Late-Round Perspectives: Scott Boulanger (Jax Falcone)

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Speaker 1: Scott Blanger is a longtime Dynasty fantasy analyst who currently does work for On the Clock Fantasy. Some may know him as Jacks Falcone. He hosts the Undrafted podcast. He's huge in the dynasty game theory, and some may consider him the VP of sarcast. These are his late round perspectives. It might feel like the fantasy football season just send it, but it's actually just getting started. DraftKings is your home for early best ball, no waiver wires, no roster management. It's the easiest way to get in on the action without the weekly grind. Go to DraftKings dot com or download the Draft Games Daily Fantasy app and draft your early bird bestball lineup first shot up a share of one million dollars in prize. Drafts stay open until the season kicks off, So now's the time to jump in. You draft it. We crowning gambling problem called one hunter Gambler New York call eight seven seventy and hoe bet Wyer, tex O beet why Connecticut called eighty eight seventy nine seven seven seven seven, visits.

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Speaker 2: CCPG dot org eighteen plus and most states.

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Speaker 3: If you want.

00:01:19
Speaker 2: What do I call you? Do I call you Scott? Do I call you Jacks? What do you want people to call you?

00:01:23
Speaker 3: You know, it's funny. I my partner at the OTC, Joe Kuvatakis. Joe is awesome, And we went up to see the Warriors Celtics game and my family went to visit his family and we went to hang out and uh, he's like meeting my wife and the whole thing, and he's like, can I call him Jacks? I don't know if I can call him Scott. So there you go. So that that tells you everything to know about.

00:01:47
Speaker 1: I mean, it's what we see, It's what we see on the timeline all the time. I've always just called you Scott, but I don't. I just like, like, if you're there are people listening right now, would you rather them call you Scott or call you Jack?

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Speaker 3: I don't. I think the Jacks thing is hilarious, it's fun. Where did that stem from? Well, because when I first got on Twitter, I wasn't trying to be noticed. I just wanted to be incognito, and so I just used an alias. But I wasn't trying to hide either, so I was just like, no, it's not about me. I'm just kind of kind of figure out what's going on and you know, in this space. So it stuck. I tried to change it once Someone's like, who the hell is Scott? Get this Jacks guy back.

00:02:23
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, fine, that's like when rich reebar Lord Reebs on Twitter. Yes, he changes handle. This has been like twenty nineteen, maybe it was a while ago, but he changes handle to Rodo ReBs and people lost their minds. Yes, they were just they were going nuts because it was no longer Lord Reebs, even though Rodo ReBs makes a lot more sense.

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Speaker 3: No, it's Lord Reebs.

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Speaker 1: Damnit.

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Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, that's just it. And then the people are right about this. So I'm leaning in.

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Speaker 1: I've had some instances where I'm like, I need to change off of the late round QB handle because at this point nobody even really knows what that stems from, and like where.

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Speaker 2: That's true? That's true.

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Speaker 1: But whenever I go on shows and stuff, you know, there, when it's someone that I don't necessarily knows super super well, yeah, they always approach me and they say, hey, let's talk quarterbacks. Because JJ is coming on when I I probably talk about that position the least I was gonna.

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Speaker 3: Say, yeah, that would be that's actually a reason enough to change it if people think like you're like some sort of like yeah quarterback.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it gets me sometimes.

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Speaker 1: But then I'm like, if I did the if I went down the Roto Reeves route, I know that, like if I changed the like late round f F or something like that, which now I'm saying this on the show, and now someone's gonna gonna grab of course will Yeah, I mean whatever, I don't care at this point. Yeah, I'm never gonna change it. It's similar. I see it as similar as like you know, Matthew Berry has always had the TMR stuff. Matt Harmon still has B y B in his handle. You just kind of you just kind of deal with it. That's what helped you, you know, get into the space and get noticed a little bit, and people people like that that comfortability.

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Speaker 2: Yes, yes, speaking of in the space, let's talk about that with you.

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Speaker 1: I like to always intro with this for folks, especially if there's someone who hasn't listened to your work before in the past. What got you into fantasy football and what's that journey.

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Speaker 3: Been like for you, well, I mean fantasy football. You know, I hate to tell you how long I've been playing that dang sport. You know, people start to understand how old I am, but yeah, I've been playing, like since ninety nine, playing fantasy football. Actually, Dynasty was the thing that really I equated once I started to learn and play Dynasty. I equated it to the difference between Arcade Mode and Franchise Mode on Madison. You know, it's like, do you just want to play one little game or do you want to have a whole thing going? Yeah, and so the whole thing going. I mean, anybody who played Franchise Mode and Madden is probably a Dynasty players the way.

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Speaker 2: That's true.

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Speaker 3: So you know that was when I did that, I would say, you know, fifteen sixteen something like that. I mean, I didn't I'm not an early adopter of Dynasty, but as soon as I got into it, I was like, there's really not much content, like especially in the mainstream. I wasn't on Twitter at the time, and I was like where like I would google stuff, it be all paywall. I wasn't sure if it was any good. I didn't know anything, you know, so I was like, well, let me see on Twitter, and so I, you know, had an alias, went on Twitter and started to figure out what's going on in the Dynasty space. And as I started to communicate with people, I realized I had something to offer and people wanted to hear what I had to say. And I was learning learning uh Dynasty game and geeking out on it. Really, I was like, this is so freaking cool, you know, and so you know, I just started to eat it up. And then when I started to spit it out, people were listening to what I had to say.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you started doing the podcast and you know you were you were with the Undroppables and then now you're you're doing the the OTC fantasy stuff.

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Speaker 2: Tell everyone that's all.

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Speaker 3: About Yeah, man, it's just uh, you know, just a fresh start in terms of, you know, starting to put together the thing that we think is most valuable in the Dynasty space. And you know, I'm doing that with Travis Seal and Joekuvitakas. Travis was with me at the Undroppables and you know had done the True North.

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Speaker 2: Uh.

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Speaker 3: You know, he's built brands before. He knows what he's doing in that regard and and Joe and I are, you know, kind of doing the Underground along with him. That's a that's a podcast that we do together. But you know, it's really comes down to the discord and we've got some tools coming, although that's hard enough to build stuff, so we're it's taken some time, but you know, we know kind of what we want to do, and you know, the website will be out shortly, I promise, but you know, we've got three pods actually two one one coming and you know a lot of stuff like that, and so it's going to be really dynasty focused and specific to that prospect evaluation, things of that nature. So we really want to lean into the things that are the core of dynasty.

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Speaker 1: Let's dig into all that staff your handle Dino game theory. So let me let me start this sort of Q and A with a with a higher level question here. Yeah, what's something in that game theory world, uh, that you think dynasty managers consistently get wrong?

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Speaker 3: You know, I was thinking about this question. It's a good question on the show sheet, and I was like, there's a lot of ways that you could go with this answer, and I thought I'm going to go kind of on a on a big scale. It's like optimism. I think there's just always too much optimism, like and maybe a little bit too much. Uh, they're sure of themselves. But every every you know, and I think you can take advantage of optimism in almost every league, especially during the draft. Every player in the draft is going to be good. Did you know that?

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I've heard. I've heard everyone.

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Speaker 3: All of these guys are going to be awesome. But right, no, bus am I right or wrong about like that? You're right, You're right to think about people. People people do.

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Speaker 1: This is this is a very very good thing to bring up though, because it's something that doesn't get talked about enough. Is that there is this notion that whatever your pick may be, the two o seven, you know, especially those late second round picks, when you actually you sit back and you look at the actual hit rates of these guys borderline atrochy.

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Speaker 3: Even when you hit, you miss. Like we sort of I know, I think you were in on, like Marvin Mims Jaden reed in that area, right, we were both kind of we were right. It didn't win us much, you know, like sometimes even when you win the bet, you didn't I mean you got there's still too much optimism even when you win.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's a really good point.

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Speaker 1: Do you think that the optimism definitely carries over into you know, I'm the example I'm thinking about is like a Matthew Golden type, Yeah, right, where Golden has this really crummy by most measures rookie season and so going into year two, of course you look at the market. So, like, I bring this up because it's really fresh top of mind for me because I talked about him on this sell Candidate's podcast.

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Speaker 2: I talked about him.

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Speaker 1: Even on the show that I did earlier this week, and going over year two comps for these players and a lot of the pushback is, well, his market value isn't that high, so we don't need to necessarily sell, which I get to a degree, But you can make that argument for so many players, and at some point you got to like, you know, like there is still some value there with a player like Golden. Do you think that that archetype in that situation is one where people very much so continue to have a ton of optimism.

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Speaker 3: For Yeah, I think you know, it's interesting as you say that, I think optimism turns to certainty, you know, like Ultimately, the reason we have optimism around these prospects is because, well, they were all good in college. We can all spin the story of how they're going to be good in the pros. You know, we can sort of tell our own narrative about each player in our own mind. We can make it up. It didn't actually happen yet, so everything is in our mind. Once we've seen players a lot of times, then you'll see people saying Matthew Golden's for sure a bus sell, for sure, he's a bomb, he'll never be anything. Other people saying it was a rookie, he's gonna be right. So now it sort of shows itself in certainty rather than in optimism, because I think there's a lot of pessimism too, because as soon as we're hurt by a player in fantasy, you know, I think of like Amari Cooper or like there's certain players and people like I'll never, you know, never roster that guy. And yet there were like a wide receiver too for like forty five years in a row. You know, it's like it's not that bad guys. So there's sort of that thing that you know, I think certainty boils over and then you take advantage of certainty. I've got a saying, I'm sure you've heard it. Ready to be wrong, you know, you've got to be ready to be wrong. Think about how you might be wrong. Like even Matthew Golden, I faded Matthew Golden, I think again, I win, I was right. Now I'm like, well, if people are that far out, maybe I lean back in. Is there a possibility he actually returns value?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the way exactly.

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Speaker 1: And I brought that up though because I also like it when giving that advice and when talking through it. I think one of the hardest things to do is to anchor yourself to a market value that everyone just generally agrees with. Yeah, right, right, And so I can sit here, like when I did that show on the Cell Candidates, I'm just basing it off of Keep Trade Cut and you can say what you want about KTC.

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Speaker 2: You know, people will great.

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Speaker 4: Right, like like people, but like there's the haters again, you know, definitely, Yeah, I.

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Speaker 2: Mean there's always gon be heters.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But my response to that is I know that that site is going to be used by a lot of dynasty managers, and so if that's the case, then they're going to anchor themselves to whatever that market value says on that site, right, and so like I'm gonna I'm gonna reference that because that's what a lot of people are going to be referencing.

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Speaker 4: Now.

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Speaker 1: When I talked about Golden, he was like wide receiver thirty nine or so, you know whatever I had brought him up as a potential sell. I like to use I like to use examples too on that show of like, hey, you might feel more optimistic, or you might feel like this guy's value just sunk and therefore you should go get him, as you're alluding to. But there are still some instances where these guys don't necessarily fall to a level of being completely irrelevant and you can only buy, you know, where there's there's still some window here where you could sell.

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Speaker 2: And so that was my example.

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Speaker 1: If you will like my point, I think you can throw like a Travis Hunter in there to a degree as well. But that's kind of a different circumstance and like very difficult to read, and just it's just different in general.

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Speaker 2: But with Matthew gold and then now you know, I look at it now, and you.

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Speaker 1: Know I talked about it earlier this week I was like, these are the reasons that things are not looking good for Matthew Golden. We can obviously look at some outlier examples in the past that where things have turned around, you know, like one of his journey comps was Devonte Adams, you know where we saw that happen with Adams early on in his career. So it's just this balance, it's this very and it's to me as a dynasty you know analyst. Obviously I do a lot of redraft in season, but dynasty, I'm doing a lot of dynasty out of season. And one of the most difficult things, in my opinion, is that there's just no market. Like there there's no set market of what we're actually talking about here. No matter what I say, there's going to be someone that says I can't get them for that price, yes, or that that price is wrong, whatever the case may be.

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Speaker 2: Do you find that to be a little bit difficult when talking about this?

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Speaker 3: Check local listings. Check. I mean this is right. Yeah, I just made a big long tweet today on you know something, and I put at the bottom ps this is for these types of leagues. Check your local listings because okay, you said a lot, and I love it. I love the the first of all, there's the player take, the possibility, the range of outcomes takes, and I think you are probably one of the best at that, you know, I feel like that's where and you speak to a large audience, so then you get a lot of pushback from no matter what you say, and so I think you're also you know, thoughtful, and so then you start to think about, well, am I right? Am I wrong? Is that a good take? Bad take? Is that a you know? And I love that. I mean really, it's it's your own sort of way of being accountable to what you're saying. And I appreciate that thoughtfulness. Just so you know, I'm sure a lot of your audience agrees with what I just said there. It's just true because you know, from a perspective of doing this, it's hard because you have to have a take, you know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean at least people want you. People want you to have a take all the time about everything, and.

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Speaker 3: Then how yell at you about how stupid it is, which is also fine, it's fine, but nonetheless, my point in saying this is that you know, that's the Matthew Golden take and then, of course, the dynasty game theory in me goes, well, in a shallow league, he's a cell. In the deep league, he may be.

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Speaker 2: A bye there we go.

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Speaker 3: You know, So my my dynasty game theory thought process starts to kick him because in a deep league, hey, he could be sort of a Jamison Williams.

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Speaker 2: Light yeah, spiked we kind of guy.

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Speaker 3: Right, he could get there and that could be the positive. But if he does that and I'm in a managed league where I'm playing you know, ten by nine, He's never cracking the lineup, so I might as well sell him his value now that way up the bottom falls out, I still got some for them. So there's the game theory, right, That's what I'm always thinking about, and that's what I'm always trying to have that conversation about the players. But it's not always, you know, easy to do because there's not a lot of people thinking that way.

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Speaker 1: Quite frankly, by the way you're bringing up the you know, me having to think about all these different angles and like, you know, look at the details and stuff. I had someone actually for my Wide Receiver Studs episode that I did earlier this week of looking at the prospects who produced like studs in college. I was referencing in the past, you know, hit rates of this group of players who had played three years in the league.

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Speaker 2: That's how I framed it.

00:14:56
Speaker 1: But what I meant to say was guys who were eligible to play three years in the league. Right, So they had been drafted before what twenty twenty four, right, yeah, because they'd been able to play twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five.

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Speaker 2: And I mentioned Henry Ruggs when they played two years in the league, and someone was like.

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Speaker 1: Is that data bad because you mentioned I'm like, no, guys, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

00:15:17
Speaker 2: You know that's yeah.

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Speaker 3: I find it incredible. I do the the anatomy thing. You're gonna ask me about it later. But I had I you know, I it's like, how many players out of this fifteen player set were drafted in the first round, second round, third round, whatever the case, right, And I made one little mistake. I had one player in the fourth round instead of two, and two players in the third round in stead of one or whatever. You know, I mixed one digit and soone was like, woll pretty good stuff. But you know, yeah, like I'll catch it good cats, bro.

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Speaker 1: You know, like I get caught literally, I mean like like I have to be so careful. And I'm not I say this all the time whenever I go on other shows and stuff, and you know, shout out to this guy.

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Speaker 2: But what what.

00:15:54
Speaker 1: Taught me to be very very detail oriented with this stuff is early on, in like the twenty twelve to twenty fourteen timeframe on Twitter, fantasy Twitter was a place where people would go back and forth for literal I mean, I'm not I don't really see it happening as much anymore, maybe for it's my exposure to what's going on.

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Speaker 3: But it's so true. There used to be these It was amazing. It was the best theater of all time. I know, that was amazing.

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Speaker 1: We would go back and forth and I remember specifically Sigmund Bloom, who's a great friend now. Sigmund Bloom and I would go back and forth and he, you know, he has like a law background and stuff, and he's great at arguing and I'm this like twenty four year old kid trying to trying to do something in this space, and we'd go back and forth and I'm not even kidding. One of the things that goes through my head all the time when I'm publishing content, is how would Sig poke holes in this argument? Yeah, you know, like how how would like going like taking me back to those moments of going back and forth? And that's how I mean, That's just how I mean. I know we've gotten off off topic, but like that's how you got to create content in the space oftentimes, is that you have a lot of people who love this hobby just as much as you do, who are researching this stuff almost as much as you are, And so you better be crossing your t's and dotting your eyes.

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Speaker 2: You know, we're gonna call.

00:17:05
Speaker 3: You out, shameless plug. But you know, I think a lot of that what you had there was what I'm seeking and what a lot of people are seeking is sort of earnest conversation, right where even if you thought Sig was right or wrong, even if you sometimes you actually take a position You're like, I may be wrong here, but I'm gonna sort of sust this out and see exactly what's going on and see where my thoughts are at. And then there's a respect level turns into sometimes like name calling and like the standard uh, you know, Twitter tropes like and it's not even close, you know, stuff like yeah, yeah, and you're like, come on, man, those maybe maybe, but don't be a dick like you know, and so you know, a lot of that has turned to where a lot of the thoughtful people are, you know, we find it in our discord. It's not it's growing, by the way, and if you're if you like what I'm saying, go join because that's where like it's really thoughtful, like respectful, like oh, maybe you're right, you know, because who the hell knows, you know.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, right right?

00:17:56
Speaker 1: Well that my my favorite tweets, and I'm sure that I was guilty of it years and years ago, but I've really tried to not act this way and tweet this way. But it's the the people that start with imagine thinking blah blah blah blah blah after an outcome already happened. When you're literally alienating half the people who thought that, you know, like imagine thinking that this ADP was right or something like that, that.

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Speaker 4: Means that a lot of people were drafting that player at that right literally average yeah, that means that means you're just calling out like thousands of people just because you think that you're better than them from.

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Speaker 3: The biggest part of the Bell curve was stupid.

00:18:32
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, right, right right, And I'm like, you know, like that that kind of stuff. You know, I'm sure it existed back then, but I'll be naive and just say that back in the day, you know, I'll be the old man here and say that back in the day that the back and forth was was much different than it is.

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Speaker 3: I think there was more better and more worse there was. It was like a different conversation right there. You would you would stumble through a lot of the bad ones to find good ones, and when you found good ones, you were like, oh, this dude's actually pretty and that. Yeah, honestly, that's kind of where I was, like founded was. I was a little bit of it, but yeah, not personally, so like, you know, I don't once I once you read those sort of cringey sort of imagine that, you know, it's like, I don't think I want to talk like that, you.

00:19:10
Speaker 2: Know, right, right right.

00:19:12
Speaker 1: You brought up the anatomy stuff that you do, so each year you do these threads and the anatomy of the elite players at each position. Yep, let's just focus on running back and wide receiver, because that's going to take up a lot of the discussion today, Slash.

00:19:24
Speaker 2: It's the most important. Those are the most important positions in fantasy and dynasty.

00:19:27
Speaker 1: So talk to me about, like just summarize the process for that at We'll start with running back.

00:19:33
Speaker 2: Okay, So just what you're doing when you're doing these threads.

00:19:36
Speaker 1: I think there's a loaded question is there're a lot to it, But what you're doing when you're looking at the anatomy threads and then if there's any running backs in this year's class or whomever that might get you excited based on some of those findings.

00:19:46
Speaker 3: I know exactly where this comes from because I, you know, I invented it so to speak, or whatever it comes from. I you know, if you go back front off, I think this is like you know, in the in the you know, fifteen to twenty twenty, in that window, like the late one of those Las teens, you know, the there was a lot of like geeky dynasty talk like the R squared of you know this and that, It was a lot of that, Like you know, the data was not only like out there, but it was also coded in. If you're not smart, you won't want to listen to what I have to say. That type of thing. There's a lot of that. You know, you remember that, right of course. And so I was like, well, I kind of understand this. I mean, I'm not that guy, but I kind of I kind of get it. But I also don't think most people do. And I also don't like it. So I was like, you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to take this thing. I'm going to do it really stupid and just make it so that like it's fun for me. So I did that, and it was like the idea is and there's also another component of it. So number one was sort of not dumbing it down but making it more fun. So just taking the elite players, but not the ones that scored, because I see you do this, you do so well, but like taking the ones that scored it as a you know, running back one or two the year before you know, I might get Derrick Henry who's older. I wanted to look at the top twelve ish dynasty ranked running backs or whoever, because that's really what we want is we want to find those valuable pieces. What do they look like and what it also does is rather than looking backwards, I think it also looks forward a little bit, or at least it tries to move the timeline forward. It catches things like the running back position getting smaller, right, because it's just identifying the guys that are hip and happening now James Cook, Devon, ah Chan, Kiren Williams, et cetera. Kiren's on in it this year. But you get the point. There's a lot of smaller backs. So anyway, long story short, you take that data set of the top twelve or fifteen at a position and you just describe them. What are there, what did they look like as prospects, how big were they, how fast were they? What sort of key stats did they all share? And what does that data set look like? And then you can geek through it.

00:21:54
Speaker 1: So when you look at the running back stuff, are there any I know, there's like you have like fifteen different varia. There's a lot of different variables in each one, but are there number one? Are there any of that like really stood out that was interesting? And then you know traits And then when you look at this class, are there any players that sort of match up with what you saw from some of these elite guys.

00:22:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good question. So admittedly many or some or some of the things that are on the anatomy don't matter, you know so much like they as a matter of fact, some of them I would do and not only did they not matter, but they were noisy and they didn't even correlate at all. Like so I was like, well, I don't think that that. You know, it's useless, So I'd take it out. I put other things in and you know, just having fun with it. You know, the things that seem to matter more when you look at and I know you know this, when you look at running backs, I think pass catching matters, you know, I look at a couple of things that sort of share or show what these elite prospects have. And you know, if you look at it so like you know, Bjean jmir h and gent D Hampton, JT. Trevion Henderson, James Cook, Judkins being CMC Breasee Hall, you know, you start to get to the backside. You get Skataboo and Cam ken Walker and I put Saque in there for honorable mention, you know, so you start to wonder where should I cut it off? Each year too, should I include these guys. But when you look at all these guys and then you take the data set, they do some things very very well. First of all, you know, I think one thing that is still important is speed score. You know, these guys are generally pretty fast. I think almost all of them except for a couple, have a speed score over one oh five, which is which is kind of cooking. You know.

00:23:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's good, right, So I mean, you know.

00:23:34
Speaker 3: You start to look at that, and then you know, we haven't gotten to the combine. But now that we're getting to the combine, that's what I'm gonna be looking at, you know, So combine, I'll be looking at speed score and then just how can you you know? And I would I would folley this back at you. I look at pass catching at the running back position. I look at it a lot of different ways, just sort of raw numbers like total receptions or total receptions in a year, and then sort of more geeky ones like literally your target rate, targets per route run or a dot. Now I'm looking at these things to try and see if there's correlation to do that. What have you found at the pass catching because I think that's pretty important, don't you.

00:24:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, I mean the running back model. I added a little bit more.

00:24:10
Speaker 1: Rushing production this year to it, but that was only within the context of adjusted total yards per team play. So it's still factoring and receiving in that metric, right because it's total yards.

00:24:21
Speaker 2: So there was a little bit of rushing.

00:24:22
Speaker 1: There is a little bit of rushing, but last year with the AAP model, with the running back model, I only had all receiving because draft capital generally is capturing a lot of the rushing production, and what's really differentiating is the receiving aspect, and not only does it matter more in fantasy and a lot of times I think two with prospecting and look, I'm I'm you know, I have Matt Waldman on every year and such, and he does unbelievably great work. But it's one of those things where a lot of the you know, draft analysts out there are also looking at what real teams might be looking for in these players, and they're scouting in more of the traditional sense of what I'm trying to solve here is which players are good on a football field and which players are bad on a football field, Whereas like what the zap models. Trying to solve is purely who's gonna score more fantasy points. Yeah, and those archetypes are gonna overlap. Of course, jamar Chase is gonna be is gonna be good in both, you know, real scouting evaluation, you know from a film perspective and any modeling that you might do for fantasy. But there's gonna be some players, especially at running back, where at running back people can very much so when they're when they're watching film fall in love with a guy based on what he does on the ground and how good he is as a rusher, and sometimes that'll translate, but many times it doesn't. You know, many times we're going to need a more robust receiving profile. So I look at adjusted receiving yards be team pass attempts that's just adjusted for you know, age and strength of program. And then the other one that I swear by, and I know that others who model don't swear by it nearly as much, but I've found it just based on the way that I work with as that model and what does that models solving and it in the way that it looks at draft capital just plain old reception share, right, the percentage of catches that a guy has in his offense.

00:26:10
Speaker 2: Now, when you get into the.

00:26:11
Speaker 1: Later rounds, it starts to matter a little bit less, and some of these other things are triggered to be to matter a little bit more. But if you were to just look at some of the biggest draft busts since twenty eleven at running back and you just look at reception share, most of them have lower reception shares overall. Now you should do things like you know, if you look at Trevan Henderson and Quinnchow Judkins, you know, obviously they shared a backfield at Ohio State and for that final year, so obviously you got to do some teammates score and it. You know, there's all that kind of stuff. You need context. But like you know, someone's going to say, well, what about Derek Henry. It's like, okay, but he's the outlier of all outliers, you know, like he did not have a great reception share. But most guys who are in that position, who go day two, who go day one that end up busting, do have those lower reception shares.

00:26:54
Speaker 2: That's another one.

00:26:54
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean I think that once people start to dig in, like what you're alluding to here is that once people start to dig into these metrics a little bit more, they soon realize and quickly realize that receiving is Unlike Davis Maddick just build a new model, and I was, you know, looking at what he did with that model at running back. He only has receiving metrics, and you know, he shouted me out on the video that he had done and stuff, because you know, like he knew that.

00:27:19
Speaker 2: I was doing that with my model last year.

00:27:21
Speaker 1: But I think that, like, you know, he's just an example of like you're starting to really dig in, You're starting to model this stuff, and you're like, wait this these rushing metrics, you know you can you can find ways for them to matter, but the receiving stuff is just unbelievably important at running.

00:27:35
Speaker 3: Back, and we'll probably get to a prospect that falls short of that. The other thing I was looking at was like, you know, I just sort of play around with different things that seemed to like they might matter. It's like he had like fifteen yard run rate for their careers. You know, if I look at like the data set I just gave you all those players. First of all, as you go down the list, the number goes down. It's crazy, like, you know, some of the worst ones are toward the bottom, you know, of that list I just mentioned, So you know, crazy that that would be the case that you know, literally but like fifteen yard run rate for their careers. That data set that I just gave you of the elite guys, only two or below eight, Like basically they're all eight or nine or better percent, you know, basically ten percent. You know, I think they're almost a ten percent average if I look at the data set, I'm just looking at the prospects that I've charted so far as probably ten or fifteen. Of those, only two are above ten and really only I think that might be it one more over eight. So like they're all four or five, six, seven percent fifteen yard run rate. It's like, isn't that something you know? I mean, yeah, no, kid, now, you're right, draft capital will push. It's like, of course they're not that good. But I think a lot of times we start looking at look I just mentioned there's like five or six RB twos. Everybody's got a different guy. You know, it probably is they're probably not an RB two, they're probably something else. They're probably last year's RB.

00:28:55
Speaker 1: Seven yeah, truth, Yeah, And we'll get to this class sure a second, because very very interesting class. I mean, since we're talking about it, like is it is it Jeremiah Love and the rest essentially.

00:29:05
Speaker 3: Like yeah, yeah, I think you know. I don't mean to spoil the show sheet, but you were gonna ask me, you are man, you were gonna ask me after that, I mean, because I gotta go there, because we're right, there is there an RB two, And I would say that there is not an RB two. Do I have a favorite RB two? No, because there isn't one. You know, there just isn't a guy who's Travon Henderson, Quinshaw, Judkins or anything close to that from last year, not at all. We had gent okay, gent Love, we can talk. That's fun, conversations, will have it right now. But like, is there an RB two? No? Is there one for me? Not really? And therefore I would say this, I don't think that I'll be drafting whoever it is the RB two in rookie drafts.

00:29:46
Speaker 1: I don't because because because of because of how you envision the natural inflation of that happening.

00:29:52
Speaker 3: Yes, whoever that is, I don't. I don't care who it is, I don't want that guy.

00:29:56
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's where I think.

00:29:58
Speaker 1: I mean, look, this is difficult to really nail down, and I think that I've shifted my my stance.

00:30:04
Speaker 2: On it a little bit over the last year.

00:30:06
Speaker 1: But it's this idea that when there's a stronger running back class, that better running back you know that that teams are gonna not draft running backs high because they know they can wait.

00:30:15
Speaker 2: And if there's a bad running back class like this one, uh, you know.

00:30:18
Speaker 1: I'd say, I don't think this is as bad as the twenty twenty four class, but it's definitely got some some wartz.

00:30:24
Speaker 2: You know, there's definitely some issues with it.

00:30:27
Speaker 1: Now, does that mean, though, that someone like a Joanah Coleman will be drafted higher because, you know, because of the scarcity issue? Whereas last year, what if base Shall Tuton and camp Scataboo would have been Day.

00:30:38
Speaker 2: Two picks in this class? Like, who who knows how that will go down?

00:30:42
Speaker 3: Yeah?

00:30:43
Speaker 2: I would.

00:30:43
Speaker 1: I would say that, Like my research that I did on this last year said that it doesn't matter because teams will just get the guys that are kind of highest on their board. And that's what we've kind of seen historically. But at the same time, I do think there's a little bit to it whenever you get to sort of like the latter parts of you middle and lighter parts of that position in general. But regardless, yeah, I don't think that, Like I think this is where like modeling can be really really helpful because it'll give you a score that's just the context of that guy and where he got drafted and what his measurables are, and metrics are based on history as opposed to saying like this guy is here versus the rest of the class.

00:31:20
Speaker 2: Now, now here's the thing, though, is that wide receiver.

00:31:25
Speaker 1: Some say it's really bad, some say it's okay, some say it's good.

00:31:29
Speaker 2: Whyt to talk about the wide.

00:31:31
Speaker 1: Receiver anatomy thread and such and research that you've done, and if there's any wide receivers that you think kind of fit that mold this year.

00:31:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. So the wide receiver model, well, I almost said model. The anatomy is different than the model. The model's very a lot smarter, as you know, than me. Yeah, and very a lot smarter than my anatomy series. It's we think we built a really good model that we're going to be using as well. The models different though, and I know you know it because I've given you a peek behind the curtain of that model. It's you know, regressive draft, apple, the whole thing. It's very, very different, and so it's going to give us a different perspective, which I think is I think it's valuable, you know, And so we we like our model in terms of the anatomy, you know, I think that there's so many things, but a lot of them are just basically per route run. So like you know, first downs per route run, yards per route run, targets per out run, basically your target rate, you know, I mean, you know, we look at first downs per route run is what gave us, you know, players like Pukainakua, who was shrouded in a lot of you know, other metrics like yards and you know what I mean, catches because he didn't play as much and was hurt in this lad is another one that's exactly right, and and so it helped us be in on those players, you know, sort of coming out. So so that's that's where I sort of focus. And I do think that this class is is good, not elite, but it's good.

00:32:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, okry So so let's go back to running back. Okay, uh, Jeremiah Love ye looked at as the clear I mean, I want to ask you a few things here. Number one, do you think he's as good of a prospect as Ashton gent last year? And then I'll even take it one step further and say, like a Bejean Jremiir Gibbs before him. And then do you think, as a second, as the second part of this, do you think that he's the clear cut one oh one in super flex rookie drafts where obviously.

00:33:18
Speaker 2: You can get the Mendoza in there if need be.

00:33:21
Speaker 3: The Mendoza, Yeah, the machine, Yeah, the Mendoza. So yeah, I think as John Lobb called him on my my podcast, he didn't really call him this, but he equated to I think it was Ulysses s Grant the butcher, So we're calling him the butcher now. Anyway, it's a long short look. I think Jeremiah love is every bit the prospect that Gent was. He actually falls a little bit short if you look at a lot of the college metrics, but he also I think played a higher level of competition. So if you want to adjust for that, it's close enough. You know, I think he's very much right there. So yeah, to answer that question in terms of Bijon, I don't think so. I think Bijeon was a special creature, so I think he was a little bit, a little bit of a higher process. But look, you're splitting hairs at this point, because really, I mean, you give me Jeremiah Love in a you know, in the in the Chiefs offense or something, you know, making up ye good, Yeah, in a good offense, versus Bijon in a bad offense, I'll take. I'll take Jeremiah Love because running back is a little bit of an interdependent position.

00:34:27
Speaker 1: Of course, I actually think that's gonna be a huge point of conversation in a year or two, is Jeremiah Love, Because like, the top ten has teams in there that have like franchise quarterbacks and could realistically just go after the running back.

00:34:43
Speaker 2: And you know, I think the NFL is is not the same as it.

00:34:47
Speaker 1: Was five years ago in terms of the importance of the running back position, and so teams might feel a little bit more okay with spending up whereas I think last year the Raiders getting ash and genty was quite literally Pete Carrold living in the past and not like. I don't think Pete Carroll was being forward thinking when he was drafting Ashton Gent, even though some teams might have.

00:35:07
Speaker 2: Been forward thinking and wanting a player like Ashton genty.

00:35:10
Speaker 1: When you look at the top ten right now, there's teams in there that are kind of I think the commanders are intriguing.

00:35:15
Speaker 2: I think the chiefs are intriguing. Do they go to that direction? Who knows?

00:35:19
Speaker 1: I you know, Whenever I look at Love, I think that one place so like, Gent does look better in the zap model than Love did. The one thing I'll say with Love, though, is that you know we're recording this on Thursday. The combine for running backs is gonna be happening over the weekend. And if Jeremiah Love weighs in at a you know, hefty weight and then he runs unbelievably fast, yeah, then all of a sudden we're probably elevating him a like because I do in the look, Ezekiel.

00:35:46
Speaker 2: Elliott ran was faster than I think people remember, of course.

00:35:50
Speaker 1: Whenever, yeah, right right, I think that we're looking at kind of like that archetype of play and type of player and impact as like a.

00:35:59
Speaker 2: Zeke had, you know, with Love.

00:36:02
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean I think he's to your point, it's like, what's you know, when you get to this level of prospect, you can look at landing spot and that landing spot could very easily just be the differentiator from ash and Gent being a stud because Ashton Genty and the Chiefs offense or wherever could probably dominate. Or you know, if Jeremiah Love goes these spots, he's the one who dominates. And then we're just ranking him ahead of Gent and Dynasty all of a sudden, which I don't think is like that absurd if the spot is that good, because destination and situation matters more running back than it will a wide receiver.

00:36:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think when you look at the we'll talk about the one on one real quick, but I think when you look at Jeremiah Love as a prospect, like everything I look at, like, you know, if you look at the the anatomy, it's like his receptions are great, his yards per carry, which it's kind of a base stat if you will, but I actually do think it shows some signal. I mean, good players gain more yards on fewer attempts. You know, it's just kind of true. I mean, if you try and rank them through that, that's stupid. But if you just see signal of big plays, I like that, you know, and look he'll be he's six seven for his career, that'll be the best, that'll be tied with JT amongst that group. You know, So that's really good for a career. His yards per reception are fine, That's that's great. I mean, you know, I look for early college production. I think that that's something that you know is going to eliminate some wide receivers in the class as well. But you know, if a guy can't come on, you know, can't do something in his freshman or sophomore year of college, and you're gonna tell me he's elite. Hard hard to believe. He had thirteen sixty two total yards before his junior season, yards per out run one point six to zero for his career. That that puts him, you know, right up there with all the all the other best players except for like CMC and Gibbs. You know, he had a twenty percent ten yard run rate one season, seventeen percent ten yard run rate. We talked about the run rate being north of eight. He was ten point two fifteen yard run rate for his career was Jeremiah Love. He also is over thirty percent basically misstackles forced per rush for his whole career. That's a really strong number. We do see that translating the miss tackles forced from college to the NFL. So it's not like there's he's missing anything on the on the the anatomy. So he definitely clearly defines he's gonna be drafted high. And then, as you point out, if he runs fast with a good body type, it's like an absolute home run in terms of the one O one. I think so, although, like you say, Mendoza, and maybe there's a wide receiver that lands so beautifully, like you just can't imagine, you know, one of the top three. You know, you're like, oh my god, this is like heaven. He's great and it's a great situation. Maybe, but I think as of right now, I mean I would not hesitate to draft Jeremiah Love at the one on one. And Mendoza's growing on me. Man, what an awesome kid. Huh.

00:38:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I agree, And I understand the argument going quarterback, you know, especially in these super flex formats, especially some super flex formats, where they they matter so much. The issue I have is when you look at strictly just draft capital and what happens with especially in recent memory. Yeah, and what happens with these running backs not only are they so unbelievably productive, right, which, by the way, like I I think that that like this, I shouldn't say the that model really liked Gent, really liked you know, Jamiir Gibbs, these past catching backs, like because Gent had that second to last season that's pass unbelievable. Yeah, And so that's why he looks better than like a love in the model because Love's Love's receiving was was above average, but it wasn't like so otherworldly that you know, he he was just this obvious, you know, eighty catch guy at the NFL level.

00:39:44
Speaker 2: Regardless, he's a great prospect. So I don't want to you know, dwell on that.

00:39:48
Speaker 1: But the fact that we're going to see great production because of his draft capital itself and just the work that he's going to get, we know, you know, we have we have strong confidence that he's a really good prospect. There's still going to be insane volatility with even the wide receivers, Like even if we even if we get a Carnel Taate or a Jordan Tyson or whomever in the exact spot we want them to be, we can draft them high, sure, but there's still gonna be that that instability that you just don't get with those high and running backs, which which is why I'm just you know, it's just kind of like you gotta go Jeremiah Love even over Mendoza. Is you get you get bust at quarterback all the time. And we know that it's a really difficult position to evaluate. And I love Mendoza too, but we just have to be realistic about that that bust.

00:40:29
Speaker 2: Rate of these positions.

00:40:31
Speaker 1: Yes, and and let's just say, like hypothetically, let's say that Mendoza's ceiling and his importance at his position in fantasy is greater than Jeremiah Loves. And I only say that because we see the Dynasty market right now and we see quarterbacks ranked really really high number one. Does he have the mobility to be more than a Joe Burrow esque kind of player that you know, that's one question to ask with Mendoza. But regardless, the range of our comes from Mendoza is still much much wider, seemingly than what we'll see from Jeremiah Love.

00:41:05
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:41:05
Speaker 3: Absolutely. You can fast forward to you know, mid season and Jeremiah, excuse me, Jeremiah loves just being awesome like all these other running backs, right, and then Mendoza is doing something of a Jared Goff cam Ward first year and you're like.

00:41:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, well, what the just what do they do? Like, what's going to surprise you? Right? And it's because because that's what happens at quarterback.

00:41:27
Speaker 1: It's not it's not this like shocking revelation that sometimes these guys just aren't nearly as good as what we think.

00:41:33
Speaker 2: And so that's where the range of outcome stuff comes into play.

00:41:35
Speaker 3: And I put simply, Jeremiah loves the best bet on the board. Period.

00:41:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, period. But when you when you factor everything in Jeremiah Love, is it well he had a backup in college Darien Priced. Does when you look at Price, the lack of production, which is we can excuse away, I get it right, But does that scare you at all when you're projecting how well this guy is gonna gonna be at the next level. I saw you tweeting a little bit about Price maybe like three or four week you know, two or three weeks ago. Do you think that he, like, is he your RB two? And are you worried about that lack of production?

00:42:11
Speaker 3: Look, I think it's he my RB two. I don't even have an RB two. I don't even I don't. I don't really, I really don't. I mean I could probably look and tell you who I have there. It's so immaterial to me because I think none of those guys like I just have them in a cluster, you know. When I do rankings too, Like if you were to see my sort of dynasty, especially the rookie rankings right now, you'd see those four or five next guys dm At Johnson, Jenerium, Price, Jonah Coleman, Kate Tron, Allen, Nick Singleton. I think all five of them are just in one, three, four, five in a row after some stuff. You know, It's like they're there. I don't know which one's gonna be. So that's kind of how I see them. I don't really have a ranking of them, but I know for a fact that JJ Zachar Reeson is concerned because everything in your model basically tells you to run away screaming from Jerium Price. Yet of course common sense comes in and goes, wait, I know he's good. How good is he? The question I asked on Twitter was because the outlier in my anatomy, you know, data set and that model, so to speak, the outlier is ken Walker. He's the one that is in the top fifteen here dynasty running back that doesn't have a pass catching upside or a pass catching profile as good as all of those other players in that fifteen player data set. And I would argue that if he hadn't won the Super Bowl MVP, he might not be in that list because his value might have fallen outside of because I use top fifteen consents.

00:43:35
Speaker 2: Or if zach Scharbenae didn't get hurt right.

00:43:37
Speaker 3: Right, right right, so without a couple of things kind of going right, he might be outside of that point being is he's sort of a borderline elite dynasty running back asset to be fair, and so, which is why I have a hard time knowing when to cut it off. But that's a different times it brings up the conversation. It's great, and I asked the question, is Jadarian Price a better prospect then was ken Walker?

00:44:01
Speaker 2: I I mean I would say definitely not agree.

00:44:05
Speaker 3: Like I agree. So you know there you go, yeah, no, no, yeah, I guess Walker.

00:44:13
Speaker 2: To be sort of that's a good point.

00:44:14
Speaker 3: That's a good point you get there. If he's not that, then what exactly he's not an army your army two in a class there? You know.

00:44:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean like my my stance.

00:44:23
Speaker 1: So you know, you mentioned like the ZA model and the way that it's going to look at Jendarium Price. I have a teammates scorer, and that teammate score will look at Like I said, reception share is something that gets weighted as like a I mean, it interacts with draft capital within the model, and when a player has an alarming reception share, that's just one of the triggers that the model is like, oh this guy, there might be a red flag here or whatever. But if there's a teammate and a teammates score based on draft capital, so Jeremiah Love goes top ten wherever he goes, I mean, there's gonna be a decent teammate score for Jenarium Price because of that, and then Jeremiah Love is going to get some teammate score of jen goes top you know, two rounds or something. If if he does go day two pretty comfortably, then Jeremiah Love will get a nice little boost from a from a teammates scort perspective as well. But you know what, what the model has learned from history is that the players who do have and a lot of a lot of times, it's not that they had an identical situation to this, because I really think, you know, looking back, the only situation that kind of runs parallel to this is the Rochean Bijon situation that we had a few years ago. But Roshan Johnson was not looked at the same way as Jenerium Price.

00:45:31
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, Sony Michelle Nick Chubb.

00:45:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you could look at and you could look last year of course at at you know, uh, the Ohio State running backs, right, But I mean, more so, just like the such an elite player and Jeremiah Love such an elite player in Bjeon Robinson, that the RB two just had no shot at seeing any sort of work to be And so most of the time the example actually yeah, yeah, yeah it is it is. But so most of the time the players who have a beefye enough teammates Scoer are doing so based on sort of this consolidation of a larger backfield of guys who came out the year prior, or guys who are coming out that same year who might not be so elite like a Bijean or Jeremi Love, but it might be a Day two player. So a lot of them are like the Alabama backs from like, you know, the twenty tens, when they like every year there were like two or three, you know, Alabama backs that people were at least semi concerned with. And so if you look at history, though, and you look at those players' profiles, if you give them a proper boost in reception share, you can kind of get to the right spot for where like a Jenerian Price probably should be rated and ranked and so based on projected draft capital. Right now in the ZAP model, he's actually clustered with Jonah Coleman and Emma Johnson right now, even though he has a historically horrific reception share. Yeah. Right, But to your point about like Walker, like print it does, it looks like it's got to be fake and wrong. But to your point about the anatomy stuff, like if Kenneth Walker is the lower end. And I mean we I could talk for days about Kenneth Walker's receiving profile and people you know, coming at me for saying that he was a bad receive. I never say it was a bad receiver. I questioned the amount of work he would get as a receiver coming out of college, and I think we've seen that.

00:47:24
Speaker 3: Come to fruition.

00:47:24
Speaker 1: Of course, we had one year above an eight percent target shair you guys like, you know, like this is this is.

00:47:30
Speaker 2: What we kind of expected to happen.

00:47:32
Speaker 1: Kenneth Walker is a great player and a great runner, and I you know, I liked.

00:47:36
Speaker 2: Him this past year, you know, and in fantasy, which was wrong.

00:47:40
Speaker 1: But if Kenneth Walker, to your point, is on the lower end of those elite players, and we know that, Like to me, Kenneth Walker is like the realized version of Jenerium Price.

00:47:52
Speaker 2: You know, He's he.

00:47:53
Speaker 1: Is the if Jenerium Price just got the production and workload that we would expect.

00:47:59
Speaker 2: But we can't just make that assumption about price.

00:48:02
Speaker 1: You know that That's where I stand, is that, like, yes, that's an outcome for sure for Genarium Price, because I think that he's explosive.

00:48:09
Speaker 3: You know, early down guy. But I had John Lobb on the show and I was sort of talking like you were, and he said no. He made the argument that basically Jenarium Price was the beneficiary of you know, second string tied defenses and blowout wins, where it was he even lower.

00:48:25
Speaker 2: Than with Price.

00:48:27
Speaker 3: Yes. Interesting, yes, And I thought, wow, that's interesting because I was expecting and hoping to hear some like college football. He's freaking awesome, you know, and you know, because he's a college you know. And so I was like, oh, that's an interesting because I hadn't really heard that take, you know, because it seems like it's like the college guys are all like, he's awesome, book itt and yeah, yeah, and I believe that because he wh he was good.

00:48:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are some insane explosives from Varium Price in college.

00:48:52
Speaker 3: Lo's dope to me, I agree, right, So then but then you look at the data and then so it's kind of interesting, like it's is it data versus film? And he sort of says, hey, hold hold your horses, like this is the guy who was running in the wake of Jeremiah Love right, you know, and truth be told. While he does have some pretty good rushing you know, metrics, they're not as good as Jeremiah Love, which we wouldn't expect them to be, but he had to step down from that.

00:49:14
Speaker 1: So but it's not even but it's not it's like it's not even close, right, you know, Like that That's the thing, is that, like when we look at Traveon hen because I've gotten the Travion Quinchaw Judkins, I mean I talked about on the podcast, I've gotten multiple questions about that in relation to this. The difference, guys is that Quinchaw Judkins and Trayvon Henderson both had shared production in that backfield. Yes, the Notre Dame backfield was very much just largely Jeremiah Love. And I understand why, you know, because he's he's a monster. I get all that. But it just goes to show that, like there's so much projecting that needs to go on with Gendarian Price that you know, we'll see where his ADP lands and all that, and we'll see, like you know, like I don't want to just say, like I'm not going to draft a dude, but if he has a traditional RB two price tag in a rookie draft, that's gonna be a really tough sell for me because I want I would much rather just know that that could have happened.

00:50:07
Speaker 2: Sure, yes, that's in the range outcomes.

00:50:09
Speaker 1: Like we said, it could be kind of he could be a Kenneth Walker type, you know, like that's definitely there.

00:50:14
Speaker 3: Look I'll give you I'll give you this example. Let's look at let's look at last year. A player that I loved, like at this time was RJ. Harvey. I freaking like, I was so RJ. Harvey, like everything Harvey piled. Yeah, oh yeah, I loved it. I you know, you put on the film. I loved everything about Harvey, you know, and I was singing about Harvey, Harvey, Harvey. And then he goes in the second round and then he gets steamed up to the first round and rookie drafts. I hardly had any r J. Harvey because I don't think that's correct, you know what I mean, Like, that's not correct, that's not his value, that's not what I that's not what I saw. I loved him, and I thought that the market was too high on him, you know.

00:50:50
Speaker 2: So you loved him when he was a Day three pick or like a late third.

00:50:53
Speaker 3: Or something like let's go are you kidding me, Like, this guy has got some pop, you know, and then when he's a first round pick, so whoever, Look, there will be a second running back selected in the first round of our super flex rookie drafts.

00:51:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, there will.

00:51:07
Speaker 3: Be another one, and whoever that is is probably yeah, I'm out, I'm out.

00:51:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I mean early take.

00:51:13
Speaker 1: I'd probably agree, but as you know, I can't say that as concretely because you know, someone out there is going to hold me to that.

00:51:21
Speaker 3: Hold me, hold me. I don't even know who he is, and I'm fading them. That's that.

00:51:25
Speaker 1: I think it's the trust me. I think that's the right take. I definitely definitely think that's the right take. Are there any running backs that are projected to go kind of later in the draft that you're interested in right now?

00:51:33
Speaker 3: It's hard to find, you know, I don't know. I you know, I think when I think of this, I normally think of the like because I have had some pretty good hits back there, you know, over the years, and you know, I can't take all the credit. Some of them were sort of walked to me by some smart people. But you know, Ramandre Stevenson, Elijah Mitchell Kamani Vidal. You know, there's there's been Julius Chestnut made the league, like I mean that, you know, he was a thing. You know, he made the league. I would say that's a win. You know, people would ask, like, you know, it's a win he made. He's on he's still on a roster for Cronel out.

00:52:09
Speaker 2: You know.

00:52:09
Speaker 3: So anyway, you know, looking deep, I don't see it. The guy that I think is kind of going to be an interesting value proposition potentially is Nick Singleton.

00:52:18
Speaker 1: I was hoping, you're I feel like I was just saying that over and over my head and it just like got to you.

00:52:23
Speaker 2: I'm with you with Singleton. What do you see with Singleton?

00:52:26
Speaker 3: Well, I'm kind of hoping that he is, you know, faded into the sort of the you know, because look, of those five, someone's gonna be the RB six in this class. I'm hoping that's him. I'm hoping everybody just sort of forgets about him and I can get him at that cost, because then it's a then he's a late round like you know, but look, if Nick Singleton becomes the RB T to him.

00:52:45
Speaker 1: Out, yeah, yeah, of course, I mean I think you know, but I think it's going to be I think it's gonna be pretty impossible for that, just because of the foot injury, you know, and and you know what I mean, Yeah, no, no, I do.

00:52:56
Speaker 2: It's the RJ.

00:52:56
Speaker 3: Harvey situation. So I think it's Nick Singleton. His profile is vexing because he's up and down. Literally year two year, two year, two year four. All four years have this sort of pingpong effect. There are some things that are a little bit sticky year to year that I don't love. He gets criticized for some of his rushing acumen, decision making between the tackles, things like that, and sometimes I throw that away because sometimes it can be a little noisy and people are misreading situations. But I think it's probably pretty true with this guy. I don't think he's a very refined, down to down runner. So I think I want to see him drafted in the situation where he's sort of the one B home run threat, pass catching, you know, player on a team. If he's that guy, I think he poses some value. I think if he you know, if someone somehow brings him in as their sort of starter and thinks he's a bellcow, that that's a mistake.

00:53:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I really like Singleton. You know, he was one of the Zap model.

00:53:51
Speaker 1: I would imagine once the draft is over, because I think he's gonna fall in the draft a little bit because of the injury, you know, and so we're not gonna see him run or anything. And and the thing is, he's explosive and he's not small. He's not small either, and when you get that combination, chances are you could have gotten like a really nice speed score from Singleton if he were healthy. And if that were to happen, then all of a sudden we're talking, you know, day two pick potential.

00:54:14
Speaker 2: But you know, maybe that still happens.

00:54:15
Speaker 1: But I I think there's a chance he's like more fourth round play, like more of a fourth round player, and that's gonna obviously turn people off if you know, people are gonna be waited by draft capital. But he's got a great receiving profile. There's size to him, and when you get that combination, that's great. But then there's the explosiveness to him, which I again I think he would have run a decent forty. My only fear is that some of the comps that came up when I was looking into him was like a CJ. Procise type, you know, like I think that that we've followen one was like Jay.

00:54:45
Speaker 2: Ajaii, which I or.

00:54:47
Speaker 1: But then so you get like an interesting player like that who at least gave us like you know, and who knows would have happened with his career if things would have gone certain ways. But like then you get like the Procise and the Robert Turbin type players. You know where they're they have decent you know, decent production profiles and stuff, and they were athletes just never truly translated in the NFL. So I think there's a range of outcomes there, but there's a ranger outcomes for any day through a guy or late day two guys.

00:55:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think if you look at like his misstackles force per rush, you know certainly you're not gonna like it. You know, both both his best season is not even that good and his career numbers I'm looking right now, it looks like it's the lowest of anybody I've charted here is miss tackles force per rush for his career. So like, yeah, not good, right, and certainly does not is not synonymous with the the the anatomy guys, that's for darn sure. So you know that's why I say, like when you put these guys into that type of thing, like they're just not those guys. And so if somehow or another, like first week, might have thought Nick single thing was that because in his first couple of years, like especially his freshman year, he went off and so yeah, he starts to think, Okay, well what can this guy become? And then he falls back and he just.

00:55:59
Speaker 1: Very flat line and to be clair, he shared a backfield with another with another pro right with with Alan, but.

00:56:04
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, I'm with you.

00:56:07
Speaker 1: Though with Singleton, I think that he's a very very interesting prospect to watch.

00:56:11
Speaker 2: Let's let's move on to wide receiver though.

00:56:13
Speaker 1: Okay, because this is a really interesting wide receiver class in my opinion, I've I've done about half of the running back profiles because I want to wait for the combine to happen so I can have a little bit better or not. But I don't care about the combine as much a wide receiver. So I'm almost almost done writing all forty seven profiles for the wide receiver, so I am very ready to chat about these wide outs. So we have this big three this year. Do you think that it's a Big three or do you think that there's only two guys? Or is Casey concepci owned someone that you're interested in. Where are you at with the top end of this draft at wide receiver?

00:56:44
Speaker 3: I think I agree with the big three thing. There's some red flags on all three of the Big three, but they're they're not red. They're like light pink, you know, or some sort of you know. I think the biggest red flag is the guy that everybody loves the most is Carnell Tait, the NFL guy. You know, we talked about this a number of times. There's always that it. Look it's the Marvin Harrison Junior, now, I mean it was There's always a guy that I think is a little bit over vet. Look, Roma Doon say, these X receivers don't necessarily perform the way we want them to in fantasy, ye don't. I don't know who's the last one. I mean, I mean, Brian Thomas Junior went out and had a great year than a terrible second. Tell me the guy, Just tell me the guy, you know. I mean, it's it's not Jamar Chase, Like Jamar is actually that guy? I guess, but you.

00:57:35
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, but Jamar but no, no, I get what you're saying, because Jamar Chase is more of the the slot like.

00:57:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and there's more of that like neighbors archetype with him, where they're more of those like forced mis tackles guys. You know, like I would argue that you could if you want to extend that and not just say they're elite, but like that's in the DJ Moore, Luther Burden, this kind of kind of area in terms of like style and just what they're able to do with the ball in their hands that's different than what the traditional like.

00:58:03
Speaker 3: Traditional outside player. Yeah, and so I mean that's why I brought him up to sort of differentiate so people kind of know what we're talking about is. And so Carnell, you know, he does have a great teammate score, but you know who else had that same teammate score was JSN Marvin Harrison Junior and a Mecca Abuca And they don't have the same sort of targeting issues that Carnel Tate had. I mean, his yards per team pass attempt is very low compared to the elite guys. His career first downs per route run. You know, he ran a lot of empty routes. Now granted he ran it next to some of the greatest receivers. I mean it's his career targeting, Yeah, is nineteen percent. Like, you know, that's the lowest out of any of these guys. I mean it's the lowest guy have charted in the class. Like, yeah, like fifteen or twenty guys that I've done this for. And you know that's not great. So there's some there's some slight flags with krnel Tat and I love him, you know, it's the hard part. You know. It's not like I'm saying he's not good. I'm just saying analytically, we have to say it.

00:59:06
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, I I would agree, Like, I think he's a really good prospect, as you're saying, But if you look at like if you want to compare him to the Ohio State guys that have come out before him, he has, you know, over the last five years, he has the worst breakout scorer in my model, you know, my methodology of doing breakouts score, which is based on receiving yards per team pass attempt. Yeah, and yeah, like does the model account The model does not account.

00:59:28
Speaker 2: For Jeremiah Smith because it does not know that he exists.

00:59:31
Speaker 1: Slash is going to be as good as he is, right, And if you start to factor that in, you get way more subjective. And it's I'm very open to saying that teammate score is not perfect. It's very hard for its perfect, but it does get signal, you know, it is it is able to get signal.

00:59:45
Speaker 2: And so he is getting some of that based on you know, who he's played with, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, I think it's.

00:59:51
Speaker 3: Really interesting, say like meta Buca, Marvin Harrison Junior, Yeah, Jeremiah Smith himself, and who else? Did I say?

00:59:57
Speaker 2: Yes, a lot?

00:59:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, these guys, Gary Wilson, they'll played with each other, right, Like, so, okay, grade him just amongst Ohio State receivers and he sucks at that, you know what I mean? Like, uh, so you know which.

01:00:10
Speaker 2: Is which is you know, grading him off of the best of you know in the league.

01:00:14
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, right right, So but yes, to your point though, like let's look at ceiling and what that true ceiling looks like. I think that what you brought up about where his alignment might be and where he what he brings to the table in real.

01:00:27
Speaker 2: Life versus fantasy could be a little bit different.

01:00:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, can you just say this plainly, Yeah, he will have to be a better target earner in the NFL than he was in college to return value for you on your fantasy team period.

01:00:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think that's valid, and I think on the on the because again I think that from a real football perspective, he will be very effective or it's awesome, you can stretch the field, he can make these big plays, Like I get all of that, right, but how big of.

01:00:52
Speaker 2: A volume getter will he be?

01:00:54
Speaker 1: Whereas I look at someone like Makai Lemon and I don't have those concerns if he's in the right spot right, similar to what we've seen with like a like a Nomen Ross, Saint Brown or whomever. Obviously he gets comped to, Yeah, or a JSN. Where are you at with Lemon? Are you afraid of any of the slot stuff? Does that scare you a little bit?

01:01:11
Speaker 2: Or is it? Or do you think he's just a great prospect.

01:01:14
Speaker 3: He's a great prospect, especially if we're playing fantasy football, Like if you and I are running an NFL football team or like, dude, we can get Carnal Tait. Oh yeah, let's maybe let's do that because like he puts pressure on like they you know, I understand, you know, I understand the real football implications of having a player like Carnel Tait. By the way, Carnel Tate almost had a perfect quarterback rating when targeted this year. Did you see that was like one fifty three or something when fifty one out of control. So anyway, you know, his efficiency is just.

01:01:43
Speaker 2: Which is predictive for the record. That's actually a pretty decentmetric at wide receiver.

01:01:47
Speaker 3: It is, And so you know he's great. He's just gonna throw in more targeting mkaith lemon. Look, I've made this case so many times, like every time we go, yeah, he's only a slot, like you know, I don't know JSN and a'm NRA and wait, hold on, these guys playing all the all the you know, Cooper Cups triple crown year came from the slot, right, So you know, I'm not afraid of the slot. I'm afraid of the slot that it doesn't play our Jaden Reid plays you know, sixty percent of the snaps. He's very effective when he's in there. Now, if all of a sudden, Jaden Reid played ninety two percent of the snaps and was shifted outside.

01:02:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'd like him a lot more. Oh my god, right, Josh Down, same deal, Josh Down.

01:02:27
Speaker 3: Sure, all these guys right, any slot only. By the way, your pod with Matt Harmon and your pod before that, unearthing why this is even a little bit more of an issue with these slot only guys is great.

01:02:37
Speaker 2: Yah, we're not going to revisit that.

01:02:38
Speaker 3: But to the point that we have alpha slots is a totally different player. And I think if you're drafting mkay Lemon anywhere before pick thirty five, like basically late first, which I think is where he's going to go, he gonna play. He's not exactly a part time slot exactly. That's the problem.

01:02:56
Speaker 1: My problem is more like the Antonio Williams of the war whoever you know, Kevin Coleman or something who who is a like that, they're likely to be slot players. I mean, Coleman's probably a better example, likely to play slot players. Zachariah Branch might even just be a more of a slot gadgety type guy.

01:03:14
Speaker 2: But regardless, like those are the guys that scare me.

01:03:16
Speaker 1: Yes, Makai Lemon one of the craziest things that I found when I was researching him, and as I was digging into his profile for his profile in the in the Prospect Guide, I.

01:03:26
Speaker 2: Liked him more and more.

01:03:27
Speaker 1: Now the that model more than likely is gonna have him number three of the big three. But I think that I'm from a teering perspective, it'll be the same for me. But Lemon, you know that he has when you split up the yards per route run to slot and out wide, he is the highest career yards per out run out wide in this entire class. Let's go the fact that people were worried about him shifting it.

01:03:50
Speaker 3: Now.

01:03:50
Speaker 1: Granted there's not as many routes, smaller sample big plays can skew that a little bit, but the fact it's he has a three point five to three perimeter yards per out run over his career, which is by far the best in the class.

01:04:02
Speaker 3: Incredible.

01:04:03
Speaker 2: So you know, when you when you factor all that in, it scares me a lot less that the slot stuff for Lemon versus some of the other slot players that we see in this class, and we haven't talked about Jordan Tyson.

01:04:18
Speaker 1: Analytically, for me, he looks amazing, looks really really good. Yes, but there's obviously some concerns. Do you do you share those concerns? Is he your wide receiver one? Where are you at with Tyson?

01:04:28
Speaker 3: Makai? Lemon's my wide receiver one in the class? For the for the reasons given I you know, Tyson, I go back and forth with you know, there are some things in his I'm gonna tell you, like he's the one that I'm not sure when I first started to sort of scout him from thirty thousand foot feel like, dude, this is the wide receiver one in this class. This guy's awesome. Injuries are one thing. I'm not like a super worried about the injuries, although they factor in, they're certainly going to factor into NFL teams two potentially, So I don't know. I mean, you know, you don't like guys that are injured? Do you like guys that are health So? But in so far as he's a you know, twenty two year old rookie, that's fine. He doesn't have a ton of red flags. So, but it's hard. So I just kind of cluster these three together, and I think my take will be, you know, I'm ready to be wrong no matter who I like best, I'm okay taking the one I don't I like the worst, you know, in that sort of picks two through five in your rookie drafts, right depending on where Mendoza is and all the rest of it. Like, I think, I'm just happy to get one of them. Now. Obviously there's still more data to come, draft position, draft capital, some combine stuff that can maybe shake things a little bit. But as you point out, I think either of these three guys is great, and I actually have Carnell Tate third, So right now i'd go, you know, lemon Tyson Tate. And that's a loosely held take.

01:05:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel I mean, I'm not going to fault anyone for putting any of those three guys in any order.

01:05:48
Speaker 2: And I like Casey CONCEPTSI one two.

01:05:50
Speaker 1: I like I've seen I've seen takes on Twitter in response to other you know, tweets about you know, like Harmon's really high in concepts and uh, people saying that that analytical bros probably hate him because he had a low yards pero run rate and you know, his yards per team pass attempt wasn't that electric. But the thing that that folks should realize is that when you're looking at this stuff analytically, if you get the early career production that Concepcion did, it overrides a lot of those spikes. If he had a spike season, then he would be ranked even higher, you know, he would, he would look better, of course, but the fact that, uh, he was very productive in all three years.

01:06:28
Speaker 2: Right away, he was productive. You know, draft capital looks like it's going to back him.

01:06:32
Speaker 1: You know, there are some drop issues, but I don't really care that much about the drop stuff from a prospecting standpoint. I don't think he's part of the Big three, but I think he's going to form a tier of his own for me after those guys.

01:06:43
Speaker 3: It's fair. I I'm okay with that. I you know, I would I had the one oh six and one of those you know those stupid drafts that you do on Twitter where they tag you and all of a sudden, I love him, but you know they're stupid, right, So I had the one someone who's like, Scott, You're on one o six. I'm like, okay, And Casey Conception was the player that I was drafting, you know, and I'm like Okay, well is there anybody else? Because here I am on the clock, like, what do you at OTC baby, what are you going to do? You know, are you gonna take Casey concept? You? Are there any other choices? What else could you possibly do? Not taking the RB too? I think that clear of course, definitely not taking the quarterback to we can get to that too. But though I think, okay, so what are the wide receivers? I took Omar Cooper. I really like Omar Cooper.

01:07:27
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Cooper. Then I took Omark.

01:07:29
Speaker 3: Cooper because of I think he's in the conversation with Casey concepttion on. I don't think he's better. I'm not like, oh no, I have him ahead, I have him with And so therefore wanted to sort of make the statement like, hey, I think he's around here. I think there's more to uncover. But this kid's like Deebo Samuel, a real wide receiver who can shake tackles. He's got those legs, you know, I mean he's he's really well built and he shakes tackles and he runs real routes. So one one other thing I'll say about, you know, Omar Cooper is his a dot was great too. He was running downfield routes early in his career. This past year came a little bit closer, got a lot more slots. I think they just wanted to feature him because they know how awesome he was. So it was a real downfield wide receiver that can also get the easy stuff.

01:08:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've I after doing his profile, I started to like him a lot more too, because I didn't. It was kind of I probably wrote it like a week and a half ago, and I feel like the steam has really started with Cooper over the last like around that time, it was kind of like the start of that. And yeah, like Deebo was one of his comps for she Rice was one of his comps. Yes, Now, to be fair, the model did not really love Rashi Rice coming out, so there's that. But I do think that the archetype of Omar Cooper being that tackle breaker and that guy who could do a lot with the ball in his hands is definitely there. You know another guy that I saw you tweet about is Elijah Surratt played with him. How high do you think he should be ranked? Do you think that he's in that tier with those two guys too?

01:08:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, the more I think about it, like, the more I want those three guys as sort of a tier, and I'm willing to put Denzel Boston in there. I think we're going to talk about him. He's another one of those outside players that, by the way late breakout, I mean he did nothing zero.

01:09:08
Speaker 1: Denil, I mean, full transparency. He scares the crap up, scary, scary player. So for me, yeah, for me, I'm happy to fade Boston to Sarat, meaning I think when the ADPs finally drop, Boston's going to be drafted ahead of Sarat in the NFL draft, and therefore it's it's going to be like Boston's going to be in that one o eight to one ten range, my guests, and Serat's going to be in the two oh three to two o four range, I think, you know, And for those reasons, I think a SAT more like a Jayden Higgins prospect. And you know, I'm not saying they play exactly this. I'm just saying sort of, you know, I think they're better then they're going to be given credit for for a multitude of reasons. But his prospect profile is dope. I mean, if you look at the data on in the analytics on sarat He's been awesome.

01:09:57
Speaker 2: Cool story for Sarrat too.

01:09:59
Speaker 1: He went from he went to Saint Francis is a zero star recruit, yes, you know, and then he goes to James Madison and then he follows Signetty to to Indiana and literally every year just got better.

01:10:10
Speaker 2: Yes, for Elijah Surratt, like.

01:10:11
Speaker 3: He think, I think a lot of the you know, zero star stuff is what is holding him down. I think there's just sort of people hanging on through their priors. But if you just look at how good he is, he's good.

01:10:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, I I do think that.

01:10:24
Speaker 1: And like Denzel Boston is just one of those like absurd range of outcomes going from Kevin White to Courtland Sutton.

01:10:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, like he's just it's just this really really.

01:10:34
Speaker 1: Wide range that if draft capital does correlate strongly to rookie draft ADP that I'm with you that it's gonna be very very hard. Like if if Denzel Boston's sometimes going ahead of Casey Concepcionne or even like yeah, like if period, if he I just can't, I will not be able to do that. I don't think it's gonna happen but if it does, I wouldn't be able to do that.

01:10:55
Speaker 3: I think it's gonna happen in leagues because I think, you know, it's possible. Like look the draft, it only takes one team to sort of muck up the works and take a guy too soon or too late away, you know. Yeah, but I do think Boston has a very good chance of being drafted ahead of Conceptsion because of that sort of thirst. Four. Look, it's hard to find a guy like that can play like Denzel Boston, you know, at the NFL level, It's easy to find a slot guy like you know, Cooper and Conceptsion. Again, I'm not saying that they're not good. I mean even you know, And what I mean by that is like Wandale Robinson's available, you know what I mean. Like again, you understand what I'm saying, right.

01:11:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, of course, of course.

01:11:33
Speaker 1: I mean, like we it's very natural for a Dynasty manager to fall in love with the bigger body dudes that are that that seem like they have this massive mass of ceiling. Something that's interesting about Denzel Boston too, that I looked at whenever I was looking at their production profiles and their journeys and stuff. Because the way I go through this is that I don't know much about college football before I do the prospect guide.

01:11:55
Speaker 2: I'm a very casual college football.

01:11:57
Speaker 1: Satcher, and so then I start digging in and so I I write, you know, the higher end guys. First, I'm just going profile by profile, and then sometimes I get to a guy who I'm like, oh, he played with this other player, so I'm gonna go back and I'm going to reference that whatever. One player that I wrote up was Jeremy Bernard, okay, who played for Alabama, but he played in Washington earlier on in his career, and he played on that team with Michael Pennix, Jalen Polk, Roma Dunsday, Jalen McMillan, and Denzel Boston, and in that same offense, he far outperformed Denzel Boston that same year. And so you now have a comparison. Now they're totally different wide receivers, literally completely different wide receivers, but from a production standpoint, you have this really interesting comparison of what happened when they were both together. Two guys in this class. I mean, Bernard's gonna be a Day two guy probably and what happened. This is not a pro Bernard take for the record, Like, I think he's fine, but he's not someone that I'm like, you know, jumping for joy over. But the fact that you have this, this other player, this class who actually did get some production in an offense with legit wide receiver NFL talent, it's kind of interesting when you when you compare the two, you know, and you look at those Durnams. I'm not saying it's full proof, but it's at least an interesting narrative that you can talk about.

01:13:14
Speaker 3: Yes, I think I think Jeremy Bernard is definitely gonna be a little bit of fools gold, you know. And I hate to do the helmet scout thing, but it was the guy that popped to mind. I was like, who's the guy that like gets a lot of like love as a good player, but then when he's in the NFL is just another guy even though he's still just as good as he ever was, Like John Metchi, you know what I mean. It's like, you know, it's like, yeah, he went to a big school, he played good, he was a good football Like he's good, but he's just not that type of elite you know wide receiver the next all. I think that's probably what we're seeing with Jeremy Bernard.

01:13:48
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:13:48
Speaker 1: Are there any other players who who you look at and you're like, there's one for me? I mean, there's actually a lot of them for me in this year's class, But there are there any guys that you look at and you're like, why is this guy getting hyped up the way that he's getting hyped up right now?

01:14:00
Speaker 3: I definitely thought about this question a little bit. There's a few, and we touched on a couple of them. There's there's two. I'll give you what. The first one I'll give you, which we haven't mentioned is Malachai Fields.

01:14:10
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, yes, let's talk about fields.

01:14:12
Speaker 3: This is this is like, this is so bad. It doesn't even I.

01:14:15
Speaker 2: Don't understand it.

01:14:17
Speaker 3: Like, what are we even talking about. He's a fifth year senior, so he's not even an early declared never mind that he's fifth year. He had no production before his junior year. One hundred and seventy two yards and a touchdown, nothing on the profile. I just look, I'm like, there's nothing there. On top of that, he's a sort of an oversized outside X YEP. Yuck all the way around. I have no interest in Malachai Fields unless he turns into a tight end.

01:14:42
Speaker 1: If you look at since twenty twenty, there's been nine wide receivers drafted between picks thirty three er one hundred.

01:14:49
Speaker 2: I'm looking at my prospect guide right now.

01:14:51
Speaker 1: Who posted a best season yards perro run rate below two point three? He was at two point two. Yeah, Malachai Fields was, So he's short of that threshold. By I mean, it sounds like it's justero point one. But that's not nothing right for a best season yards per hour run These are Day two guys since twenty twenty, basically the wide receivers Van Jefferson, Josh Palmer, Jonathan Mingo, key On coleman ad and I Mitchell, Jalen Polk, Luke McCaffrey, Save you On Williams, and Isaac Tesla like it.

01:15:17
Speaker 2: It's scary.

01:15:18
Speaker 1: His breakout score is not good like he's Yes, he's one that definitely catches my eye.

01:15:23
Speaker 2: The other one for me, I mentioned it was Zachariah Brandt, correct.

01:15:27
Speaker 1: I mean, the dude, this is the quintessential player and this might bite me in the butt a year from now.

01:15:34
Speaker 2: Where you guys are clipping this and just remember this is in the late February. We're not making this take.

01:15:39
Speaker 3: Let's go for all nothing.

01:15:42
Speaker 2: I'm going to change this take exactly.

01:15:44
Speaker 1: This is the exact archetype of player that on Day two NFL teams look at and they're like, Oh, he's got crazy speed, he's got traits with the ball in his hands where he's gonna be able to take anything to the house. But the production profile is just not existed. It's just not there at all. Not that it's not existent. So many of his looks. Forty five and a half percent of his career targets came behind the line of scrimmage the players that we see with that kind of or or you know, thirty five percent of his career yards came on screens. Since twenty twenty, among top one hundred picks, you have two wide receivers with a rate of over thirty percent, Malachi Corley and Anthony Schwartz. That's the archetype that we're looking at. Was Zacharyah Branch. I mean, you get guys like Corley and you know, Veayalis Jones, Kadarius Tony. I mean, it's just it's it's these gadgety type players that I'm just not going to get excited for him from a fantasy football perspective.

01:16:38
Speaker 2: He's not going to do it for.

01:16:39
Speaker 3: He almost I will not draft Zacharia Branch. It won't happen. I will have zero sharre, zero kids. It's just there's no there's no spot in the draft where I think that that's a good pick, Like.

01:16:51
Speaker 1: Do you think that do you think that he? Do you think that I haven't looked at any rookie draft ADP. You definitely have looked at it more.

01:16:56
Speaker 3: Than I have.

01:16:57
Speaker 1: Is there any chance that he's going ahead of like the like maybe like an Elijah Surrat?

01:17:02
Speaker 3: I think do you think? Yeah?

01:17:04
Speaker 1: That would be I mean that's like that right there is there's upside for a Surrat is just so much more men's.

01:17:09
Speaker 3: So there's some you know, there's some there's gonna be the mock draft sort of. There's a lot of people to do him on sleeper and all over the place. There's definitely gonna be some group think. And I think, you know, you have a big voice, uh you know, however, big my voices has not been pleasant on Zachryia Branch either. So there's some voices out there that are going to be you know, basically pointing this out. I think he's going to fall, but then who knows what happens again at the draft, right, Because you make a good point of zachryib Branch is actually fairly valuable for an NFL team if you know he can do something. He's definitely an athlete. You could scheme some things up Jet sweet. I mean, he creates some leverage, but he's never going to be a guy I'm putting into my fantasy lineup.

01:17:52
Speaker 2: But front offices are so arrogant, yes, right, and they look at him and because like well if you if you yeah, if you squint, if if you squint, yeah, it's Tyreek Hill.

01:18:02
Speaker 3: Yes, but god stop it, right yeah.

01:18:04
Speaker 1: So like so like an NFL team is gonna and and look, this is why I look and range of outcomes because I'm like, okay, there's a point five percent chance that this becomes a Tyreek Hill situation.

01:18:15
Speaker 2: Sure we can recognize that.

01:18:16
Speaker 1: That's fine, But an NFL team doesn't see it as a point five percent chance.

01:18:21
Speaker 2: They see it as a twenty five percent I can't.

01:18:22
Speaker 3: That's so funny. I find it amazing that you. I don't know if that's true. That's crazy, Like.

01:18:27
Speaker 2: I think it's true.

01:18:28
Speaker 1: I think, Oh, I think NFL front offices look at these players and they say to themselves.

01:18:32
Speaker 3: Maybe it's Tyreek Hill. Really yeah, well, I mean like I mean, I don't mean like I mean it's I.

01:18:37
Speaker 1: Think they I think that they believe they I don't think they'll make that one to one can I mean maybe they'll sit there and be like, well, look at the impact that Tyreek Hill made, right, But yeah, I think I think that what NFL teams. I think that NFL teams are unbelievably cocky and they draft players because they think that they can develop them and and some of them are very very good at doing that, and so I don't want to throw all of them under the bus, but a lot of teams they get cocky with with the way that they draft, especially a wide receiver, and they and and this falls into the same idea, like these teams have very similar archetypes that they go after all the time.

01:19:13
Speaker 2: Like I remember there was.

01:19:14
Speaker 1: One year the year that Xavier Worthy came out, and like there was uh an ad Ni Mitchell a couple of years ago.

01:19:19
Speaker 2: You know whenever they came out.

01:19:20
Speaker 1: And one of I remember I had written there, uh you know, in the Prospect Guy, because this is when the draft happened.

01:19:27
Speaker 2: And one of Xavier Worthy's comps was Marquise Brown, right, and then lo and behold the Chiefs went and they drafted Xavier Worthy after going after Hollywood Brown, right, and then one of Adnai Mitchell's comps was Alec Pierce. Now Alec Pierce ended up breaking out year four and the model looks at year one to three, but uh, Alec Pierce was one of ad Ni Mitchell's comps. Lo and behold, the team goes out and.

01:19:49
Speaker 1: Chris Ballard loves himself these athletic wide receivers, and they draft ad Ni Mitchell, right, and so there there are these teams do like they repeat the same behaviors. Yeah, right, exactly these and and sometimes it's like logical, you know, and like that that's a logical enough thing to do. Whenever you look at what I think, Yeah, I think they were trying to do the same thing with Darcos Hunter last year. They just wanted that same kind of archetype of player because then they can have the interchangeability of these players without having to show their hand when certain players were on the field, which is incredibly smart.

01:20:21
Speaker 2: Like the Rams are good at this, you know. But then there's some teams that just like what are you doing?

01:20:26
Speaker 1: You know, it's just you and like like the Chiefs getting Mikol Hardman Zachariah Branch. I'll call it right now, The Chiefs are going to get Zachariah Branch, you know, like this is the this is the great and.

01:20:37
Speaker 2: He's a but he's a.

01:20:38
Speaker 1: He literally his top cop in the model right now is Mikoel Hartman. Yeah, Zacharia Branch. So like it's it's these teams think a certain trust me. I don't think they're definitely gonna get Zacharia Branch. I'm just giving you the example of of these teams and the way they think and how they think they can develop these guys. And the biggest mistake I've learned, because I've made this mistake plenty through playing Dynasty and doing this analysis, is that when you fall into the trap that the teams fall into and thinking that that team can really develop that player, that's when you get screwed. That's when you draft me Cole Hardman. You know, one oh four in a rookie draft when the production profile is just not there at all.

01:21:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I'll be clear about all this. I don't I don't. I don't really know if he's good or not. Like Zach Branch. I'm not like some sort of scout. I'm just telling you, based on the math, this is a bad bet. Yeah, that price, you know, and and and generally speaking, so you know, if you talk about my our wide receiver model, it basically is regressive because I don't if Zach Branch gets drafted in the first round, I'm not giving him extra points. He's a bad pick in the first round. He's not a first round pick, so there's no bonus points for him. He's not that player. And so therefore it's a bad bet. We're not going to let a model get tricked into moving a guy like that up. And it is what it is, like, that's just that's just that's the bet he is. Now. Is it possible, as you point out, that he ends up being good. Of course, it's possible. Man, Like you know, even Wandell Robinson, uh sort of had a little bit of that type of profile, right, you know, Yeah, but he was productive, he was more. I know that. I'm just saying I sort of said a little bit. You know, it's not it's a better bet, but you know it's a similar bet at least. And like here he goes he's having a little bit of success, is a free agent. He might go back in the bottle too, We don't even know. Yeah, sure, like I would bet against another progression from Wandelle Robinson just.

01:22:30
Speaker 2: So yeah I fly, yeah, yeah, exactly based on that profile. And the thing.

01:22:35
Speaker 1: The thing is too though, like like if you look at players who have the branch profile, and again, yes, my analysis is going to be based on what we've seen historically, me trying to put my spin on where the NFL is going and where I think these these players fit in. Of course, like that has to be the case, but I'm of course going to be looking at what we've seen historically, and to your point, we're placing bets and we're saying, does this make sense based on what we've what we know about what hits and what doesn't hit.

01:23:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah that's my approach. Guys.

01:23:08
Speaker 1: I'm very math based, I'm very analytical based, and I'm gonna watch, like as I'm writing.

01:23:13
Speaker 2: These profiles on my other screen.

01:23:15
Speaker 1: I'm watching these guys play just so that I have I'm not just saying things just to say them, and I've watched them play. But with that being said, you know, when you look at expected value, the only guys who have kind of a similar you know, high behind the line of scrimmage, high screen slot work, whatever the case may be, as branch that have gone day two over the last you know, five or six years. The only two guys that stood out that have been productive, because a lot of them have not, like Lynn Boden, Amari Rodgers, Canarius Tony. You know, the two guys who did were Wanda Robinson and Luther Burden that have done some production stuff. But both of those guys had way better age adjustine production, yes, than Zachary Branchise. And I think that's the difference here.

01:24:00
Speaker 3: Like that you brought in Luther burdon. Look, there is a possibility that zach branch has got I just think that at the end of the day, his speed, the way he runs at the combine, he'll be overdrafted and therefore he'll be pumped up. And you know, it's just like you say, it's a low it's a low outcome bet a lot of times too. I think you start to get into stuff like, you know, at some point you want to switch over and draft these awful running backs, you know, as bad as it is, as bad as it is, you know, Wood, he marks what were all the Kyle Manungai. I'm not saying he's bad, but he was a fourth fifth.

01:24:29
Speaker 2: I got my young guy in our league together.

01:24:30
Speaker 3: Damn right you do? He yeah, killed me. But you know these are the that's the backs that actually that that can win for you. I mean, the likelihood that Zach Ryan Branch is going to win for you is very low. The the the idea that you know later on in drafts you either want the elite wide receivers up front, you know, and then shift to shift maybe another position. JJ. This year record number of tight ends, uh, you know invited to the combine? What were your thoughts about that? Based on the heels of your analysis that tight ends are sort of taken over a little bit, you get a record number of tight ends invited to the combine. Pretty cool, I thought.

01:25:04
Speaker 1: My thought was, this is the first year we're doing tight end profiles in the Prospect Guide, and we we do all players who are invited to the combine, and of course, of course this is the one where we get more than any other class.

01:25:15
Speaker 2: It's like two thousand and four or.

01:25:16
Speaker 3: Like yeah, what I said record, I mean yeah, yeah, no, no, I went back twenty years, so yeah.

01:25:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly.

01:25:22
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, like I'm excited to see I haven't dug into many of the tight ends, like because Brandon Goadula is going to be running point with a lot of the tight end stuff and then I'll be working with him once I'm done with the running back and wide receiver work. But you know, like last year's tight end class was elite, like incredibly, It's gonna be very hard for a class to match up to what we saw last year. Yeah, and like last year, going in it was interesting, like I remember looking at it and being like, wow, this is like this is a good tight end class. But I don't think the consensus going in was necessarily like it was going to be nearly as good as it ended up being.

01:25:56
Speaker 3: I gotta give I gotta give my man Theoreminger. We would I would always he would say it's going to be a transformative tight end class. That's what he good for him transformative, and I would always bust his like, oh transform you know, I'd roll my eyes in it.

01:26:08
Speaker 2: But he was he was right.

01:26:09
Speaker 3: He called it. He absolutely called it. Speaking of transformative tight end class, I gotta ask you, whatever research you've done, or however deep you are into the tight ends, what do you think about Kenyon Sadik?

01:26:20
Speaker 1: I have I honestly, I have not dug in enough to like. I don't because I don't want to say anything that I would regret saying. You know, I've been so focused on running back and wide receiver.

01:26:29
Speaker 3: I haven't.

01:26:29
Speaker 1: I haven't fully gotten a tight end yet. Where where where are you at with them? So you can give the photo, Let's just tell you.

01:26:34
Speaker 3: I think when you start to uncover Kenyon Sadik, you're going to see some troubling data points that don't make sense and that don't make him the tight end one in a rookie draft, nor a first round draft pick in the NFL draft. It's a little scary. I'm seeing a little bit more John hus Smith Chiga Conquill than I am. You know, Brock Bauers, Trey Trey McBride, you.

01:26:54
Speaker 1: Know, interesting, interesting, Yeah, So what I've been doing with tight End over the line. We send an email last about this earlier this week, but essentially, Brandon Godoula, who I hired on at the beginning of January, and I have been working on a tight End model because I wanted to kind of scrap mine.

01:27:11
Speaker 2: It was like, we're still using some of the stuff from it, but.

01:27:14
Speaker 1: We needed to just kind of work with it a little bit differently. There's some really fascinating stuff that we've uncovered. Brandon did a lot of, like the heavy lifting. I was kind of overseeing it all. And one of the things that's incredibly interesting in this model, and the example that we used that I use in the guide itself. This is kind of a spoiler, but I do think we might actually just send a newsletter about this.

01:27:36
Speaker 2: But Brandon found the example of Michael Mayer versus Hunter Henry.

01:27:39
Speaker 1: Okay, and this will give you an idea of how draft Capital is working with athleticism, is working with college production. Within this model, if you look at Michael Mayer versus Hunter Henry and their collegiate career and what they looked like as prospects coming in almost identical height and weight, almost identical speed score, height of Justine speed score, almost identical team. It was identical across the board, production, athleticism, and height, right, the one thing actually no, sorry, athleticism was the one part that wasn't identical. Okay, So similar like size, similar draft capital, and then similar production.

01:28:15
Speaker 2: Okay.

01:28:15
Speaker 1: One thing that wasn't was the height adjusted speed score. And almost every model that's out there, it'll say go with the guy that has the better height adjusted speed score, go with the Michael Mayer over Hunter Henry. Hunter Henry has a significantly higher Zapp score than Michael Mayer does in that model. And the reason for that is because the athleticism piece, while it's good for tight ends to have when you layer on draft capital, what that's telling us is that a team liked Hunter Henry despite not having strong athleticism, not being like an excellent, excellent athlete, and as a result of that, there are probably these things and these things that he does from like a route running perspective or some other factor that is making him a better player overall. So the tight end model, it's not as simple as running a straight line really well at a heavy weight and be relatively productive.

01:29:10
Speaker 2: Jordan Reid's another one.

01:29:11
Speaker 1: Jordan Reid looks pretty good in the model way back in the day when he came out, people might forget, but he was an awesome, awesome fantasy asset, and when he came out wasn't actually the most amazing athlete from a highly Justine speed score perspective, but he still had day two capital. He had good college production. And so what that capital is telling you is that there's probably something else there that makes that player. It's not full proof, but makes that player really interesting and good. Harold Fannon would be another one from last year. So before the draft, I comped Harold fan into Jordan Reid.

01:29:42
Speaker 3: There we go. People get mad at me, and I'm like, no, this is a good comp.

01:29:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the lack of athleticism, but then you have the capital and the production, all of that works together. Yes, I'm saying all this as a teaser for the guide for sure. Yeah, I am incredibly pumped about that type because I from what I've seen, because a lot of models, even the running back and wide receiver ones to a degree, are very additive, right right. And what they do is they're looking at all these different factors, they're adding them together and they're saying, this is the kind of player that we're looking at here. Yes, and they're not necessarily working in conjunction with each other's I mean, like mine does to a degree. But a lot of times you're just like, oh, he's athletic, Oh he's productive, Oh he has a good draft capital. You know, that's all good, And now we're but there's a lot of these things that work together that can discover and allow us to discover things that we might not have otherwise seen in the data that we can't.

01:30:34
Speaker 2: See in the data because not everything's going to be captured that way.

01:30:36
Speaker 3: That's right now, it's pretty cool. I love that.

01:30:38
Speaker 2: That sounds great.

01:30:39
Speaker 1: I love that we just went a completely different direction of off of you ask me the question. I have one more I got to ask you. Do you have any late round wide receivers that you like from this class?

01:30:48
Speaker 3: Do? I?

01:30:49
Speaker 2: Oh, let's hear it.

01:30:50
Speaker 3: Well, So I would say that there's a couple depending on how late we're going, but I think Skyl or Bell.

01:30:56
Speaker 2: Oh I like Bell. Yeah.

01:30:57
Speaker 3: I mean again, you know, when you go late, you're kind of looking for you know, you're just looking for something to grab onto, right, You're you're not saying this guy's definitely a sure thing. But I think there's some things in Skyler Bell's profile that and it sounds like, actually, I think I forget who it was. Maybe it was Jeremiah. They had him pretty highly ranked, you know, in the top ten wide receiver, so I was like, wow, okay, so maybe this is already sort of cat out of the bag situation. So Skyler Bell is one. Ted Hurst is everybody's favorite right now. I think I think maybe it was Davis madeck Ifred who said is like ted Hurst is the guy that you want to be high on so that you can imp impress the other people in your group chat or something like that, you know, like, yeah, that's ted Hurst. And then of course, you know, I'm just I'm just still pulling for Tyrone Montgomery to get a chance. I thought it was a shame they didn't get to go to the Combine. I mean, he showed out the Senior Bowl, like what, NFL no fun League. I thought that was a joke, you know, But you know, not having him there is tough. But Skyler Bell is probably the realistic one, but he may not be late round for very long.

01:31:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, Skyler Bell, Well, his top comp right now, and again this can change based on some the heightweight stuff at the combine, right because but I just wanted to run based on because sometimes for people who don't know, you go Google and look up these guys height and weight, and then all of a sudden, like they go to the combine and they're three inches shorter and fifteen pounds later, and.

01:32:19
Speaker 2: You're like, what the heck? Where did this come from? His top comp that was Ricky Piersoll, which I thought was pretty interesting.

01:32:24
Speaker 1: There you go, kind of a versatile that he had because Skyler Bell had some of that that rushing production stuff at one at one point in his career. But he has kind of like a versatile profile. He's a little bit older, you know, he's not he's a younger, that's the problem. Not the youngest prospect in the world. So he's he's an interesting player for sure. And another fun fact in the ZAP model, there are six players with the last name Bell. Three of them are from the twenty twenty six class. There you go, yeah, crazy, right, that's analytics.

01:32:53
Speaker 2: For you guys.

01:32:54
Speaker 1: That's right, yes, all right, before I let you go, Yeah, this was great for the record I always love chatting with you.

01:33:00
Speaker 2: Give me an NFL Draft hot take before I let.

01:33:04
Speaker 3: You go here, So I didn't know how far back I went, but I'm pretty sure there's never been fewer than four running backs selected on Day one and Day two of the NFL Draft. Hot take. The fewest number of Day one and Day two running backs ever selected the NFL Draft will be in the twenty twenty sixth draft, where three or fewer going Day one or Day two.

01:33:29
Speaker 2: See first off, I like the take, But second off, you don't want that.

01:33:33
Speaker 1: You personally don't want that to happen because then no one will be taking that RB two in the first round.

01:33:39
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right. I'm betting against myself. Either way I win, either my hot take comes true or my dynasty dreams come true.

01:33:45
Speaker 2: Yes exactly.

01:33:46
Speaker 3: I love that. This is the way I make bets. I can't lose.

01:33:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it.

01:33:49
Speaker 4: Just Drake.

01:33:50
Speaker 3: When Drake May came out, I said, I hate this pick, and I just knew either I was going to have the right take, or I was going to get the greatest quarterback of all time.

01:33:57
Speaker 2: Who knew you?

01:33:58
Speaker 3: Yeah?

01:33:58
Speaker 2: There you go, there you go? Yeah, Yeah, this was great.

01:34:01
Speaker 1: Man.

01:34:01
Speaker 2: Let everyone know where they can find you, what you're working on all that great stuff.

01:34:05
Speaker 3: Absolutely find me on Twitter or x whatever they call it nowadays that Dino game Theory, OTC Fantasy coming your way soon, there'll be a website. We do have a little bit of a Twitter presence. Easy for me to say. Also, most importantly, check us out on Dynasty Underground. That's my podcast and YouTube and The Undrafted is my my podcast.

01:34:29
Speaker 2: Yeah. Great show. You had Scott Connor on Recentlyah, great, great.

01:34:34
Speaker 1: You guys are both big, big Dynasty game theory people, so it's it's great to uh to hear you guys chop it up.

01:34:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, that one was the Scott Connor State of Dynasty show that just came out. And every time I have Scott on, we don't talk about any any players. There's no players. We don't talk about players.

01:34:50
Speaker 2: That's all. That's his that's his m O. Yeah, that's his m and he's great at it. I mean, there's no shade at all. He's awesome.

01:34:55
Speaker 3: Literally, to the end of the show, asked him and said, hey, so any player you want to mention, you know, just sort of a you know, you know, anybody love this this position goes no.

01:35:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it.

01:35:06
Speaker 1: That's that's like when we were at Radio Row and we were talking to I had Tetero McMillan on the show, which was awesome.

01:35:12
Speaker 2: It's crazy experience. Yeah, and we were talking to him and Kitchen asked him if he modeled his game after any wide receiver and he just goes no, right, it's just no. It's like, thanks, t Mac, appreciate it, brother, No, I appreciate your time as always. And then, as always, folks, make sure.

01:35:30
Speaker 1: You're checking out lateround dot com because the Prospect Guide is currently available for pre order. It launches March sixteenth. I think it's March sixteenth, but you can check it out lateround dot com. The price will go up from fourteen ninety nine to nineteen ninety nine after it launches. Otherwise, everyone, thanks for tuning in.