Late-Round Perspectives: Dr. Edwin Porras

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Edwin Poulos is a doctor of physical therapy who works for the Minnesota Twins. He's a medical analyst for Fantasy Points dot Com. He's got controversial takes on injury prone this and some might consider him a Briese Hall and Saquon Barkley truther. These are his late Round perspectives. It's okay, Look, I think that it's important to actually talk about this because everyone has a bad dealer to every season if you're active in your leagues and stuff like that, where you look back like I have it in one of my leagues where I traded Cooper Cup at the wrong time because I was scared. I wanted to diversify a little bit, and I ever since then it just had this horrible domino effect of me trying to fix the problem and fix it.

00:00:52
Speaker 2: My team is horrible now, like it's just.

00:00:54
Speaker 1: A completely sunk, just done team, and you just kind of have to live with it, right, Like you hope that the person like you're probably hoping that I don't win the championship at this point, I would assume, because then because you helped that happen, right.

00:01:06
Speaker 3: It makes me look it makes me look terrible. And I told you.

00:01:09
Speaker 4: I think I text you or I've DMD you, like, so obviously in that league, I'm the only one who doesn't like do the full on like analyst thing, right, So I basically just consume all of your content, like all your guys that are in that group, I just like read your stuff, listen to your stuff, and then like make my own decisions. So two out of the last three years I've made the playoffs. I think I won a playoff game last year. So like I've really been running hot, like it was time for me to just run terrible in that league and that this is this is it. I don't think I'm in last, but I think I'm close to last.

00:01:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, to be fair, I've run very poorly the first two years in that league, and so this is the this is the year where I'm ready to take it to the next level and then get that w I also realized whenever I DMed you and we're talking about you or talking about this show and bring you on, you're a back to back Fantasy Points.

00:01:54
Speaker 2: Guest I had. I had Scott Barrett on.

00:01:56
Speaker 3: Last oh yeah yeah yeah.

00:01:58
Speaker 1: So now now we got we got ed coming on and talking you know, so I'm doing my my, my, my service to fantasy points dot com with these back to back guests. But you guys do great work over there, of course, and you know you're more on the medical side, not on the fantasy analysis per se side, you still do some like random fantasy analysis ish because what you're doing just kind of naturally sort of plays into all of this, right, because like it's no different. I see it as like, of course, my foundation is coming from the perspective of doing the analysis and running numbers and watching stuff and seeing what I'm seeing and talking about which players I want to buy, sell, et cetera, et cetera. But then I'm still sort of injecting, you know, injury stuff into that because that's part of the game, right, Like injury analysis is huge because it's a violent game and players get hurt. You're just coming out from the opposite perspective where you're leading with the injury analysis, but then you're having to sort of give contextual evidence about that injury analysis so that people you know, can can utilize it in some way. So I want to kick things off by just sort of asking and so so that people can get to know you and know sort of what your background is, because you're definitely a different guest the type of guest that I brought on so far onto this show. So what's your background? Where'd you come from? How did we we met? Because of Living the Stream? I think right like you were listening to Living in the Stream.

00:03:22
Speaker 4: As it might have been. I think it was I think Dan, you know what, Danny. I think I've heard you guys talk about Danny's coaching tree. He's got like this massive coaching tree. I have to credit Denny. I think that he like retweeted it was a Todd girl the year that Todd Gurley fell off, but he was I still dude. I remember this vividly because it was still the first It was like the first year that I did this. Todd Gurley was still going like twelfth overall, thirteenth overall in nineteen and I put this article about like explaining like what does this knee stuff mean? And Danny was like, hey, I saw your article. It's pretty cool, and then he retweeted it, and that's really when it started like sort of blowing up. That might have been, but yes, I also was listening to Living in the Stream, so it might have been the same thing. So Denny's coaching tree continues to expand as Taysom Hill's package continues to expand as well.

00:04:01
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, exactly. So let everyone know, like what where did you get this passion? Where did you start? Like what are your credentials? All of the above, So people feel good and they know that going into this podcast that this is a very serious thing and this isn't just some random person who's just like Leo DiCaprio screaming at the TV meme you know about these injuries and such.

00:04:22
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, man, I actually think you framed that perfectly, Like you framed it exactly how I would anticipate you framed it, or you would frame it, because you get it and some people don't get it.

00:04:30
Speaker 3: And I get that.

00:04:30
Speaker 4: So I graduate with my doctor in physical therapy. Right, that's doctor is not a profession, Just to clear that up. Doctor, just level of degree. I try not to use the term because it's pretentious. I just made the Twitter handle. It is what it is now whatever, But I have a doctor in physical therapy. What a physical therapist does, by the way, I think also is important. So anytime you have an injury in the athletic setting, you have an injury, guys injured or they have surgery from day zero, literally sect the surgeon closes them up, like we are the ones there helping them gain strength, mobility, all that differ stuff. Were progressing through their their their sport timeline, like they have check in with the with the Orthos every now and then, Like we're there, you know, trench in the trenches every single day with them. So it's not like we're sort of coming from this awkward perspective of like I don't see athletes right Like for me, that's that's my life, right, It's baseball.

00:05:16
Speaker 3: But it's a little different.

00:05:17
Speaker 4: So I did an orthetic residency, which is very equivalent, which is the equivalent of like a medical residency that you hear where they're just not uh, they're not required for PTS yet. But I just I hate myself. So I voluntarily did it, and then I went on and I got this job with the Twins. That's where I'm at right now, the Minnesota Twins baseball team. Different sport obviously, but it actually worked out well because probably shouldn't do the fantasy thing on the baseball side, just considering the fact that I work for the team.

00:05:39
Speaker 2: Uh.

00:05:40
Speaker 4: But that's why they were totally understanding of it. And that's what I do now. Man, Like we see every athlete from every level, including some of the big big leaguers that will come down and are considered long term rehabs. We see them down here, we rehab them, We check on them every day. And that's so that's my background in a nutshell. I think I just rambled for a long time. But I don't know if I.

00:06:01
Speaker 2: No, no, it's it's good.

00:06:02
Speaker 1: I think that the a distinction that's really important here is that, like you know, obviously you're not sitting there like doing surgery and such, right like you're you're helping them after all of that occurs. But if we're being honest, the after that occurs is exactly what's relevant for fantasy football, right Like that that's the piece like like you know, uh, Dawson Knox and he goes and he gets risk surgery, right, So I don't really care.

00:06:26
Speaker 2: I mean, hopefully everything goes well.

00:06:27
Speaker 1: Like I'm not saying that I don't care about Dawson Knox's overall health, but I don't care, you know, uh, like what goes down during that surgery. I want it to be a success. I want him to be healthy, all of that. But it's really the post surgery and the recovery that me as an analyst, me as a fantasy player, is most concerned about because that's going to impact, you know, my fantasy teams and how I'm managing that fantasy team. I understand that's coming across as like the most egotistical I only care about my fantasy team kind of perspective. Of course I care about these players. I just want to throw that out there. But I think that's where, you know, there might be some pushback. I would assume maybe some pushback from people. Maybe we can just get into this now, is that people see you as this doctor of physical therapy, and so you're helping people after the fact if you will, You're not you're not necessarily cutting them open. And I would assume that that might generate some backlash from people. And we've seen I've seen it even just in your mentions and other uh you know, not to not to talk down on what this means, but like other Twitter doctors mentions, right, I've seen people on social media just just coming at you and saying that you're doing it actually doing a disservice because you're not actually looking at these patients. You're not doing surgery on these patients, So how could you know, you know how long the recovery is going to be or anything like that. I have a take on those people and their criticisms, but I'm curious how you sort of handle that and how you would respond to something like that.

00:07:57
Speaker 4: I want to hear your take, but since you're asking for my I'll give you minds this long, long, long story, right, I think we are doing a disservice, but not in the way that you might think. I think we're doing a disservice as pts specifically, who are like doing this Twitter doc thing. I think we're doing three different things wrong. I think we're not emphasizing it enough that video analysis specifically right, As an example, video analysis is not diagnostic right there, Nick Chubb is an example. Literally, any MDPT andrey analyst who saw that injury was literally like this is doomsday and then turns out towards MCLACL could be a pretty relatively considering what we thought minor injury. Right, That's an example. So we don't emphasize enough video. It's not diagnostic. We don't educate the public enough about what we do, like I just did, Like I just told you, like I literally am with these guys every when they have a setback. I'm there right when they progress. I'm there when they're ahead of schedule. I'm there when they're behind schedule. I'm there when they have their check in with the doc. I'm there when they're transitioning to the weight room with the S and C stuff, Like I'm there to help, Like that is what we do, Like this is our bread and butter. And I was having this conversation I actually think with Danny Kelly actually, who like we weirdly enough, him and I had this conversation and it was very similar, like I told him, like the only thing that bothers me when those when like the Twitter trolls come out is like it's not so much that it bothers me that they're criticizing me. It's like, well, I'm more frustrated that you don't really understand what I do. And I think if people understood what physical therapists athletic trainers do, then they would have a better understanding and like okay, like this is at least like a semi educated opinion on the general population, like of these injuries.

00:09:22
Speaker 3: Right.

00:09:23
Speaker 4: But I do think here's where I I totally understand criticisms when Twitter docs any of them, any of us want me in there. If you ever see me giving a treatment recommendation or giving what I think they should be doing, or like giving some analysis where I'm like, well, if they did this, they should really do this. Like that is like crossing borders where I like, I think to myself, if I were a piece of he or an at rehabbing this dude, and then here's this other guy on the internet who knows has no other context, no their details, it's like giving his opinion on what I should do with this guy. Like that's super cringe to me. So if you think that you should give like like we could give opinions like on what like should they have an injection and should they do this? Should they do that? Like, I think that's that's that's where it's not cool. That's where I understand the criticism comes from. Uh, but that's that's just me.

00:10:10
Speaker 3: I don't know.

00:10:10
Speaker 4: That's where I think that we're doing a disservice. But to say that, like, but we're just making assumptions, right. I think that's the other point I wanted to make. Every season you put out your your freaking killer book, by the way, like it is, it's a smash every year you you're projecting offenses. You don't know you've never been in any I mean, at least I assume JJ.

00:10:30
Speaker 3: Maybe I don't know. May it's just some somewhat of shift or insights.

00:10:32
Speaker 2: It's it's it's a it's a it's a fair assumption to make.

00:10:35
Speaker 4: You've never been in an offensive meeting room. You've never been in a coach's meeting room. You haven't been in any of the facilities of the guys that you're writing about. You haven't talked to any of the offensive coordinators. You don't have a quarterback in your ear. You're looking at coaching tendencies, what coaches tend to do, what offenses tend to do, the specific skill set that uh that offenses will tend to exploit with their players, And you're making a an assumption, right, like that's your jam, that's what you do. Well, I'm doing the same thing, and Twitter Twitter docs are doing the same thing, Like this is what we do for a living. So we have this ten thousand foot view of what we can generally anticipate and expect. So it's not like we're coming out of left field, right, It's not some random person like I am, relatively speaking random relative to the case. But I would never try to treat the case based just on what I'm hearing what I'm reading. So that's my take, But I do want to hear your take.

00:11:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, my take is very very similar to the last part that you were talking about, where I think that actually you guys and gals are doing more for that profession and analyzing it to a level that fantasy analysts will not analyze to that level because you guys actually were schooled in.

00:11:41
Speaker 2: This very specific thing.

00:11:43
Speaker 1: It's not like me or rich Reebar or Matthew Berry or any or Evan Silva and all these fantasy analysts went to school to become a fantasy football analyst. We found a passion and then we dove into that passion, and we spent hours and hours and hours now perfecting our craft and trying to be as good as we possibly can. And I do think that me versus the average person out there, I know more about fantasy football and football than they do. But it's largely because I spend a lot of time doing this while someone else is an accountant, someone else is a lawyer. You just don't have that time and opportunity to really spend doing this kind of stuff. So to me, when there's other people that pop up on social media and hit my mentions, let's say, and they say, oh.

00:12:24
Speaker 2: Who are you?

00:12:25
Speaker 1: You're just a person, you know, in your mom's basement given this fantasy football advice. And I'm kind of like, that's not totally wrong. I am kind of just a guy that's doing this fantasy football stuff. I didn't even get my degree in mathematics or doing anything math related, despite the fact that I'm doing so much numbers driven analysis whereas you did do that. That's my first point, right, is that I think that you to the fantasy football injury world is more tightly closer, you know, is tied closer to me to just the fantasy football analysis world, because I think more people can naturally do the fantasy football analysis, whereas more people cannot do what you're doing.

00:13:03
Speaker 2: Right, That's number one.

00:13:04
Speaker 1: Number two, and I think this is the key point, is that what we're doing is a probability driven thing. You will never go to social media and you will never go on a podcast and say this is for certain how long this player is going to be out. What you're saying is, here are all the things that we've seen historically of when players returned with a very similar injury.

00:13:24
Speaker 2: Here's where this guy is with his age.

00:13:26
Speaker 1: And with his physique and all this kind of stuff, and how many injuries had in the past, or if this is a recurrent thing, You're you're literally putting an input similar to what I do with target share and offensive run, offensive plays run, like all of these different inputs, and you're saying, here are the chances that this thing will occur. You're gonna be wrong, I'm gonna be wrong. We're all gonna be wrong with this. The crazy thing is that you guys and gals, once again, all the injury experts out there, Stefania Bell you you know, there's just a ton of folks out there who are doing this.

00:13:57
Speaker 3: Now.

00:13:58
Speaker 1: You guys seem to get critics sized more frequently than the average fantasy analyst when you're likely a lot more accurate than the average fantasy analyst with what we're doing.

00:14:09
Speaker 2: That's what's so crazy to me?

00:14:11
Speaker 1: I think it's just this this this flip that needs to be switched for people and thinking about, like like, just because you are not sitting on the sidelines with these players doesn't mean that you can't accurately or pseudo accurately predict how long these guys are going to be out.

00:14:26
Speaker 2: So's that's my take overall.

00:14:27
Speaker 1: Maybe you disagree, but I think that it's at least pretty aligned with what you were saying before.

00:14:32
Speaker 3: Now you nailed it.

00:14:33
Speaker 4: You nailed it, And I mean that's not even necessarily true. Like the I think the video stuff is really where a lot of that criticism that you're talking about comes from. And I think it's weird because again, maybe it goes back to an education thing. When we look at an injury on video, it's not diagnostic butt right, I'm adding a butt there. They're biomechanical models, there are studies, there are discussions. Mechanisms of injury are like a topic.

00:14:58
Speaker 3: Within sports medicine.

00:14:59
Speaker 4: So when we watch a video and we have a clear enough angle, we're not guessing, right, Like I'm not guessing, like like Stefan is not guessing like other Twitter We're not guessing completely. We are watching, we are we are observing, we are applying. Like you said, like the stuff that we see because we also have to see it, like one of the important things when you're like covering, like sideline coverage, right, like when you're super locked in as a pt or eighty eighties would even know this better, I'm not an ac eighties when it's even better, like knowing what happened watching the play when a guy gets injured or when a girl gets injured and then being able to immediately trioge them, Like seeing what happened helps a lot. So that's like a part of the game. That's part of the gig. But yeah, that's I think you nail it. I mean, that's I don't have anything else.

00:15:40
Speaker 1: Set, so let's let's move on then to some of your just like general philosophical takes on what you do and on how it pertains it to fantasy football. One of the things you know, you've actually been on a Late Round podcast episode a while ago. We did a show it's probably been like two or three years at this point, but we did a show on injury prone no this and you you definitely have opened my eyes a bit to the idea of injury prone noess and probably the way that the masses view injury proneeness and that being a little bit incorrect. You know, I think that a lot of people make the assumption that if a guy has been hurt over and over again with an equaling let's say three, right, like, he has like three injuries over like a one and a half year span, therefore that player is injury prone. Now you would probably disagree because I think there's a lot more nuance to it. So I want to ask you what is that nuance and how do you feel about injury prone noess overall?

00:16:33
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you pretty much nailed it. I think that in general, they're too often people are super ready to give like, oh, he's injury prone. But really what it comes down to is population statistics versus like individual satistics. I promise I'm going to run it back to fantasy because this is I feel like it's pertinent. But basically, what I'm like, the way that I process these injuries is like I know for a fact that these like these guys are injured at a rate that's literally and I say this all the time, like I constantly bring this up the NFL has two point three percent injury free rate over five year span this Lawrence study, they found that essentially less than three percent of NFL games have no injuries. Right, So you have to look at this from a population level risk and an individual level risk. So yeah, I think you nailed it. Like once there's two or three injuries, people tend to jump to that. But based on this five year study, right, all this again, this doesn't tell you individual risks, is just population risks. The study basically looked at injuries per one thousand exposures. You can just think of that at like a thousand games per position or a thousand players per position. Every for every one thousand players that play the game of football in the NFL three hundred and ninety you can expect through under ninety five injuries. That's huge, right, that's like forty percent. So for every athlete at risk, it's basically a forty percent chance that somebody's gonna get injured. So that's like the lens that I start. That doesn't even get to the point where you're talking about individual risk. That's a totally different conversation. When you look at injuryiest that's when you get into it, like the stuff that you mentioned before, the athleticism, the age, the injury history, the specificity of like the biometrics, like what is what are the specifics that going to this dude that is injured. So the baseline I think is that's important to like that's where I start. My baseline is like, Okay, this guy's had two or three injuries. My default is like it's probably a fluke. Like I know that sounds backwards, but it's not like when I that's literally how I view every injury situation.

00:18:24
Speaker 3: So how does that.

00:18:25
Speaker 4: Come back like that study, how does that come back to fantasy football? Well, when you look at the again the per one thousand athletes at risk, here are the top four positions that are injured most frequently. So this is up from number one to number four, wide receiver, tight end, defensive back, running back. Right, So those the three of the top four are directly related to fantasy So the exception is that you're healthy, right, like you should every every fantasy football player should draft every player with the fundamental assumption of like, some of these guys are going to get hurt, and some of them are probably going to be hurt for a lot long time, Like so when you ask, like how do you view this?

00:19:03
Speaker 3: That's that's really my starting point.

00:19:06
Speaker 1: So did you just say so wide receivers, according to the stuff that you've looked at, they're and tight ends, I think is pretty obvious just because of the way that they play and like how brutal that position can be. But wide receivers are you saying, are they as a group, like would you consider them more injury prone? Just because of that like a larger population study. I'm not talking about the individual player, but wide receivers in general more injury prone than running backs.

00:19:33
Speaker 3: So yeah, to a certain extent they are.

00:19:35
Speaker 4: So, but you have to remember, like we're looking at when like you and I are looking at at wide receivers, we're looking at like the top what fifty sixty guys at the position, Like this is all players, So a lot of the guys that are wide receivers, for example, they'll get hurt and then they'll just like leave the NFL. There's also more of them, so like this isn't necessarily surprising, but this does control for team position too, So like by position, like they can for that, and wide receiver is still number one.

00:20:01
Speaker 3: So and I'm asked.

00:20:02
Speaker 4: Actually, like I'll tease the last question that you asked, JJ, there's a question at the end that I'm going to talk about.

00:20:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, this kind of teas is that.

00:20:08
Speaker 4: Okay, But running backs are still four, right, running Backs still are injured pretty frequently. So yeah, man, that's what it is. Like wide receivers tied in running backs. They're all injured extremely frequently. So you should not be surprised if any of you, any of your fantasy players are are injured.

00:20:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:20:22
Speaker 1: That's probably logical though too, because and I talk about this all the time, where like running back is more of a coaching decision in terms of how they produce than wide receivers because there's two or three wide receivers on the field at once, and so talent can win out because if they get opened, they get targeted. Whereas a running back it's like, look, if your coach doesn't want you on the field, you're just not gonna see the volume and then you're not gonna so if there's only one running back on the field at once, So it makes sense that just from a numbers perspective, you know to some degree that there's just a higher chance that some of these wide receivers would end up getting hurt.

00:20:51
Speaker 2: Now you mentioned some of these.

00:20:52
Speaker 1: Factors that could impact not just like the injury proneness or the rate of getting injured, but also probably the recovery I would assume as well. I know that you've tweeted about this a little bit, but what are some of those factors like player age, athleticism, what are the things that you're looking at when sort of analyzing these individual players.

00:21:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, kind of going back to that initial like we talked about wide receivers specifically, another thing you have to consider is, like I think people think of injuries. This is probably another place that I could provide better like education if you will, Like you think of running backs hammering into defensive linemen and linebackers, and that's how they get injured. That is one way that they get injured. But non contact injuries are a thing too, And receivers and dbs they have the most the highest rate of hamstring injuries. So they're having hamstring injuries. They can have like achilles injuries. You see them, do you know to see them get acl injuries that are non contact like these receivers also are. Depending on what study you look at and sort of what how you slice the data. Wide receivers are also more prone to concussions, So like this isn't just like a binary thing, That's what That's what really fires me up, is like when people just make these assumptions and this is like very common among football spaces. It's like, Yep, rushing quarterbacks get injured more, Yep, running backs are injured more often than wide Receivershi's like it's way more new and nuanced than that and typically not really that that accurate. So anyway, so position, I guess is really like the answer to start answering your question like position, What is the position? And how can I stratify or assume what type of injuries these guys might you know sustain?

00:22:26
Speaker 3: So uh position right? For one.

00:22:28
Speaker 4: The other one is age, Like age is a huge one. If you are Mike Evans, if you're Cooper Cup, if you are God who else older wide receiver or older Adam Adam Adam Thielen, Like if you're those dudes and coming into this season in my in my tiers because I give injury tiers every summer, like you're you're pretty low, Like in other words, you were like higher considered higher risks to me because we know that for hamstrings in particular, age and previous history of a hamstring strain is super like super tied to another hamstring injury. Right, And then we saw that with Cooper Cup. Cooper Cup had his injury, he had two weeks to recover, and then he had a reinjury. Right, And that just accounts for the thirty four percent reinjury risk for wide receivers off of hamstring strains. And then when you look at age in particular, right, I just have all this data. I'm channeling my energy, ja, I'm trying to give as much datas po.

00:23:17
Speaker 3: I love this.

00:23:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is great.

00:23:18
Speaker 4: So small sample, right, it's only a sample of eleven because I only go back to twenty eighteen for a lot of different reasons. But basically, since twenty eighteen, sixty three percent of wide receivers who are twenty eight year older had a re injury of a previous hamstring strain. Like, that's high, that's extremely high. So that should be something that like we should have been accounting for and I probably should have been accounting for even more on the front end when we were drafting in August and we knew Cooper Cup was injured. So those are really like some of the specific things. And then like more examples, right, I don't want to talk too long, but like looking at agent.

00:23:51
Speaker 1: Talk away just as I say, as I say, please just brain vomit all over the place.

00:23:56
Speaker 3: So dude, I could do that.

00:23:57
Speaker 4: I'll day So another like micro instate that I'm not surprised when this happened, like I wasn't surprised to see it. Jamiyir Gibbs hamstring strain, misses one week, comes back just like lays the wood fantasy wise, right, because he took over that volume, the hamstring doesn't seem to be an issue anymore. He's twenty one years old, flip side, and has never had a hamstertrain flip side. Aaron Jones has a history of hamstring have a hamstring tightness at least is going to be twenty nine in December, tried to come back once, didn't come back, missed another game. Right, I'm not surprised that the specific micro instances of how those two players have been handled in terms of their hamstring recovery. Right, And then when you look at like moving on from age in particular, when athleticism does matter for to me, like lower extremity traumatic stuff like high ankle sprain's ankle sprains, even like surgical ACL and like obviously I've been like super on Breeze Hall since whenever a surgery was like because as long as everything goes smoothly, athleticism is so important to getting back to where you were is just like really straightforward, right, The more athletic you are, and like the higher your baseline is, like the less you have to get back and the better you still are than the rest of your competition. Like you know, the old cliche of like eighty five percent of Saquon is better than one hundred percent of Matt Breeder or whatever you want to call it, Like that is very true when it comes to running backs, specifically after an ACL tear. So Breis Hall like to me was always a smash. Like you get these ninety fifth percentile plus athletes that are also really good at football, Like you can pretty much bank that they're gonna they're gonna provide some sort of like production for you, and I will say it's it was better this year. I think that the crowd, like generally speaking, concessus is starting to sharpen up on this. But Bristall being like a fourth round pick to me was like a smash. So I was super excited about about Breeze Hall. So yeah, that's how I view so age athleticism and then sort of the micro like risk stratification for each Dude, is.

00:25:53
Speaker 1: There a process for you from Mike an athleticism standpoint or is it more subjective in terms of like how you're viewing a player. Are you looking at like spark scorers, are you looking at at forty times or are you just saying, hey, visually this guy seems to be like an athletic player, or you know, fantasy analyst or draft knicks are saying that this player is athletics, So therefore I know that I can input him as an athletic player.

00:26:16
Speaker 3: Dude. So such a good question.

00:26:18
Speaker 4: First of all, I would hope that you don't think that I'm a film grinder when you look at me, because I'm not right, I'm not. I have not watched the game since two thousand and six. I've I've opened spreadshets, That's all I do. No, But really, the reason that your content has always rested dude, I've literally listened to you since I feel like, like I don't know twenty eighteen, twenty seventeen, twenteen, your content has always I've been like super attractive to me because you are like Boom with these numbers and data and objectivity and then drawing a conclusion from there.

00:26:48
Speaker 3: That is me. So I am not ever going to be like I can eyeball it.

00:26:51
Speaker 4: Like sometimes that comes back to bite me, right because some some pets and Twitter dogs, they have a pretty decent like feel and like I and like I envy that a little bit, but like I'm gonna I'm sorry, but I'm always gonna lead with the data, especially when it comes to this type of analysis, like I don't know how Aaron Jones actually feels like I don't know how Jamiir Gibb. Gibbs responded to his first day of his running progression.

00:27:11
Speaker 3: I don't know that stuff.

00:27:12
Speaker 4: So I'm gonna try to stick to be as much objectivity as possible. So I look at spork specifically, that's the metric over at fantasypoints dot com, Scott Barrett's brain child. It's very similar to spark and you just look at like those ninetieth percentile and above athletes is really what we see the cutoff for. And then if you look at yeah like a Way to Justice, forty score is actually also very correlated to running backs coming back and being successful, which makes sense, right, Like if you can hit a hole as fast as Breece Hall is, you cannot necessarily have to move latterly as much as you need to because you can hit the hole and just be freaking gone, right, So speed score sportscore in general, like how and all that other stuff that you guys analyzed, right, Like I lean on you guys for what is that backfield going to look like? What are these coaching tendencies? Like, what can we project for these off? How many total touchdowns could we expect on a week to week basis?

00:28:02
Speaker 3: How much?

00:28:03
Speaker 4: You know, what's the running back rush share look like? So all that stuff is like also has to fit that box. But yeah, from an athleticism perspective, it's definitely like more objective numbers, which.

00:28:12
Speaker 1: Is interesting because from my perspective, when I'm analyzing guys coming to the NFL, most of the time, running back athleticism does seem to matter to a decent degree, Like I have like waight to justin forty time thresholds and stuff in my model wide receiver doesn't seem to matter whatsoever. I think some of that might have to do with the fact that it's sort of embedded in draft capital. You know, like Christian Watson coming out unbelievable athlete, but he ended up going in the second round, so that was sort of embedded in where he was drafted. Like if he was not athletic, or if he was like just above average athleticism instead of like elite athleticism, probably would have been like a fourth round pick, right, like a fifth round pick or something like that. And so I do think that it's probably accounting for it that way. But the more that I'm thinking about this, what you're saying is more of the reliability aspect and the fact that they can bounce back and that they can play for you, and that their games played will be more reliable. But that's not really what I'm measuring. I'm not measuring how many games are going to play through the first three years of their career. I'm measuring how well they're going to be and how well they're going to perform on a football field during the first three years of their career, which are two very very separate things. So I do think that from an analysis standpoint, like if you're an analyst or if you're a player fantasy player, not only you know, obviously is the injury stuff important that we're talking about here, but you can almost almost subjectively, sort of overlay this on top of the player evaluation stuff and say, Okay, we know that that these athleticism measurables might not be that big of a deal at wide receiver, but we do know in the back of our heads that they can bounce back, hopefully a little bit better from injuries when they do occur.

00:29:45
Speaker 2: So I think it's really good to know.

00:29:47
Speaker 4: You also, like you hit something, Sorry, we can move on after this, but like the other so when you ask it all like my process in particular, there are also other things that go into right, So it can't be a Javonte Williams type injury. I was off Davonte this summer and you're sort of seeing why he's just now so coming around and it doesn't seem like it's gonna happen for Javonte this year. Maybe if it does, it's like fantasy playoffs. Maybe that's an argument for him, but like, that's a massive injury and they brought him back really fast, so I'm not surprised that he had the hit flexer stuff going so critier for running backs and ACL just like, uh, that's the first thing. Is athleticism score right, like ninety fifth percent plus percentile.

00:30:19
Speaker 3: I like that little bull. Can I do it again?

00:30:22
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, right now?

00:30:23
Speaker 3: So we do.

00:30:24
Speaker 1: We do have video with this and Edwin right now is giving a thumbs up on his screen and it's like his camera recognizes the thumbs up and pops up a thumbs up on the on the little little icon.

00:30:34
Speaker 3: It's key bizarre. It was very cute.

00:30:37
Speaker 4: Sorry, So okay, sportscore, relatively minor, ACL injury at least nine months to recover, and high draft capital, right so first round draft capital. That's how we could have identified Adrian Peterson, but I was like twelve when it happened. That's how we identified Saquon Barkley before he had a fluke ankle injury. That's how we identified uh, Breeze Hall helped to identify Breese Hall. Right, So, high draft capital, minimal surgery, and generally speaking, like we can assume that they're going to have a good workload, like those are really like the four main criteria that you want to hit. So and also, interestingly, the sports score on average for running backs that come back is really I don't remember the specific numbers, but I remember being vastly different when you say, like athleticism doesn't matter for wide receivers. When I looked at these same metrics for wide receivers after ACL euro one hundred percent accurate, like their sports score was like in the fifties, Like it didn't matter, like they were just like you had a bunch of dudes who were just like, relatively speaking, very average NFL athletes, and so it didn't matter as much for them.

00:31:31
Speaker 2: You mentioned the draft capital piece. I think that's kind of interesting.

00:31:34
Speaker 1: Do you think that that's because so much is embedded in draft capital or do you think that it's like a motivational thing for these players that they're they're so good and they're so motivated to be good. They then get drafted in the first ten picks of the NFL draft, And then that means that if like Brisall is a good example, you know, early second round pick, really really good prospect, he tears his ACL, he has his brutal injury, out for the year, bounces back seemingly really really well.

00:32:00
Speaker 2: Well, like, do you think.

00:32:01
Speaker 1: That part of that equation is just this and you're with with guys in PT all the time, right, and that are that are coming back from these injuries. You definitely witness players I would assume having far different, Like the spectrum of motivation to get back has to be way way different from one player to the next. So do you think that that sort of embedded in that draft capital equation a little bit?

00:32:21
Speaker 3: So, yes, I think you nailed on it.

00:32:23
Speaker 4: So it is actually super interesting as a different topic for a different day, when when you work with an athlete and you know that they got that dog in them, and you like see that they got that dog in them.

00:32:33
Speaker 3: Some of them don't even really even realize.

00:32:35
Speaker 4: They got that dog in them. So it's really interesting as an outsider to observe. And like there are some days like some of the pets and I will sit back, like in the office after the day and we'll be.

00:32:42
Speaker 3: Like, you know what, what's his name?

00:32:45
Speaker 4: Just a dog and like they're in rehab, but like the way they attack the rehab is like they're just they're attacking the rehab like dogs.

00:32:51
Speaker 3: And it's really interesting anyway. But yes, I think what you said is true.

00:32:54
Speaker 4: The other thing, too, JJ is like for better or for worse, sunk and costs with organizations very much. We took this guy in the first round, We spent this much money on him, or this much draft capital on him. He is our guy. He is going to be our guy. And that's honestly part of what helped Breese Hall this year. Right, You remember those Diana Roussini comments or reports in like July, like July or August when they actually brought Dalvin Cook in. And part of the hold up when Dalvin Cook didn't sign for a couple of weeks was because they basically told him, like, you are not here to be a starter, like you are a stop gap, and we Breeshall is our guy, and like that's exactly what we've seen. So that's the other aspect of it too, is like draft capitals like front offices are much less likely to give up on a guy, and then when they have high draft capital and they're much more likely to just sort of let him go. That's for draft picks rounds one through four. After the fourth round organization is basically just like, ah, whatever, Like if he makes a team, he makes a team. If not, if not, then he doesn't, it's fine.

00:33:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what injuries?

00:33:47
Speaker 1: Then? Do you think that people the general public just sort of brush off as nothing but they can actually linger and sort of stick with a player, you know, for the remainder of the season. I think there's there's obviously we get a plothora of injuries every single week that some of them we haven't even heard of before, or at least the layman has never heard of before. Are there are there certain injuries that you found that the masses just sort of like, Eh, no big deal. He's got a hamstring, that'll be fine, Or he's got a high ankle sprain that'll be fine, no big deal. Like are there are there some that linger a lot more than people realize.

00:34:17
Speaker 4: It's it kind of as a mixed bag man, Like the ham strings are definitely one. I think that people are like, oh, I had a hamstring, he's back, boom, He's gonna be good to go. I shouldn't have to worry about anything, when like you really should be worried about uh, you should be worried about re injury on average, like high ankle sprains.

00:34:34
Speaker 3: You sort of nailed it.

00:34:34
Speaker 4: Running backs in particular, they they come back, but they actually don't reach baseline of their fantasy production until week three or four after they come back. Most of them don't, right, they hover around that like eighty five percent, and then week three after they come back, that's when you send when you tend to see them take off again. Concussions are another one that people, I think until last year, didn't really take that seriously. That's definitely something that you like. Concussions. There are some recommendations from like neurological institutions that will be like, you shouldn't do a contact sport one month after you have a concussion. Whether that's right or wrong, you can argue, But like dude's coming back one week after concussion is like a big deal.

00:35:11
Speaker 3: So that's another thing.

00:35:12
Speaker 4: But I think generally speaking, it's it's the ribs, like the ones that you like, you kind of nailed it, like the ones that people don't typically tend to think about, like ribs issues, ongoing knee issues.

00:35:22
Speaker 3: These dudes are banged up.

00:35:23
Speaker 4: I mean we mentioned at the top, right, like everybody's injured all the time. It's the injuries that you think where the guy's a full participant in practice, you know that he's going to be active, and then he plays and the next thing you know, he's gone two or three weeks with like five or six fantasy points. That's when you have to go back and like that's when I go back and watch, like, Okay, something had to have happened this week. And that's when really like a lot of like my fantasy I think advice comes from is like the by low opportunities or they'll sell whatever sell high opportunities comes from that those types of like random injuries that you didn't think were a problem. So it's kind of hard to say, but there are those are just a few.

00:35:56
Speaker 1: The concussion thing is really interesting because you you send a tweet about this earlier in the season that that when players return from concussion, they they tend to not perform as well. And I do think that people sort of just assume that if a players playing after concussion, he's gonna be fine. But then you take a step back, like I've had pretty gnarly migraines in my past, for instance, right, and not not super super frequently anymore, thank God. But you know, I've had like crazy migraines where you get that migraine hangover afterwards and like you're not feeling great for the next day or two. And I've never had a concussion before, but I would imagine just naturally you're just not one hundred percent with it after concussion. Is that why we probably see that drop in production?

00:36:39
Speaker 3: Oh?

00:36:39
Speaker 4: One, that definitely has to be a part of it. Now, when the clear concussion protocol, it's criterion based, right, so it doesn't matter how much time passes in theory, but it's not a perfect protocol. So you have to have like you have to be so you have to go so long without symptoms. You have to like be able to meet this streshold of activity. You need to be able to do aerobic quork, all this stuff that goes into just feeling like a normal human. Like imagine that I'm holding my finger just here and I tell you to focus on my finger and you literally are going like back and forth because the fingers moved in front of you. Like That's what some people will report is like feeling a concussion. It's super you know, it varies like a ton You just like aren't you're right, like you just you're just not right, and like that's that sweet that you're talking about. It's it's actually really interesting. I think it does have to do with that cognitive function, because when you look at running backs after a say that running backs or like meat heads, but like after concussions, running backs come back, they see ninety six percent of their normal usual touches and they have they see one hundred percent of their fantasy points. Wide receivers they see a thirty percent dip in targets per oute run, they see a thirty six percent dip in fantasy production. And then what I have in my book this year that I that I publish it was I call that a dud rate. Is essentially, anytime a player scored fifty percent or less than their usual fantasy production, I call that a dud rate. Right, since twenty eighteen, wide receivers after a concussion have a fifty four percent rate in their first week back. So my theory is because yes, the cognitive function. The other theory is like they're trying to get through protocol so they can they can even be out there. And since wide receiver does tend to be more of like a technical strategy, you know, strategic type thing, unless you're just like a dog, like Justin Jefferson or something.

00:38:19
Speaker 3: Uh, that's that's like my theory. But i'd be interesting.

00:38:21
Speaker 4: Numbers do bounce back after the second week though, like when they come back their numbers, the numbers bounce back. But I don't know, I'd be curious, see what you think about that.

00:38:27
Speaker 2: No, that makes total sense.

00:38:28
Speaker 1: I think that it's the like like think about how players translate from college to the pros. I mean, maybe it's changing a little bit over the last handful of years because of these college schemes sort of inching their way into the NFL, But we see a lot more running backs translate and transition a lot easier than wide receivers because it's an easier position to sort of just get thrown into. And the concepts are a lot more similar, you know, with that transition, and so I think that it would be a very similar sort of concept with concussions, where if a player is out, he might not need his reps that much because it's a pretty easy position, easier position to just get thrown back there. You know, I'm not taking anything away from running backs. They're doing a way better job than I could ever do. But you know, I'm just saying that that it's compared to wide receivers. You know, like you said, it's a lot less technical. There's only so many things you're going to be doing, whereas wide receiver there's a lot of stuff you got to do in order to get open and earn that target. So I think it makes a lot of sense. So everyone listening pay attention to concussions for wide receivers over running backs whenever they return. It sounds like there could be a decent difference, you know, in their fantasy production. Let's get into some individual player takes, because I know that people are gonna want to.

00:39:37
Speaker 2: Hear about that.

00:39:38
Speaker 1: I'm going to just talk about the big name players right now because I think that's what's most important from a fantasy perspective. Obviously, they can check out your work and everything that you're doing for literally every player, every relevant player who's who's banged up. Right now, I want to talk a little bit about Cooper Cup you you mentioned him a little bit earlier. I mentioned him at the start of the show saying that I got scared off off of how much I had across my leagues, and I'm like, I got to diversify a little bit, and then one of my leagues it was a bad idea to diversify. But what was going on to start the season for him? Why was you know, the reporting was really strange around cup I saw some takes that he was just gonna be done, that he wasn't gonna play football anymore. I saw some takes that said that he didn't need to be on IR, that he could have played week two or week three.

00:40:24
Speaker 2: What was going on with him?

00:40:26
Speaker 1: And then as a follow up to that, is there any reason to be nervous about his rest of season potential with that injury?

00:40:33
Speaker 4: So a lot of me is like, because I've seen those takes two of like he's literally dead right like hopefully he's playing his funeral type talk, which I always thought was like super extreme. I think what happened JJ is like he's thirty years old, he had a hamstring strain and he tried to come back too quickly. Like I think that is like the bottom line of what happened, Like we saw that happen with Adam Thielen. We've seen this happen before, Like worse outcome that was you know Julio Jones. We saw it in twenty twenty with Julio Jones. Like these dudes who are older, they unfortunately just need more time to come back. And I think he tried to come back and like it was two weeks or something like that. This tends to happen. Like he's just thirty years old and he had he had a setback. Like I think that's what happened. Aside from that, Like I can't tell you he's got some weird, like you know, thing going on with his muscles. I can't tell you if he's got like, you know, some some new ailment that we're not a you know, something weird going on in back and like I have no idea, Like I can't tell you that.

00:41:29
Speaker 3: I can tell you that it's highly unlikely.

00:41:31
Speaker 4: And I can tell you that in his first week back he scored like twenty one fantasy points and he's looking to be fine. So I think that's what honestly what happened, man. And like the rumor mill is really interesting to me, Like when it's a big profile name, like I'll just give you this. This is kind of like anecdotal. I mentioned like sometimes I go to the back and like talk to some of other pets I work with, and sometimes we'll sit and I mean, we don't do this intentionally, but like we'll be like, hey, did you see like what this reporter said about like our guy's injury, like X's injury, Like, oh, no, what you say? And we'll like kind of laugh and like we'll have like a little moment where like, oh, that's funny.

00:42:03
Speaker 3: That that's what they think.

00:42:04
Speaker 4: Like that is that is I think that there has to be some sort of humility to understand that we don't have all the answers. And like if somebody claims to have all the answers, like you can go like hang out with them, Like I don't have all the answers. I'll always tell you when I don't have all the answers. And that's like one of those situations where I'm just gonna assume, you know, Auckham's raids are the most likely, you know scenario is what happened. Like he's thirty years old. He had setback, so obviously he had enough time to bounce back from that. I can't tell you that he's not volatile anymore because he is still thirty years old he did still have like a pretty big hamstring injury. There is a thirty percent recurrence rate. So what I can tell you is like from a performance standpoint, I don't think you're gonna see him take much of a hit. I think it's just he should still be able to do what he's gonna do. I still need to dig into his snaps in his routes and sort of how they're using him, because the rams are super smart and they're super sharp. They they know how to manage workloads, they know how to manage guys coming off of injuries, and they know how to sort of mitigate risks. So I'd be curious to see his numbers now I need to go back and do that. And but he's volatile, right, Like, I think he's a good asset to have. I think that if you're in most positions like you should take on like a Cooper cup if especially if you need risk. But I can't tell you that he's safe, right, He's not safe. He's not something that you should just slam dunk, take it to the bank. He's going to play the rest of the season. He's a dude who's volatile. But I still think that he's gonna be able to provide good production for whoever.

00:43:23
Speaker 1: Has Yeah, one of those players where you know, I do rest of season rankings every week, and if I knew for sure all of these guys would play the remainder of the season, he would be wide receiver three ish. I mean, like, you know, in that range. Let's just say, like assuming Justin Jefferson's healthy or whatever. But there's just this inherent you know, maybe I'll bump him down just a tier, right, like just or maybe the bottom of the tier, just because of this this inherent risk like you're talking about, given his age and stuff. Makes me a little bit feel a little bit better that I gave up on him in that one league. What about Devon a Chan, someone who I'm definitely interested in rest of season? In love him, Uh love his situation. I liked him as a prospect, but I loved him given the landing spot when he returns. Should we expect any sort of decline in production? I mean, obviously it. You know, running back is different because coaching is going to dictate how much work this player gets. But at the same time, if we assume that, uh that that the coaching staff is gonna work with however healthy he is, Uh, are we gonna should we expect him to be the same old devon a chan when he returns.

00:44:30
Speaker 3: So it's kind of a two prong take.

00:44:33
Speaker 4: The The first take is het the video look like he had an MCL sprain. MCL sprains are super common. Uh, you saw it with Nick Chubb, he got an MCL sprain. Eleijah Mitchell's not the perfect example to use because that dude is sort of always banged up. Uh, But you've seen these running backs, these wide receivers that have this these MCL sprains that come back, and they tend to do fine. And we know that because they that m c L has really good uh like vascular supply, has really good blood flow to it, so it heals really well, just takes some time. The other thing is he was getting a second opinion, So it's like, that's interesting. One hundred percent of the time when guy seeks second opinions, it's because they didn't necessarily like the first opinion. So that makes me think that it could be a little bit more than an MCL. If that case, it would be something like a meniscus type stuff. But they obviously decided okay, no, no surgeries needed, will throw them on the IR.

00:45:23
Speaker 3: That's all. We haven't gotten any updates after that.

00:45:25
Speaker 4: I do think that there could be some meniscal involvement because when you look at the data, a lot of times, when you have an MCL tear, it's like a pretty big MCL issue, you also have some associated meniscus stuff. So honestly, he's he's a little bit more volatile than I like. I still think that he can bounce back and be productive. I don't know that it's a slam dunk that as soon as he's an eligible off IR that they'll bring him back. I do think that they might take an extra week maybe two with him. So from that perspective, that's really how I'm viewing it. That's probably the worst case scenario. Though, Like the worst case scenario is he comes back, you know, five or six weeks after he was actually put on the IR, he takes another game to sort of get his fet under him, and then he's able to take off with whatever volume they give him. But I do think that from like a game's played perspective, the situation is a little bit volatile because we don't have a super clear picture about what's happening with him?

00:46:12
Speaker 1: What about Justin Jefferson because he you know, a lot of these injuries this year, man, they start out like it's nothing like that, like we've seen it with Kien Williams, with Jerome Ford, with now, you know, Justin Jefferson. Even when he went down, people weren't really that worried about how long he would be sidelined. And then it just seemed like we didn't hear anything from the team for like a forty eight hour period about Justin Jefferson. And you knew that that silence meant that that something was about to happen that was not going to be favorable, right, And so you know, he goes on ir it sounds like he's progressing well.

00:46:46
Speaker 2: Should we expect.

00:46:47
Speaker 1: Him, assuming the Vikings are competitive and that they want to play him and all that good stuff, should we expect him to be able to bounce back and be the same old Justin Jefferson.

00:46:56
Speaker 4: So yes, I do think, so I'll lead with that. It's like a lay any fears. I do think that he can come back. I do think that he can be productive similar to Cooper Cup doesn't mean that he's not volatile it doesn't mean that he can't have another reinjury. Again, remember there's a thirty four percent reinjury rate to wide receiver since twenty eighteen after a Hams restraint, So that is super important to consider. The other consideration with Justin Jefferson, like you're saying, is like, when are they actually going to bring him back. There's a there's a rapport out there I recently saw, and I wish I could remember.

00:47:25
Speaker 3: I closed the window.

00:47:26
Speaker 4: They did say that he they he quote feels better than they thought he would. Okay, we'll take that for what is worth. I do think that he's going to be able to come back in that that first week that he's eligible, Well, the Vikings bring him back. I'm not entirely certain, but I have a couple leagues where I'm six and one Flex Humble Flex, and I'm like sending offers where Deontay Johnson's like my wide receiver four, and I'll like send Deontay Johnson plus a piece to try to I'm trying to get Justin Jefferson. Guy hasn't responded yet, so hopefully that goes through. But like in leagues like that, imagine how you could stomp the rest of the league. Right, I have Tyreek Hill in that same league, and if I get Justin Jefferson, like that's there's literally no no way other than like terrible side of varias that that you could lose a league like that.

00:48:06
Speaker 2: Yeah. So another player where there's a lot of this is probably.

00:48:11
Speaker 1: One of the strangest situations going on right now in football is Deshaun Watson, where you know, a couple of weeks ago, it was he was cleared to play, but he took himself out like he didn't want to play himself. And then you know, last week happens where it seems like they were protecting him that you know, ste Fancy comes out and says that he's protecting his franchise signal caller and all this good stuff. Uh, he's got the shoulder injury, seemingly, like what, what's what's going on? Like is he is he done? Or a they gonna trade for Jacoby Brissett, Which I'm not expecting you to answer that one, but like, like, what is going on with Deshaun Watson right now?

00:48:43
Speaker 4: They should trade for uh, for Josh Dobbs is what they should do. I think that'd be Yeah, that'd be fun. That'd be fun for Josh Obbs. No Jeohn Watson. So Ian Rappaport is confirmed this isn't a shoulder contusion. I mean maybe it was at this point, but like it's a shoulder strain. It's a rotator cuff strain. Rotator cuff strain are more so in my I see those in my world oftentimes dealing with one right now actually with the guy, and what you see is like you just feel weak, your shoulder hurts, and you can't you literally can't throw. I tweeted a video of Deshaun Watson, who his throwing mechanics are usually pretty pushy anyway, but like if you watch the first few throws of the last game that he started, like it's brutal man like he it just it looks brutal. It looks like it's painful to throw the football. So this initially started in week four, didn't play in week or How to Buy in week five, didn't play in week six, right, finally comes back in week seven. Obviously, I think it was too soon. I don't there's a chance that we don't see Deshaun Watson for another two weeks again, because if he tried to throw the throw too soon, then he could have really set himself back. Because these these injuries are super sensitive, so it's really something to monitor worst case scenario. And I usually don't say worst case scenarios unless I think that there's at least like a five percent chance that this happens, Like there's a there's a five percent chance that we wake up tomorrow and they're like Shawn Watson placed on IR, Like there's a chance that if they're gonna protect him as much as they have and coddle him as much as they have, that they could throw him an IR and say, let's let this rotator cuff strain, like get right, let's rehab you, and then we'll bring you back at a later time. Maybe that's not what they're gonna do. That defense is obviously looking monstrous, So that's sort of what the the the vibes are bad, I'll put it that way, like the vibes are bad, and I don't necessarily And I appreciate you for trading Deshaun Watson to me in the Injury Prone Invitational a couple of weeks ago. I also gave you Jalen hurtson that same trade. But good thing that the other Watson that I also acquired, Christian Watson, is doing just fine and I should be fine.

00:50:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we should.

00:50:37
Speaker 1: We should throw out there right now that the trade at the time was actually decent on paper and pretty fair on paper where it was I get it's a super flex league. I gave up to Shaun Watson and Christian Watson because Watson, but Christian Watson was about to return, and I got Jalen Hurts and then the funny part to all of this and they're playing tonight, so something might have happened during that game or I have no idea how he produced. But the other piece is Dalton Kincaid, who now is looking like a tight end one because of this Dawson Knox thing. Do you do you have a take on the Dawson knock stuff. By the way, I saw that there was a rap sheet report earlier today saying that they think that he thinks that he's leaning towards going on IR But there was a you know, the Jackson Smith and Jigba wrist injury that happened in August this year where he seemed to get back, but at the same time did he get back quickly, you know, because he didn't perform to kick off the year for the first three weeks. Like I feel like that might have gone a little bit under under the radar with with JSN and the way that he started the season is that he was hurt throughout August. He wasn't getting reps, but also he was just injured. But do you have any This is off the cuff, but do you have any takes on like the Dawson knock situation too, because I was definitely blowing a lot of my fob on Dalton Kincaid in the leagues where he was available, and I told patrons to do the same that I was. This is one of those opportunities where you don't always get a really talented rookie getting thrust to a situation like this where the opportunity is going to increase a lot.

00:52:03
Speaker 2: I like to be aggressive in those situations. So tell me that it was smart to be aggressive.

00:52:07
Speaker 3: It was smart to be aggressive.

00:52:10
Speaker 4: The thing with Duston Knox, I don't think this is gonna be like a six month thing if you follow, So everybody should follow bang up Bills on Twitter at banged ut Bills. He does what I do, but he literally just just does like bills. Super nice guy's name's Kyle. He's a physical therapist too, so he he's super tight in, like super locked in obviously. So he's thinking like four to six weeks is is like a decent timeframe for the specific injury that he thinks Dawson Knox has, and I would agree. I would tend to agree with that, like I think that something relatively minor is what we have at our disposal. Wrist and hands are super complicated though. That's why wrist and hands, you know, hand risk specialists exists, because things can get things can get.

00:52:49
Speaker 3: Sketchy real fast. There's just a ton of ligaments bones in there.

00:52:52
Speaker 4: So I would plan for uh, I would definitely plan for four weeks without Dawson or without yeah, without Dawson Knox. I don't think it's season ending, but at the very least, I think over the next four or five weeks, like Dalton Kaid's looking money. He looked good in that last game. So again, j JA, congratulations, I appreciate you stealing all of my good players.

00:53:10
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:53:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, look, I mean, like I think from a fantasy perspective, then if you overspent like I did in a couple of leagues on Dalton Kincaid. Even if it is a four to six week injury, there's always a chance that Kincaid really shows up and shows out and the Bills have no other choice but to, you know, give him a lot more routes run than Dawson Knox moving forward. You know, we talked earlier about sort of how the masses view injuries and such. Do you think that there are any injuries that people care too much about that they get way too you know, I don't excite, it's not the word. They get way too caught up in when that injury occurs, thinking that that player is going to be out for.

00:53:47
Speaker 2: Weeks and weeks and weeks, et cetera, et cetera.

00:53:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that it's kind of a bigger picture. Like from a Redress season perspective, people are way too I think, pessimistic on Acls at the same time too optimistic. They were like people were too optimistic on Javonte Williams. They were too pessimistic on Breeze Hall. So that's really one injury where I see that people are just sort of really misplacing their their optimism and pessimism.

00:54:12
Speaker 1: And to be clear and to be clear, that Davonte Williams thing is because he had the other ligaments that were screwed like like he had like MCL and stuff like that, right, that was all screwed up in that.

00:54:21
Speaker 4: So the primary issue with the the Jowontay Williams thing is the LCL. So LCL, when LCL is involved, it matters because you have to like dig into another part of the joint. That's a whole nother conversation. It's like a big recovery. It's much longer recovery. So yeah, that's that's really a primary difference. So I think that is one where I think acls in general people are like, oh, acls are like, you know, they used to be career ending and not like, well they're still pretty career ending. Fifty two percent of running backs since twenty twelve as far back my data biscus, fifty two percent of them never come back like they play they are even like twenty five, twenty six years old, and then they never play in the NFL again. Like that's like ACL injuries are still impactful. That's why when we find out like Breese Hall, Tae Kwon Barkley, Like when we find those outliers, like we latch onto them because that's gonna be like Lee, those are gonna be League winners for us. So that's honestly like the ones that really stand out to me. But in general, I think the idea that is this guy one hundred percent. I think I understand the spirit of the question, but like in my mentions, it's constantly like, do you think it's gonna be one hundred pcent? Do you think it's gonna be one hundreercent? Like, no, right now, I can guarantee you. Okay, I can't guarantee you. We just literally talked to the top show. I can't guarantee anything. But like I can, I can say with pretty fair confidence that Breese Hall right now feels eighty five to ninety percent like Breese Hall, and I can guarantee you there's gonna be an interview that comes out next year where he's gonna be like, oh yeah, like I thought I was ready. I mean, you saw it with Michael Gallup, saw sa Quon Barkley. They're not confident in their knees psychologically, which is totally normal until the following year, so that last five to ten percent can matter for sealing outcomes. But to be what we call like in the PT, we're like clinically meaningful, like when we actually see it and observe it, and it matters for fantasy football purposes. Dudes can be eighty to eighty five percent and still make a massive impact. So I think it's less of like an injury in particular. It's more about worrying about what one looks like. That would be like my take. I love that, I love that.

00:56:05
Speaker 1: All right, before I let you go, I want you to want you to give me just a general injury take, like any take that you want, whether it's about injury proneness, whether it's about a particular player, anything.

00:56:15
Speaker 2: Just give me a take, fire off a take.

00:56:17
Speaker 4: Okay, it's less of a take and it's more of a fact. This data based. We are on the late round perspective, but still late round statistical analysis. Yes, okay, anyway, anyway or else?

00:56:28
Speaker 3: Sorry.

00:56:29
Speaker 4: Since twenty thirteen Top twelve running backs versus Top twelve wide receivers. This is by adp right, and this is PPR. I don't care what we say, jj HAFPPR is not God's Game PPR is God's Game. Running Backs, they missed an average of three games per season. This is top two again, remember top twelve by ADP. Running Backs miss since twenty thirteen three games on average, with a median of one missed game. Look at wide receivers. Wide receivers miss an average of two point two games technically a few round of this three with the median also of one missed game. So that number, in particular, I think really has shaped the way that I drafted this year in particular, and you really have seen it like sort of play out with Deontay Johnson, right with Cooper Cup, with Justin Jefferson. Running Backs are not the only position that gets injured. And then if you look another like the other part of this stat in particular, if you look at missed seven plus games in a season. Right, So, any any running back wide receiver in the top twelve by ADP who missed seven plus games in the season. So of the top twelve running backs sixteen percent, of the top twelve wide receivers thirteen percent. Right, so there's a three percent difference in missing seven plus games. I know that was a lot of like that. That's hard to conceptualize sometimes when you're listening to it. Basically, what this tells me wide receivers are running back injury rais from a fantasy football perspective, in particular, when we're talking top twelve wide running backs and wide receivers, they miss a very, very similar amount of time. So don't I guess my advice or my thought processes, like, don't over invest in the idea of injuries because they happen all over the place.

00:58:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, like there's reasons to go zero or RB, but that reason shouldn't be strictly because of injury. It shouldn't just be because running backs get hurt.

00:58:13
Speaker 2: Leave it at that.

00:58:14
Speaker 1: I think that's a really really good thing to end the show on, Edwin. I appreciate you hopping on man. Why don't you let everyone know where they can find you.

00:58:22
Speaker 4: At FB Injury doc on X that's really Fantasy Points dot com obviously, that's where you can find all my work, primarily JJ. Thank you for having me on man. This is a second time, Like most people don't get to be on here at all, and I've done it twice now, like this is I am on JJ zecher he since podcasts and yeah, man's pretty cool. I love a really weird life and I really appreciate it.

00:58:43
Speaker 2: No, I appreciate you man.

00:58:44
Speaker 1: As always, anyone who wants to follow me on Twitter, I'm at late round QB all my workover on lateround dot com.

00:58:50
Speaker 2: As always, thanks for tuning in.

00:59:01
Speaker 3: Contacted contact the tas