see him getting a ton of scoring opportunities in an offense like this, and it's an offense that's probably not gonna run a ton of plays. I mean, I just I don't see where the ceiling is gonna come from with Zamir White. And you know, John Dagel said it when he came on Late Round Perspectives a month or two ago, but this kind of looks like this year is Alexander Madison.

00:10:54
Speaker 3: In my opinion, Yeah, I don't mind that shot at all. I mean, to me, it just comes down to kind of what you led with as you'r you know, kind of crux of your argument is that it feels like a very hit, small pick, like if even if you were to thread that needle, whereas you have other running backs going around him, you know, Raheem Moster, Jonathan Brooks. You know, you go down to tadj Spirit, the two Titans guys or the you know, and it's like you can make an argument that you've see an outcome. It's like, well if in this ten percent of upside outcome, like this is a player that's actually winning me games, Whereas like Zameer White's a guy he feels like even if you hit and he's not a bus, you're treading water with the pick. And then you have to have some fragility with his usage. Last year, I mean in the games under Antonio Pierce, they had the Raiders had a forty eight percent drop back rate when leading on the scoreboard, which was twenty ninth in the league. They went up to sixty five and a half percent, which is eighteenth in the league when they were trailing on the scoreboard, which is a pretty sizable jump. And that matters here because when you look at the Raiders wins last year when Antonio Appears took over as head coach, they came they had the one quality win against the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes. But remember they didn't complete a pass for the final recorders of that game.

00:12:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, really weird.

00:12:01
Speaker 3: Guess the Christmas Day game, I think, Yeah, it was very Street, and then the other quarterbacks they beat were Tommy DeVito after he took over for a Daniel Jones, that towards acl Zach Wilson, Easton Stick and Jared Stidham. Like I mean, it's just hard to predict the kind of game scripts that led to what that runout was for White last year was able to stack touches. When White was on the field for the Raiders, they ran the ball fifty two percent of the time. When Josh Jacobs was on the field for the Raiders, they ran the ball forty six percent of the time. The only running backs that at a higher rate of runs per snap when a team was leading was Najie Harris, Tyler Elguero, Kenneth Walker, and Derrick Henry. This is the team that has a six point seventy five implied win total. It's ahead of just the Titans, the Broncos, and the Patriots. He's not going to catch passes. I mean, it just seems like even if you hit, you're not really gaining a lot.

00:12:47
Speaker 2: That's the thing.

00:12:48
Speaker 1: I think a lot of these picks that we're going to talk about today do stem from our philosophical or the way that we view the game right and philosophically how.

00:12:56
Speaker 2: Well we use running backs right exactly.

00:12:59
Speaker 1: That's why, honestly, in my rankings, people are gonna look at them and say, man, you're really low on Zamir White, because I have I have both Cincinnati backs and both Tennessee backs ranked ahead of Zamir White.

00:13:09
Speaker 2: And the reason for that is the upside case.

00:13:11
Speaker 1: It's the fact that one of those guys in those backfields could emerge. And if one of them emerges, that player's gonna be a lot more valuable in fantasy football than White will. And there's multiple ways that those guys can emerge. You can do it through injury or through talent, whereas there's not much of an upside case for White. And that's the way that I approach fantasy football and play fantasy football. And so you know, if I'm playing the you know, if I'm playing the game for a rankings contest, you know, if I'm trying to see you know, if I if I think, you know, Zamir White, where he goes at like RB twenty three or twenty two or twenty.

00:13:42
Speaker 2: One, wherever, Yeah, he can match that ADP. That's fine.

00:13:46
Speaker 1: I just don't think he's gonna get much higher than that at the end of the season, even if things do go his way.

00:13:50
Speaker 2: That's what this really comes down to.

00:13:52
Speaker 3: I mean, he had an optical outcome and his highest weekly finished was RB twelve exactly. I mean that's fine, it's fine, and it's great when you pick up off waivers too, like he was a great waiver.

00:14:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well that's the other I do.

00:14:05
Speaker 1: I do think that part of it is like psychological for people because they they won leagues because of him or with his help last year at least, shouldn't say because of because again the ceiling wasn't like so tremendously high. But you know, maybe there's a little bit of an attachment that some people have towards White. Not only that the dude is a freak, like he's a he's a monster. He is a a large, large man that you know, you look at and you're like, how could he not score Fantasy points?

00:14:31
Speaker 3: But Andre Williams, baby, yeah, that's a good point.

00:14:34
Speaker 2: That's a good point. Anyway, give us your second player to avoid mean.

00:14:38
Speaker 3: Since you did, Zamir White, I think I'm gonna go to his incumbent, right, I could let's do it. Yeah, I got Josh Jacobs and a lot of similar reasons here. And you know, I think when you look at Josh Jacobs and the total product that we've had of his career, because I do think there's an upside outcome for Josh Jacobs, but we really have a sample where he's been more of an RB two first career. That twenty twenty two season is the outlier, right Like, in terms of everything, all the metrics of efficiency and you know, fantasy points, production, the rate of long runs, everything, And I do think there will be some given given take here playing in a better offense in Green Bay than he did with Las Vegas. But I mean, all of his efficiency metrics line up with his other three years, and I have kind of correlated this. I think that his twenty twenty two season reminds me very much like the twenty fourteen season that DeMarco Murray had and Jamarco Murray ended up bouncing back and having one more good year over the course of his career, but was largely what he had been prior to that point, which was like a solid RB two type of running back. And that's what I believe Jacobs is I think he's very much in the ilk of like a Najie Harris, right, and then now we're not only taking taking him and saying all right, we're gonna put him a better offense. Right, and that's gonna be fine, But now his workload is a little bit contre compromise. No matter what you think about marshaon Lloyd, Mattlafluur has already openly come out and says like he's a big believer top down that you need multiple running back to touch the football per game. With the Raiders, Jacobs didn't play third downs at all, something we're kind of already expecting, you know, kind of probably Lloyd to do at minimum, and we'll see if like aj Dillon does anything, but Jacobs did still didn't share any backfield touches because of that. I mean a Miraorbdula didn't come in and get touches. He's played on third down. Jacobs has averaged sixty nine point seven percent of his team rushing attempts per game played to his career. At this point last year, before injury, he was at seventy seven and a half percent. Over the five years that Laflour has been in green Bay. A Green Bay running back has accounted for seventy five percent or more. The team runs just five times in a regular season game, just fourteen times over the eighty three games that he's coached, has a running back had over two thirds of the team runs in a game. You know, Now, Jacobs wasn't a part of those teams, you know, and we're betting that. You know, he's still like is going to be the lead guy. But all those things paired with like his efficiency, like, he's still guys that's needed volume to cover. I mean that year he had that Austpiriot three hundred ninety three touches. If you're looking for got to be Derrick Henry. That's a thin line to like kind of cover. And then the Packers in general are kind of a weird team because a lot of people are expecting them to be better and build on what they did the back half of the year, but they have some other kind of like statistical stuff that's going to be hard rollover. The green Bay Packers converted ninety five percent of their goal to go possessions for touchdowns last year. Not only did that lead the league, it was the highest rate for any team that's available for the data, we don't have it all the ways since the two thousands. There were five other teams in the two thousands that converted it ninety percent or higher of their goal and goal drives in the touchdowns. All of them had a drop in that rate the following season, and all scored fewer touchdowns overall the following season. So we believe he's entering a better offense, and then he is from a talent perspective, But the Packers are another team, Like we can't just say are going to score all these touchdowns. They could easily score fewer touchdowns and still be a good team.

00:17:58
Speaker 1: To me, Jacobs has been an easy fade, just just at cost, especially in like home leagues and stuff. Like if you've been drafting on underdog all summer, you know you've seen his ADP fall pretty dramatically. Like he was a three four turn guy. Now he's like mid fifth even late fifth at times type player.

00:18:13
Speaker 2: I also think that you know you and I.

00:18:15
Speaker 1: Probably agree that like running back data, like individual running back data, can be pretty noisy year to year, So like I don't like to use that as like the crux of an argument, but I don't think we can totally ignore how rough Jacobs was as a runner last season. When you look at some of his efficiency metrics, you know, it's like like his his.

00:18:35
Speaker 2: Burst wasn't there at all.

00:18:36
Speaker 1: He only gained ten or more yards on three point nine percent of his rushes, which was not only by far the lowest of his career, that was the lowest rate of gaining ten or more yards by any two hundred plus attempt running back since twenty eleven. I mean, there are numbers that suggest that he just was not himself last season. Now, maybe you know it was just a situational thing in Vegas, not being very strong offensive. I get all of that, but he's also he's played in the league for a handful of years now, you know, I know that he was a younger prospect coming in, so age wise it might not look as bad. But I do think there are some question marks there. And then you mentioned the stuff with Lafleur in the backfield and splitting the backfield. I mean, Laflour is the coach that was splitting the Tennessee backfield when he had Dereck Henry and Dion Lewis. You know, like Derrick Henry wasn't Derrick Henry you know then as he is now. But even when Henry started to really turn things on during the second half of that season, when he was splitting touches with Dion Lewis, it took them like a month and a half to finally give Derrick Henry the keys to that backfield and to just let him do his thing right. It wasn't really until Arthur Smith where where Derrick Henry was able to be Derrick Henry, the guy that's, you know, a Hall of Famer, borderline hall of Famer.

00:19:53
Speaker 2: I have no idea.

00:19:54
Speaker 1: I don't want to get into that kind of discussion, but yeah, I mean I think that through their actions, through Green Bay's act, they're telling us that that they want to have a split backfield. They draft marshn Lloyd. I remember Evan Silva on one of the ETR podcasts talking about how there was I don't know if it was a rumor or not, but Evan was mentioning how when they got rid of Aaron Jones, Matt Lafleur got Josh Jacobs thinking that they were going to have Aaron Jones also in that backfield because they they they would have this tandem because that's the way that Lafleur likes to run his offenses. Then what did Green Bay do? They get Marshawn Lloyd, who at the very least rich Marshawn Lloyd is probably the perfect kind of change of pays back at the very least like, is he going to be a bellcow some day.

00:20:38
Speaker 3: He does Aaron Jones?

00:20:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. You have a really he's a really really explosive back. He can catch pass out of the back, he can do the things that Aaron Jones did. And that's the fear, like everyone's saying, Josh Jacobs could be Aaron Jones. Plus what if Josh Jacobs is more of the early down guy that we've seen, you know, in these offenses historically, and that caps him as well. I mean, there's just a lot of ways that this can go south. There are some ways that it can go favorably for Jacobs, as you noted, but I think there's just a lot of them that can go south.

00:21:08
Speaker 3: I mean, he goes ten picks on average ahead of Joe Mixon, and every pro argument you would make for Josh Jacobs, you would make for Joe exactly.

00:21:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly. That's a really really good point.

00:21:20
Speaker 1: All right. My next guy that I'm gonna go with this is again, this is kind of a philosophical thing more than anything else, because when you look at where this guy's drafted versus what our projections look like, We're not gonna sit here and say, you know, he can't meet expectation. I absolutely think that he can. But we're gonna go to wide receiver. I'm gonna go to Courtland Sutton. So Courtland Sutton Rich has never finished as a top twenty four wide receiver and PPR points per game throughout his entire career. He's never done it. His season high and PPR points per game thirteen point nine that came during a second year in the league. He's had injuries and such as that's derailed his career a little bit since then, but he ranked twenty seventh in scoring that year, and he hasn't really been close ever since. He's not a bad receiver, but you know, across this fairly large sample he's shown us he's probably not like a special special wideout right. He was targeted on fewer than twenty percent of his routes last year, So that's a pretty weak number, especially you know, in a in a situation that wasn't that competitive. Overall, he finished with a one point sixty five yards per round run rate. Fine, you know, there's just so many numbers that point to him just being a fine wide receiver's target share last year just over twenty percent. All of those numbers are just fine. So you know, you look at where he's being ranked. You know, he's wide receiver forty four ish over on like a Fantasy Pro site, it's usually where he'll get drafted as well. But he's going ahead of a lot of the higher end, especially in home leagues, he'll go ahead of a lot of the higher end rookie wideouts. Like if you look at you know, you could even throw I know that this is not the case on underdog, but like Romadunze will go later than Courtland Sutton, Brian Thomas, who I think both of us are into, will go later than Courtland Sutton. To me, I'm throwing those darts way before I'm throwing the Cortland Sutton one. Because Sutton at the end of the day, is not going to be a league winning player for me. Look what he did last year finding the end zone as many times as he did, and he wasn't a league winning player, and so the opportunity cost is still not significant where he goes.

00:23:21
Speaker 2: But you can still get.

00:23:23
Speaker 1: Some really solid running backs, some of the guys that I'm talking about in these ambiguous backfields, but also some of these rookie wideouts who historically have hit at a very very high rate in that range and in those rounds. And so I just don't think that Courtland Sutton is going to be a guy that burns you at the end of the day.

00:23:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, it's another thing where you look at the ADP of Courtland Sutton and you say, all right, well, he's the first wide receiver on his team. I'm getting him at pick. You know, a wide receiver, you know forty to fifty. Why wouldn't I just do that and getting the team's lead rock receiver. Well, historically those guys have not been really that good either. I just put out an adpar I'm sure you've done this similar work to Since twenty ten, there's been one hundred and sixty nine wide receivers who were the first wide receiver for their team but were taken outside of the top twenty fourth position. Only forty percent of those wide receivers matched their ADP just meeting ADP expectations, and of that same group, only eighteen of them turned into wide receiver one scoring season. Twenty three percent of those guys finishes a wide receiver two or better. Then, when you look at the player himself, I mean, he's coming off of a really down year that I don't think people understand was a down year because he scored so many touchdowns. He only averaged forty eight receiving yards per game. Last year, he scored ten touchdowns and was the wide receiver forty in PPR points per game. Forty seven percent of his red zone targets went for touchdown, the highest rate of his career. His previous career high was twenty five percent. He had eight red zone touchdowns last year, after he had seven his first five years in the league. He converted sixty percent of his end zone targets for touchdowns after twenty five percent. And then, I think the biggest thing that hurts Courtland Sutton right now is the current defensive meta is just geared towards where he wins. I mean, last year he was still really good in one on one situations against man coverage two point three seven yards per out run and was targeted on twenty four percent of his routes, but against zone one point four to seven yards per out run seventeen point six percent target rate per out run. The NFL meta is just geared around to stop dudes like Courtland Sutton right now. He's not like a huge target runner in like terms of NFL nuance. He's a big dude that if he's one on one, you let him win. And uh, that's kind of really hard to lean on those guys. So I'm with you on this one. I actually don't think I've drafted court Sutton at all because, like you said, at that point, when I'm drafting venture receivers, I'm trying to find avenues to how can this guy be a wide receiver two or better? And it's really hard to justify the upside outcome for someton getting there a guy who's been inside of the top forty in points per game once over his NFL crew this point.

00:25:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely crazy. And the other thing too, last year was Sutton's touchdown totals. A lot of that just came down to the fact that Denver threugh for or when when Denver scored a touchdown they threw for that touchdown. They had a touchdown ratio when you're looking at pass to rush touchdowns, yes, of seventy eight percent, which is a really high number. That's a number that typically regresses year over year, which you could maybe make the case for like a running back there or something. But you know, I think the offense in general is just gonna look a lot different obviously with the quarterback change and the way they operate, and that's not necessarily a good thing for Courtland Sutton. All right, Rich number three, let's hear it.

00:26:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, my number three is another running back I think, in the same kind of arch type of the guys we've kind of covered to this point, maybe catches a couple more passes. And that's Ramondre Stevenson. And like you said, I'm not really knocking him for his inefficiency last year. I mean, he was a hyper efficient in twenty twenty two. That kind of regresses in twenty twenty three. That stuff like, I'm not really cared about when I look at reminder Stevenson, though I look at what his role is is offensive environment and his draft cost right, and it's just hard for me to get there for the like the pure octane upside example. You know, we have to factor in so far that he's caught some passes in the NFL, but they've been like in a Leonard Fournette type fashion, Like he's caught passes, but they've done absolutely nothing good that that should warrant that he should continue to catch passes. He's averaged just six point one and six point three yards per catch over the past two seasons. But you get a guy like Antonio Gibson now wo's brought in, who definitely isn't gonna jump form Andre Stevenson. You see the contract that Stevenson got. But Antoti Gibson has completely increased his receptions and his yards perception every year in the NFL. Is a guy, it's a proven pass catcher. You all know, you've heard the stories that he's a wide receiver in college. And so what if Stevenson doesn't retain that long down and distance role in this offense, that is going to matter on a team like New England because they are already projected, they're projected outright projected. They have the number one pick next season. This is why they can't trade their first for Brandon at you they play. They also, to compound this, they played our hardest projected schedule at Sharpe Ball Analysis on that we have in the NFL. UH, they still questions on their offensive line and they project to be a bottom eight scoring team in the NFL. So you might say, all right, like in the Samir White angle, like, ah, it feels fine, but it feels like we're attempting to kind of thread the needle, uh through all these potential hang ups just to get like an ap match, like an outcome to where like, yeah, Ramandre finished as an RB two and I draft him as an RB two shot, so I should feel good about it. There's just not a lot here I can signal that says like we're going to get an RB one season from him.

00:28:34
Speaker 2: I don't put a ton of weight in contracts either.

00:28:36
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but like the at least with like with like, with like running back contracts especially, we have to always keep in mind that the most recent contract is going to be the most lucrative contract, right because we get we get an increase cap every year, they're gonna be able to spend a little bit more so when DeAndre Swift or Ramondre Stevenson signed these quote big deals. You know, that's partially based on cap right, partially based on the way that things are trending in the NFL. But also it's still a small number in the grand scheme of things, right, Like, running backs are still not getting paid that much. So if you're gonna say it's a massive contract because this guy gets eight million dollars and this guy gets five million dollars, the delta still isn't that significant at the end of the day. And I think we need to keep that in mind, at least with with these running backs. Right, And you know you mentioned the Antonio Gibson factor. He's seen a nine and a half percent target shaper game every year of his career. I mean it's not like he's he's a zero in that in that department. You know, there hasn't been at least I haven't seen any like massive coach speak surrounding Antonio Gibson or like, you know, the fact that like he's gonna play this massive, massive role in the offense. But I do have a lot of concern about Stevenson on the pass catching side and an offense that could be trailing and not very good.

00:29:47
Speaker 3: Because really, his only good, his only good fantasy sample we have so far was out of necessity, Like he had a wackload through necessity. And if that's compromise, even due a degree, we have to question if he again and fits on Zamir White spectrum, he's going in that area of the draft where he's around you know, Aaron Jones, He's around James Connor, He's around Naji Harris, right, like guys who could have similar roles but are just in better environments.

00:30:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly to me, Like a player like Naji Harris will probably see a similar role projection wise as Ramandre Stevenson, but he has crazy contingent upside with with Jalen Warren if Jalen Warren were to go down, and I you know, as bearish as some might be with like the Pittsburgh offense. And for the record, we're recording this before anything goes down with Brandon Ayuk. So if something happens with Brandon Ayuk, you know, over the weekends, we have to record this before we go to the Fantasy Football Expo. But if anything goes down with Brandon Ayuk. This is recorded before the Ayuk potential move. But regardless, like the Pittsburgh offense is still projected to be better than the New England offense. Number one, there should be more scoring opportunities for guy like Naji, but there is that contingent upside. There's really not that to a strong strong degres. I mean, you do have more I think with Remandre versus like a Zamir White, you know, because if Antonio Gibson goes down, you know, you'll you'll see a potential bellcow workload for Remandre. But it's still a pretty pretty crappy offensive environment overall. All right, I'm gonna go to quarterback now. Since I brought up the forty nine ers, I'm gonna bring up rock Party now. This this is this is partially a game theory thing, because if you look at the way that rankings work and that tiers are sort of formulating, he is a pocket passer at the top of that giant, giant cluster of pocket passers. You name some of them earlier, with like a goth or a Tua. I think you could even throw like a Stafford in there, and and Kirk Cousins and maybe even Aaron Rodgers because we're shooting for we won't. We only care about upside in single quarterback season long leagues, especially that late. So there's just a lot of those kinds of players, and I don't think Brock Party is special enough to really automatically separate himself the way that rankings are kind of showing. So you know, if you look at San Francisco, the system, of course brilliant. The weapons in San Francisco, you know, with or without Ayuk, very very strong. But Party's coming off a season where he had a seven percent touchdown rate. It was it was a little like six point nine to five percent or something like that. So it's about a seven percent touchdown rate for Brock Party last year. There've only been twenty seasons since twenty eleven where a quarterback had three hundred and more pass attempts and a seven percent touchdown rate or better, and only four quarterbacks have been able to do that more than once, those four being Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson, Lamar Jackson, and Drew Brees. Now, I know that Purdy has been above that mark throughout his career, and so people will say, well, if he regresses to his meen.

00:32:40
Speaker 2: Technically, his his touchdown.

00:32:42
Speaker 1: Rate's actually been seven point two percent throughout his career has been better than what he.

00:32:46
Speaker 2: Did last season.

00:32:48
Speaker 1: But I'm not gonna bet on brock Purty giving us the most historic touchdown rate in NFL history throughout his career. It's just not a worthy bet in my opinion. But not only that last year he had as a borderline MVP season, like he was an MVP candidate until like Week thirteen or fourteen.

00:33:04
Speaker 3: Last year with that weekly dicotomy was kind of fun.

00:33:07
Speaker 1: Yeah right, right, yeah, you see that every freaking Monday talking about brock perty and his MVP chatter. But despite him having sort of like a very pure ran really hot season, he averaged eighteen and a half points per game, Like, it wasn't even like he was giving you high end QB one production. I think that I would understand this a little bit more if it were like a mahomes in pass heavy. You know, we could see it with a little bit of rushing, but we could see that top three outcome even in a situation in a season where he gave us like arguably one of the best seasons that we'll probably see brock Purty play. I know that's hard to hear for some people, but that's kind of how we see it.

00:33:47
Speaker 2: Statistically.

00:33:48
Speaker 1: It's not that he can't get better as a quarterback in general, but statistically it's gonna be really really hard from to match what he did last season. He was still a lower end QB one in points per game, maybe a mid range QB one depending on your scoring. So to me is he's fine like in a vacuum perty, Like if you're in a single quarterback league where you know, like we're in our Apex draft that we do every year with a bunch of fantasy analysts, and quarterbacks are gonna go a lot later and Purdy could end up going in like round fourteen, where the opportunity cost just doesn't matter whatsoever. But where he's being ranked, I don't see the need to get Purdy when you can find that kind of play three or four rounds later, if not more. I mean, you could realistically make the case that will Levis has just as high of upside this year as brock perty does, Like you can make the argument and the way that they're scoring like Will Levis gives us a Jamis Winston type season right like where he's throwing it down the field. Sure there's turnovers, but Tennessee's offense looks better than we think. And a lot of those touchdowns are that they score end up being passing touchdowns and then the opposite kind of happens for San Francisco. And I haven't even talked about the fact that Sam justsco touchdowns per game number that's going to regress a year over year as well. We very very rarely teams that have scored over three point three touchdowns per game Since twenty eleven, there's been twenty six of them. With next season data, twenty five of the twenty six saw that number drop year over year. That includes both Detroit and Miami this year as well, but San Francisco was well above that mark over three and a half. So there's just a lot of reasons as to why brock Party isn't really a necessary get this year.

00:35:29
Speaker 3: Yeah. I like that shout obviously, you know, you look at he's brought the over the last thirty years. I mean, we've had two quarterbacks have a seven percent or higher touching righting back nex season's you know, on the outside of here, Aaron Rodgers you brought up and then Dave Craig nineteen eighty seven to nineteen eighty eight. For some context, Patrick Mahomes has had one season of his career with a seven percent touchdown Right, who's like, you know, the best thought of as the best player in the NFL. No quarterbacks on three years in a row. So yeah, the should be some regression there. You look at you know Party, how he got there too? Just running here? I mean he was eighteenth in red zone expected points scored and was eighth overall. He was eleventh in red zone pass attempts, but twenty nine point seven percent of his touchdowns those passes went for touchdowns. It was by far the highest rate in the league. He only threw twenty one total passes all year into the actual end zone of just twenty first in the NFL, but fifty seven percent of them went for touchdowns, the highest rate in the league. The league average was thirty four point eight percent. Party threw a touchdown on four and a half percent of his non end zone throws. Think about this because this is the forty nine ers game, right, Like the the NFL average was two percent, so he more than doubled it. Yeah, so I like that shout. And then the biggest thing he brought up is like, even even running as pure as he did last year, he had two top three scoring weeks.

00:36:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, like he he.

00:36:46
Speaker 1: The ceiling just isn't there for these kinds of players, and it's just not, you know, worthwhile to spend any any sort of amount of capital. I know that I made that Levis shout, and I made that comparison, and I'm not saying from a median outcome stamp that they both look the same.

00:37:01
Speaker 2: They don't at all.

00:37:01
Speaker 1: I'm saying if things hit right for a Will Levis and things hit sort of a median outcome and maybe below median outcome for rock Party, it's really not hard to see a guy like Levis or a guy like Aaron Rodgers or some of these guys who go or Gino Smith is another one, some of these guys who are going significantly later to match this kind of production. This is this is how you are. But tradge's the quarterback position. You either get a rusher or if you're getting a pocket passer, you can get multiple of them to just make sure that you know you're increasing your odds that you get that outlier touchdown rate season that you you get that player that one one or two guys who end up, you know, really overperforming as throwers. You know, like a like like we saw with like a Dack or like a Jordan Love down the stretch last year. You know, you can throw multiple darts to increase your probability, but if you're only getting one, I mean, I just I don't see the need to just get that dude and get get Purty when other guys have a very similar ceiling who go later?

00:37:55
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, all right, fourth guy, Rich, let's hear it.

00:37:58
Speaker 3: All right, the last you were kind of spicier, so I to get him. The first guy I have is Michael Pittman out of these last two, and it's really just Pittman like kind of everyone just ignored what happened last year because like his adp just kind of went right back to where it was right like, yeah, some people were like, oh, well, what's gonna happen with Pittman with a rookie quarterback or an accurate quarterback, And everyone's like, oh, he just caught one hundred passes, so like we'll just go back to take him. But it's like it happened without and he's like back in the environment where everyone was worried about and we didn't really get to see it except for a tiny small sample, you know, im when you look at it right now, they the duo of Anthony Richardson and Michael Pittman only connected on fifty nine point one percent of their targets six and a half yards per target, while Pittman caught seventy one point six percent of his targets from Gardner Minshew for seven and a half yards per target. So if I if Pittman falls into a spot where I can you know, I go wide receiver heavy and he can be my wide receiver three of my flex and aggressive wide receiver heavy builds. I actually that insulates the more where I can say, like, all right, that usually never happens because he goes in the top twenty fourth position because again he's another guy that just doesn't have like this the massive spike week potential. So but so these situations where he's a wide receiver tour or better, I mean I'm working with a lot of trepidation. I Mean what we saw from Anthony Richardson last year was exactly the player he was in college when we raised all these questions. I mean, he was unbelievably terrible in accuracy, especially to quarterbacks. I mean he was. He was forty fifth among all quarterbacks and in accuracy rate throws to wide receivers last year. And I brought up those splits you know that that Pittman had with and without him, so like that still exists in his range of outcomes, Like he's gonna be playing with an inaccurate quarterback on the team that's probably gonna throw maybe five hundred passes. And and if you want to even shay Shane Siken gets it, and he was more aggressive with Jalen Hurts, like I mean maybe five point fifty. Like it's gonna be a low volume passing offense for sure, Like if you were if you're projecting this out anyway to dice it, if you're projecting anthea, which should be healthy, it's just going to be a low volume passing offense. I will say that one pro for Pittman that does give me a little bit of pause of just like outright fading him completely is that he does get a lot of targets out of that RPO play action game. And we know that those targets are viable. I mean, only Tyreek Hill had more targets out of play action than he did last year. So that's like he could have some roster or some fantasy efficiency smoothing type targets if he's not going to get a lot of targets. But we're still banking on Richardson to buck a six year sample of him playing football that he's not a good thrower of the football.

00:40:35
Speaker 2: And even if you want to.

00:40:36
Speaker 3: Overlap Shane Stiken to Jalen Hurts, Jalen Hurts actually has a really strong passing efficiency profile exiting college and what he's done in the NFL night and day from Anthony Richardson's So, I mean, I'm just saying that everyone's looking at what they were operating with trepidation with Pittman last year and just ignoring it all when it all exists again, and it exists in totality again this year.

00:41:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, like it's it's weird, but the starting quarterback going down last year for Pittman was actually not a bad thing.

00:41:06
Speaker 2: It was a good thing.

00:41:07
Speaker 1: Is they were able to to, you know, change the offense up a little bit, you know, Obviously Indianapolis is going to run more plays than the average team just in terms of pace and the way they operate that offense. But uh, and you know, the RPO stuff, I do think has you know, there's I've talked about on the show. Ben Gretch has done research on it and how like top wide receivers just given the nature of what an RPO is, top wide receivers get a little bit of that that target share, boot, bomp and boost just because of what that RPO is, you got to make that decision very quickly, and it's usually going to that top wide out. But I'm I have my concerns as well. He's been He's one of those players where you know, you stare at him when you're drafting and then you just you just never feel super super comfortable clicking his name, or at least I haven't throughout the offseason. I've gotten some uh you know, I'm not I'm not outright fading, but it's it's definitely a situation where I'm getting him when he falls more than like forcing the issue. But maybe you know, the Josh Dollen's injury, maybe that lingers because it is a high ankle. Maybe that forces some targets to go Pittman's way a little bit more. But I hear you, I definitely have very very similar concerns. I'm gonna go with kind of a I think it's a cheapye. Dalton Schultz at tight end is the next player to avoid with a healthy wide receiver room, Dalton Schultz number four option in this in this Texans offense. You know, as a receiver, there's really no reason to project him to be better than like a Tank Dell. I mean, this guy's like a borderline dad running tight end. He's not this like uber effective, uber athletic tight end. You know, last year he had a yards parow run rate of one point four to seven. His target share per game was actually under eighteen percent. And that's in an offense that had a banged up Tank Dell, you know, throughout the season. So now you add Stefan Diggs, you have Tank Dell there who's healthy. Obviously, Nuko Collins has become the alpha that they need. I just think that he's a he's a floor pick, right Like you're you're associating him with a good offense and you're saying, oh, I'll get some touchdowns from him, that's fine enough. Whereas you can make that argument for a lot of guys like I just I'm having a very hard time understanding this ADP when you can get a younger guy and Luke Muskgrave just a little bit later in another pretty good offense and take the chance and roll the dice a little bit to see if he emerges in a wide receiving group, in a pass catching group that's relatively you know, overall ambiguous, and honestly, if you want to just get like a floor play a tight end, just wait even longer. Just get a Hunter Henry type, like a guy who's gonna probably be touchdown dependent and you know, more of a focal point in his offense, just because there's a lack of alternatives versus what Dalton Schultz is dealing with in Houston. There's just a lot of tight ends you can get later in your draft that have a legit shot to just straight up outscore Dalton Schultz this year. I mean, you can even go to like Mike Kasicki if you wanted to, and say, what if they figured it out, they play him at big slot, they give him more reps than we expect, whatever, and He's in a powerful offense too, without the three headed monster that Dalton Schultz is dealing with. You know, you get you know, the two guys and Jamar Chase.

00:44:21
Speaker 2: And t Higgins.

00:44:22
Speaker 1: I just think there's a lot of tight ends that you can throw the dart at late that are way more favorable than a guy like Dalton Schultz, even a guy that's going right next to him in rankings, Pat Fryarmuth, and an offense that targets that you know what out of tight ends. This Arthur Smith offense has been top eight. I talked about it last week, Top eight and tight end target share every year that he's been a coach, an offensive coordinator or head coach in the NFL. I mean Pat Fryarmuth to me again pre Brandon Aiutra, but Pat Fryarmuth, even probably with Ayuk, would be a more attractive play I think than someone like Dalton Schultz.

00:44:58
Speaker 2: I just don't really understand. Dalton Schultz is a.

00:45:01
Speaker 3: Yeah I and tight ends that are the There have two wide receivers drafted ahead of them and he has three Yes, have a have an ultra low hit rate in ultra low ceiling. Where is Daln Schultz on the Dad Runner scale, if you were to slide him in, where would he be?

00:45:16
Speaker 1: Probably probably a three and a half out of ten or I guess no, No, Dad Runner goes in the opposite direction, So probably what like a six and a half to seven out of ten probably around there.

00:45:23
Speaker 2: I mean, he's he's got, he's got, he's got.

00:45:26
Speaker 1: Some juice for because we've seen we've seen some tight ends, you know, not not being able to get down the field very quick whatsoever. But but yeah, I mean like he's he's definitely uh, he's definitely high on that scale.

00:45:39
Speaker 3: Yeah. I just don't think a lot of people realize to the rotation of players that Houston had last year at wide receiver, Tank Dell and Nico Collins, you know, never in mind the fact that we're adding Stefan Diggs here. Tank Dell and Nico Collins were only on the field together for thirty four percent of c. J. Stroud's dropbacks last year. Yeah, like that's it, a third of his dropbacks. Yeah, it's like how health that's like how banged up they were, and that aided a guy. And Schultz even with all that going on, was thirteenth at the position in target rate perout run.

00:46:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, like he wasn't Yeah he had.

00:46:10
Speaker 1: He had still a sub eighteen percent target share despite fighting for targets with Noah Brown. You know, it's like like this isn't this just yeah? Like like where where are these looks going to come from? With Dalton Schultz? You know again, yes, he could score touchdowns. There could be some some touchdown dependency there and a good offense that I think if we were to place our bets on which offense is going to throw the most touchdowns this year, Houston would easily.

00:46:34
Speaker 2: Be top five.

00:46:35
Speaker 1: But you know, I don't know if that necessarily translates to Dalton Schultz scoring eight. You know, I'm very very concerned about about his outlook.

00:46:45
Speaker 2: All Right, we got one more guy from you, Rich.

00:46:47
Speaker 1: This one's probably the spiciest on your list, and people are probably gonna hate you and troll you for it, but let's yeah.

00:46:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it kind of ties into what you kind of laid out right, like it if we want to pick these players at positions, and I do think the tight end market is really strong this year, but I don't want to This isn't that an outright player I'm avoiding, But I am avoiding and taking him as the tight end one and where he is at ADP and it's Sam Laporta. It hurts. Love Sam Laporta's prospect, love him as a player. I think everything about his situation that he was already a good performer in is it exists in year two. But when you look at last year, I mean, paying top dollar for a guy like Sam Laporta just inherently doesn't make a lot of sense. Although he was the tight end one and overall scoring last year was the lowest scoring tight end one in PPR format since twenty seventeen. He provided almost no positional leverage. All of Evan Ingram, Travis Kelcey, and TJ. Hockinson had at least ninety percent or more of the production that Laporta had, and those guys a lot of them missed time. Hockinson and Kelsey the other those Kelsey Hockinson actually scored more points per game than him. He was the only tight end one scorer overall in PPR formats of the per first thirty years that actually wasn't first in points per game the first time ever. And then when you look at theirs, he is also a guy that we do have to factor in as good as he was as a rookie and we expect him to get better, there probably is going to be some pullback on how efficient he was, and remember he didn't even have a thousand yards last year. Twenty five point one percent of his Fantasy points came via touchdowns last year. It was the third highest among all top tens. The top tight ends of twenty four Hunter Henry's at thirty percent, Mark Andrews Is at twenty six point six percent. He scored four point four touchdowns over expectation. It was the most in the NFL of any tight end last season. He scored more points over expectation in the red zone than any tight end at the position. Fifty four percent of his red zone targets went for touchdowns, the highest percent of all players at double digit targets. Fifty percent of his end zone targets went for touchdowns. The average conversion rate for titands forty three point two percent. So I mean, it's just one of these things, like what kind of position. It's a good player. He plays indoors in Detroit. You've heard all the splits, even though Detroit on plays two more games outdoors they did year, but everyone's running wild with this.

00:49:01
Speaker 2: Jared golf.

00:49:04
Speaker 3: Amon ra is the is the lead target, but after that it's pretty nebulous. We expect him to be second on the team targets. Like all those are fine. Like I think Laporta is a player I would want on my rosters if it wasn't attached to this tight end one draft cost and a third round to fourth round price tag, especially just because I think you said I think literally when you look at the top ten tight ends and ADP, I think it's pretty tight. I think that's a pretty tightly packed group. And so I just he's a guy by default, like the player, like the situation. I don't really have a lot of pulldowns other than the touchdown aggression stuff. But I just don't see any advantage to taking him as the tight end one.

00:49:41
Speaker 1: I don't see a difference between him to Kelsey, to Trey McBride to Mark Andrews really, like I don't I think that if we were to throw them in a hat and say, hey, I'm going to pull out the tight end one this year, I think we'd probably give pretty equal odds to each of those players. Like genuinely it's just doesn't seem like he is separated himself nearly enough. And then going back to what I said earlier, you know, Detroit is a favorable offense, will play in domes, but we're we can't ignore that they they ran pretty hot last year. They had three point three touchdowns per game. And I gave you that stat earlier about how teams that have that high of touchdowns per game rates, they almost always score fewer touchdowns the next year. It doesn't matter what these teams do to boost their offense and make it better. Not that Detroit really did that much, but it doesn't really matter what happens. There's just a very very hard thing to repeat. That's what regression is all about. And so I agree with you.

00:50:37
Speaker 3: I don't.

00:50:37
Speaker 2: I don't think that.

00:50:38
Speaker 1: I think it's fine that he's the tight end one for people like I don't. I don't have like a huge issue if you want to rank him tight end one. The problem that I have is that oftentimes you can get like a round or two discount from him to some of these other tight ends who have just this, I mean, have a very similar outlook as him.

00:50:54
Speaker 2: I just don't really understand that.

00:50:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean he goes a full round and a half over Mark Andrews right right. Who's gonna be the lead target his offense or wey project them to be. You know, there's definitely s eight flowers there. Yeah, I mean Dalton Kincaid we project to probably be the lead target, you know. Yeah. So, I mean it's it's a lot. Like I said, I look at those top ten ten ends and I it's hard to Like I said, I'm picking knits here basically.

00:51:17
Speaker 1: Sure, sure, I mean people people might get upset, But I think that from a cost perspective, because all of this is versus cost. Like we're not saying you can't draft Saanmaport or that San Laport is bad. It's just where he's going in drafts that's that's questionable. I'm gonna stick with that team for this last guy. I think this is kind of spicy too, because people are ranking him pretty high, and they're they're drafting him pretty high.

00:51:38
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go with David Montgomery.

00:51:40
Speaker 1: I was on the Yahoo podcast with Matt Harmon and we were talking about players that were targeting and avoiding, and I did it based on the Yahoo ADP and David Montgomery was like RB sixteen over there, which to me is just sensationally high.

00:51:54
Speaker 2: Like I think he's a low end RB two.

00:51:56
Speaker 1: I'm talking like in that RB twenty four, you know RB two twenty two to twenty four type range. When you lay everything out and you look at the market trends that I've studied and such, with these running backs, David Montgomery checks zero boxes right like he's an RB two. He's not a middle round running back. Technically, he's an RB two by ADP. And when I talk middle round running backs, I always say middle round running backs who have top twelve running backs on their team. You know, teammates like a Kareem Hunt when he was playing with Nick Chubb for all those years in Cleveland, they very very very rarely become what I consider moderate breakouts or players who outperform ADP expectation by three or more PPR points per game. Now people will say, well, Kareem Hunt did it. Kareem Hunt really didn't give us a high of a ceiling throughout his time in Cleveland. When Nick Chubb playing alongside with Nick Chubb, we don't often see RB twos with RB one teammates. It's happened four times since twenty fourteen, but three of the four guys who are part of that group, they played below ADPI expectation by at least one one and a half PPR points per game. The one player who exceeded expectation was mark Ingram and he only did it by half a point per game. So we're not seeing, at least in the small sample, this type of player, given the teammate situation, emerge very well. And obviously it's because he has an RB one on his team. The RB one is going to command touches. That's really what this comes down to and what this data tells us. But if you then look at another thing that we always look for is target share. We want a player to see a lot of looks through the air, whether it be an RB two or an RB three, really any running back, but in particular for argument purposes, we're looking at, you know, these RB twos. He's not a pass catcher. He had, or at least in this offense, he's not a pass catcher. He was a little bit in Chicago. He had a five point one percent target share per game rate last season. That's with obviously Jamiir Gibbs in the picture. Jamiir Gibbs being one of the best pass catching backs in football makes sense as to why they Montgomery basically in that Jamal Williams role that we saw where Jamal Williams was scoring all those touchdowns. And speaking of touchdowns, that is why you draft David Montgomery is because he's gonna score double digit touchdowns because that role, this role in this offense has destroyed in the touchdown column over the last couple of years.

00:54:18
Speaker 2: We can't deny that if you look at the split of.

00:54:21
Speaker 1: Montgomery before his injury around week six and then he came back week ten, and you look at him from weeks one through five. Now Gibbs missed some time during this period, but regardless, he had eight goal line rushes Montgomery did to Gibbs as one. Now Gibbs again miss some time, so I understand if you want to at least throw that out a little bit, but we did see a heavy workload going towards David Montgomery at the goal line during that stretch. He comes back in week ten and from week ten through the playoffs, David Montgomery had eleven goal line rushes. Jamiir Gibbs had ten. David Montgomery splits one from twenty point two PPR points per game to thirteen point six. And this is in an offense, like I've been saying, that probably won't score as many touchdowns year over year. So the reason you're drafting David Montgomery might not really be there to the same degree as what we've seen in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three in this role in the Lions offense. Now, the argument could be, well, there's contingent upside with David Montgomery because if Jamir Gibbs goes down, then Montgomery's a bell cow in his offense. My argument against that would be, you're paying a premium for that, right like you can get.

00:55:32
Speaker 3: It's T Higgins. That's literally how T Higgins has been drafted.

00:55:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, true, true, But you're paying You're paying this premium for at least T Higgins is playing a position that's really high in demand on like underdog and stuff. Right Like, when you can get all of these ambiguous backfield pieces two or three rounds later than David Montgomery, it just doesn't make like you're you have just as much injury upside with one of the Tennessee guys, one of the same Sinnati guys, one of the Pittsburgh guys. You could even say Blake Korum has more injury upside than David Montgomery does, or even like a zach Sharbonay who's a you know, a high end handcuff or a even a ty Chandler Like there's there's a there's plenty of double digit round running backs who maybe don't have the same uh standalone value and production as David Montgomery does. But we're drafting David Montgomery and that standalone production for a floor and not a ceiling. The ceiling hits whenever the injury happens, and that same ceiling can hit for other running backs throughout your fantasy football draft. So for all those reasons, I just can't get behind him being that RB sixteen, RB seventeen range. I think that he belongs more in that low end RB two range, maybe even maybe even you could argue high end RB three.

00:56:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean because Montgomery last year and Jamal Williams the prior year were taken you know, RB thirty and lower. Yeah, it makes a ton of that time. And just gonna keep preferring to when you were saying that. I was just like, this is the same stuff that he this is what's held T Higgins adp up for forever. It's like, man, when Jamar chases out, T Higgins is awesome and he's like and he's okay when Chase plays. And that's basically what it was the final when when they when this backfield was in Unison week ten on, he scored a touchdown in all but two games and still only had one RB one scoring week.

00:57:22
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a it's a floor play, even with the touchdowns. Is a floor play.

00:57:27
Speaker 1: Like I think that people assume that touchdowns equal ceiling. That's not the case when you're not catching passes out of the backfield. Just not gonna like you need to score so many touchdowns for that to be the case. And we're just not gonna likely see that if they're gonna use Jamiir Gibbs the same way they did that.

00:57:41
Speaker 3: I mean he was scoring, he was scoring touchdowns in that span and still only averaging thirteen YESR points per game.

00:57:49
Speaker 1: Yes, you you as I'm saying, you need, you need like a legit if you're trying to hit a legit ceiling without an injury to Jamiir Gibbs, you probably need an eighteen to twenty touch down season from David Montgomery in order in order for that to truly come to fruition. And I am one million percent not gonna bet on that.

00:58:08
Speaker 2: There's no chance.

00:58:09
Speaker 3: No, I mean, especially some of the guys he goes ahead of the company he keeps, you know, the like I mean, Alvin Kamara, Kenneth Walker, like, you know, guys like that. We've brought up guys like Connor and Nase too, very similar spots that if one of those other guys, it's it's the contingency value still there for those guys, it's just not fully priced in. Because Detroit Lions, you know, running backs the past years have scored you know, an absolute truckload of touchdowns exactly exactly, and what if they don't you know, what if Samuel Porter continues to score score the mom and I looked up, so you get double out.

00:58:39
Speaker 1: I mean, look, if Detroit scores four touchdowns per game this year, we're gonna we're gonna ignore the final ten minutes of this podcast.

00:58:47
Speaker 3: Just gonna have to hope I'm on Rod, that got us there were hope that that Jamison Williams has his his breakout finally and that thing is just just flipping their just targeting their wide receivers lot.

00:58:57
Speaker 2: Anyway, Rich, you have a you have a special offer you when a out out here before we end this show.

00:59:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean, if you guys want to go over to Sharp Football OCE dot com, if you like the cut of my jib or want to read some more the stats, like, I know that this is the audience for it, right if you listen to JJ, I'm gonna I'm gonna drop a lot of stuff that's similar wavelength. And if you guys, this is only for your audience that listen to this podcast here, I want to go over this sharpfootbllows dot com. You can use the promo code draft for the draftkit and get the draft kit that I've been working on the entire summer for just five bucks. So just you guys, five dollars holler promo code draft.

00:59:32
Speaker 1: Awesome stuff. Anyone listening definitely take advantage of that offer. Rich, thanks again for hopping on. If anyone's not following Rich and his workover at Sharp Football Analysis, make sure you change that. Follow him on Twitter at Lord Reebs and you can find me on there at Late Round QB. Make sure you're taking advantage of that underdog offer and you're checking out this year's Late Round draft guide over on lateround dot com. Thanks for listening everyone, I'll be back tomorrow with a new episode of Becoming a Best ball Bro.

01:00:01
Speaker 2: I'll talk to you then,